On Employee Blogging

Jeremy Zawodny recently wrote a pretty good summary about employee blogging. A few people have asked me why I haven’t blogged more about working at Yahoo!, and what it is that I do there. Basically, I always follow these basic criteria when I blog about work:

  • Is it about anything sensitive in any way?
  • Is it disrespectful to either your employer or any coworkers?
  • Would you flinch in the slightest if your boss, his boss, all the way up to the CEO and the board of directors read it?

Does that leave you with anything? Is what you have left interesting? No, I mean interesting to other people. Yes, that’s what I thought. You’re not left with much.

Hey, it sucks that Mark Jen got fired from Google, but it looks like he pretty consistently violated my three rules above, and apparently posted something that in itself pushed it over the top, since he was forced to remove it. There’s a huge difference between writing an occasional blog about your employer (as Jeremy Zawodny often does, and is fine!) and blogging about your employer as though the whole exercise of working there was a documentary writing project.

Let’s move on, guys!



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3 Responses to “On Employee Blogging”

  1. The Dreamer » A Blogful of Work Says:

    [...] le for blogging. Zawodny has the full scoop. The part that interested me the most is what Jeremy Cole had to say about it. I have unknowingly been following his three rules [...]

  2. Jacques Marneweck's Blog Says:

    Blogging gets a Googler Fired
    Blogging is can get you into trouble. It turns out that Mark Jen got fired from Google for blogging about the companies adsense financials and strategy from what I can gather. Jeremy Zawodny and wrote about employee blogging previously, which…

  3. The Dreamer Says:

    A Blogful of Work
    The blogosphere is full of news about Mark Jen getting fired from Google for blogging. Zawodny has the full scoop.

    An interesting take on this is by Jeremy Cole…..
    …. read the full article”

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