This entry was published at least two years ago (originally posted on October 23, 2003). Since that time the information may have become outdated or my beliefs may have changed (in general, assume a more open and liberal current viewpoint). A fuller disclaimer is available.
UPDATE: Please take the time to read my followup post, Fifteen Minutes of Fame, for my thoughts on what happened after I posted this picture, why it happened — and most importantly, why I don’t blame Microsoft for their actions. Thanks!
It looks like somebody over in Microsoft land is getting some new toys…
I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS’s shipping and receiving). Three palettes of Dual 2.0Ghz G5’s on their way in to somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. Hopefully they’re all in good condition when they arrive — the boxes are slick enough that a few of them took a bit of a tumble (you can see them back in the truck)!
I am sure apple would love to hear your story and they’d probably offer you a job. Good luck with finding new work. Sorry you had to go through this.
That sucks man, good luck in the future
I’ve seen several controversial blogs out there, but it really proves how respectable blogs are in the media.
See this Sparkpod blog http://www.sparkpod.com/lesbians
Can you sue them (your employee)? If they are going to do this do you for such a stupid reason, might as well get the best of it. Can such reason for dismisal be legal?
Jeez, I can’t see their problem. Of course MS is going to be buying G5s. They still develop applications for the Mac so they’d kinda need some Macs to at least test things on. It’s not like they’re switching or anything.
WHAT IN THE WORLD IS OFFENSIVE TO MS ABOUT THIS BLOG?
This is the silliest thing I have every heard. As others have said MS would need G5’s to develop on, and maybe use them for publishing Quark or something – I dunno. But to fire you? My heart goes out to you and I hope you quickly find gainful employment!
What were you doing with a camera at work? Most places (I’m sure its so at MS) definately view that as a no no.
You are NOT supposed to take any pictures or even carry a camera in any company. Now this guy took this picture and expects not to get fired??? What the heck is your problem guys?!! Is it because it happened in your favorite company?
Just wondering if this makes you a mac user if your not already, if so welcome, and f microsoft!
As another employee who has been fired for blogging, I feel your pain. Though mine was much more…stupid, I can still relate. One thing you’ll be able to count on is the support of your community.
Regards,
adam
Typical macintosh fanatard. Way to go.
Rob, Im afraid you are overlooking the fact that most mobile phones in this day-and-age infact contain those evil camera thingys…
Good luck with finding a new job – hope you get better luck this time, and dont end up slaving for another micro$haft.
I’m sure with the exposure on /. that you’ll find a another job soon! I thought Microsoft wrote software for
the Mac, so it’s quite likely that they’d have a bunch of Macs sitting around or on order. It’s not like
you snapped a picture of a pallet of RedHat 9 boxes! Good luck!
Chin up–you can always sell penis enlargement pills!
The reason they fired you is that you weee a temporary employee and could have been fired without much trouble. Had you been a permanent employee, your offer of taking down the post would have been taken.
The logic being along the lines of “There’s enough negative publicity associated with our actions. If anybody’s action results in more negative publicity (especially true because of the title), and he’s on our payroll, we better find out how easy it is to fire him. … (Later) oh! he’s a temp and he creates a negative publicity for us … easier to fire him than for us to face our superior.”
I’m pretty sure most companies will take similar action against temp employees.
Bottomline – You are a temp. speak only as much as is necessary.
“You are NOT supposed to take any pictures or even carry a camera in any company” !! Since when? That could be reasonable in military facilities perhaps but not in a company unless it is explicitly displayed.
It looks more like a disgruntled colleague stabbing you in the back, given that the blog was not on an office server. Regarding using digi cameras at work, here in UK a lot of employees got an MMS phone and grabbing a pic during work to show to friends is commonly acceptable. Shame on Microsoft for being so foolish. Hope you find new work soon. Good luck
Why in the hell would Microsoft be upset about this? Like others have said – of COURSE they buy Macs. They write Mac software! Hello!?!? Office v.X anyone? It’s no secret that MS has Macs, and that they have a stake (ie they have stock, it was in the news a few years ago…) in Apple.
I personally would be driven to find out why this offended Microsoft. Best of luck to you in these times.
You pussies! What’s with the ‘careful what you post/say/do’ comments? I will be absoulutely sure to doom your lame-ass writings to the trash. Why bother reading a blog (or writing one, for that matter) if you’re going to avoid subjects for fear of reprisal?
