Friday, September 22, 2006

Please Mr. Postman

I'm working on a few posts that should be ready to publish shortly. In the meantime, I'll cover some housekeeping and address some email questions I've gotten.

A few of you have asked why I'm blogging externally rather than using the internal blog system at Intel. There are few reasons for this. First of all, I like that Intel has an internal blogging system for employees. There are several blogs that I read regularly. I'm not sure where the exact boundary is between acceptable or not for blogging internally, but I can almost guarantee that I'd be crossing a line with this blog. There's one particular funny, popular, insightful blog inside Intel that recently retracted a post that poked fun at the CEO after an open forum meeting with employees. It was a humorous, insightful, and well written post. The blogger said some things that many of us were thinking, but was far funnier than most of us were in our own heads. I didn't think any less of the CEO after having read it, and actually was impressed that Intel would allow someone to post that blog entry. But then it was gone shortly after being posted.

Did someone ask the blogger to take it down? I don't know - he wrote that he removed the post voluntarily. I'm guessing he removed it after having a conversation with his boss or HR. I say this because, as a fellow blogger, I doubt he would have written and posted an entry he was not comfortable with. And why would a smart, funny guy retract a smart, funny post? Btw, I fully support some boundaries - clearly you can't let employees say anything they want on an internal blog. But it's determining where that gray area is that causes a problem, and that one retracted post was an indicator for me. So that's why I'm writing out here and not in there.

I've gotten comments from a few non-Intel people who are reading. One from an Intel spouse, and a couple from friends of Intel people. They seem to appreciate the perspective they're getting here. This wasn't intended, but if this blog helps give non-Intel employees a better perspective, I think it can only be helpful.

I was asked about the post that disappeared for a while last week. I don't know what happened, but it was moved to my blog drafts folder. This may be a quirk of the blog software, or more likely something I did. While I will edit for punctuation and readability after posting as needed, I don't plan to remove any entries, or heavily re-edit (as I did with one post). My posts will stay out there, and I'll make corrections or address issues in subsequent entries if needed.

A couple of folks asked whether or not they should be reading this blog from inside Intel. I can't really answer that, as it's a personal choice. Like many employees I tend to access the Internet infrequently during the day, and I think it's considered acceptable. Please do what you feel comfortable with.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I may be getting laid off at my job. Do you know where I can get the resources to determine:

1/ should I sign the severence papers
2/ should I bring my lawyer into the conversation
3/ was the process fair for those who got RIFd

What are the Intel folks doing?

Anonymous said...

Nice blog -- how can I get it in an RSS feed?

Anonymous said...

What is the work environment like there these days? My husband is just keeping his head down and doing his job. He has managed to get through all the layoffs when they have happened. All I can say right now is bring on vacation, and then sabbatical! I think he is going to be looking forward to both!

Intel IT Guy said...

For the first comment above, sorry to hear you may be laid off. I can't really advise you on whether or not to sign your severance or to bring a lawyer into it. You may want to have a chat with an attorney if you're concerned about your situation. I don't know how any firing process could be 100% fair, but it seems like a good process to get through a bad task. I think people at Intel are dealing with it and moving on.

On the RSS request, I'll look into it. It may take a few days.

To the wife, I think the environment is the same. Most people are glad to see cuts start happening so we can move past it.

Anonymous said...

Blogging is truly egalitarian. That is, it assumes equal information sharing and receiving power of all users. This is why some people get upset who are only used to having their thoughts published (and not that of the 'common' person or employee). Truly blogging is the voice of the people. While I watch my words in my Intel blog, I am frustrated by the number of managers who have become upset about the most inane commentary. I thought we were all adults?

Anonymous said...

As this is a Blogspot blog it's quite easy to get the RSS feed:

Just add atom.xml to the URL, i.e.

http://intelperspective.blogspot.com/atom.xml

When you do that it redirects to:

http://intelperspective.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

Both ways will probably work in your RSS reader.

Anonymous said...

I'm a vendor to Intel - small-potatoes for them, but a big portion of my workload and income. I appreciate the blog as a way of understanding what the folks I'm working with are going through. Thanks for publishing it as an external blog.

Anonymous said...

You mention that Internet use from within Intel is acceptable. As an IT guy, can you post on how that use is being monitored? Is there a time/bandwidth limit, how about different web sites?

Intel IT Guy said...

I can't tell you specifically how internet use is monitored. But I can guess that whoever is doing the monitoring is looking for usage outliers in terms of sites visited, amount of activity, or people visiting inappropriate sites. If you surf the web all day long or view a "Spring Break Girls" web site from any business, you should expect to get caught.