I was so impressed with Mark Jen that I blogrolled him minutes after reading his blog. Who wouldn’t be? IBM, Micorosoft and then Google. Especially when he starts to write about his every day experience at Google, giving us a good insight. About a week back, I started feeling uncomfortable at the kind of things he wrote about and then…. my hunch proved right. He gets canned from Google, barely two weeks after he joined it.
I have always been very wary about writing about work. It’s a simple lesson guys. Never bite the hands that feeds you. And blogger’s don’t get any special immunity from getting fired.
I think Google lost a nice opportunity here. This guy, Mark Jen, was getting pretty popular because of his explicit writings about life at Google. If I was the Corp comm head, I would’ve taken Mark to my cabin, given him a nice dressing down. At the same time, I would’ve encouraged him to write about the good things that happens at Google while ‘requesting’ him to go easy on the negative aspects. I wouldn’t have fired him, definitely. By doing so, Google has erred from its motto of ‘Don’t be Evil’.
It’ll be interesting to see Mark recouting the epidosde. Keep an eye on his blog.
