Should someone be fired for blogging?

Word broke today of what could be the first case of someone getting fired for blogging. Joyce Pack was a programmer for Friendster. She was let go thanks to two postings dealing with her part in the development of their new PHP backend and her roll on that project. You can read those posts and try and find what could have gotten her popped.

On behalf of Friendster, let me say that in context, she might have exposed the company to a fall out with a vendor or given out more information to a potenal competitor or hacker by noting what tools she had used in the redesign.

Without knowing what her employment agreement said, all we can do is guess. But it should be pointed out that the Microsoft folks are blogging sections of code in their public blogs plus Scoble rips the Bill even now in then on his.

Sure sure, the guy who posted the shot of the Macs on Microsoft's dock to his moblog got popped but he was a contractor. The Friendster case is different. In fact, this is up there with the cases of the NY Times and ESPN fired staffers for inproper use of the email a few years back. People both of those cases, the folks got whacked as an example for not undstanding the policy. Given that Joyce was an employee and thats she was working for a firm that is building personal networks via the internet which happens to involve blogs, I'm kinda stunded that they would make an example of her but stranger things have happen...