You’re Fired!

Posted on July 19, 2006

My first website happened one Saturday afternoon, in the spring of 1998, when a buddy of mine and I decided we wanted to get rich off of the internet boom.  We sat in his living room and plotted out how to take on the world, then we figured a website can’t be that hard to do, so we slapped one together.  What a proud day that was!

I went home and exclaimed to my pregnant, not yet geeky wife that we were on the world wide web and we were gonna be rich!  She was not impressed with our pathetic site.   She took it upon herself to design our site, purchased a domain and got us hosted.  Now things were shakin’.

We were selling custom built PC’s and undercutting the competition and we did ok, we made some big sales, but it was alot of work.  We were doing too much work for such little payback.  After awhile, my partner and I seemed to butt heads on how to  continue and ultimately agreed to part company.  I got the name and the website, he got to walk away, unharmed.
This is me trying to make a buck off of our old domain.

Honestly, I had a new direction in mind, Dell, Gateway, Compaq and others were up and coming and undercutting us.  The future was not in selling custom computers but in repairing, upgrading, networking, teaching, educating etc.  Here’s my new site, as of October 18, 2001 and again, about a year later, September 22, 2002.  By the way, I didn’t try to make any money by selling this domain when I was done with it, I just let it go.

Ok, so what?  Nice story, eh?   Have you heard this story of Ms. Sanderson, being fired from her job because she blogs?  CNN says:

Now Sanderson claims to have been “dooced” — the New Media term for getting fired for what you write in a blog after a Web designer lost her job for writing about her job and colleagues on her site, Dooce.com.

The story goes on to say:

Sanderson claims she was dismissed for “gross misconduct” because her blog, clearly carrying her picture, risked bringing the company into disrepute. She was also accused of using office time to write her blog.

Remember Mark Jen?  He was terminated last year by Google for blogging:

Mark Jen is known for being terminated with cause by Google, Inc. for distributing corporate secrets in his personal blog, 99zeros. His original writings are still available for viewing in the archives at his current blog. Jen worked for Google between January 17, 2005 and January 28, 2005, a total of 10 business days. As of March 2005, he is now employed by Plaxo.

There are others too, but you get the idea.

The point here is this, be careful what you blog about, be aware of how you say what you are saying, know what you are saying about people, places, employers, churches, ministers etc. and also make sure that you have permission and/or authority to say what you are saying.  Once you save a blog post, it is archived on the internet, on Google, on Bloglines, etc, forever accessible, long after your post or site is gone.  So, if you go off on a rant against an issue, a denomination, your employer, your spouse, your dog, your neighbor’s dog or anything, it is out of your control to erase your trail.  You can delete your post, but it’s still on Bloglines and Google and others.
I have always been careful on this blog to not talk bad about anyone or anything.  Generally, if I’m not happy with a situation or a person, I won’t go there, I’m not putting it in print.  The same is true for commenting, don’t trash someone or something in a comment, you can’t take it back, once saved.  For the most part, people don’t want to hear you whine or complain about something.  I’ve seen comments that were longer than the post and the comment totally bashed everything that the poster stood for.  That’s not cool, so just be aware.  Don’t get me wrong, I love comments and I love controversy, but there’s fine line between controversy and piling on.
I have also never mentioned who my actual employer is or hinted at it.  For those who I have talked to or e-mailed with, you may know, but that’s a one on one conversation and that’s not me bashing my employer or sharing trade secrets.

To sum it up in a word, it’s called common sense. (ok, 2 words)  It’s also being courteous and thoughtful and treating others the way you want to be treated.
So don’t forget, once you post it or comment it, it’s public record and virtually permanent.

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