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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."
there's no such thing as bad publicity.
(1st?)
fak3r.com
You can't extrapolate from one intern who was hired despite having sent out a stupid email. TFA implies he spent the rest of the summer kissing ass and working his butt off.
As for Abadala, she's a trust-fund baby. I suspect she'll learn the hard way that professional networking is extremely important in a services career.
Many people have been passed over for hire for something stupid they posted to Usenet or an Internet forum. Googling a person before hire to learn as much about them as possible is standard practice these days.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I guess it depends on whether your boss has a sense of humor or not.
Come to think of it, it also depends on whether you are indeed "doing jack" all the time...
In the company I work for, misuse of e-mail may constitute a CLM.
That's a Career Limiting Move. Not to be confused with sleeping with the boss's daughter--a Career Ending Move.
My work here is dung.
>>>>
>>>> SEND THIS EMAIL TO AT LEAST 50 FRIENDS AND YOU WILL
TOTALLY
>>>> GET A JOB AS A LAWYER. IT WORKED FOR ME LOLZ. IF
YOU
>>>> DO NOT SEND IN THE NEXT 10 MINUTES YOU WILL NOT GET
THE
>>>> JOB AND A LAWYER WILL COME AND BEAT YOU UP LOLZ
>>>
>>> DO THIS GUYZ IT WORKS
>>
>>
>>
Does this article remind anybody of when Peter got the promotion, and Michael and Samir got layed off?
Hey, I was busy putting off my project work and came across this funny page: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/21/175222 6
You guys all get the irony, right?
Maybe this is because in the legal profession you need to be forceful and unyielding in order to help you argue your cases. Who has ever heard of a famous lawyer who felt others pain, considered their positions and was meak and soft-spoken in court?
As a geek, though, I have found that many human resources types leave you alone when you come off strong and watch your language. Projecting dominance works well with them. If you do it right, you leave them no grounds to say "he was intimidating me" because the authority looks at your conduct and says, "uh, right. Next case."
It's about a simple rule. The average person doesn't really respect those they think are weak and/or vulnerable. This applies to both genders. Women don't like men who just give them what they want, and men don't respect women who just blindly take whatever a man does. People who are unwilling to just sit there and take it get much more respect in almost any organization. Usually the types that complain shut up in the face of a counter-challenge.
From the article:
As for Ms. Abdala, she says a mea culpa "will never happen." She's living on funds provided by her father and has rented office space for her own practice. "I've never been the type to work under someone," she says.
She sounds like one of those people who nobody picks to work with, so she ends up doing all of her work alone and has convinced herself that she enjoys it. I hope the marketplace (ie, her prospective customers) make her suffer (or she'll surely make them suffer, not having learned how to behave in a civil society).
C'mon folk, this is /., gotta keep the crusade going!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Mr. Korman: "Thank you for the refresher course on contracts... Do you really want to start [annoying] more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?"
Ms. Abdala: "bla bla bla."
So she wants to be a lawyer, eh? Is she going to use that little act in front of a judge?
Judge: Ms. Abdala, you're badgering the witness. Please stay within the confines of decorum.
Ms. Abdala: Yada-yada-yada... whatever Judge...
I agree with Mr. Korman: highly unprofessional. I guess she's looking to start an ambulance-chasing practice because I can't see anyone hiring her if that's as professional as she can be.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
What is the issue?
That someone put snotty comments in an email?
Or that some other person choose to use them as means other than intended by forewarding them on to a bunch of other people?
It looks like the article (yes, I RTFA) is bashing the wench for being snotty, not the recipient for using the email to further their own ends.
Ms. Abdala sounds like a spoiled nutjob who thinks that her thoughtless gall in her personal life should automatically transfer to her professional career. The fact that cattiness is framed positively and rewarded in today's business world is disheartening. There is a difference between being bold and confident and being petty. Moreover, just because you have gall does not mean you are always correct. As a man whose initials are JK once said in a widely watched debate, "You can be confident and you can be wrong." The type of gall that Ms. Abdala displays here may be good in the court-room but it can also be dangerous when administrating a business. A lack of concern for other people's feelings or thoughts is just as bad - probably more - than an over-concern for them. A good worker has the confidence to stand up for their own opinions bravely when they know they are right, and to take genuine opportunities. She also knows when to shut up and cooperate, for crissake. I really hope that Ms. Abdala's outrageous bluntness is not rewarded with a fast-track career.
I'd like to move us right to Peter Gibbons. We had a chance to meet this young man, and boy that's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
Who does or doesn't remember, Bernard Shifman is A Moron Spammer? Of course noone would hire an idiot like him.
