News recently broke that a Google employee – Mark Jen, was fired for his blogs about life in Google. Mark was only a month old employee at Google. Anyhow, most tech Bloggers who got wind of the story are posting facts on the case. The story also made its way to Slashdot where the community took jabs at Mark. It is obvious that if your like the other bloggers out there who comment publicly about their work/workplace, you had better be careful.
Whats wierd is that Mark blogs on as if he is still at Google.
To quote Scobleizer:
Really, the policy is: don’t piss off your boss. We put a positive spin on it and call it “be smart.”
Reading Mark’s blog I can see a variety of mistakes he made. When you start at a new company you need to build a relationship network before you start discussing the company in public. You need to understand what the various forces that have power (and, at every company there are probably people who have more power than you do — even the CEO has to listen to the board of directors and to other people inside the company) and you have to work carefully and deliberately.
Links
Microsoft geek blogger Scoble
Jeremy Zawodny about blogging at work
Google bloggers
Blogscoped: Mark Jen fired
Google Blogger has left the building