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MS Blogger Should Have Been Fired
I don't see what the big deal is here. The guy blatantly
violated MS security policies. Yes, the picture was quite
innocent, but here is the deal. You can't just go around
snapping photos of stuff arriving on trucks to Microsoft. If
the guy had in any way been a valuble employee, he probably
would have gotten away with a slap on the wrist. However, he
was just a temp anyway, which means he is disposable. My
question is, when the hell did a tech get the idea that he
could just go around snapping photos of stuff arriving on
trucks and posting them to his weblog? What if the stuff in
question had been delivered under some NDA or something?
4 Comments
ah Jesse, Jesse, Jesse.
I don't know if you're a curmudgeon who really believes
this or if you are just stirring the pot a little.
But if you read his post again you will see that it
wasn't just because of the picture - it was because he
said where the picture was taken. The picture alone
"might" have been ok.
Now I don't work there and cannot comment on Microsoft's
camera policies (I know some companies prohibit them)
but getting the axe because you posted your business
address seems a little excessive - a lot of us we all
would get fired because we have business cards.
Now if Microsoft "does" prohibit all
cameras on campus, then this guy did do bad.
Any company who cookes up rules such as these, that a
picture of a truck with G5's is a serious issue, has
something serious to hide. Firing the guy is also a
stupid action. It has reached /. already, hundreds of
thousands of people now know this. Would this guy be
taken aside, ordered to remove the post on his blog, 10,
maybe 20 people would have known about the existence of
this photo.
That's the key part here :)
Now, I don't know but if I were Steve B. the people I
WOULD FIRE were the ones in charge of the PR department,
because they don't know what PR is.
No, the post says someone else (Microsoft Security)
deemed the picture with associated text violated some
unmentioned security policy.
Mentioning that something was delivered to a specific
address should not be objectionable to even the most
paranoid person. There are a number of outsiders who
already knows this information from the delivery truck
driver to the original shipper.
And the context of the "might" implies
that security would not have objected if he had
refrained from mentioning Microsoft.
Without knowing exactly how this violated security (was
it "Thou shalt not bring and use a camera on
campus, period"), neither of us can comment on
the validity of the firing.
But it does have a certain "fishy"
odor.
Just posting a picture of some boxes being pulled off a
truck is a lot less harmful than posting a picture of
boxes being pulled off a truck and saying, "by
the way, all these boxes that I just took a picture of
were being delivered today to such and such department
in Microsoft." Both are bad, but I definately
agree that the second is a lot worse.