Dinner with the fired Google blogger

I spent a lot of time tonight at the geek dinner talking with Mark Jen.

He was the guy fired by Google because of stuff he wrote on his blog.

It was clear he didn't understand what he was up against. He's very sorry for what he wrote. I believe he's learned what he did wrong. He won me over. I would hire him on my team in a heartbeat (if he'd agree to capitalize his sentences properly. Heh!)

Really what he -- and other bloggers who've been fired -- did wrong is have a mismatch in the image they were presenting to what the company wanted presented.

Anyway, I can certainly see why Mark was hired at both Microsoft and Google (two companies that have famously tough hiring standards). He's smart. Dedicated. Passionate.

I look forward to him moving past his mistakes and blogging again. He told me he'll blog again real soon, just wanted to make sure that he didn't increase his troubles with further writing. I'm sure he'll land a good job and be a leader in this industry.

That said, I told him that next time he gets a job I'd make sure it's one where he can talk passionately about it in a positive light.

Some more tips I learned:

1) Know about strategic dates that are coming up that might make managers or employees more skitish or uptight than usual (Google's pre-IPO employees will be able to sell another round of stock this month).

2) Make sure you really understand the culture of the company you are joining before writing openly about that company. An Apple employee was also at the table at dinner tonight and agreed that the expectations around blogs were quite different at Apple than at Microsoft. If you don't understand that difference you can really get into trouble.

3) Make sure your boss is on your side and is willing to (and able to) stand up to people who are extremely wealthy and powerful. Or, is willing to defend you to your coworkers.

4) Make sure your own personal "brand" (for lack of a better word to describe what people think of you after reading your blog) is aligned with what company insiders think the corporate brand should represent. That's where the Delta flight attendant got into trouble. That's where Mark got into trouble.

5) Understand employment law and the consequences for making mistakes. California, for instance, is an 'at will' state. Translation: your boss can fire you for combing your hair the wrong way this morning.

6) Understand common-sense culture. For instance, it's not generally accepted to talk about personal details like salary (and I can think of a whole raft of such issues like religion, sexual orientation, political persuasion, personal lifestyles, etc) in public spaces. In fact, if a coworker asked me about the salary I make I'd refuse to discuss it (although astute readers here know that I make less than $100,000 per year). See, even I like breaking the cultural rules once in a while.

One last thing: please remember that when you talk about people in the public space that there is someone on the other line. Mark made a mistake (er, a raft of mistakes) but he paid for it by losing a job he actually liked (although I wish he'd have been a bit more positive on his blog) and the salary and career opportunities that represented. I've seen a lot of pretty personal remarks made about Mark and getting to know him I've come to realize he's just as human as the rest of us.

Comments

[christopher baus]

> I make less than $100,000 per year

Man you need a raise. You probably moved a few million in TabletPCs this year ; )

[Angie]

Perhaps it is better to just not discuss work on your blog??

I must be one of the rare people that actually likes where I work and who I work for. :)

[christopher baus]

I don't totally get what you are saying here. Are you saying I shouldn't blog about religion, politics, or personal lifestyle? Where's the fun in blogging then? Most everybody works somewhere.

[Alfredo Octavio]

Robert, Robert,

What has Microsoft done to you? You can't talk about your sexual orientation, religion, and lifestyles in public places? Why the hell not? Don't we have anti-discrimination laws? What kind of world do you want us to live in? That's bullshit Robert. In your own time, in your own blog you can talk about all these issues, if you lose your job, you are better off than working for such bigots. The only thing you shouldn't talk about are: Things that are secret in your company, things that should be secret in your company (even if they are not), and things that could make clear a competitive advantage to your competitors. Everything else should be on the table if you are a decent human being. Mark, did wrong, but so did Google... They could have handled the issue differently and they would have come out ahead.

[Dennis T Cheung]

Clearly Alfredo doesn't understand the concept of 'at will' employment.

[Robert Scoble]

Christopher: let's take it into a different arena. Not blogs.

Let's say you're going on a client meeting. Let's say this client is a Republican. Let's say you're a Democrat.

Do you really think it's a smart career move to discuss your political views with this client?

I don't.

Note, I do bring up politics on my blog from time to time. When I do bring it up it's done in a very thought out way. A very deliberate way. And when I do it I'm willing to take the consequences. Which, can be considerable. Did you not note who won the election?

Yeah, there are anti-discrimination laws, but that's often very tough to prove. I'm talking about real-world here, not the theoretical "ideal world."

The reality is that I signed an agreement that says I can be fired at any time for any reason. Or no reason at all.

