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)!
440 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
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.
i think its funny microsoft needs apple’s you should get that shit in the newspapers im only sorry 4 Michael
You people are ridiculous. Look at the facts here. ANY company (yes, ANY company) would have fired a temp employee (and given a full-time employee a damn strong warning) for photographing company property/goings-on behind the scenes and blogging the photo without permission. If you don’t believe that, and if you have a job, just ask someone in your HR department about what happened here and see what would happen at your company. Cry about the injustice of it if you want, but it’s reality. If it was your company and you had some temp jackass taking pictures behind the scenes and posting them on the web without your permission, what would you do? You’d walk his ass out the door like they did. Regardless of this photo in particular being harmless (everyone knows that MS owns Macs), what he did illustrates a severe lack of judgement (read as — if he did this without permission, what else will he do without permission). Hell, he even mentioned his company’s name, which implies some sort of endorsement for the post. Go on and cry about this being another example of big bad MS, but they did what any other company would do. Some lessons in life are learned the hard way. Hopefully, this guy learned his lesson and next time, he will leave his damn camera at home and focus on doing his job.
So here is what comes to mind. Why would Microsoft Want to hide the fact that they bought G5’s. Microsoft Makes does software for the macs, aka OFFICE. What, are they going to test apple software on a PC????? That is just gay all around. If make software for apple you need apple computers to test it on … simple and easy.
Microsoft is lame if they fired him.
As trivial as these photos are, it can easily be considered industrial espionage.
For Bobby T. and other religious fanatics, Xerox (parc) invented many many many things (gui ,event drive programming) and gave them to Apple (and the rest of the world). MS did not steal the ideas from Apple, it took what was freely available. Trademarking the generic “windows” term was a dirty trick though.
Never forget the MS is the one who bailed Apple out when they were going under.
SOLIDARITY!!! Rise up my fellow workers! Rise up! You have nothing to loose but your chains!
I’m taking the FISH… Who’s with me!?
Good luck, hope you find a better job. Seems like M$ doesn’t understand even a little bit of humor (think even at Apple they have some Windoz-machines). Greetings from Hamburg Germany and best wishes for future (you did right man!) … Tice ; )
Sure, everyone involved was within their rights to take the actions taken. Microsoft’s actions are still kind of suprising because those actions turn a non-event into unfavorable news.
Gasp! Microsoft might actually have a Macintosh in use! No way! … Yeh, right. We’re supposed to believe they’re so talented that they can develop and test software for Macintosh without actually having Macs?
Microsoft markets software to provide Windows connectivity to Unix platforms too. It wouldn’t even be news to me if Microsoft had to move their IBM mainframe and a stack of Solaris boxes to make room for the Macs. In recent months Microsoft even stated they were setting up a lab to evaluate Linux.
So what’s the news here? “Heavy handed Microsoft fires employee.”
“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.”
Perhaps MS has tech support for their Mac software in Redmond. Or perhaps the tech writers who write the manuals for Office v.X are there.
I worked there for a while. Someone that was interviewing for a job blogged about what a “stupid asshole” her boss was, his boss was “a fucking bitch”, and everyone else (including HR) were idiots. She got the job, but she continued to complain about specific details every day. They finally found the blog, and yes, she was fired… and I don’t think many people would argue with that.
I dislike MS probably more than most Mac users because I have five years of reasons. However, they aren’t any different than most companies. If you publicly mention anything that happens on the job, it can be grounds for termination.
You boss probably would not have fired you. Since he mentioned the official “security” word and phrases like “not welcome”, chances are he was getting pressure from above.
Just remember that when it comes to business, whether it is a boss, coworker, company, temp agency, whatever, nobody is your friend… and I wouldn’t be surprised if you have problems getting jobs in the future because of these blog entries.
Was the firing over the mention of M$ having G5’s or the posting of an image from the campus? When I worked at Apple, they had a very strict “no photo” rule. And what about that other pallet of G5’s that arrived at Bill Gates house?
Lets face it though , You dont want to work for a company that are such bastards to their staff anyway.
Apple should hire you
Releasing that information for the public is not the right of the blogger. If was the right of Microsoft. It would be like your girlfriend showing your mom your porn collection. It is not their concern. Why is it when linux users infringe on the rights of Micro$oft, Micro$oft is the a-hole, but when M$ ask for you to register a product to protect their OWN intellectual property, the linux nerds take up their torches… Linux users are arrogant and have a double standard. If you had AIDS do you think it is the responsibility of your employer to tell its employees?
M$ sells about a $billion worth of Mac software… they’re not going to jeopardize that much money… they WANT MS Mac software to work and work good… With the open source Office suites getting better and better they have reason to sweat…
If you get a chance, can you reveal what that graffiti painted on the loading dock says? Looks like “FREE REDMOND” maybe?
microsoft dont have the rights to do that, isnt wrong! damn, they suck.
the slashdot crowd awaits!
Heh, Mircosoft lost a Huge PR opportunity here. They could have milked the “Hey, we play nice with our competitors!” Edge. In this day of massive lawsuits and enourmously bad PR, such as DRM and viri scurring about the Windows world, Microsoft needs all the help they can get with the public.
Of course, we are talking about Microsoft here…
SOLIDARTY! Rise up my fellow wrokers! You have nothing to loose but your chains!