As to this picture/one-liner that got an intern fired – it sucks, but you probably could’ve expected it from any computer company. If Apple was getting a delivery of Windows XP and you spread it around, good ‘ol Steve would probably shit his pants, then fire you.
Ironically signed,
Anon. (for fear of reprisal)
I’m sorry you got fired dude but you screwed up. I totally understand Microsoft’s point of view. If it were my company I would have dismissed you as well. I don’t need my employees risking my competitiveness by publishing unauthorized photographs and information about R&D and future product.
It sucks that you got booted but the truth is, they had every right to do it!
Can you honestly sit there and think that someone at MS wasn’t going to get a little upset about
you broadcasting to the entire world that they are buying Mac hardware? All employees have to consider
what the company may consider confidential information. Them buying a competitor’s product would
definitely count as one of those, or so I would think.
I don’t work for MS and yeah there is the case of free speech but I don’t think you considered the
consequences of what you were doing. I blog about my work all the time but I don’t reveal anything
to the world that might be considered confidential.
Another shining example that shows Microshaft is run by a bunch of idiots. Who gives a **** that he took a picture of some Apple boxes! Get over it Redmond.
MS should have had the G5’s shipped in non-discreet boxes ;)
Good ol’ Microsoft. Best of luck man.
Im glad youdid the right thing, why would you want to work at microsoft anyway?
If I was bill I would buy Sun’s, run some linux boxes, why not a couple apple’s .. have to see what the competetion is doing. Getting fired over a photo is a little over the edge. Good luck, wish I had a job to offer you.
Yeah, I can see them doing it. I imagine they have a software testing lab where they need every machine possible to test on. That is part of the debugging process. Could be a reward for the guys (and gals!) at the MBU. I’m really sorry you got fired, but if I were your boss I might have had to also. Don’t worry, you will be OK.
That photo is just dying to appear on a t-shirt.
Those slagging M$ now will of course remember Apple did more or less the same a while ago, firing an Apple Store employee for having a screenshot of some application Apple uses for customer management, buried in a webserver directory
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/19575-1.html
http://virga-x.adtn.net/screenshots/Apple%20Internal/
maybe you could get a job with the company who shipped the G5’s to MS. Maybe as a quality control officer? Probably a waste of your talent i know, but if things get tight? :)
Quote: You are NOT supposed to take any pictures or even carry a camera in any company.
If you think that absurd comment is actually even remotely true then your a prize muppet of the highest order.
And, as you apparently, can’t see what the fuss is over…
It’s so objectionable because its just trivial nonsense over a non-event.
It’s well known that of course Microsoft has PowerPC systems (how else would they write all the Mac OS software they do?). So the secrecy on that topic isn’t an issue.
Somehow I can’t see this head line: ‘Burger King worker takes a picture of a McDonalds Milkshake in a Burger King car park, post it on his homepage, gets fired.’.
He didn’t in any way portray his employees in a bad light and their is no breach of security here. He stated MSCopy building is near the Goods Delivery building (something that someone in Security objected to, according to the blog) but that blissfully ignores the fact that the buildings are going to be clearly sign posted in particular the Goods Delivery Area (and it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that one out).
There are no legitimate concerns here that warrant firing an employee, just a trumped up power tripper in Security/HR/middle management with nothing better to do than callously harm in the lives of others – all they have succeeded in doing is making the world just a little gloomier.
I can’t think the mother of the person responsible for firing this hapless employee would be proud of their offspring’s achievements that day – and the same goes for those involved who stood by and let it happen. I think the middle manager who stood for this and failed to stand up for his (even temporary) employee is spineless wonder and ought to be ashamed of themselves. We are always telling our children to stand up against decisions we think are wrong and unjust, it’s sad that we as adults seldom practice what we preach.
Like many things in life, it happened because other people are afraid to stick their necks out and say ‘No, wait a minute, that’s not fair.’ and put their foot down.
What’s happened to this employee is clearly not right, if your in any doubt (if for some reason you’ve lost the ability to tell ‘right’ from ‘wrong’) then just ask your mother, because she apparently has some unwished work left with regard to teaching you the basics…
“Rob, Im afraid you are overlooking the fact that most mobile phones in this day-and-age infact contain those *evil camera thingys” – yes, but this is one reason why there are a growing number of buildings (especially government) that require you to check your celphone at the door, unless it a) has no built-in camera, and b) has no attachment point for a camera. Seriously. People do give security a high level of importance, especially at larger companies. Besides, having shown a propensity for taking random pictures, even if this one was innocuous, how does MSFT know that the next one won’t have some more secure detail, maybe even in the background? It has nothing to do with the G5s, and everything to do with the camera.
