March 9, 2007

Career Advice: Don’t Spend Half Your Work Day On Facebook And Then Brag About It

Michael Arrington

107 comments »

A Goldman Sachs trader in the UK named “Charlie” was warned by his employer that his visits to Facebook on company time were to stop. He spent, apparently, over 500 hours on Facebook in a six month period. That works out to about 4 hours per day.

Unwisely, perhaps, Charlie posted the warning email on his Facebook account, saying “It’s a measure of how warped I’ve become that, not only am I surprisingly proud of this, but in addition, the first thing I did was to post it here, and that losing my job worries me far less than losing facebook ever could.”

Indeed.

I really wish I was a Facebook stockholder.

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Comments

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  1. Jenn

    What an idiot.

  2. Bryan Le

    What the hell can you possibly do on Facebook for 4 hours a day? Hell, what can you possibly do on ANY social networking site for 4 hours a day?

  3. Velioncho

    May be he is facebook share holder - directly or indirectly -

  4. Velioncho

    And he is just waiting for the day to get fired so that Facebook gets good publicity

  5. JayDawg

    I would love to have a job where four hours was half of my workday.

  6. Bob Barker

    Bottles and models

  7. Bob Dingwell

    Perhaps he just keeps logged on to facebook in the background..?How does his company measure his online hours on facebook? time spent between http requests on facebook are attributed to his time online? As a gmail user, I would be caught online for over 10 hours a day (at work), but my actual use of gmail is less than 10-15 minutes a day…

    Just things to think about…

  8. Stephen Sclafani

    Michael,

    Off topic, but was wondering: why did you decide to switch from bolding to underlining?

  9. Brent Lamphier

    All of our friends are on facebook, all of our high school friends who we haven’t talked to in 3 years are on facebook, as is the cute girl we saw walking on campus (and it’s not too difficult to find her and learn about her). Now, once I leave college, I can’t imagine spending 4 hours on it, but, in college, i know many who have spent at least 2 hours to go…crap…I’ve done nothing today. I agree with Arrington, I wish I owned a piece of it…

  10. Alex

    No better way of becoming a shareholder than through employment. How about this?
    http://www.facebook.com/jobs.p.....evelopment
    Would be a relatively short drive on Middlefield for you, too.

  11. Heather R.

    Status:

    Charlie is going DOWN.

  12. ...some Drifter

    an idiot, indeed.

    his employer is Very lenient to only give him a warning and not an instant Fired notice

    who knows, if this story is big enough - he could use his new-found fame(infamous, more like) for his benefit.

    i can imagine it’d be very tough for him to find future employment - all the employers have to do is google his name - then kaPow! HUGE slacker

  13. Velioncho

    #7- good point but he has posted the email snippet on facebook, so he may not be denying it.

  14. Nathan Kaiser

    Bryan Ye is right on the money. Now, I have heard of people getting caught looking at job sites for hours on end… I wonder if the IT Dept would have acted differently if that was the case.

  15. Taylor

    If he was a real facebook pro he would have put it in a Note not in his About section.
    Shit, I need to not be on facebook so much…

  16. dataprotector

    you know it is ridiculously easy to find this persons profile on facebook just with the screenshot displayed. Doesn’t make much sense to hide his name and picture at all!

    Sorry but you should’ve thought about that before posting it

  17. Bisi

    I think the letter is fake ..
    He just made it up to get attention .
    If he is spending 4 hours of his 8 hour day on Facebook , he would be seriously underperforming his peers and somebody else that works with him would have noticed …

    Anyway I thing the email is fake . The IT department does not warn people HR does, besides why will it take them 6 months to realize that he spends half his work day on Facebook .

  18. Matthew Elliot

    500 hours sounds like bullshit… tabbed browsing? I leave my gmail open in a tab, he probally does the same thing with facebook

    I’d quit the job in a heart beat, stalker software is evil, if i do my job and socialize at the same time it shouldn’t be a problem, just because I don’t wanna talk to the cube jockey sitting near me doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to anyone while I work. I’m old school and use aim to chat with old college buddies, but if young kids are doing the same thing with facebook good for them.