What I'm saying is don't give your employer extra reasons to fire you (if you care) and/or when you do take risks make sure you do it in a very thought-out way. Don't take risks without understanding the consequences like Mark did.

[Robert Scoble]

Christopher: another way to look at it is:

There's the right time and place for everything.

If Mark had worked at Google for four years and then started blogging the way he did I'd expect that he'd have been treated quite a bit differently.

If you go on a sales call you shouldn't talk about religion or politics or sexual orientation or other sensitive topics. Those don't belong in the discussion.

Same on a blog where you're representing your company.

If I'm going to talk about that stuff I'll start a separate blog so that people have to come looking for it and I won't put Microsoft's name on it.

When you're out in public on behalf of a company you live under different rules than other employees do.

Sorry, that's just the facts.

You'll also notice that on stage at VSLive the Microsoft employees were dressed nicer than the employees back in Redmond.

Think about that one for a while. When you're out in public you need to dress nicer. Even if you hate wearing a suit or tie.

[david parmet]

"Really what he -- and other bloggers who've been fired -- did wrong is have a mismatch in the image they were presenting to what the company wanted presented."

Good point and related to blogging and marketing - which is the whole point. Blogs, be they by employees, customers, distractors, etc, threaten companies who are interested in control because they are by definition uncontrollable.

Learn the culture of your company before you stick your neck out - sad lesson to learn but a valuable one.

[Alfredo Octavio]

What? Now you need a suit and a tie? That's a very old school concept of dressing nicely. I think that's out of touch with today environment. I work at a bank and I don't have to wear a suit and a tie except when meeting government officials and that is because they can sanction you! je je

Really what you are saying is that gays should get back on the closet or risk being fired. I say, take the risk... the other option is awful. If doing a business depends on you hiding what you believe in (eg., politics) then it isn't worth it. Don't sell yourself...

People accepting these conditions are little more than slaves... The worst part is they are not in your contract... I may not understand the concep of "at will" employment from a company point of view, but I understand personal free will and freedom better than you guys.

[Out4Blood]

When I first read Mark's blog comments, I thought he was a litle too bold in his commentary. He did appear quite negative. If I had just started at Google, I would have been writing, "Damn, free food!" Not, "There must be an evil consipracy to keep you here 24/7."

That's just bad manners. I equate that to visiting a friend's house for dinner and telling him and his wife how bad the food tastes. Not good manners. Not a good thing to do.

So the host asked Mark to leave on account of his bad manners. Was that evil? No.

[Dave]

Alfredo, you may understand the concept of personal freedom more than the rest of us - IMO you don't, since nothing here was said in the context of freedom to do anything - but guess what? You completely lack any understanding of realities.

Read through this again... nobody said that gays need to stay in the closet. What they did say was that - in the wrong time or wrong place or wrong way - if a gay came out of the closet there is a risk of them encountering difficulties interacting with others that could have been avoided.

In case I didn't make sense here, let me try again. Does a gay have the FREEDOM to come out of the closet? Certainly! But can a gay broadcast their sexual preferences, say, to their boss of the same gender, in such a way as to make that person uncomfortable enough to fire them? In some states they can. Is this discrimination? Sure. But again, proving this is very hard - particularly if the person doing the firing knows how to cover their butt.

Is this fair? No. But it IS reality.

[Robert Scoble]

Alfredo: I wish you well, but I'd never send you on customer visits if you had that attitude. You'd lose billions of dollars in sales. Your politics and religion are just two things that don't belong in a business discussion a lot of times.

It just isn't smart. Everyone who deals with people learns this lesson very early on.

Corporations don't allow free speech. Sorry, they don't. You should watch Donald Trump's "The Apprentice." While dramatized, that's pretty much how things work in most corporations I've been in.

If you lose the trust of your coworkers you'll hear those famous two words: "you're fired."

Also, please look at the kinds of things I've written about. I have put on my blog that I'm in favor of gay marriage. But I did it KNOWING just what my company would support and KNOWING that I might pay some consequences for posting that.

Turns out I don't know of any consequences that happened because of that post, But I was very careful and very deliberate in posting that post. It wasn't something I just did on a whim. It was something that I was willing to get fired over.

But, out of thousands of posts I've made, I've only talked religion or politics a handful of times. Why? Because I know that no matter which side I pick on those two topics I'll piss someone off. That's not smart to do in business.

[Harvey Manfrenjensen]

IMO it's not so much about the beliefs he expressed... Mark's lapse of judgement made him an instant liability to google. In letting him go, google also displayed how quickly they're prepared to eliminate weak links in their personnel, something MSFT has struggled with for years...

