Infamous Emails Don't Always Kill Careers

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Those oft-forwarded email gaffes don't always lead to career meltdowns for the ashamed senders, Jared Sandberg writes in the Wall Street Journal. In some corners of the business world, preserving a reputation can be less important than acquiring one in the first place. For instance, the 2003 legal summer associate who accidentally emailed 40 colleagues to announce he was 'busy doing jack' ended up getting a job at the firm. More recently, the young woman who told off a lawyer offering her a job -- and saw her email forwarded worldwide -- is quite confident that the notoriety can't hurt, and might even help, her career."

Comments

Re:It depends

[pilgrim23]

testimonial: I was leaving work one day and...the elevator stopped between floors. I pushed the emergency talk button and got a P..rson talk.. th..sounded ..ike t.is (the sound cut in and out) . I was told, by the dispatcher (what I could hear of the conversation and from later discussion) communication problems were my fault (huh?). Since I could hear little, I talked into the mike and explained where I was and what the circumstance was. then settled back on the floor of the car, and waited 2 hours for someone to get me out. This was a Friday night and I was perhaps the only one in the building by then...
By the way this was the 2nd time I had been stuck on an elevator in that building and the final upshot was the maintenance company lost the contract. But, on to the thread: I sat down with my iBook and wrote a log of my experience via email(s) and sent it to Building maint. CCed to my supervisor (wireless) and by 1.5 hours the email contained the word "damn" in one line. Nothing worse; just that.
Next Monday I was called on the use of offensive language.

Re:Unbridled Optimisim

[PriceIke]

Her finances are going to be just fine. Did you see her picture? That's professionally done promotional photo, not a candid by some hack ABC photog. I'd lay money she'll get a few dozen job offers, and probably a few marriage proposals out of the deal. She could probably even start up an email-etiquette advice column in some legal rag.

This was such a non-story on a slow news day. "bla bla bla"? So what? I've seen much worse.