  19. Dan

    Nice of IT to give a warning without turning him in directly. How many times would that happen?

  20. Tim

    IT does warn people in some cases…my previous employer’s IT dept used to monitor sensitive data that people emailed to outside accounts. The head of our department emailed a compensation list with SSNs on it to his home account, and IT sent him a nastygram warnig. Ironic thing is that our department WAS HR.

    I’m skeptical of Charlie as well…unless he’s a rainmaker in the trading department, they’d have likely walked him well before this for poor performance.

  21. fareed

    drug tests and internet usage monitoring are wastes of energy in the same way.

    if you still perform your job well, who cares?

    unless (for drug tests at least) you operate heavy machinery or drive or something.

  22. Thomas B. Pedersen

    I think this actually more common that most people are willing to admit. Just look at the replies to Michael’s post. 20 replies in about one hour. I bet there are hundreds of thousands of employees wasting hours every day monitoring all their RSS feeds.

    At least it looks like this guys is getting laid from all his online activity. :-)

  23. Jimmy

    Forget about facebook… virb.com is where it’s at.

  24. Carson

    @Jimmy

    You are so right…i signed up for virb today. I cant believe how great it is. http://www.virb.com
    Its what Myspace should have been. Its unbelievable… i cant wait for more bands to sign up

  25. other

    He is a goldman sachs trader, he’s lucky if 4 hours is 1/4 of his workday.

  26. Pedro Morgado

    Nice blog.

    Visit mine here.

  27. Richard

    Seems interesting.

  28. Zaid

    This year’s graduating class will be a huge test for facebook: first “generation” of facebook will graduate(students who’ve had FB all four years). Let’s see how these folks continue to use FB.

    -Zaid

  29. Mark S

    My theory is that Goldman is taking them public and planted this story so guys like Mike Arrington would write about it, bring even more attention to them, and the public would rush out to bid up the IPO. Arrington even admits he’d like to own some and they probably will cut him in on the friends and family…he’ll flip it day one and make another small fortune!

    Okay, none of that is serious but I thought it would be fun for the conspiracy people out there. I have to go, the cia is watching me…

  30. Professor Print

    This is great stuff.. Good find TechCrunch! This one is worth forwarding to those that get a laugh out of idiots.

  31. Mr. Drano

    Some of us actually get paid to do what Charlie does. I guess Charlie does, too.

  32. Adam Healey

    who wants a career anyway.

  33. TP

    Facebook is a non-player. Lake Erie has a lot of water, but no one is making any money bottling it. Last I checked, Facebook was in the $$ business, not the “user” business. I’m sure their investors won’t take payment in the form of “users” to fulfill their 2X liquidation preference. Fact is, advertising on SOCNETS stinks. Every single report from any company spending in this space or analysts analyzing (LOL) are saying this. I don’t doubt at all that there is a considerable % of users who are on FB for several hours per day. But they don’t even notice the ads, let alone click on them. If FB were smart they would eliminate all ads tomorrow and charge its users for the valuable service they provide. This chasing the ¢20 CPM tail is futile. Charge your users $20 per year and Zuck books $300M. That, is as good as it gets.

  34. David Mackey

    I have to agree with some of the lines of thought that go before, that this could very possibly be a prank.

  35. Firefox Fan

    at this moment i have open 52 tabs in firefox, there is facebook somewhere i think. last time i checked this website it was few days ago. so, did i spend all this time, since then on facebook? ;)

  36. Wade

    Haha, that was actually an entertaining post. More like these, please.

  37. [kbox]

    This is beyond idiotic. This cretin deserves to lose his job. He is a grown man with a good job and he is acting like a 12 year old girl.

    I wouldn’t admit going to facebook once, Let alone be “proud” of spending half of my time browsing it.

