Slashdot Mirror
Intern? Bloggers Need Not Apply
westlake writes "Short, funny, and to the point, a good read from the NYT about the realities of blogging in the corporate world." From the article: "Most experienced employees know: Thou Shalt Not Blab About the Company's Internal Business. But the line between what is public and what is private is increasingly fuzzy for young people comfortable with broadcasting nearly every aspect of their lives on the Web, posting pictures of their grandmother at graduation next to one of them eating whipped cream off a woman's belly. For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring."
My coworkers and I were sharing stories at lunch the other day; thankfully, my office is blissfuly absent of corporate culture ("professional, but relaxed"). A coworker who has a daughter my age said that when her daughter started working as a receptionist at a hospital, she came home after a few months on the job and said "Mom...you never told me Dilbert was real..."
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Don't use your real name on your blog, you idiot!
However, not all bloggers share that mentality. And not all non bloggers are exempt from it so hey.
blogs are at least a fantastic way to vet an employee before hiring.
I don't know if it's all that different from when I was first entering the workplace, but today's youngsters put it all out there. I don't know where kids get the idea that the only ones who would ever look at their MySpace blogs are people in their own age group.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
I determined a while ago that any private material that becomes public material can be used against you. In about 20 years I expect a metric shit-ton of blackmail material will be available for our future up-and-coming politicians. (Thank you MySpace for embarrassing our future politicians!)
Of course, because I'm smart enough to keep private matters private, I'm automatically disqualified from politics. (Yay!)
Hint: No matter how awesome that frat party was (I don't care *how* crazy those midgets where!), it's probably not a good idea to post those pics until your hangover is gone.
On the other hand -if we encouraged all of the Poli Sci, Business and Law students to not only blog, but to also to post pictures of their exploits on myspace we might be able to weed out some of our future idiot/corrupt politicos and business people.
Just think if this have been around in the '80s when King George was partying his brains out....
-What's the Speed of Dark?
Was the woman his grandmother? I wouldn't hire that dude at all.
If there is something you don't want your boss, your friends your family or your enemies to know, don't put it online.
If it's really really sensetive, don't write it down either.
If you say "hah...no one will care what I said/wrote anyway", you'd be suprised.
First post!
Two weeks after graduating from high school I was hired by a fortune 500 company to work in the bowels of the tech department. Let me tell you that I saw a lot of totally confidential stuff that I thought was awesome and It was hard to not blab about all of the information I was privvy too
Acting like an idiot in public can hurt your job prospects. Acting like an idiot in a world wide, semi perpetual, archived and instantly accessible forum can *really* hurt your career.
Lets not couch this in terms of some kind of cultural divide. These people are putting things in public that should be private and then suprised by their own ignorance.
Step 2. Blog about it
Step 3. Get fired
Step 4. Profit!!
OTOH, does the same thing apply to kids who get expelled from college/highschool?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is Slashdot, people. This is an experience that is absoultely unrelated to anyone that views this website.
I mean, I only got 8 tickets to graduation. You think gram ranks above the guys from the local LINUX group and my WoW guild?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
OK, I've heard the "information wants to be free" mantra a zillion times, and I've met my fair share of people who think their right to free speech (no matter what they're saying and what the consequences will be) trumps anything else.
I've seen an absurd story on the news today about a British woman who was prosecuted for indecent exposure, because she had the audacity to sunbathe nude in her own garden. (She was acquitted, but the comments by both the public prosecutor and the judge were profoundly inappropriate, and no-one seems to have taken any action against the "offended" neighbour who videoed the nude sunbather without her permission - something that probably is illegal under the recent Sexual Offences Act.)
You know the thing that really scared me today? A professor (in the UK sense, i.e., a very senior academic) talking about the "semantic web" and implying that in a few years, everyone will have a unique "Internet ID", and everything from their personal details to pictures of their wedding will be on-line for all to look up, instantly and reliably.
Choosing to share your personal information with the world is one thing, though I suspect a great many of the enthusiastic youngsters supporting trendy web sites today will regret it one day. Choosing to share others' personal information with the world is an entirely different thing, and I'm not sure I want to live in a world where everything about you is assumed to be public knowledge.