[Curt]

I think this whole discussion points up the single most important, and difficult to resolve, issue when it comes to employee blogging (not corporate blogging -- blogging privately but being an employee): there is no agreement about even the most basic issues of what is 'permissable' to blog about. We haven't really even agreed on terms for the discussion. I spoke with the Village Voice's Managing Editor Doug Simmons and he said he couldn't even conceive of anything (at all) that would result in a blogging employee getting canned. Others, such as Friendster, have fired people who were well thought of in the industry, apparently popular and productive at work, for (apparently) blogging that the system they were changing (because it was problematic) was in fact problematic. How do you navigate that? To do corporate blogging (sponsored blogging, or blogging primarily as a rep of your company) is reasonably straightforward, though not without its problems. Blogging as an employee, not as a rep, is much more fraught. Blogging lacks a single clear space in the public imagination: Is it primarily my diary, my picture gallery of adorable kittens, my magazine, my Maoist revolutionary meeting place, my Idi Amin fan page, what? I think until businesses start addressing this, and employees push back, and we reach some understanding, this process will be characterized more by MISunderstanding. And employees and employers both will have to push, the employers to harness, the employees to shrug off the harness.

[pb]

Best advice: don't be an idiot.

[Johnnie Moore]

Robert: Microsoft are getting a bargain!

[Kevin]

Hmm, I think we wonder into a situation where both individuals and corporations must evaluate both the physical and implied contract. Excluding CA. "at will" law, which makes most of this moot, I wonder if a company really can fire you for comments that are not indirectly or directly about the company.

Taking Scoble's example of gay marriage, if I were to state that on a blog page with no reference to the company I work for and that it is my personal opinion I don't think a company could do anything regardless (except in CA.) This is a personal opinion and though you work for a company not a direct reflection on the company.

That may all be a ideological whim, but in the past before blogs and such we merely dealt with heresay/word-of-mouth which would be much harder to dispute and fire someone over. Maybe blogs need to be treated as such and enjoy greater protection when a contract does not layout the rules.

My ramblings.

[Chris]

Alfredo: You might think you understand personal freedoms but what you understand is the "ideal." Not the reality. The fact of the matter is that its extremely easy to fire someone for their sexual orientation, or political views, or that they staked paper the wrong way. Many HR reps are taught how to word things to use as ammunition later.

The fact of the matter is though that you clearly misinterpreted what Robert was saying. He's not saying people should stay in the closet, or hide their believes. What he's saying that is you must becareful of your enviroment. Politics and freedoms have nothing to do with closing a business deal. They shouldn't either. Business is about exactly that, business. Not politics, not race, not creed. Maybe sometimes it should be (or at times, really shouldn't be) but thats the way life goes sometimes.

I think Im rambling.

[christopher baus]

Russell Beattie heavily supported Kerry in the last election. Are you saying now that he works for Yahoo! this would be bad? If I can't talk about my opinion on DRM, copyright, etc. which are political issues on my blog, what CAN I blog about? My personal voice then becomes very limited. Your advice on blogging has served me well in the past, but now I just don't get it again.

[Silke Schümann]

@Chris Business is never just business. Just think of the unions fight. Think of the carter era. Think of the history of my country (Germany) which ended in the holocaust. Think of Great Britain and unemployment of the Irish, where signs said no Irish employed.

If no one stand up for the suppressed and no one fights every day for freedom and free speech there is no such thing.

Voltaire:
"I may disapprove of what you say, but I will
defend to the death your right to say it."

Talking business isn't talking religion or politics. But There publication on business subjects and there is blogging.

I seperated business blogging from personal blogging yet I still write about political and social issues if I think it is vital for our society to accept differences.

Whether we do business or pray or have sex we always live in _one world_ and have to find some agreement to live and let live. As far as I'm concerned I expect respect and integrety from business partners. If they can't cope, they are not my business partners.

I can only speculate, but it appears as if there hadn't been much negotiation between Mark Jen and his bosses. All I read is, that a nice smart guy didn't get the chance to learn the lesson within the company. He was just fired. Learned it the hard way. It appears to be a lack of respect and integrity, doesn't it? though I aggree very much with 2):
"Make sure you really understand the culture of the company you are joining before writing openly about that company."

[Morgan Schweers]

Greetings,
Voltaire didn't say that, it's an extrapolation by a later author. The meaning is great and to be lauded, but check the facts.

