Comments on: Yes, People ARE Fired for Blogging

By: a twisted world

a twisted world — Sat, 14 May 2005 02:32:35 +0000

Avoid getting fired for blogging
When others make mistakes, We learn. There have been numberous blogging catastrophies in the most recent past. Here is my attempt to providing you those links so you could read and judge for yourselves. Some of these links are credible, and some are just

By: Paolo

Paolo — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:31:35 +0000

A person who is murdered still dies. So, you could say “he was murdered,” or you could say, “he died.” One statement explains how “he” died, while the other one states the end result.

So, you can use poor judgement and say something on your blog that leads to your being fired and it can be described many ways. For the sake of a descriptive conversation I’d prefer hearing that someone was fired for blogging. Right off the bat it tells me more about what happened than “he was fired for poor judgement,” because the natural next question would be, “what did he do?”

By: Eric E

Eric E — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 23:56:43 +0000

Jon Gales says: “If I hire you and I hear you are talking about the company to outsiders, and I don’t like that, I’m going to fire you.”

You may have the right to fire someone under those conditions, Jon, but don’t be surprised if you end up paying through the nose. It’s called “wrongful dismissal”, unless you hire perma-temps under short-term contracts, or something like that.

By: Shane

Shane — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 07:26:08 +0000

a friend of mine was fired for bloggin’ shit about his workplace

By: Jon Gales

Jon Gales — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 05:10:31 +0000

A company should be able to fire someone for its own reasons. If I hire you and I hear you are talking about the company to outsiders, and I don’t like that, I’m going to fire you (even if it wasn’t explicity stated what you can and cannot say).

If everything you as an employee can and cannot do has to be written out to the letter, no one would be able to read the rule book.

Unless you have written expressed permission to blog about your company, it’s risky. That’s just business.

By: Jeremy C. Wright

Jeremy C. Wright — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:42:42 +0000

David: Agreed. But for a company such as Google to not publish some kind of guideline, considering they own Blogger and everything. And the background is that he actually did everything they asked and they still fired him. Odd, but it’s ultimately their decision.

Alex: I’m Canadian. I don’t buy the “guns don’t kill people” thing either

By: Alex Moskalyuk

Alex Moskalyuk — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:18:40 +0000

Still, you have to agree that blogging about company is asking for trouble. What Anil said is analogous to the saying “Guns don’t kill people, people do”.

Basically, do not blame the tool for the trouble, blame the motivation behind it. What you were saying is that the tool (blog) was still to blame.

But yes, you were right, neither of the 2 blog-related firings was due to the fact that they did on the company time.

By: David

David — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:17:53 +0000

Jeremy, there are always rules. Hell, unwritten rules exist, and if people can’t pick up on them, or choose to ignore them, they’re going to get burned in some manner – whether it’s for blogging about things they shouldn’t, or saying something to a co-worker or client that they shouldn’t.

By: larry borsato

larry borsato — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 23:49:49 +0000

Medium versus message.
Jeremy puts a very fine point on the issue when he insists that people do get fired for blogging. Actually, people get fired for working. I know this is true because if you don’t work for a company they can’t…

By: Jeremy C. Wright

Jeremy C. Wright — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 23:36:08 +0000

Alex: Who said anything about blogging on company time? Doing personal activities on company time is always a no-no.

Jon: What if there are no rules?