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ninetyninezeros, the now-blank blog of Mark Jen, a former Microsoft employee now working for Google, has had his blog “disappeared” from Google, apparently by Google. Danny Sullivan and others report that Jen’s posts were critical of Google policies and so they just eliminated the blog.
Included in his rants,
“Microsoft’s health care benefits shame Google’s relatively meager offering. …
Lastly, Google demands employees that are 90th percentile material, so what’s with the 50th percentile compensation? The packages would’ve been decent when the company was pre-IPO, but let’s be honest here…”
It would really sully Google’s image if they fire him. Especially since Jen reports that they don’t pay re-location costs until the first paycheck, which he said he hadn’t yet received. That means he’s laid out so much money that he’s now broke. And blogless.
Danny Sullivan notes that the cached copy of Jen’s blog is no longer in Google, apparently manually removed. Ninetyninezeros is still cached in Yahoo!
http://archive.scripting.com/2005/01/26#When:4:15:15AM
Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble says: Considering working at a big company? You might want to consider this post at Dave Winer’s site.
UPDATE: The ninetyninezeros blog is back with an explanation that sure sounds like he was coerced into taking down his earlier posts.