Maybe I'm just biased, since a bitter ex of mine did once post intimate and formerly private personal messages on her blog (but edited and with modified dates). It just seems to me that this sort of thing is happening ever more often: it's assumed that no-one you deal with has a private life, and if you know it, it's perfectly fine to share it with others. I guess the whole posting confidential company information thing is just another nail in the coffin: as the saying goes, privacy is dead, and we have killed it.
It's tragic, and it's even more tragic that most people don't even realise. Yet.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"What would Google show?" is a question you need to ask yourself when applying for a job. Employers increasingly Google the name of prospective employees. Not for the mail room job, but certainly for management level positions or those with security implications or even just those above some annual salary level. You also need to remember that with huge caches that shit doesn't go away even if you try to disappear it. What you thought was cool at 20 may not seem so to someone you are asking to pay you 100k at 30.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
"It is important that corporations make a choice as to what type of blogging they will allow," said Alfred C. Frawley III, director of the intellectual property practice group at the law firm Preti Flaherty in Portland, Me.
Why does blogging need a different set of rules than any other medium for communication?
If there is something your company doesn't want disclosed, have the lawyers draft up the paperwork. Just for kicks, we'll call it a "non-disclosure agreement", or NDA for short. If this NDA is broken, handle accordingly.
You may be within your rights to decide what I am allowed to disclose, but what does it matter how I do it?
Director of the intellectual property practice indeed. Just another moron with a big title that even he doesn't understand.
It's not easy being a nigger.
Someone put forward the theory to me the other day that we like Celebrities (and I use the term 'we' here loosely) because we miss the sense of community our tribal ancestors had. Celebrities fill the gap because they provide a familiarity with faces and shared stories that link us to other people around the world.
Blogging seems to extend this idea (ideal?) by making peoples stories more openly shared. For example, I read http://www.waiterrant.net/ and http://www.oblivio.com/, I know their stories even though they live in new york, and somehow the world feels smaller and less disparate. Added to that, I have a few friends who read the same blogs, we both know their stories (or at least the stories they choose to tell).
It brings back that sense of community a little.
Can't we all just get along
Anyone who does this is a fucking moron. Anyone with such a galactic dearth of common sense deserves to be shut out of the corporate world. And the rest of society for that matter. This is the kind of person that doesn't care when everyone loses their rights to privacy, since they don't use any of theirs. They can all burn in a fiery pit and go straight to hell.
[/rant]
I continue to be amazed at the personal details shared across the internet. At one time, I put my phone number, office number, and alternate email addresses, in my signature. That changed significantly after AOL "joined" the internet, of course. With the panic in human resources about providing or receiving references (beyond the dates of employment), things like myspace provde an interesting adjunct to vetting future workers.
It isn't just the inappropriate pictures that will keep you from being employed. It's the evidence that you can't keep quiet about things, that you're not trustworthy, that you're not even very good with grammar and spelling (in the real world, spelling counts). Once upon a time you could move away from a bad reputation, or switch jobs to leave behind a bad experience or two. Now, with things like zabasearch and google hacks to track you down, youthful indescretion becomes a permanent and inescapable brand.
No second chances. Sad.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
I really thought the part of the blurb that talked about moving from a group of peers to the intergenerational workplace was specially insightful. As a college student, and as a young person, I feel that my peers too often underestimate the culture gap between themselves and their future employers. Many of my fellow students are mature enough to handle the transition well, but not everyone is as capable.
I think blogging about everything is only a single aspect of the vast differences between today's youth and their parents' generation.
Stupidity screen. Social Darwinism at work.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
I don't know where kids get the idea that the only ones who would ever look at their MySpace blogs are people in their own age group.
:)
Considering the color schemes of most myspace pages and the spelling/grammer, Im surprised anyone looks at myspace blogs
I'm sure there are a few corporate environments that are worse, but they're probably degenerate one-off businesses that are in the process of completely disintegrating.
Shouldn't "eating whipped cream off a woman's belly" be a link above?
Anyone dumb enough to post their company's innermost secrets on their blog deserves exactly what they get.
