A variety of news outlets are reporting the departure of Mark Jen from Google. Jen, previously a member of the Adsense team, left Google earlier this month; a Spokesperson for the company confirmed the tale telling C|net News that "Mark is no longer an employee at Google".
His departure relates to one of the nine posts made on his blog, about Google's benefits and finances. Widely perceived as one of the best places to work in the world, Jen described Google's benefits as "thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work" and suggested that "Microsoft's health care benefits shame Google's relatively meager offering". He later removed the content, adding that he "goofed and put some stuff up on my blog that's not supposed to be there. nothing serious and they didn't ask me to take anything down (even the stuff where i'm critical about the company)". For the full content of his now edited blog, see here.
What's sparked such online interest is the idea the online angel Google has fired a blogger; this is, after much speculation, now certain. Unfortunately for him, he is now one of a handful of bloggers who have experienced the effects of being too honest about a company. Unsurprisingly, IT firms are more than happy for employees to rave on blogs about their products and how great a place it is to work, yet less amused to find them talking about company benefits or finances. One can't but wonder how happy Microsoft would be if blogger-in-chief Robert Scoble were to talk about the company in a distinctly negative light.
Yet, this incident aside, the bottom line remains: although bad news for the company, one must judge Google not by their PR machine or their individual employees, but by their products. Google is still number one in the market, and continues to launch new and innovative products. This is probably Google's first PR 'incident', and it's really no surprise the competition is latching on to it. Bloggers need to remember that content posted online is just that - public domain, and content has consequences as this site has learnt on many occasions. Google has yet to comment publicly on the issue.
View: Jen's Blog | Discussion
View: Blogger : How Not To Get Fired By Your Blog
His departure relates to one of the nine posts made on his blog, about Google's benefits and finances. Widely perceived as one of the best places to work in the world, Jen described Google's benefits as "thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work" and suggested that "Microsoft's health care benefits shame Google's relatively meager offering". He later removed the content, adding that he "goofed and put some stuff up on my blog that's not supposed to be there. nothing serious and they didn't ask me to take anything down (even the stuff where i'm critical about the company)". For the full content of his now edited blog, see here.
What's sparked such online interest is the idea the online angel Google has fired a blogger; this is, after much speculation, now certain. Unfortunately for him, he is now one of a handful of bloggers who have experienced the effects of being too honest about a company. Unsurprisingly, IT firms are more than happy for employees to rave on blogs about their products and how great a place it is to work, yet less amused to find them talking about company benefits or finances. One can't but wonder how happy Microsoft would be if blogger-in-chief Robert Scoble were to talk about the company in a distinctly negative light.
Yet, this incident aside, the bottom line remains: although bad news for the company, one must judge Google not by their PR machine or their individual employees, but by their products. Google is still number one in the market, and continues to launch new and innovative products. This is probably Google's first PR 'incident', and it's really no surprise the competition is latching on to it. Bloggers need to remember that content posted online is just that - public domain, and content has consequences as this site has learnt on many occasions. Google has yet to comment publicly on the issue.
View: Jen's Blog | Discussion View: Blogger : How Not To Get Fired By Your Blog
"So i happened to look over my finances this past weekend and i realized something: i'm broke. which is odd, because i had a bunch of liquid capital in my checking account last time i checked, and now all of a sudden i have nothing.
i realized the root problem was that google's relocation process requires the employee to pay all the expenses up front and then get reimbursed for them later. that means you have to cover an apartment hunting trip, your final relocation, lease termination fees and temporary housing expenses all in advance. not to mention that they don't pay out your signing bonus and relocation money until your first paycheck (which i haven't received yet). finally, add in the fact that i had to put down two months rent as a deposit for my new lease, and i'm flat broke.
on the plus side, this first paycheck is going to be huge... (which unfortunately means i'll probably end up getting taxed huge on it. doh!)
which led me to thinking about the "benefits" package at google. as i thought about it, i realized that most of the "benefits" actually seem to be thinly veiled timesavers to keep you at work. take for example: free lunch and dinner. now this one is an awesome value proposition for google; i'm not exactly sure why other companies don't also recognize the value and join in. consider this: it probably costs google a maximum of $3 per employee for lunch and $5 per employee for dinner. so that's only $8 per day, but if you think about the fact that the employee now probably only takes a half hour lunch break and also stays late working, the company actually realizes far more than an $8 gain in employee output. not to mention that most people think this is a great "benefit" and google gets a ton of positive press on it. in short, this "benefit" is designed benefit the company, not the employee.
then look at all these other fringe "benefits": on-site doctor, on-site dentist, on-site car washes... the list goes on and on with one similarity: every "benefit" is on-site so you never leave work. i'm not going to say this isn't convenient for us employees, but between all these devices designed to make us stay at work, they might as well just have dorms on campus that all employees are required to live in.
