- 15 . 06 . 11
A cautionary tale for those of you addicted to social networks.
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Facebook Engineer Fired For Using Facebook Way Too Much At Work.
Palo Alto, California.
A Facebook engineer has been fired for using Facebook too much at work.
“It was ridiculous”, an anonymous source (who promised he wasn’t the employee’s direct manager) said. “He was on it 24×7. Now, we’re a very tolerant company. You have to be with these Gen-Y types. I use it myself. Well, uh, occasionally”, he added hastily.
“I know the importance of staying in touch with your friends and family, but he was jerking us around.
“He claimed to be researching the user interface, but all I could see was him chatting to his college buddies. When I challenged him on it, he even rearranged his desk so I couldn’t see his screen! Luckily, he was a Facebook friend, so I could see him on Facebook Chat. I, uh, we had to let him go. What? No, I wasn’t his manager, I promise.”
Despite strong protests, James Greaves, 28, originally from Brentwood, Tennessee, was unable to save his job.
This was not the first time Jimmy had had problems with Facebook at Facebook. “I was a bit foolish”, he admitted. “When I was offered the job, I forgot to tell them I was best man for a wedding soon after I was supposed to start. I called in sick so I could go to the bachelor party and then again the day after, but a groomsman checked me in on Facebook Places at Aphrodite Nights and then tagged photos of me half-naked and licking cake off a stripper.
“That was a hard one to explain”, he sighed.
“It’s ironic”, he continued. “I actually pushed an update to the tagging functionality just a couple of days before that – my first piece of useful work. My mate even mentioned how easy it was for him to do all the tagging in one place. He probably wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.”
Jimbo had been at the company 6 months since joining from Google, where he was let go for not using Google enough. “I was searching for information on ‘binary space partioning’ and got to ‘bin’ before Google Instant automatically took me to Bing.com”, he said. “My manager was passing by and fired me on the spot for not being Googly enough.”
“I just don’t understand it. I’m fired for not using a service enough. Then I’m fired for using one too much. There needs to be some consiste”, Jay added in a tweet later on.
Facebook declined to give an official comment, though later in the day Facebook’s own Facebook status briefly changed to “officially has no official comment on Greavsie’s dismissal”. No word on whether that was done on the responsible staff member’s own time or not.
Jim is now using LinkedIn to find a new position, and hopes that they will offer him a role soon.
After, and not in the same league as, The Onion.
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