Similarly, any boss who fires an employee simply on the basis that they have a blog, regardless of content, deserves some sort of dressing down - although this is harder to achieve.
People are too often pushed into very polarised positions on the matter, which helps no-one. There's plenty of acceptable middle ground, if only someone could bring reasonable discussion to the table.
Aaaahhh - damn. I knew I shouldn't use my real name when I registered. Oh god, what am I gonna do now - aaaahhhh.
Actually, I think many people invent a psuedo-name and often don't realize when they've crossed the line from anonymous to identifiable when you look at the collection of what they post. The vastness of the internet makes people feel safe even when their standing naked in public.
I've worked with 2 people who were fired over blogs they thought were quite anonymous, but it became quite clear who was writing them when you looked at the collection of posts. They both knew perfectly well if they were caught they'd be fired (and they should've been), but they also felt quite anonymous since they didn't use their 'real names. It's ALOT like folks that post 'anonymous' comments on stock boards.
If your grandmother is the founder and president of the local Linux User Group, the biker chick for the local chapter of Hell's Angels, or (worst of all) beating you in WoW, which she connects to from her OpenBSD system, then you probably would invite her.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I thought that said "eating whipped cream off their grandmother's belly."
Come to think of it, gotta be careful what you post at Slashdot: all that anti-Microsoft hatred that can get spewed could be problematic when The (Wo)Man goes to sign a paycheque.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
You think in 10 years she'll have problems? :) I wonder how her career is doing these days, anyway.
Better living through obfuscation. Project White Noise
When I blog I keep this in mind. My worst enemy will use this against me in my weakest moment to do maximum damage.
Remember, what you blog WILL be used against you. But if you only supply your enemy with Nerf balls it won't be an effective weapon.
And that's why I'm posting anonymously.
About 5 years ago, I did a search on google for my boss. He did not have a very unique last name, so all I did was narrow searches down to vicinities he was likely to have lived in. It only took a few minutes. He was convinced it would be very difficult to find him on google becuase of his name. Problem is, anyone looking for you on google, would already know a little bit about you, and that is enough to dig up newspaper articles, jail records, resumes, and all sorts of stuff. I would rather not have my future boss finding me on myspace doing keg stands, or mooning someone with a half-shaved-ass. I do/have done stupid shit just for laughs, just like everyone else. That doesn't mean I use the same judgement in a professional setting. I would rather be interviewed without any pre-conceived notions.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
From TFA:
But Comedy Central disagreed, asking him to change the name (He did, to "I'm an Intern in New York") and to stop revealing how its brand of comedic sausage is stuffed.
"They said they figured something like this would happen eventually because blogs had become so popular," said Mr. McDonald, now 23, who kept his internship. "It caught them off guard. They didn't really like that."
So, basically, they objected to him sharing potentially confidential information (fair enough) and to his using their name for his personal (readership/ad) gain. Again, fair enough. He still got to keep the blog, and he's still an intern there. Oh, and he didn't have the blog when he "applied," anyway.
Le sigh. If the editors don't RTFA, what hope is there for the rest of the readership again?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Go and immediately start googling alias's, full names etc of their own to see what pops up?
*hastily edits some forum posts*
*hastily deletes some blog entries*
Can't we all just get along
I think that this shows the power of the internet. Mass communication is a tremendous source of power. It changes government policy and it is also a threat to corporate power and even the power of a school. Here's to the internet! Here's to blogging!
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
From everything that I've seen - and read in numerous books (see the Unwanted Gaze which details many privacy breaches within the MS employee base), working for a large tech company, especially MS, represents the end of your privacy. Managers there very obviously disclose anything about any employee resulting from both private investigators as well as spyware that is implanted on the home computers of those simply checking their mail using a web browser. I've personally heard lots of medical records of spouses and children as well as tons of other slanderous stuff from these tech companies in their zeal to shape their subordinates and influence purchasing decisions.
FIRED for having a blog
:P
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
Your future bosses and the people interviewing you are also online, and may have interesting bits of information floating around there.
If nothing else, it makes sense to include personal information searches in your "company background research" phase of interview preparation. The more you know, the better prepared you are.
Jim
I fail to see why bloggers are perennially shocked by this. It really has nothing to do with blogging -- if you talk about company business in public, you're in danger of being fired. It's that simple.