next, let's look at the health care benefit provided. arguably, this is the biggest benefit companies pay out for their employees. google definitely has a program that is on par with other companies in the industry; but since when does a company like google settle for being on par? microsoft's health care benefits shame google's relatively meager offering. for those of you who don't know, microsoft pays 100% of employees' premiums for a world-class PPO. everything you can possibly imagine is covered. the program has no co-pays on anything (including prescription drugs); you can self-refer to any doctor in the blue cross blue shield network, which pretty much means any licensed professional; and you can even get up to 24 hour-long massage sessions per year.
lastly, google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what's with the 50th percentile compensation? the packages would've been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let's be honest here... a stock option with a strike price of $188 just doesn't have the same value as the ones of yesteryear. even microsoft adjusted their base salaries to 66th percentile years ago when it was clear that their stock options weren't as much a part of the total compensation package as it used to be. for a post-IPO company like google, it only seems fair that they adjust things accordingly.
all in all, despite these rants, i still chose to come to google. the work environment, projects and risk/reward equation were all more enticing than up in redmond. but just like when you look for apartments in SF, no option is ever perfect. " (from here, mirrored at Bloglines)
If it's about company details, how they treat employees?
Well you're on thin ice in that case.
Yes, it's his right to do that if the NDA doesn't say it isn't.
But it's not a human right or a part of freedom of speech to ramble on about whatever without getting fired.
Well not so much if he signs an NDA and violates his contents... imagine, I work in a hospital, it would be obviously unethical to blog about patients. So I am not going to cry on that one...
If you want to blog, write about fishing experience, and philosophy about after-life....
this guy must be an idiot or very naive. does he really think that companies in the US give their employees great benefits b/c they want to be nice people? let's get real. companies that give their employees more liberal benefits expect that the employee will be able ot stay longer at work. i've read about companies helping w/day care, dry cleaning and travel services. they do it so you don't have to go run errands or you aren't making phone calls and focusing on things other than work. for any person who works a minimum of 8 hours and potentially 10-12 on some days how much of that time is productive? google was just being smart and this guy isn't very...
Too "honest"? Well, that's one way to put NDA violations...
I don't think there's much to see here; it's the regular net effect of violating an important contract you've signed when you got employed.
And no, it's not in his right to complain about what he wants if it boils down to mentioning details about exactly what his company does for their employees, etc. At least not if the NDA said so. Jeez, if he didn't agree with Google's terms, he should just have not started to work there. A mystery to me why he immediately, right after getting employed, started doing these things. This is basically the same thing as when Microsoft fired a guy for leaking pictures onto the web when they supplied Apple computers to a Microsoft campus. It's simply putting the company in negative light and they can't allow these things to go on forever. Well, they could, and they will, but not when their own damn employees do it.
Sure, it may give Google a bit of bad PR but probably estimated to be less than having this guy keep rambling on, possibly about even more controversial matters.
Oh, and what are the massive blog quotes doing in the news article?
Just link to his blog? Oh wait you did already.
Last edited by 21023 on 09 Feb 2005 - 21:58
maybe i'm a bit cranky today, but... To those posters that keep posting meaningless comments to these new stories like "Interesting" please read:
For clarity we show zero tolerance for spam, advertising, useless and off topic comments, raising post count, warez (links) & cracks and aiding this; requests or posts that discuss circumvention of protection mechanisms, racism, threatening (citing), victimization or hateful posts that incite flaming or similar, & bypassing our word filter.
Just MO.
So well done Mark, you idiot. Good luck getting that money back from the apartment.
I admit I rant about the company I work for presently. Its kept within the confines of co-workers in a positivie way ... and sometimes in a more negative way (but never the company sucks) with some trusted co-workers after work. We all do it. I think we all do it, just never in earshot of the general public.
Mark Jen, did this so virtually everyone will hear it. By publishing on a blog there is the possibility that investors will read it and the media. Bad move pal. And he works in a marketing position withing the company. He should have known better.
Besides, as a Google employee his first responsibility is to the shareholder. Disclosing this type of information does not do them a favor. Keep it within your company or complain to the manager.
Yet another person who agrees with Google in their decision, this guy is in clear violation of his contract and general common sense.
What on earth is wrong with you, the right of free speech, which includes the right to complain about your job, is a fundamental right of ours. Google really has screwed up on this one.
But a lot of people will also raed the blog to get an insight about how Google works - and frankly, wasn't he aware about the salary before he took the position? I wouldn't think that people work at Google purely for the money.
http://www.google-watch.org/
bye, bye Google.
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