Did they have a justification to let him go? Sure. How good of one is debatable. Did they have the right to let him go? Sure. Could he have seen it coming - well certainly he should have seen trouble as a possibility.
But I ask - was it SMART for them to fire him? His boss acknowledged his right to do what he did and called it “unfortunate” that they had decided to fire him over it, and asked whether he could make ammends by taking down the posting. So it seems he was a decent employee and his boss wasn’t looking to get rid of him. So, they incur the cost of restaffing, training, and the lost productivity of the learning curve. Because they offer no justification to take the posting down, even if it does indeed represent a “security violation,” (and I find it pretty difficult to believe that the relevant pieces of information - that Microsoft buys Macs and that MSCopy is in the same building as MS’s shipping and receiving, represent particularly sensitive or secret information) their action guarantee that the information will STAY out there on the internet, and in fact gain more noteriety (I surfed in from Metafilter) because now it is not just, oh funny, stacs o’ Macs at Redmond, it’s ooh, the Evil Empire fired a blogger! They could have made a deal - we think this is a security issue, here’s why, if you want to keep your job take it down, and allow us to ask anyone reprinting it to take it down since they would by definition be doing it without his permission. He keeps his job, Microsoft keeps a good employee, and the “security issue” is taken care of as best as it, at this point, can be. So. was it that they didn’t really care about the security thing, but are so bound by their own rules that they can’t make the more intelligent play in this kind of situation? Or is it that it really was just the “we perceive this as a dig against Microsoft, so trump up a security violation and fire him? (If so another misfire, see the issue of greater publicity above). Or are they too stupid to see that it WASN’T malicious, that any chance of eliminating security issues lay in being flexible, and that firing him could only cost them resources for no gain? Sounds pretty stupid to me.
That’s quite right Ed. If you work for a corporation you should expect to be screwed at random… BUT, it is hard to see why Microsoft would want to deny that it purchased a few G5s given that they write software for these machines.
Also, any corporation does “opposition research”… who would be surprised by that?
A rational organization would simply point this fact out.
But when you work for a large corporation you are not likely to be working for a rational organization… it’s hire and fire at will. Get used to it.
Sorry but….DUH….what the hell did you expect?
I dunno if anyone forgot, but Microsoft is located in what country? Under what laws are both Microsoft and this former employee protected? Although it isn’t advisable to photograph things within the confines of your employer’s campus, unless a specific “no picture” edict was issued I doubt they’d have a legal leg to stand on. Because he didn’t photograph anything but the inside of a delivery truck (for this particular page) it doesn’t even seem that it would be comprehensively covered under a law banning sharing of trade secrets or other similar nonsense. Although I’m no lawyer, you should collect unemployment if possible and screw them the legal way—if you don’t want reinstated. If you DO, then talk to a qualified attorney if you haven’t already…
I don’t understand why there is such an outrage for MS’s actions? If you think MS shouldn’t have fired him then at what point to you draw the line about what you can take pictures of or release to the public? Employees do not know the reason behind every event or action within a company. What appears to be a harmless picture could in fact be exposing a particular business strategy or direction that is intended to be kept secret (though I doubt Microsoft direction here was “towards” Apple). The contract a person signs when hired binding them to keep company activities secret is there for a reason—everyone can assume a level of confidentiality that permits work to be done without unecessary security checks. Microsoft had to set a precedent or the gray area that would exist allowing employees to take pictures of whatever they wanted. By the way, I’m willing to be there is a no-disclosure agreement somewhere in his work contract (temp or full-time) restricting what he can say (with pictures, words, etc) about the activities of Microsoft. I’m also willing to bet taking pictures and presenting them on the web in the manner he did falls under prohibited behavior.
I guess it depends on if Michael signed an NDA or was advised of the restriction on workplace photography. If he did, then he knew what he was doing was wrong. If he didn’t, then Microsoft has no grounds for dismissal based on a single incident, unless they can prove intent to cause material harm or corporate espionage, etc. - which I think any reasonable judge would throw out on its ear. (On the other hand, if you can, why not sue ‘em for wrongful dismissal?)
What’s more worrying to me is that Microsoft obviously has their own version of Echelon or something out there, monitoring all employee activities online whether at work or at home. I realize the software biz is competitive, and Microsoft didn’t get to be king of the hill by playing nice, but there are some serious ethical considerations here. Seriously, though, who does it harm to show some G5s arriving at Microsoft? Apple develops for Windows (Quicktime, iTunes, iPod, AppleWorks, FileMaker, WebObjects, to name a few) and Microsoft develops for Mac (WMP, Office, hardware peripherals, IE, VirtualPC which was acquired from Connectix, etc.) so it makes sense they’d have some for compatibility testing at least!
Microsoft sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is why I turned Microsoft down when I was approached by them. I use their software but I am more partial to any form of Unix(TM) for many objective reasons. They (Microsoft) simply need to grow up.
Good luck.
-Chuck
an Apple geek that work for Microsoft and has a server on a GNU/Linux box… good mix
you will easily find a new job thanks to slashdot
Hye even we need paperweights
They’ve truly made a martyr out of you. In all honesty the picture really isn’t that poignant. It doesn’t show “MS HQ” in big bold letters or anything so it̵