The fact that bloggers seem more inclined to blab publicly doesn't really affect anything to do with this. You talk about company business, you risk being fired. It doesn't matter whether or not you do it by leaking it to a reporter, talk about it in a bar, or post it on the Web for all to see.
The moral indignation of bloggers on this issue is really quite laughable. The very same features of a blog that allow you to get your word out to a wide (but willing) audience easily are precisely the same features that mean it'll be easy for your company to find out you're talking out of turn. That you can do it easily and reach a lot of people quickly doesn't really change the fact that you shouldn't be doing it -- blog or no.
You can't have it both ways.
when someone you know writes details about you in a blog. I agree with the sentiments here about how it is very foolish to put personal details on the web. A lot of youngsters do it today to be 'hip n cool'.
But I feel the issue that is even more disturbing is that if you have friends who blog anyway, then details about you (stuff that you may not wish others to know) will end up on their blog someday.
Imagine some guy whom you went to school with starts to create a blog detailing his entire life and he posts childhood class pictures (with you in them), names everyone in the picture, and even gives a small anecdote about each of them (including you). This is something you have very little or no control of. I could come up with more scenarios but you get the picture.
How does one stop that? Not make friends with someone blogs?
I think we all realize there is a common thread in all of these issues regarding blogs, myspace, et al. It is that there are cases where people have cast something out to the internet and wish they could rein it in again. Obviously they can't, but what about obscuring it and making it harder to find? Is there some way to populate google's results with new stuff about yourself so as to bury the embarassing content?
Slashdot: news from nerds.
"For them, shifting from a like-minded audience of peers to an intergenerational, hierarchical workplace can be jarring."
:-)
Let's get rid of this horrible corporatism and finally be a world of peers
So basically the point here is that making the transition from being an irresponsible young idiot to being a responsible adult is a jarring experience. What a revelation!
While I most likely wouldn't call anyone to an interview whose postings show indescretion, I often think of how I'd just like to see their face when I place a copy of their search results in front of them.
Why do you think I post under a 'nym?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
If you are really that rash, I don't want to work for you. The problem with a non free economy is that I might not have a choice.
As large companies are increasingly favored, the assholes win. When society and government tolerate blatantly anti-competitive behavior, your ability to switch jobs or start your own business dissapears. The assholes in any company realize this and abuse their subordinates as they please. The subordinate has the unenviable choice of career change, poverty or sucking it up.
Our trade with non free powers like China has not made them more free, it has made us less free.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Human nature has not been changed by blogging. Everyone has their moments and they are witnessed in public. If you work for a company long enough, people will get to know you and your faults. The difference between then and now is that now people don't have to go on word of mouth, they can see the pictures themselves.
It has nothing to do with job performance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here in America, our legal system has been accepting email and IP addresses as evidence of identity for years now.
The real danger here is not violations of genuine privacy, but rather, the ability of truly bad people to sabatoge enemies without any worry of consequence.
My mom hated computers until the day she died. She didn't trust them. She said that so long as text could be deleted or added, she couldn't trust any computer as any sort of reliable evidence (she was a lawyer, I am not).
The older I get, the more I regret mocking this opinion as naive.
barack to the future?
I'm no intern, nor am I an up-and-coming executive. The sort of life I'm looking for and the "adult" lifestyle I pursue is one that's totally compatible with some random guy who makes bad jokes on message boards, produces cheaply done artwork, remixes pop music without permission, writes "Doctor Who" fanfic, is a member of a pagan coven, MCs cheezy presentations at hacker cons, and posts strange dreams to livejournal. I may not ever make partner in the prestigious XYZ firm, I may not ever break six figures, but I'll be somewhere doing something that is compatible with someone like me.
So, having things on my "permanent record" like the stuff I've done with phonelosers.org or 2600 or whatever else is strangely liberating in its way, because it pretty much forces me into putting my money where my mouth is and seeking out a lifestyle I'd be happy in, rather than one I'll endure for the sake of appearances.
Hi, my name is Rob, and I'm Googleable.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
(The funny thing about "corporate culture" is that it's self-inflicted. Every suits-type feel the need to wear a stupid tie, but all (almost...) agree it's stupid...)