  38. Matt

    What can you do on Facebook for 4 hours a day?!? By now, he should have all Facebook’s user’s profiles memorized. :P

    Err, why doesn’t his IT department just block Facebook… It’d be easier. Plus, they might as well block all the other social networks (the main ones, at least) while they’re at it. If you want to stop someone going to a site, the smart thing to do would be to block the site. Simple as that. Whatever…

  39. Matt

    Sorry, for double commenting…

    But, this guy must want to be fired or something… But, he can do as he chooses, and possibly deal with the consequences later…

    Yes, I realize that blocking the site may stop the problem of him being on Facebook for 4 hours, but not the slacking problem…

    Just my opinions…

  40. Garrett

    In response to #7, et all.. there’s a big difference between Gmail and Facebook. Gmail uses AJAX (a specialized use for Javascript) whereas Facebook doesn’t have that type of functionality. So in order for him to be tracked for 500 hours of use he’d have to be using Facebook quite frequently (at least once every 1-2 minutes or the TCP/IP connection would close). So, it’s not hard to say that yes he did browse Facebook for 500 hours non-stop / intermittently. Gmail’s a different story (and IT can track whether you’re writing email all day or just getting page updates :)..).

  41. Neil Cauldwell

    I just looked for this guy on Facebook, no sign of him. Where did Mike get the screenshot from? Quick and easy viral marketing if you ask me.

    Garrett - Facebook does in fact have some Ajax functionality, I remember noticing some last night.

  42. yeh

    Ppl who comment on TC are stupid. You’re stupid! You read that! You know NOTHING! FB comfortably gets it $10-20cpm, I know, cos I pay it as an advertiser. idiots. and this is not a hoax. can the haters go away and start their own companies? losers.

  43. Catchou

    http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=648400423

    You need to be on London network to view his profile.

    Charlie [deleted by MA], Oxford graduate at Goldman Sachs.

  44. CM Barnes

    Pretty great publicity stunt for FaceBook, I suppose. That, or this guy really wants to change careers.

  45. Anirudh

    An awful lot of people might be facing the same thing I guess.

  46. Richard Hong

    Not just career…this need to be emphasized in University with student’s academic life as well.

  47. Anshul Jain

    This is hilarious, but seriously you cannot measure time on facebook like this. If the guy forgot to log out, it cant be said that the entire day he was on facebook. Also if this is a publicity stunt, then its a brilliant one.

  48. Rich

    Maybe he was getting paid to use facebook, this company apparently pays you but i have not been able to get an account to do that yet!
    http://thymesonline.co.uk/inde.....;Itemid=43

  49. Dude

    Yep, Oxford graduate will have a tough time finding employment…

  50. Neil Cauldwell

    A great opportunity for Jobster (whom recently partnered with Facebook) to seize?

  51. Lazy Oxonian

    Is everybody going to poke me then?

  52. r@dix

    well, i hope that a*hole gets what he deserves.

  53. Lazy Oxonian

    @ r@dix: th@t’s never going to h@ppen @nd you know it!

  54. Alex

    I found Charlie on facebook in 1 minute. But the fact of the matter is that you guys really have no idea what facebook is considering some of the comments I’ve read here. It’s a combination of address book, photo album and email program. His constant logged in status is of no surprise and a standard feature for most users. I’m logged into facebook whenever my computer is on. I might navigate away, but with its settings, it won’t log me out unless I close the full program and not a tab.

    As far as that “a*hole” getting what he deserves, that would be considerably more money than you make.

  55. Charles Frith

    Maybe Charlie values human relationships more than the dollar worshipping acolytes of Goldman Sachs do. Money is a means to an end.

  56. garrett

    he spends 4 hours a day on facebook and he only has 89 friends at oxford to show for it?

  57. Catchou

    He was previously booted off Facebook for excessive usage (Facebook disable ppl’s accounts if they have a crazy hitrate without exposure to enough adverts or something), he used to have 500+ friends, recently re-got his account hence the 89 garrett.

  58. Andy

    Facebook account? Pinstripe suit? Oxford graduate? Banking job?

    What a tit.