Fight Spammers!
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.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
...it's ten years later and Ms. Abdala is sitting across a small table, staring down rather sheepishly at her formerly well-manicured nails:
Bar Representative:Are you aware, Ms. Abdala, that this is your second time in front of this board for accusations of malpractice?
Ms. Abdala:Yes, but you have to understand . . . I really didn't want to talk to my client. He's soooo boring . . .
Bar Representative:Regardless of your opinion of his personality, you did, in fact, take money from him?
Ms. Abdala: Well, sure, but . . .
Bar Representative:Blah, Blah, Blah, Ms. Abdala. This board finds you guilty of malpractice. Effective immediately, you are no longer licensed to practice law in this state. Have a nice day, brat.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Hmmmmm.... yes... but what about gaffes like THIS ONE?
A "circuit analsis" class? I'll bet that was an embarrassing incident!
WHAT? Oh like you never have.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... she said this: I'm more worried about whether I've left my hair iron on than this little email exchange
Translation: I can't get a job now.
In tabulario donationem feci.
note: not for the faint of heart, or those of us with morals (there must be somebody out there)
Tucker Max
If you didn't, I'm sure Doug Hofstadter would have ;-)
From another article on the topic, the hiring firm had decided after the verbal agreement to lower the pay. If anyone would be liable for breach of contract, it would be the hiring firm. And then he would be seriously in violation of breach of confidentiality by doing this... if I knew of a lawyer that did this I would do everything in my power to never hire him. And I don't believe that responding "Bla bla bla" is really that bad as the extremely unprofessional threat the lawyer made: "You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?". To me this sounds like a very thinly veiled threat that he is going to try to get her disbarred for 1)not accepting the job after he had changed the terms of the contract by lowering her pay and then 2)making a rebuttal to his statement that her actions were unprofessional.
Now, maybe she should have thought a little bit more carefully in dealing with this creep, but you think a seasoned lawyer would be the one showing some modicum of professionalism. Instead, he acted like a whiny little brat, used semi-vulgar language, made threats and then forwarded a conversation on to others that may have had a small expectancy of privacy.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
From TFA:
As for Ms. Abdala, she says a mea culpa "will never happen." She's living on funds provided by her father and has rented office space for her own practice. "I've never been the type to work under someone," she says.
I won't work under someone, earning my own way, but I'll shamelessly nurse from the teat. That doesn't work for people whose parents don't have the funds to be venture capitalists for their children.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
As a person who worked at a bank for 5 years, from teller, to head teller, to personal banker, to investment specialist I can tell you that - potentially an investment specialist would need to hit certain sites to find out things like stock prices. Other then that, it is not necessary for the company. The bank can easily restrict access to specific users (i.e. Only allow people who have the investment specialist job description). Instead of putting it in front of everyones faces. People can also utilize the internet and be fairly respectful "yes i will only go to check my email, or weather report, etc." If you don't want your employees doing something, then do not temp them with it.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I mean, who even heard about that smarmy tart before she was shown screaming for more on thousands of spamvertized websites around the world?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
And, in this case, the ??? step would be "sue for unauthorized distribution). Quote the business plan; quite job, send snippy email, then sue if the boss passes it on.
This post is for the sole use of the intended /. recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, distribution, or reply/rebuttal is prohibited.
Law school is 3 years usually (though people who work while in school often are in a 4 year program). If the school permits it, you could take summer classes and get down to 2 1/2 years. I'm sure that with some work (summer classes, AP classes in high school) one could graduate from college in 3 years or so as well.
So it's not really that big an accomlishment. She's at about the bottom of the age range for new lawyers, but I wouldn't say she's exceptional just based on that.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Back in the day, we used the built in mail package in VMS for our corporate e-mail package. VAXmail used your username as the FROM field, but since this was usually something like VQXC4995, or some such, the package allowed you to add a "personal name" string, which showed up in emails, along with your FROM username, so that people could tell who it came from without having to consult a table of usernames. Unless you looked at it, though, you wouldn't see yours normally. One night, a particularly annoying IT supervisor was incautious enough to leave himself signed on in the computer room. The operators, scamps everyone of them, took this opportunity to change his "personal name" string from his name, to "I Love You". It was a month later, and hundreds of emails sent by him, before anyone (the director of IT, as it turns out) called him up and said "Dave, what's with this I Love You message in all of your emails. He was mad for weeks, but never fiured out it was the operators that did it.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
The guy's name was Bernard Shiffman. More info can be found here.