I say, post whatever you want on your blogs, or anywhere. Being turned down from a job (you wouldn't like anyway, if the managements are such assholes) isn't as bad as not doing things you enjoy (or ranting on the web about it) because you want to fit in.
But although it looks depressing, I believe as a new generation of managers emerge this actually gets better. There *is* a choice not to work for assholes. I've been turned down from a few jobs because of tattoos but to me it always was a filter for shallow, control-freak managers and good dudes.
As long as you don't "suck it up" there is a chance of a change.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
It may surprise you to realize that different organizations in the world are actually following different systems of ethics/principles that are fundamentally incompatible with each other:
Guardian Principles: Provide Security (i.e. negative-sum and zero-sum problems, such as protecting land from neighbors)
"Guardian principles are appropriate for governments and police forces, organizations that defend laws and land. In such a group, betrayal can cause disaster; force is frequently necessary; tradition is valuable; and loyalty is more important than money"
Commercial Principles: Optimize Trade (i.e. positive-sum problems, such as bartering my surplus for your surplus)
"Commercial principles are appropriate for business and trade, which seek to increase value to all parties involved. Money is the lifeblood of commerce. Innovation and efficiency are more useful than tradition, and the use of force is severely frowned on."
Information Principles: Promote Abundance (i.e. unlimited-sum problems, "too cheap to meter")
"Think of a programmer working at 2:00 AM to add a feature to an Open Source program he didn't write. The programmer is not paid for this work; he does it because he wants the program to be more usable and more popular; he has been working for six hours without a break." "The Information system has arisen to facilitate the production and copying of freely shared information. This system of action is related to the so-called "hacker ethic" and to the older system of academic endeavor."
If you scroll down about a quarter of the way through that page, you find "Table 1: Comparison of Systems" which makes it abundantly clear that the goals and means of the 3 systems are incompatible. They go on to give examples of organizations that attempted to combine the different systems, or to apply principles of one system to the wrong kind of problems, invariably with bad results (example: the Soviet Union tried to apply Guardian principles to economic and information activities, and we can all see how well that worked out).
Actually, I will shamelessly plug CRN's main research direction here too---Molecular Nanotechnology/Molecular Manufacturing (MNT/MM) is something more Slashdotters should become informed about, so they can help spread the word. It's going to have a profound effect on our planet, and currently it looks like it will arrive within 10 to 20 years and we need to do lots of preparation before then or there are huge risks to our survival.
P.S. Sorry to post anonymous, Please mod this up.
if "blog" isn't a word, then what is it?
In a year or so I'm going to be in a position to hire people. And yeah, I'm going to look at their blogs if I can find them. I might object to people talking about how they plan to fuck up every job they have, or chatting amiably about how much money they stole from their last employer, and so on and so forth.
But assuming they're not an obvious asshole, I'd actually *prefer* employees who have a sense of fun and a life. I'd rather see a blog talking, side-by-side, about work and home life and parties - or even just home life and parties - than one chronicling the minute details of work.
Maybe I'm unique in wanting employees that are interesting smart skilled people, but if you immediately throw out everyone who's interesting, you end up with a company full of boring people. And that's not the company I want to work at. Or run.
So, yeah. Posting those party pics might mean you can't work in middle management at Wal-Mart. And if that's a serious problem for you, then . . . I guess maybe you shouldn't post the party pics. But there are companies out there that don't care so much.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
The more tools you get, the more threatened your bosses are going to get. Employees who can host blogs and write killer software are going to get shafted as their tools invade what was once the exclusive domain of their bosses.
So if you ever have the misfortune of becoming mentally ill or old, you'll find yourself wishing that it was easier to get shitty nurses fired, and that there were more nurses being trained by nursing schools (nursing schools deliberately keep the number of graduates low to maintain high salaries for nurses -- like most professional associations).
And the next story...
Humor? Slashdotters need not apply.
I've been turned down from a few jobs because of tattoos but to me it always was a filter for shallow, control-freak managers and good dudes.
Couldn't get away with that in Seattle and a few other places I can think of, at least if you are hiring for any kind of technical or creative position.