You asked for it, man. I dont know of a big company that allows snaps like that. Besides, MS wasnt your employer if you are a temp. Wake up! Temps are considered disposable employees. Didnt you know that? Its ugly, but thats how companies look at them. You should have jumped on as a full timer when MS was switching a lot of temps over to full time.
John,
While it is true that Microsoft has a booming Macintosh software division, all of their Macintosh development is done in San Francisco, at their “Mac Business Unit”, as it is called. It seems notable to me that 18 G5s have arrived in Redmond. Companies also like to keep their hands close to their chest, and they depend on their employees (temp or not) to do that. If some employee was wandering around Apple with a phonecam posting pictures of interesting things to the web, s/he wouldn’t last 5 minutes.
Microsoft is a bunch of shit-sucking pig fucker nazi assholes. Fuck them.
You deserve to be fired you stupid fuck! If I posted photos that contravined my contract my employer would rightfully do the same thing. Besides.. why wouldn’t MS want MACS? They need them for testing, at the very least.
Sounds like M$ all right. If they made such a big deal about the blog, it obviously has some merit… M$ wants to be sure word doesn’t get out about the fact that even they know Macs are so much more superior than any joke of a Xerox-OS they can release… They obviously have no ability to create anything original (just look at the overly slowly developing Longhorn). Their nifty new feature set looks like they took Apple’s patented technologies, and then created new names for them and stuck it into their own box. Just look into their “pile” method of managing documents on the hard drive. It’s like that PC M$ helped design with HP (I think it was)… All the original features of that machine either come from already existing Mac technology, or from Apple patents… M$ must have Apple patents as a subscription. As soon as Apple files a new one, M$ gets it and immediately begins adding it to their system…
KMFDM woo
Attention all: Don’t take pictures of your workplace. This goes for anywhere you work.
— tom7.org
Only in America…..
Don’t worry dude, you weren’t exactly hanging with the smartest crowd on the planet, even though 95% of planet Earth seems to think otherwise. I friend of mine got hired by Microsoft last year, nice guy and all that, but a grade one ass licker, only does what he’s told. Definitely not the kind of person I’d want to employ.
Hey! You are a temp worker! Who cares?
Layoff my ass, you were let go; it’s not like they owe you any loyalty for all your temp work.
Ya know the thing is, now more peeps will know about MS’s Macs than if they would have just shut up. Stupid.
America runs on FEAR!
You undermined your employer. Now live withthe consequences.
Taking pictures of inside company shipments and posting them would get you fired from anywhere. I
feel sorry for you as I have been fired from a job myself, it hurts. I think this has less to do
with Microsoft worrying about buying a few Macs (much to the wish of ‘anti Microsoft’ folk, they
already own Mac for fucks sakes) and more to do with inside company inventory and inside confidential
information being posted on the web. Think about this and take it as lesson not to do something
quite this stupid again.
joe blow, i think you have hit the nail on the head :)
I posted this elsehwere, but I’ll post it here.
I don’t like Microsoft in general. I don’t like their practices, ethics, many policies, etc. However, while I agree that the action appears excessive, I do defend Microsoft’s right (really any corporate entities right) to protect itself (security and other).
The fact of the matter is, eclecticism was not sensitive to what is allowed by the company with which he was employed. He exercised poor judgement and unfortunately, it was costly. I expect he will learn from that practice. In the future, he should actively determine what is allowable by the company and then use that as a guage for posting on his own blog.
As we have personal privacy so do corporations. Think about that.
And as for those that are talking about MS not wanting anyone to know they have Mac, I ask you, how much of Apple does Microsoft own? Please, let’s be serious about why someone would be fired for doing this.
Such a massive secret u let out of the bag!!!
Did you sign a non-disclosure aggrement??? Was there any sort of visible ‘No cameras’ allowed sign anywhere?? I would think most people would not have expected such a despicable reaction.
This sucks. US and UK employment laws are so shit, the very fact that you where a temp worker with no rights is harsh. I fear for humanity as a whole. You people above who have defended MS actions, you must love your companies soooo much. I will piss myself with laughter when they abuse you.
If I has posted unauthorised pictures and information about a company I had worked for I would expect disciplinary action. Sorry but you really do deserve it. This is the way of the real, professional working world in IT. I dislike most Microsoft products as much as the next man but these pictures are embarressing to your previous employer and probably violating the contract you worked under. Oops. Good luck with the job hunt.