Blogging vs Transparency
on 05.09.06, 07:02am in microsoft • comments (2)
There’s always a fine line to walk when being a blogger collides with being a ‘good corporate citizen’. As a long time reader of Dare’s blog, I can totally sympathize with him when he talks about when "Last week, I got mail from some exec at Microsoft complaining about my blog.".
The same has happened to me as well, and it’s certainly happened on more than one occasion (another reason I was going to stop blogging).
Not having met Al before, I have no idea what went on between him and Dare, and frankly I don’t really care. It’s interesting though, because on one hand I find that I’m asking myself if it’s good to ‘air dirty laundry in public’ versus having a more ‘filtered’ view for the sake of corporate transparency (and corporate survival). I’m sure I haven’t made any friends by consistently posting that MS should buy every employee a MacBook, throwing Windows Media Center into the closet, problems I’ve had with IE, when I feel Scoble is wrong, etc.
On a side note, Dare’s original post on easing the use of Firefox under NTLM was particularly interesting to me and fixes my main issue I was having with it last year. I’m back to using Firefox full time now (and it’s been the broswer of choice on my MacBook).
It’s interesting times, that’s for sure.
Michael Brundage (May 9, 2006 @ 8:41 am)
I thought Dare’s criticisms of IE7 were pretty mild (in general, and for Dare). Al and the IE team should be spurred to do better, not insulted that Dare would dare to confront their product’s limitations (in any forum).
I find it interesting that at Microsoft we’re supposed to be really into constructive criticism, and yet so many employees (many of them high-ranking) are exhibiting intense sensitivity to it.
No one would have seen Al’s post if Dare hadn’t quoted it. Dare’s making sure Al’s criticisms of him are heard by Dare’s entire audience. I don’t see any of the people who have confronted you over the past year doing the same with the things you’ve written that bothered them.
Al (May 14, 2006 @ 9:51 pm)
Of course, this leaves aside the implied insult that his stated reason for quoting my entire post was to keep me from deleting it…
In a sense, you are right, Michael. If Dare hadn’t bothered to reference me, only the dozen or two people who read my blog (many of whom already think Dare to be an asshole) would have seen my venting on my personal blog. Since it was my personal blog and I was tired of Dare’s BS, I felt perfectly in my rights to give my opinion as an individual of him. Whether that is an IE team opinion is really for the team to decide and I doubt if such would be aired in public. Constructive criticism between employees should be done within the company, not in a public blog. I wasn’t trying to be constructive, I was merely venting.
I will point out that I am not a Microsoft employee anymore either as I gave notice a few weeks back and quit.