Employee blogging

I find this (and I supposed relatedly this) fascinating from a sociological perspective. Some part of me of course feels bad for them for being fired for something they said or did that was totally irrelevent to their job, and it's frustrating to see yet another example of the chilling effect on free speech that the corporatization of America has. The fact that there's now legal precedent for your company to snoop your email just because they own the email server really bugs me. Most people spend most of their lives in an office and do much of their interaction with the outside world in that context. Just because the company owns the infrastructure an employee uses to communicate with the outside world means that employee has no rights regarding their personal communication? Or that the employee should engage in absolutely no job-unrelated activity while at work? When work hours are getting longer and longer and most of any given person's life is spent in their office? That's bullshit.

On the other hand, it's utterly idiotic and naive to think that you can identify yourself as an employee of a particular company in a public forum and not expect that company to pay close attention to what you say. PR departments exist for a reason. Companies very carefully monitor their public image, and they know very well that if all their employees say whatever they want about them, they no longer have control over that image, and that scenario scares them. Just because Microsoft or Google have "open" policies regarding blogging doesn't mean employee bloggers have a blank check. Do you really think if you say "Windows sucks and you shouldn't buy it" you won't, at the very least, end up having a nice little chat with one of your superiors?

Relatedly, I've always found it rather...some combination of amusing and annoying I guess would be the closest way to describe it...that people ever honestly believe corporate mottos or corporate images mean anything. Apple makes generally good products. I grant you that. Insofar as that's anyone's rationale for liking Apple, I'm fine with that. But for the people who believe Apple holds some kind of ethos, is inherently "good" in a way that someone like Microsoft is not, or in some way holds making "hip" electronics and aesthetics as an absolute ideal that supercedes any business motivation is just fucking stupid. Businesses make money. Period. They will do whatever they can to make money, and they will abandon meaningless mottos like "Think Different" and other PR-created corporate images the instant they interfere with their long-term bottom line. If Apple were going to make more money by selling PCs starting tomorrow covered in garbage and running Windows 3.1, they would.

Same issue with Google. People think it means something that their motto is "Don't be evil." This is clearly a reference to Microsoft, but it's utterly laughable to me. Google will be evil if it benefits them. It just so happens that at the moment it's beneficial to them to tap anti-software establishment sentiment and to create the impression that they have some kind of corporate ethics. In the endgame, they don't. I promise you. At some point, if it significantly affects their bottom line, Google too will be "evil." But, if you believe in the free market, it's not evil anyway. Good and evil are value judgments. In the free market, there is no good and evil. It's just a matter of what you can get away with while maximizing your profits.

...And this, children, is why I don't buy the whole "Microsoft is the evil empire" line. Microsoft is a company. They are a company who through savvy business decisions acquired a dominant market position, and they have aggressively fought to keep that position. The problem is that they were aggressive to the detriment of their public image, and now that is coming back to haunt them. They let their true motivation show through, and the idiot masses don't like to be reminded that businesses inherently have no soul. Nor do they like to be sold crap, but that's a separate issue. My point is that if Google or Apple found themselves in the same market position Microsoft is in, they would act identically. They are all just software companies doing what they think will most benefit them at the moment. Morals don't enter into it.

Does this mean I don't think you should be pissed at Microsoft for being a bully and engaging in some sleazy business practices? No, of course not. The only way to change behavior is to reward good behavior and punish bad. Basic behavioral psychology. My point (I seem to have many of them today) is that while criticizing them is worthwhile, blaming them is not. If you want to prevent businesses from operating as Microsoft has, fix the system. Close the legal loopholes and hold all companies accountable for the actions they take. Don't just get upset that somebody actually bothered to jump through the loopholes. Addressing one particular manifestation of a general problem does not fix the problem.

One final note: the issue of corporate image versus corporate morality is why campaigns like Apple's "Think Different" have always bothered me. I wished people would get more upset at Apple's use of the images of people like Feynman, Einstein, etc. The great scientific innovators' and agents' of social change motivations were pure, insofar as anyone's motivations are pure. They wanted to advance scientific knowledge, teach, and change the world for the better. They were not co-opting those goals to further another implicit end as Apple was and is by using their images. Apple's use of their lives and their work is utterly parasitic, feeding off the reputation of genuine heroes and innovators to bolster their bottom line. I remember a few years ago many people became upset, rightly so in my opinion, at the use of...I think it was an insurance company's?...use of the image of Martin Luther King in an advertisement. Apple's use of Feynman or Einstein is not particularly different. It bugs me, therefore, to see Apple people proudly displaying such Apple posters on their walls while at the same time railing against Microsoft's practices. You can't have it both ways. Either taking advantage of the opportunities and resources (and loopholes and hard work of others) is ok, or it's not. Think about it: if Microsoft evoked the image of Stephen Hawking as part of an ad campaign, would you be upset?

(I'm beginning to think "blog" should be a synonym for "rant"...)