9to5mac (which I never thought I’d ever link to EVER):
With some of the Apple news spotlight this week on the firing of an Apple employee (and last month) over a Facebook rant, we thought the best way to clear up this employee’s claims of “unfair dismissal” from his job would be to post Apple’s internal policies on the matter. The internal papers are very interesting, and give a fantastic look at Apple’s perspective in situations regarding employees being terminated over their online actions and more.We’ve got the full run down of Apple’s internal policies on social networking, blogging, speculation, leaking trade secrets, business policies and more after the break.
I still have my Policy & Procedure manual from 2005. It’s really not much different except now Apple allows social networking when they didn’t back then but there are still tons of restrictions. Whatever. It seems like this is the once a year post of how insane Apple is by some blog. I’m not concerned by any of these and neither should you. This is link-bait and everyone should read these kind of posts once and then never read another one again because Apple won’t slacken up on their control over employees. Also, remember that employment in America is voluntary so if you don’t like Apple’s policies, quit or never apply for a job there.
…also, for anyone saying these are standard at companies; yes and no. These sort of policies exist at large companies but they’re only enforced when you really screw up whereas Apple security is monitoring your social media profiles 24/7 for anyone that steps out of line. You don’t HAVE to apply for a job at Apple so there’s no point in getting all worked up about it.