Bloggers Be Warned - Our Own Halloween Tale

Michael at eclecticism has a tale that should serve as a warning to bloggers.

While employed at Microsoft as a long term temp in their print shop, he noticed a couple skids of Apple G5's on the dock. Finding it somewhat ironic, he snapped a picture and blogged about it.

As a result, he is now unemployed.

He doesn't blame the company, and realizes he probably violated some part of his employment agreement by posting a picture taken on the Microsoft campus and describing it's location. He offered to take the picture down, but no dice.

Even more interesting than this story is a review of the results.

Michael says he only expected his story to reach family and a few friends. So, if MS had asked him to take down the post and reprimanded him the damage would have been contained most likely with little impact on MS.

In contrast, as a result of firing him, his story is on fire in the blogosphere and beyond. It's been on Slashdot, MetaFilter, and The Register. He's also been interviewed by The Seattle Post Intelligencer and ironically MSNBC. Excerpts:

Microsoft would not comment on Hanscom’s dismissal. Spokeswoman Stacy Drake McCredy said the company did not discuss personnel or security matters. ... “We do recognize that Web blogging is a legitimate form of communication,” McCredy said. “A number of Microsoft employees have Web logs and we respect and support their addition to do so, as long as they abide by our confidentiality agreements.”

Ask him to take it down and contain the situation or fire him and let the bad press fly? Which one would have best served Microsoft's interests?

An interesting sidenote. Eclecticism is a Typepad site, and Michael reports it held up to the traffic deluge just fine. Nice to know in case of the (admittedly) remote possibility I might ever get an Instalanche.

DC

P.S. I've seen this story a couple places. Let's throw the linkage to Eat Your Vegetables.

Comments

[brett]

now here's an interesting thought.. yes, it seems funny that Microsoft would have Macs.. but last I checked, Microsoft writes MS Office for the Mac platform.. thus, they NEED a room full of G5's for their engineers to use

if Microsoft had just mentioned that, the photo would make perfect sense, and Microsoft would have the moral high ground, rather than being the bad guy

[DC]

Hi Brett,

There seems to be a mix of platforms commonly in use at MS, and they do develop Apple software. So, it's not at all surprising they would be receiving a shipment of G5's.

It seems their reason for firing Michael was more due to taking and publishing a photo on the MS campus and identifying the location where the product was being received.

Nice to hear from you.

DC