About Social Media Today
I have been an entrepreneur since my 20s (I am now 37) and I have never had an employee quit via a social network - that was true until today. This morning one of our Ruby on Rails developers didn’t show up for work. We called her various numbers, but didn’t get through. By around five we were worried. Was she hurt? Then one of our other employees checked her Facebook account. Ooops She had ‘unfriended’ our employee. I checked my Facebook account, I had been unfriended, too. Several other employees check their accounts and realized she had unfriended them as well. Ouch. She had quit.
Of course before the age of Facebook I would have assumed she was in the hospital and unable to come to work. In the age of Facebook it was clear she was severing her employment relationship with our company. To be sure, it was unclear as to whether or not she would be successful in the long term (we are very hard to work with). Quitting via Facebook is generally a bad idea. I would highly recommend simply calling your boss or his boss and explaining that the position isn’t working out. Why?
Well, in our case we have to change access codes to banking accounts (ACH collections are a bitch), locks to doors and access codes to our NOC and data center facilities. The cost is in excess of $1,000 as opposed to an orderly ‘I quit’ sort of relationship whereby we would execute an orderly transition. I am not naming the employee here, just suggesting to all my Generation Y friends - don’t quit via Facebook. :)
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