Mark Jen said he’d come out and blog about what really happened regarding his poor blogging judgement that got him axed from Google, but I must admit I was surprised it was this quickly, and the post he made, I think, is going to hurt him more than help him.

Mark Jen, whose blog about his first days at Google drew acclaim and criticism, was fired by Google on January 28, two days after he’d been taken to the principal’s office and spanked. Read all about it on his blogpost of earlier today.

Jen titled his post: “The official story, straight from the source.” I’m sitting here thinking that his timing and execution on this “official story” post is nearly as bad as the situation that got him fired.

Let’s think abou this for a minute. He’s already out there getting mostly negative publicity (from what I’ve read), about being fired for Google and now he’s stoking the fire on Google’s own turf (blogspot.com). He’s met with at least two intelligent bloggers recently: Jeremy Zawodny and Robert Scoble, and yet Jen hasn’t been able to parlay the knowledge and advice gleaned from these discussions into a viable damage control plan. I’m sure both those intelligent gentlemen gave him some great advice but so far he hasn’t demonstrated being able to use it. Mr. Jen, we must ask: have you learned anything? 

Here’s just a few things Jen could do, IMO, and post haste, if he wants to start establishing and/or regaining some decent level of credibility:

• Get off of blogspot.com and onto his own server, with his own domain not controlled by or underneath the power of the place that he’s writing about. Yes, this takes money and being that Jen just got fired, he might not have the extra cash to setup his own blog and pay for the bandwidth himself. With Jen’s current notariety, though, he could swing some sort of hosting deal and maybe something in exchange for advertising (he should disclose any deals, of course). Bottom line though: as long as he blogs under the place that already had his posts removed once, what is to stop them from having it happen again?
• Set parameters for what he’s going to blog about next. The fired from Google story has about five minutes of the 15 minutes of fame left, so he should lay the groundwork for what he’s going to be blogging about over the long haul so that prospective employers know what they are getting into. For him, more than perhaps any other person on the planet right now, this is extremely important. His closing statement in his blog post: “if you have a corporate blogging policy, i promise i’ll follow it” rings more than a little hollow in light of all that has transpired to date. He’s going to need much, much more than a sentence or two to bring back his credibility and now is the time to start showing — through multiple blog entries about subjects other than his Google firing — what his true skills are and what he can do for his next employer.
• Write about what his strengths and what positive skills he can offer a prospective employer. Make his blog his virtual resume. With the kind of attention and exposure he’s going to get over the next week or two, he has a golden opportunity that he’ll probably never, ever receive again to display his best. The plan should be not to squander this exciting opportunity. One way he could squander this is by becoming the William Hung of blogging: don’t milk out the Google thing! I fear though, that’s what we’re going to get. I sure hope I’m wrong.
• Prepare and publish via Creative Commons a suggested template of blogging guidelines for employers to use. Possibly nobody knows better than the blogger who violated those rules, what lines should be drawn in the sand and where it should be painfully obvious to new employees what they should and should not blog about if they don’t want to lose their job. This would be helpful to employers and helpful to employees. Seek out those who already have worked on this information in preparing this outline and network with others who have had trouble related to blogging as resources.
• Do not bash Google in any way, shape or form for a long, long time! Mark Jen is going to be seen as the poster child for bias against Google perhaps forever heretofore and any sort of negative commentary about them is going to be seen as further evidence of disrespect. His opportunity for player hating against Google is over as any negative commentary he makes is going to go against him, not Google, in most people’s eyes. After at least six months of reestablishing himself he might be able to start speaking about Google products or services without people saying: “Oh yeah he’s that bitter guy who got fired by Google.” His best course of action is to take the high road, as Google has been doing with this mess.

My personal opinion because I do not know and have never met Mr. Jen personally or professionally from evaluating all that has happened and have read is that this guy has squandered an incredible, ripe opportunity with a company which many deem as the place to work for these days. While it’s easy for all of us not in Mr. Jen’s shoes to be the Monday morning quarterback here, the most sensible thing for those who actually know and care about Mark is to get him to do the right things from here forward. Get him to go into the right damage control mode!

I think it would be sad to see Jen pulling a William Hung here, but if that’s the route he wants to go, then there’s certainly an audience for that crap. I can pretty much guarantee that this will be my last post on this matter for a long time to come unless there’s a significant new development, so Jen’s exposure as William Hung on this blog has pretty much been spent. 

The better route towards earning professionalism and credibility for Jen is likely to actually listen to the advice of those who aren’t getting in trouble with those they work for over blogging and at the same time already have some significant presence in the blogosphere. Sources like Technorati, Pubsub and Feedster should help in addition to the bloggers Mr. Jen has already spoken to. With limited searching I found some good advice out there for him. I wish you good luck, Mr. Jen and hope we won’t be hearing a botched version of Rocket Man coming from your microphone heretofore: “And I think it’s gonna, be a long long time …”

Did this post make you go hmm?

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