No, not me, don’t worry :-).
On Friday I dropped by the office of an old boss of mine. He had apparently heard I was back in the building and wanted me to come by and say hi. It was pretty cool seeing him again; he was a really good guy to work for. I interned under him 3 years ago, and I believe the job I did that summer was the reason I got hired by my current company. The internship was a VB / Access job. It’s not the kind of job I’d want to do as a career, but it was fun to be able to apply all the VB skills I had racked up as a teenager. I churned out something like 2,000-3,000 lines of code a week, it was ridiculous. During the meeting he actually told me that most of the stuff I had done was still being used and that people still talked about me (which I found kind of shocking). It was really cool to know that I had had such a positive effect.
I don’t always have such good experiences though. I’ve had some jobs where I’ve felt bored or like I didn’t really live up to what I could have done. I thought about writing an entry contrasting good and bad experiences and how one can avoid certain pitfalls, but then I decided against it. Blogging about work is almost always a bad idea. Unless all of your stories are positive feel good stories – and the best work stories usually aren’t – it’s a bad idea to have a work related blog (same goes for dating, but that’s another blog post all together).
Interestingly enough, as I was debating whether to write a such an entry, I stumbled upon a blog post about a 28 year old video clerk who had been fired for blogging that Tucker Carlson came into his store (link). He didn’t reveal any personal information about Tucker, but he did joke about sending items such as frozen urine cakes to his house, and he did call the guy a “Gigantic Cobagz”, which is obviously not giving the store he works for the best image, so it’s no wonder he got canned.
After this interesting find, I decided to see how many bloggers I could find who had been fired because of blog entries they had written. Below is a summary of what I found. Some of them are pretty interesting. If you can find more, feel free to post links in the comments.
2. A blogger who was fired for joking about goofing off at work (link). This guy was essentially called into his boss’ office one day and told he was fired and had to leave immediately. His boss watched him clean out his desk and then escorted him out of the building. This was the post that got him in so much hot water:
Getting to surf the web for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Getting to blog for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Sitting around doing nothing for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Installing Windows 2000 Server on a P2 300: Bloody Freaking Priceless.
Everyone experiences down time at work, however, this wasn’t a wise post to make. I do feel sorry for him though. It’s a harsh punishment for something that was just intended as a light hearted joke.
3. A Google employee who was fired for saying too much about the company (link). Almost everyone loves Google, and if you have a blog that talks about what goes on inside of Google, people are going to read it (hell, it’s one of the reasons I read Steve Yegge’s blog). The problem is, Google doesn’t want you to do this, and divulging too much about them will get you fired (this is true for almost every company).
4. A Nintendo blogger who was fired for “Inexcusable Behaviour” (link). This blogger, who actually wrote under a different name to protect her identity, was fired for blogging negatively about her co-workers. Quote from her blog that most likely got her fired: “One plus about working with [a] hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy [woman] is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily… My gut tells me that this woman hasn’t been fucked in years”. Not a good thing to publically say about your boss.
5. A Microsoft employee who was fired for posting up certain pictures in his blog (link). Companies take their proprietary info very seriously.
6. A flight attendant who was fired for posting up risque pictures in her blog (link). This probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal had these not been taken at work and then posted on the web, oh well.
7. Thailand teacher fired for writing about her personal life (link). From the blog entry:
Imagine my surprise when last night I received a rather cruel email (didn’t even bother with the courtesy of calling) from my employer terminating me from the school after a week of labor because of an article I wrote days before I got the teaching job. My lifestyle apparently does not conform to the acceptable teacher’s way of living (if there’s such a thing). They were afraid that at some point I’d start writing about the school and tarnish its precious and rather inexistent reputation, and I wasn’t a good enough teacher.
Oddly enough, since these people were among the first to get fired over blogging, most of them became minor celebs after they got fired. That probably won’t be the case as time goes on.
Edit: As a side note, this is kind of a weird entry to write, isn’t it? I should say that I don’t have any fear of being fired (hopefully it didn’t come off that way), I’m on good terms with everyone I work with. I’m just cautious about this kind of stuff and it’s interesting to see how small missteps can get you escorted out of a building.