  59. Amit Chowdhry

    This guy is almost as bad as Aleksey Vayner’s “Impossible is Nothing” video resume that he sent to investment banking companies:

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=J7pok0TKDU8

  60. Tom

    Thing is. He is one of the millions who are bored at their job. Many many people - probably some of you who have posted here - are stuck behind there desks day after day with very little to do. Read “The Living Dead” and you’ll know what I mean, if you don’t already :).

  61. Choosenick

    Yeah, he’s taken it off now.
    I’ll have that Goldman job if it ends up going spare. Clearly wasted on Charlie.

  62. Steve

    add to your hosts file (windows/system32/drivers/etc)
    127.0.0.1 facebook.com
    127.0.0.1 http://www.facebook.com

    Do the same with other sites when I need to work.

  63. tom

    ok

  64. Pensador

    Unbe-f’ing-lievable!

  65. Some Bloke

    Boy, if they fire him how will he as a poor Oxford alum ever find another job?

  66. Larry Chiang

    who’s hosting the Techcrunch rooftop party??

  67. engtech

    What an idiot.

    This week I wrote about how to use Facebook without losing your job over it.

  68. Ross Mayfield

    Suddenly Reuters’ social networking for financial services people play makes sense

  69. gunit

    i log in to facebook when i wake up, before i go to bed, and about 10 times during the day. im addicted to it.

  70. Peter

    “the facebook”? hilarious. either it’s fake, or the spy department guy is Indian.

  71. bleu

    More bad boys at work caught out here.
    http://digg.com/celebrity/naug.....chi_server

  72. Dan

    Now there’s a techjunkr.

  73. shar

    Peter: before facebook was facebook it was the facebook.

  74. jayoh

    facebook offers the cleanest social network, but hell, i guess i don’t have nearly enough friends to spend hours sending out pokes and looking at updated profile pictures.

  75. Dasad

    He’s deactivated. But look at this http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2243682937

  76. Dasad

    http://cant-touch-this.co.uk/m.....omics.html

    That was Charlie [deleted] favourite URL on his Facebook profile. Read a few of those comics. Child rape, child pornography, death, drugs and racism jokes. A sackable offence in itself?

  77. Leigh

    The Internet gives us a way to feel connected to the outside world. With all of the social networking sites, blogs, RSS feeds, etc., we can stay social and productive. That’s what we say, but if you think about it, how we’ve really just isolated ourselves from the world immediately around us. Sounds like this guy is just another isolated soul.

  78. tj

    Just call it “CRACKBOOK”,and call me crackhead charlie.

  79. tj

    oops change that to “CRACKBOOK CHARLIE”.

  80. Heather

    Atleast we have a guy with a bloody sense of humour! Are you lot honestly saying that in a moment of boredom, hours haven’t been wasted on the computer? The fact that you all had to write and complain about charlie, about a situation that doesn’t effect any of you, is what’s really sad here.

  81. Anon

    just *another* oxbridge public school boy working in the City….

  82. IPTV News

    goes to show no matter how much the technology advances, people try hard to remain stupid

  83. charlie morrison

    This chap discussed above is my best friend from school and Oxford, and he is currently a strategist at GS. From all my friends currently working in milkround jobs in the city I gather that messing about on Facebook and such sites is fairly par for the course: one spends God knows how many hours in the workplace being set frankly rather low-broew tasks, and the rest of the time is left for waiting around, bored, until the next assignment is put forward. Much as Charlie is perhaps a little too fond of Facebook, is this not the case with thousands of others? Is this not rather old news? Why is everybody quite so fascinated with the trivial incidents in someone they do not know’s life? I can safely say that Facebook certainly impeded my progress in study at Oxford (along with many of my friends), although that said, Charlie came away with a First in every year of his Oxford career.
    I think perhaps people should stop spending so many hours on pointless internet forums and go back to work!

  84. Laurie

    Obviously, this guy is an idiot. Why would you jeopardize your job to goof-off on any social networking site? I’m an original subscriber to facebook, and I’ve never needed to spend that much time on the site…other than reading and updating profiles or creating new groups, your options are pretty limited. I hope this gets fired, then he won’t have a cool job to brag about on facebook.