A somewhat better (IMO) quote that touches on this also:
“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as empty, meaningless or dishonest and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.” - Heinlein

While I'm sure everyone else would love to flagrantly discard the politeness of 'avoiding social discord' to throw their sexuality, religion, and politics in the face of people who may (or may not) disagree, it is not, in the end, the best way to win friends, and build and preserve business relationships. You can do it, just don't expect to be asked back.

If you're so rich as to be able to throw away potential business partners, friends, employees and employers, then more power to you, you can live the life of the eccentric hermit.

Your blog is your own, certainly, but either don't associate yourself with your company (a practice I personally follow as best as I can), or if you do associate yourself with your company then don't talk about your private parts.

No matter what, DEFINITELY don't talk about your company's private parts (financials, etc.), without explicit permission. You generally have no right to do that in any case, because you signed away that right in exchange for a paycheck. Publishing even vague references to financials just before the earnings announcement is simply beyond verboten, to the point of 'I can't believe someone even thought about it'. I'm more attuned to this sort of thing, having been through several companies going public and such, and all the emphasis on quiet periods, etc., that goes with that.

-- Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

[Christopher Baus]

Every once and a while I read a blog entry that I keep coming back to while I'm working on something else. This is one of those.

Robert, I think if you re-read what you wrote there, deep down won't believe it. This will turn us into droids to our corporate masters. I don't blog about work very often. With any luck you don't even know how I pay the bills.

Jen screwed up because he blogged about confidential corporate information, not because of his sexual or religious preferences. He wouldn't have gotten fired for saying if he does or doesn't go to church, or if he was a republican.

Scoble you represent Microsoft a lot more than most of us represent our employers. That was a role you choose. You have to obey more restrictive rules because of it, because you speak for Microsoft all the time. I don’t speak for my employer, because you don’t even know they are.

[Neville Hobson]

What much of these comments indicate to me is questions.

Alfredo, for instance, with his strong focus on personal freedoms. Curt's comment that there is no agreement about even the most basic issues of what is 'permissible' to blog about.

It is simple. If you're employed by someone else, you will very likely have some restrictions on your personal freedoms of expression. The likelihood rises the bigger and/or more 'traditional' your employer is. Sorry, Alfredo, that's just reality. And you do have a choice, you know, not to work for that employer if you feel so strongly that you couldn't agree to any restrictions on your freedoms of expression.

Robert's got the T-shirt, so to speak, and it's worth paying attention to what he's saying.

The other side of the picture, though, that would help answer an awful lot of questions for any employee - even avoid those questions coming up in the first place - is when an employer has a clear set of guidelines on what's ok and what's not re blogging in the workplace. That would addreess your point, Curt.

The employer has the clear responsibility to set out the ground rules, make it really clear on where everyone stands.

Relying on employee common sense just isn't enough, as Mark's case indicates.

[Silke Schümann]

@Morgan Schweers
Thanks for the hint on Voltaire. And running my own business I am in quite a different position. Any mistake I make in my publique appearance is directly related to success or failure. I usually don't discuss my small and big private issues in business places like my business blog. I agree with you that an employee signed away some rights for a paycheck.

Though apart from business every single one of us creates the world we live in. I think this is reason enough to stand for the one or other principle even though this means loosing a business opportunity.

To your quote: isn't politeness something that works best two-ways? I wasn't saying, yeah, every employee ought to have any rights to publish what ever he or she thinks is worth publishing no matter what impact it has on the company.

I think it is much better to talk about problems solve them and learn on both sides. It might have been the same result after all. Both parties might have come to the agreement not to agree.

Btw the picture drawn in this quote is from the physical standpoint interesting, as too much lubrication results in lots of energy without progress. Rubbing is essential for progress. ;o)

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Right Neville and others. I'm afraido Alfredo doesn't understand business, blogging, or free speech.

Shouting "fire!" in the crowded movie theater. Making fun of your employer is called "biting the hand that feeds you."

Blogging is new, all the ethical questions have not come to the surface satisfactorily (similar to cloning, stem cell research, etc.)...

...and I'm not really convinced that companies should rush into employee blogging. I don't let any of my employees blog. I do all the blogging. And I do all the interviews, seminars, and newsletters. My name is on the company everythings (Streight Site Systems). So there.

Then again I crack a whip, make them bow down to me 8 times a day, tell them who to marry, tell them what church to attend, and force them to eat a restricted diet of toasted red aunts and Ovaltine flavored S'mores.

Employee blogging is somewhat similar to allowing employees to have company newspaper, magazine, or internet radio station.

Who says employees have to be anarchistically free?

Just try starting your own company, then see if you don't care what your staff blogs about.

This situation is so simple and clear to me, I honestly don't understand what all the fuss is about.

:^(