Microsoft fires employee over G5 photos, blog

...and get bit. this is not uncharacteristic of MS to do something like this.
i mean its no secret that they have Macs there. how else do they make MSN Messenger, MS Office, IE, and other software for the Mac? Are we to believe that MS has good enough programmers they can write entire complex applications and ship them without even trying it once? yeah right. seems a pitiful excuse to fire someone. but its a pitiful company...so guess it makes sense.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

As an employer, this is a grey area. The first thing that stands out to me is that the title implies that the employee is more devoted to Apple than his employer. That is not a good thing. Microsoft needs devoted monkeys.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

Microsoft are bastards? Well thats a big surprise..

posted by MacNN.com Reader

As crazy as it sounds, if an Apple employee published photograph's of "behind the scenes" activities, they'd be fired too. Most software/hardware companies like MS, Apple, Adobe, etc; have contracts that employees sign to prevent things like this. I don't believe this is a "Mac" specific issue - the employee just didn't think.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

Any company would be pissed if one of their contractors' employees took photos of a shipment of anything and posted it. This kid's cluelessness is amazing.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

Sheesh!

Panther and Linux must be nipping at the heels of Windows and Microsoft must be plenty paranoid to dump a guy for something as trifling as this!

Obviosly, this photo and blog page will topple the Microsoft Empire.

Off with his Head!

posted by MacNN.com Reader

quivering in his boots. I would file suit for wrongful termination though, if only to see if I could get a decent severance package. Hire a lawyer =)

posted by MacNN.com Reader

Why people feel the urge to put their daily lives on the internet for just anyone to read in the first place. The author even states that he heard of people being fired for their blogs, yet he chose to do it anyway.

Just go about your daily business and resist the temptation to create a site that details your every activity. Believe it or not, most people actually don't care! If you just must make an online journal for yourself or family, at least password the site.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

Not to be cold hearted, but he should have been careful of "blogs". I cant figure out why people write in these things, its like a public diary without a lock; it can be viewed as unprofessional. I can understand why Microsoft fired him; they view his behavior as unprofessional. Like it or not, most corporate entities are going to view behavior this way. My view of working for a big company is to think of yourself as a mercenary, or hit-man for the company: act professional all the time, and keep your personal life completely segregated in every way: maintain complete confidentiality and discretion. If you don't, you will get "wacked" (sorry for the mafiaesque jargon, just watched the Sopranos). The responsible person would just chalk it up as experience; the hard lessons are always the best.

posted by MacNN.com Reader

While I'm certainly not an MS fan, this is not an example of them going to "draconian" measures here. This is standard policy at many companies. If I came to my company with a camera or recorder, I could be dismissed. It's a posted and known policy.

And Apple certainly must have shipments of Dells and Windows XP coming in. These people do write software for each other and even if they didn't, need to keep up on what the competition is doing.

posted by MacNN.com Reader