  85. Boy

    Well done, Wedlinger. You got the wrong Morrison, and you clearly didn’t even read the article itself (which would have informed you that the Morrison in question was not involved in the incident). Next time you want to go do a ‘bit of research’, why don’t you research the correct spelling of the word ‘apparantly’.

  86. Wedlinger

    Hmm, ever so slightly coincidental then that the “wrong” Charlie Morrison’s Facebook image is identical to the unknown, obscure comic in Charlie [deleted]’s Facebook URL ??

    Went to a party yesterday, the whole City is talking about this. He is so fired.

  87. Heather

    “He is so fired”?? Where exactly did you get this information from because I know for a fact that he hasn’t lost his job!
    As long as he gets his work done, (which he always manages to do) then what exactly is the problem? As a student, I usually spend alot of time on the computer, and I also use facebook quite frequently. But possibly like Charlie, I leave the page open all day, giving me a constant online status. So suggesting that Charlie actually spends 4 hours straight a day, is a little ridiculous…

    Wedlinger - you are an idiot. And the fact that you spend so much time consuming your thoughts, with a guy you obiously know nothing about, shows how truely pathetic some people can be.

  88. Ollie

    Wedlinger, you moronic tool, I was a member of Christ Church the evening of that Guest Dinner. Charlie Morrison had nothing to do with it: it’s not even his college. The ‘Morrison’ in that article is in fact a girl, who was President of the JCR at the time. Next time you go bandying rumours around, perhaps you should bother to check your facts first? Ghastly person.

  89. Well

    Heather, go back to your studies. Be an academic all your life because clearly you have no clue whatsoever about how the real world operates. Being able to do your job well is not all that matters. When you work for Goldman Sachs, your personal reputation matters immensely as it reflects on the firm. So how does it look when a GS employee (a) shows how “cool” he is by breaking IT regulations about using social networking sites and suggesting his loyalty to the site is more than for his employer, and even more importantly (b) has as his favourite URL on that profile a site which links to racist, homophobic, mysogynistic and rape related “jokes”?

  90. charlie morrison

    Thank you Ollie, Boy et al; and thank you Heather for voicing the common sense approach to the matter that seems to have evaded a lot of others on this site. Mr Wedlinger, how is the fact that I use a clip from Charlie’s cartoon link in any way related to the (false) allegation of my simulated bum-sex?

    While on the subject of cartoons, I would point out that the rather controversial cartoons are nothing more than rather off-kilter jokes. People who actually hold bigoted views take them seriously. People who make light of such issues do so because to them such beliefs are farcical and thus can be joked about. A broad sense of humour is no bad thing.

  91. Well

    That’s where you’re wrong Charlie. Rape, racism, beating up children and mysogyny “jokes” should not be laughing matters. They exacerbate and perpetuate stereotypes, forcing things into people’s subconscious. You should take offence at the existence of homophobia in “joke” form, not find it funny, homophobia will continue as long as people like you carry on laughing at what you think are “jokes” when you don’t realise how hurtful they can be to people who’ve experienced what is in those cartoons.

    Your Facebook profile picture is currently this: http://profile.ak.facebook.com....._24525.jpg

    I think that speaks volumes.

  92. Bubleat

    Charlie, don’t you realise the existence of such cartoons makes issues worse as some people will think it’s common/acceptable/it happens when it doesn’t? Do you realise how much offence a Facebook profile pic visible to all saying “RAPE TIME!” is for someone who got raped? You make me fucking sick.

  93. Meredith

    Um, no. No no no.

  94. Blasting

    HereIsTheCity reported he spent the night he got fired dancing away at a London nightclub. Apparantly he is the guy in the red beanie (the bottom photo for 23rd Mar, and in the Flash slideshow) at http://www.alphaparties.com/march07.htm#spark

  95. Bubleat

    Here is a photo of Charlie [deleted] smoking a joint the night he allegedly got fired: http://photos-289.ak.facebook......9_5085.jpg