I mean who care if the DBA has tattoos, long blue hair, and facial piercings as long as they know what they are doing.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
-although you can usually safely remove the piercings and the holes will grow back/be less noticable.
-Still, based on the rise of body art in the last 15 years I would say that this will evenetually be better tolerated in all but the stuffiest workplaces eventually.
I think its a generational thing too -business attire is a whole lot more casual/different/varied now than it was in the 50s and 60s
-who knows what bodymods/cybernetics the next generation of freaks will be favoring in 20-30 years??
The illustrated manager of the future will probably be shaking his head at the worker who are using nanotech to make parts of their bodies different colors, or who have symbiotic implants, or ???
Just remember that the ladies of some of the more decadent middle age courts used to wear wigs with live birds in them.....and we still have the names and descriptions in some cases, even if there weren't any pictures. So I guess those people earned their own sort of myspace like moteriety.
-What's the Speed of Dark?
I would claim it a simply paranoia and simply misunderstaning HOW real life happens that I get in politics, how I get work, etc.
:)
Yep, clever people sometimes do stupid or "uneasy for everyone" things, but usually are sorry about that, so almost everyone forgives them, forgets that and life moves on. Beatles haven't lost nothing of their star power when they admitted they used stimulators while rock'n'rolling in Hamburg. And let's be clear - most people don't care HOW much you have been drunk in one party twenty years ago - if you didn't broke a law, didn't hit anyone, didn't drive car while drunk - you have ALMOST nothing to worry about. ALMOST nothing but spin doctors, but hey, they will be there for you anyway
Privacy is overhyped. But worries about blogging from both sides - individuals and companies - also are too...just worries and nothing more. Certainly, there are several individuals who will do stupid things, but they will do that anyway.
About company information and blogging - well, if you are working here, you have agreement and usually, certain level of loyality, I suppose. If you are not and have problems with attitude or even hate your work, then you are in trouble anyway, and sure have to leave, with or without trolling about your employer in blog. If you don't have to work anywhere else - then simply avoid talk bad or anything about work, because it could create confusion and frustrate and won't help anyone, even yourself. Keep it profesional, not personal.
Be reasonable. Learn to be that way. It is not matter of blogging, it is matter of people and their attitude to others.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
If your prospective new employer is Googling for you, it probably helps if your name is John Smith then you can deny everything. OTOH, if your name is Donovan Putz-Marionette then chances are they'll have you bang to rights.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
[sarcastic half-joking mode on]
Saying, writing, opening up to the wide audience your stupidity, wierdness, incompetence, intolerance, ignorance, unability to filter private information from useless public stuff, bad spelling, lack of imagination, lack of social life, bad or lacking love life, low skills in problem solving, bad opinions about certain companies, lacking technical skills, etc. etc. and you'd still expect a decent company to hire you ?
Thing is, on this planet, you can always be certain that there does indeed exist at least one person that is dumber than you. So, all you have to do is find that person and convince him/her to hire you.
If you can't imagine that some things in your life should be kept private (I'm not talking about kinky habits or any disgusting behavior and such, just simple things) then I can't imagine you working with or for me.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Yes, I did.
But I share my name with a very popular b-list film star (who was in attack of the 60ft centre folds), so anything that relates to me is somewhat buried.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tim+abell
Mixed blessing I guess.
So next time I'm in an C# developer interview I'll see if I get asked about my acting career...
Respect copyright - the GPL relies on it.
If you'd done a better title, that would've been a truly classy crappost. The body was well done indeed; it made me laugh.
I can't wait for the geezers to be buried. I'm tired of these assholes who run the show. They are simply no fun.
I was "googled" rather extensively for the last two jobs I've applied for. In both cases, I believe my blog has helped my case, rather than hurt it: I talk about interests that I have outside of work, about observations regarding the field that I'm in, and generally give people a more broad sense of who I am. By the same token, I've spent quite a bit of time in front of a computer searching for the names of interviewers as well; knowing their biases, interests, and frame of reference ahead of time puts you on a solid footing with them from the first introduction.
