It's not such a big deal that one guy was fired because he said too much about internal company stuff on his blog ... but it is a big deal that companies don't generally have blogging standards.
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/02/dinner_with_the.html
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-02-08-n55.html
An expansive communications policy is pretty important. Game companies, in particular, frequently encourage self-expression by allowing people to decorate their cubes in all kinds of crazy ways. It's easy for an employee to get the idea that such freedom extends in a bi-directional way to the outside world. In some companies that would be fine and in others it would not be fine.
It's all well and good to try to avoid bureacracy by having a minimal set of policies but the fact is people need and want direction and good management supplies it.
Nobody likes to be surprised.
© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.
I completely agree with your point about new age management. I think of it this way:
ReplyDeleteYour bosses know what kind of conduct they'll accept. Failure to communicate this to employees is nothing short of unfair. Acting like their are no real rules is simply dishonest.
With regards to this tool who was fired from Google -- he deserved every bit of it. This loser hadn't even worked there a week and he was already bitching about their benefits package. Much of his content was really sarcastic and scathing to his new employers.
What else would he expect. He's using his employers blog service to spew venom -- and he's the FNG! Certainly any boss is going to expect a newby to be on their best behavior for at least a little while, but this nimrod went right to it. I think it only makes sense for them to can him before he got even more brazen and really started to defame the company.
Badmouthing your company is nothing new. Doing it en masse is a problem. Getting caught badmothing your company in masse is just stupid.
-RM