In My Experience... | MSFT employee fired for posting pic of G5's. (1203)

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MSFT employee fired for posting pic of G5's.
[ Posted by Dan on October 29, 2003 | 4 Comments ]

Firing him will generate more bad press than his blog posting would have. I would never of heard of this unless the news of his release from MSFT was put on the various Mac news sites. Everyone is going to see this story today, but I'm going to post about it here anyway.

Now really, it seems to me that MSFT must need to buy some Macs so they can be sure their Mac software actually runs, right? What's the harm in showing a pallette of G5's (some of them knocked over) on a truck? If they poster didn't say it was at Microsoft building, you would be able to tell.

Where I work, we have a Standards of Business Conduct thing that you agree to work there, which I read carefully, and it suggests that giving away corporate secrets will get you into trouble. That's why I didn't post pics of AOL's blogging system while it was in beta, and why I don't make all of the corporate logos available for download in vector format. Those would be obvious violations of trust between me and the company that feeds my family.

IMHO, a picture of a pallette of G5's being delivered to a company that writes Mac software is not grounds for removal. But who knows, this guy could be a major asshole who was on a 'work performance plan' and the company was looking for an excuse. Who knows. I don't, but the whole thing is pretty crazy.

Taking photos in your place of business and distributing them outside of the company when it's forbidden (and thats pretty much a universal thing) is grounds for dismissal. Microsoft is in no way different than any other employer in this, and I'm sure they've done it before for people taking photos of things that AREN'T macs.

The guy was just having fun, sure, but letting him do it sets a bad precedent when the person who ISN'T just having fun starts snapping photos, whether for corporate espionage or blackmail or whatever else.

-Posted by JC on October 29, 2003 11:50 AM

Indeed the precendent is not one that I'd want set, but doesn't that seem to be a bit of a strong reaction to an action that seems so benign?

(Like I said though, who knows if the guy was already in hot water or was a model corporate citizen?)

-Posted by Dan on October 29, 2003 12:06 PM

Not really. The guy wasn't even a real employee, he was a temp. Companies let temps go over just about anything. There's no real investment in a temp since all you pay is the fees to the agency, so there's less incentive to give another chance to avoid the costly process of finding a new hire and doing all their insurance paperwork and so on.

It sucks to be him, but I'd probably have done the same thing if I were his boss. And judging by how quickly the story exploded, I'd almost be willing to bet he was there, in part, fishing for something that would get people riled up.

-Posted by JC on October 29, 2003 04:58 PM

I don't think the "bad press" MSFT is getting is going to hurt them in the slightest. Now what would be bad press is if they didn't do anything about it and this guy took a photo of something that actually mattered (like G5's with stickers saying "Now with Windows XP!").

-Posted by Eric on October 29, 2003 05:56 PM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).