

Microsoft employee's phone tweet leads to ouster - Suraj-Sun
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20109152-75/microsoft-employees-phone-tweet-leads-to-ouster/

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jrockway
That's a dumb reason to fire someone, unless Microsoft somehow pays their
recruiters negative money.

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pavlov
Violating a partner company's NDA to give personal opinions of an unreleased
product can be a severe matter.

For comparison, if a Sony employee tweeted the following: "The iPhone 5 is
using Sony's CMOS camera module, that's pretty cool. The call quality on the
iPhone 5 is ok, I would rate it a 7 out of 10" -- do you think that Apple
wouldn't mind?

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jrockway
It costs something like $100,000 to hire a new employee. Is this worth
spending that much money on when you could just say, "hey, don't do that"?

(With Apple, yes, because Apple is very fickle about this sort of thing. But
with Nokia? What's Nokia going to do about it? Go back to their own OS over a
pre-release review? Seems unlikely.)

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kenjackson
First you assume they'd need to backfill the post. Second, I've never heard
that number before, and don't believe. I've hired a lot of people, at F500 and
startups and it has never been perceived as that costly. Firing is costly
though, but hiring less so. And a place like MS, the hiring process is fairly
streamlined.

Lastly, what's Nokia going to do about it? Share less info with Microsoft
because they don't trust them. That early preview of the phone with the in-
progress camera -- well don't give it to MS now. Wait another month or two and
get the camera issues worked out first, they may tweat it. Down the line, they
could use an NDA violation to get out of some contractual agreement they don't
like.

This is the big leagues. This is a multibillion dollar play. Unless this guy
was a Scott Guthrie or David Cutler, I think they won't lose any sleep over
it. Recall MS has pushed out far bigger fish than him in the past year or so
(Bob Muglia, Amitabh S., Robbie Bach, J. Allard).

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viraptor
> "We routinely do not discuss personnel matters, but I can confirm that Joe
> Marini no longer works at Microsoft,"

I love it. We'll tell you what we otherwise wouldn't about a person who got
fired for telling what we otherwise wouldn't tell you. That makes them so
trustworthy and consistent.

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shasta
Confirming employment is standard, isn't it?

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Corrado
I'm not sure how telling everyone that Microsoft is working on a Nokia phone
is leaking confidential information. Didn't MS partner with Nokia recently for
the purpose of making Windows 7 phones?

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pycassa
i think he actually tweeted thrice about the phone, and one of them was his
rating of the camera quality/phone as 8/10

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0x12
Makes you wonder if he would still be employed if he had used 10/10.

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jinushaun
I think he would've been fine with just the first tweet--we all know that a
Nokia WP7 is coming. But then he goes on to tweet two more times and
review/rate an unreleased product. Not smart.

