Fired For Blogging? Not Exactly…
from the let's-clarify-a-bit... dept
There’s been a ton of talk lately about the idea that people are getting “fired for blogging.” It’s almost become something of a meme, where those who were fired end up with extra credibility… just for getting fired (it’s becoming a Donald Trump kind of world where “you’re fired” is a badge of credibility). Of course, the whole idea of “fired for blogging” isn’t exactly true. No one is getting fired for blogging; they’re getting fired for what they say on their blog. It’s like people who, for example, say something inappropriate at a conference about the company they work for. They’re not getting fired for “speaking” or for “conferencing,” but what they said. Now, of course, you can argue that what they said should not have been a firable offense, and that companies need to recognize that employees now have much louder virtual megaphones to use in bitching about their employment situation, but people aren’t getting “fired for blogging.” They’re getting fired for what it is they say.
Comments on “Fired For Blogging? Not Exactly…”
sure...
but were they fired under a Creative Commons license?
Unintended Consequences again
I agree most of all with the megaphone comment in the post.
The thing here though is that people used to be accustomed to bitching or talking or whatever about where they worked freely, at least among friends. Combine that with the psuedo-privacy that I imagine a lot of bloggers feel and you don’t have more or less violation of what was already allowed, you’ve just got a much more public (and searchable, which is at least as important) space for it.
I think that companies should start instituting blogging guidelines. I don’t imagine people really WANT to get canned over this stuff, but I think they do really want to talk about what they do. There was a followup comment over on a Yahoo employee’s (I think anyway, didn’t care to follow up) blog that has a little interview with the most recent one and discusses how Yahoo is dealing with the blobosphere.
Don’t take that as an endorsement of Yahoo though. I still think Google drop kicks its butt into the last century.
Fair comment
What you say is fair enough and the hero status ermerging with some of the sacked is just silly. Yes they were sacked for what the said in most cases, and I’ll add in all but a few cases rightfully so (Ellen Simonetti and Jeremy Wright come to mind as two unfair dismissal cases) but this doesn’t ignore the need to establish blogging policies so employees are clear on what they can and cannot do online, even for the really stupid ones that post nasty blogs.
I mean really, bag your employer online and what do you expect? a pat on the back for a job well done?
No Subject Given
Yeah, the whole meme is getting worn out. Not once have I seen a posting where the author would say “Yeah, I was fired pretty much for incompetence and using corp. computers and corp. T1 for my own personal blogging. It just so happens that I have a blog, but my dismissal was totally fair.”
Peace Corps volunteer fired for blogging
Very true…but in an interesting case, a former Peace Corps volunteer named Jason Pearce was fired from the Peace Corps for basically blogging, a bit for the content but also because he was doing it in the first place. You can check the whole story out at jason.pearce.net
Tech
I’m So Very Sorry!