Once again, be careful what you blog. The most innocuous thing may get you fired, just like Michael Hanscom of Seattle, WA, recently terminated by Microsoft for mentioning that MSCopy (the Microsoft in-house print shop) was located in the same building as Shipping & Receiving.
Before condemning Microsoft for being an evil, paranoid ogre, you should know that Microsoft is not unique. Look at your own non-disclosure agreement with your employer. Consider your employer’s own security practices and policies, many of which you won’t know about until you violate them. Then consider how your employer might, in the most liberal sense, interpret those undisclosed security and confidentiality policies and procedures. Microsoft acting no differently than many other modern companies act.
Mr. Hanscom was fired by a company that overvalues its own information, the fact that it was Microsoft is irrelevant.
eclecticism > Of blogging and unemployment
It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation. The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line. Merely removing the post was also not an option — I offered, and my manager said that he had asked the same thing — but the only option afforded me was to collect any personal belongings I had at my workstation and be escorted out the door.
High-tech companies—not just technology companies, mind you—are so paranoid nowadays about information security that we accept that our e-mail will be read, our desks are subject to search, and our IT departments will sweep our computers for unauthorized materials. Playing Big Brother to employees is a necessary evil for corporations today; sacrificing all expectations of privacy outside the bathroom (and some within) are the new costs of doing business for employees.
