Mark Jen in 15 minutes
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
I haven't been blogging for too long, and rarely post anything of much interest to the general public. In truth, the only reasons I keep a blog are:
- Virtual resume - I'm always available for contract
- Improve my writing skills - Apparently, writing skills are not evenly distributed among the general population, hence, I should practice
A good portion of bloggers are probably in the same category as I am. Others, however, blog for vanity's sake, as they like to share their life with whoever wants to read about them.
Obviously enough, your personal life intersects with your professional life and one needs to choose what to write about. There is an invisible line that needs to be kept in mind. Mark Jen crossed the imaginary line in a big way.
I don't know him personally. And all I know about him is mostly what has been said about him around the blogosphere.
If you don't know Mark - or leave under a virtual rock :) - he was fired from google for blogging some confidential information about his experiences inside the company. He was employed by google for 2 whole weeks (give or take a couple of days). Before his short stint at google, he was employed at
Microsoft.
I know that everyone gives him advice and call him not so flattering names, perhaps for wasting one of the best opportunities in his short career. From what we know, google seems to be THE company to work for right now, and they seem to be positioning themselves to be next big thing of this decade.
Anyway, we knew of his firing within hours of the event. The whole melodrama is probably not "news worthy" in the sense that we think of news. He wasn't in the 11 o'clock news, however, he is news and his 15 web minutes of fame are almost over. Or at least, untill the wikipedia editors delete
his article - Imagine, being part of an encyclopedia.
BTW, a few people say that blogs will make brick and mortar media houses obsolete - I'd tend to agree - It's time to evolve, I guess.
Much advice has been given to him, but the clear thing for him to do right now (I know this is my advice) is to capitalize from his new found fame. I believe he was a Product Manager who doesn't use CAPITAL LETTERS to write in his blog. And he should try to figure out a way to capitlize on his fame as he is probably more interesting to a lot of people, not for his C++ skills, but for his notoriety with google and his quick firing.
It's amazing that such a mundane event generates so much traffic and talk among bloggers - Perhaps, we all want a piece of the traffic he is generating.
I can't think of a good reason why I would want the traffic. I mean, I have nothing to sell and I actually pay an ISP to host josesandoval.com, so the bandwidth is not free. But, I guess this is the new millennia and it is just the thing to do. I.e. Generate traffic and use electrons for no good reason.
On the other hand, if you are interested in offering me contract work, you can always send me an email - Then I guess the money spent to host the site, was well invested.
Anyway,
this guy has some good advice for our friend Mark Jen - Well, at least some of the more coherent rant you could find out there, right now.
I wonder how he will capitalize on his new found fame. I predict he will write a book - It's only logical - And I think he should make it and ebook to be distributed via his blog.
Good luck
Mark Jen.
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