It's strange to see people who don't understand that they will be evaluated on the information they make available about themselves. When you enter an interview, you will be judged on what you say, how you react, your body language, and a host of other things; why on earth would publically-available information on the internet be any different? Similarly, if you provided internal documents or confidential information to the press, you'd be fired; why exactly would posting it on your blog for the world to see be treated differently?
When I was younger, I never posted online unless it was under a nom de plume, and as a result I behaved like a child; when there are no consequences for what you say, you say stupid and malicious things. As I matured, I stopped hiding behind those anonymous alter-egos, and starting taking responsibility (and a certain degree of pride) in the things I said online. You can find some incredibly dumb things that I posted while in university, and you can hopefully find some more insightful things posted more recently, but I'll accept responsibility for what you find, because that was me at the time I wrote it. Employers may make of that what they will, but they'll know enough about me to make a reasonable hiring decision.
Food for thought: tattoos applied during childhood can cause employment difficulties later in life. Ah, the joys of making permanent, lasting decisions before one has reached the level of maturity to properly balance those choices. Perhaps children should post under anonymous identities until they are better able to appreciate the effect their words can have later in life?
-Ed Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
I too, recently graduated and began working an internship, only I am allowed to blog about it and do. http://www.ravenengineering.net/blog/intern/rmetca lf/ I imagine working for the county gov't is significantly different than working for a mega corp. My friends that intern at Honeywell, can't discuss pretty much anything because its all trade secrets that Honeywell is afraid Garmin will steal.
It's not enough to just not use your real name, you have to make sure noone links to your site using your name either. If anyone else posts your name as a hyperlink to your blog, Google will associate your blog with that name and people will be able to find it quite simply.
To stay anonyomous blogging on the net, you need to avoid telling anyone in Real Space about your blog and then minimize any identifiable data. ie. don't mention region, local area names, employment, the real names of other people you know (because people searching for them can then find your blog), or frankly practically anything worth posting.
It's extremely difficult to keep a blog and talk about anything personal without being found.
(and then there is the added bonus that you won't know that people have found your blog because they are unlikely to tell you they are reading your blog, lest you start censoring yourself or for fear that you'll think they are stalking you.)
Anonimity and blogging are not a good mix.
>I don't know where kids get the idea that the only ones who
... I guess they thought you turn in your eyes when you reach 25.
>would ever look at their MySpace blogs are people in their
>own age group.
Weirdly, they even think this way offline.
For example, apparently (judging by the shocked, offended looks on their faces), only men within a couple years of their own age were supposed to look at those vast expanses of exposed flesh on college age girls
OK -I'll bite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo
(Although its wiki this IS a respected pollster result)
Popular and youth culture
Current estimates suggest one in seven or over 39 million people in North America have at least one tattoo.
A recent Harris Poll finds that 16% of all adults in the United States have at least one tattoo. The highest incidence of tattoos was found among the gay, lesbian and bisexual population (31%) and among Americans ages 25 to 29 years (36%) and 30 to 39 years (28%). Regionally, people living in the West (20%) are more likely to have tattoos.
approximately equal percentages of males (16%) and females (15%) have tattoos.
This survey was conducted online between July 14 and 20, 2003 by Harris Interactive(R) among a nationwide sample of 2,215 adults.
Although the above is from a small sample it suggests that more people have been tatooed in the past 10 years than in the previous 10.
30 to 39 years (28%) -Assuming these people didn't get their tatoos before they were 18 this group would have started geting tattoos ~1985
25 to 29 years (36%) -These people would have started getting tats ~1996
So this is more than just a 60s/70s phenomenon -it acually appears to be ramping up from the mid- 80s
unfortunately the poll did not cover 18-25 year olds or it would be clearer if the upward trend is continuing.
Think about your kids digging up dirt on you one day.
the young punk rockers tattooed in all their glory at a show. Looks good in the mix, but
I feel bad for them if anyone of them wakes up in 10 years and decides to be a square.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
just lifted weights. sorry. hopefully someday G-d will spellcheck the Internet and there will be many hymns of thanksgiving.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
His name is President George W. Bush.
I don't think him having a MySpace profile would have changed any of that.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Yeah, that page is now gone from google and wayback--the two main offenders.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent