More Warnings Against Oversharing on MySpace

Skapare writes "Your next prospective employer might be watching your MySpace page, according to a story at the New York Times. And if you think Facebook is more private, maybe not if that prospective employer has an intern from the same school checking up on you." From the article: "Students may not know when they have been passed up for an interview or a job offer because of something a recruiter saw on the Internet. But more than a dozen college career counselors said recruiters had been telling them since last fall about incidents in which students' online writing or photographs had raised serious questions about their judgment, eliminating them as job candidates."

Comments

Woohoo!

[hpcanswers]

This is great news; my Facebook site is a combination resume, cover letter, and reference letters. Hey recruiters, this way!

Re:Woohoo!

[smackdoo]

I would prefer my potential employers didn't discern my tastes for Linux and booze.

Re:Woohoo!

[BrokenHalo]

I would prefer my potential employers didn't discern my tastes for Linux and booze.

Agreed (though no employer of mine has any problem with Linux); here we have a simple example of what not to say about yourself that you don't want repeated in the wrong circles.

But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.

After all, there's no pressing reason why anyone has to use their real name almost anywhere on the internet. But I still get some strange looks when I proudly boast that my name produces zero hits on Google.

Re:Woohoo!

[miskatonic alumnus]

But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.

Yes, it's so much better to hire a candidate who conducts his dirty business in secret -- embezzling, clandestine affairs with the secretaries, etc.

Re:Woohoo!

[flosofl]

But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.

Yes, it's so much better to hire a candidate who conducts his dirty business in secret -- embezzling, clandestine affairs with the secretaries, etc.

Because we all know that there are only two types of people. The boozy, foul-mouthed exhibitionists and the closet embezzler. Heaven forbid the majority are just plain folk who go about their business without flashing the world or living in some shadowy moral morass.

I hope that's not how you view the world. That's plain sad.

Re:Woohoo!

[nitroamos]

Speaking of "recruiters"... I always wonder how the soldiers who caused such huge scandals at Abu Graib ever got in Iraq ever got into the army in the first place. Or for example the brother of the girl who took Evan's Sidekick and then proceeded to write threatening emails abusing his position. Or what about the US military in Okinawa who keep pissing off the local people by raping them?

Now obviously rape and other bad things accompany war, and so perhaps it's unreasonable to be surprised that these things could happen. But if I were a military recruiter, I certainly would try to minimize the amount of embarrassment my country could get.

I would imagine that businesses face the same issue -- maybe it doesn't matter how the employers feel on a certain topic. It probably only matters if an employee embarrasses the company.

Re:Woohoo!

[jinxidoru]

Actually, truth be told, your online presence can in fact be a boon in hiring. I have had numerous interviews where a search on the internet of my online presence has resulted in the recruiter being more interested. I have a number of tutorials and well-written articles on my website which do well to represent myself as a good hire.

Re:Woohoo!

[tehcyder]

But I guess anyone who is stupid enough to drop themselves in the poo in public shouldn't be a prime candidate for employment.

Yes, it's so much better to hire a candidate who conducts his dirty business in secret -- embezzling, clandestine affairs with the secretaries, etc.

Given the choice between an guileless idiot and a scheming crook who would you go for?

I'd say...

[Neko-kun]

It's a good way to weed out the herd...

:D

It's as much the employer's loss here

[plasmacutter]

There are many highly qualified and intelligent people here (it's a top 20 university) with very vapid social lives.

these employers using google and myspace to research their prospective employees may as well be basing their decisions on the bible or the magic 8 ball.

There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Umbral Blot]

You know intelligence isn't everything when hiring. People with vapid social lives may be generally annoying to their co-workers, and thus actually be a hindrance to a group effort.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Baby Duck]

I whole-heartedly agree. Musings on MySpace don't have a strong correlation with how an employee composes himself. I don't want to work for an employer who believes otherwise.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[ejdmoo]

There are many highly qualified and intelligent people here (it's a top 20 university) with very vapid social lives.

They aren't very intelligent if they post about it publicly online.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[cp.tar]

I couldn't agree more.

From where I stand, companies seem to want to control every single aspect of their employers' lives - so if you do not conform to the company standards in all aspects of your life, you are not really wanted here, thank you.
I mean, how else can one explain the fact that your personal life can influence your getting a/the job?
Maybe you'll have to fight for improvements in anti-discrimination laws...

I, for one, hide nothing.
It's not that I have nothing to hide; in normal life I hide quite a lot of things.
However, in every job interview so far I've presented myself as even worse than I really am; some jobs I never got (and was later glad for it), while the others I did get - and got along quite well.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[GreatBunzinni]

There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

Yet, the damaging information about those people, information that they personally posted, is out there for anyone to access. This time the bosses happen to access them but what about the prospective clients and business partners? Independently of that person's competence and professional attitude, what damage can a public profile like that bring to a company?

As I see it this has a lot in common with politics. What does it matter if a political candidate smoked pot or even if he's into S&M? Isn't his competence the only thing that matters? Yet, when the public learns about those details the would-be politician is automatically done for, even if the voters or political opponents do as bad or even worse than him. It's all about public image and if someone is involved in socially questionable things and if that information passes to that person's professional environment and life, then obviously it will have an impact.

Oh and let's not forget that the person in question bragged about doing drugs, which not only is considered ilegal in a lot of countries but it can also, at least to some extent, be a liability.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[WCD_Thor]

I have to agree with plasmacutter, but just as well I am glad that I don't do too much crazy stuff with my myspace acount(only have it to get messeges) and my facebook acount (the only thing questionable on it is the groups I've joined, mostly anti republican groups). Anyway, I hate myspace, its so god damned slow because way to many idiots are using it and putting up moving backgrounds along with music videos and crazzy pictures on the front page. Most of the time I can't do anything because the servers go to damned slow. The site should go back to being about the artists, give them the ability to have multimedia acounts while everyone else gets limitations on the shit they can put up.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[plasmacutter]

Yet, the damaging information about those people, information that they personally posted, is out there for anyone to access. This time the bosses happen to access them but what about the prospective clients and business partners?

I refer you further up in this story to the post from the guy who happens to have a shared name, age, and major with someone else.

In truth, when you google someone's name or search for it on myspace there is no guarantee it's the same person.. you may as well be shaking your magic 8 ball: "is this employee responsible and cordial?"? "ask again later"

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Dhalka226]

Or perhaps they feel the value of having a place, public or not, where they can vent themselves is worth the price of a couple missed jobs due to employers who demand that people they consider for jobs be identically stiff at work and away from work.

Honestly, I would not want to work for any employer who thought that they should have any control whatsoever over my personal life when it is not affecting my work, nor one who considered me incapable of conducting myself professionally based on completely unrelated situations.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like any other kind of new test. Until you get used to the *average* kind of result, using the test will just skew your analysis. The point being kids these days aren't more irresponsible than kids of 20 years ago; they're just talking about it more online. Condemning them for it is dumb as all hell.

In fact the judgement of kids these days is in many ways better - you don't get many middle-class kids getting knocked up at college any more.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Rakishi]

Amazingly enough there is something known as anonymity on the internet. In other words you make sure it's not easy to find your blog using whatever info you provide to your employer.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[clifyt]

"There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end."

I don't know -- half the contracting work I get is solely because of my vapid personality that I love displaying on the internet :)

I do and say quite a bit of obnoxious opinionated bullshit, though at the same time, this is exactly what is needed in my field -- someone that actually believes in his particular line of BS and willing to stand behind it. In different lives, I deal with the music industry where it is imparative that you not obviously compromise your values whatever they may be, as well as being a senior developer / manager in the software side of things where you need to be able to stick with a belief through a project in order to deliver a cohesive project (and not something that is the product of every idiot that thinks they have a stake in its creation and thus should get equal billing / equal chance of getting their unneeded feature ruining the workflow of the rest).

It may be different for young people...I had taken a class on CSS last year and it was amazing all the folks willing to suck it up for their potential employeers. Maybe I'm old enough I know what I'm willing to put up with and what I'm not -- as well as established enough in two disciplines that I've been known to quit one (being told I'll never work in that industry again by the very folks that come to me begging for a reference a year later) to do the other when life becomes too unbearable -- and doing it seemlessly. I guess its good to be old for once.

All in all, I would never work for an employeer that asked me to act differently at work than I do 'at play'. No, I'm not going to show up plastered and blatently hit on the interns (ok, this is slashdot, so I'm posting theoretically) -- but past that, my personality is the same either place for the good or bad. I gotta say, without my obnoxious personality, I would have never worked on the projects that I have in my academic or creative fields. Hell, I guess one of my first internships in computers was working for the US gov't and I was several years older than the others going for the same position and when the interview started going south based on my lack of experience (i.e., because I was off living a life while the 20 year olds applying for the job had their noses in their books but even though we were going for the same job, my age played a factor) I pointed out to my future boss that I wanted the job so badly that I almost missed it risking my car being impounded (and having to have it searched by 3 police officers) as I had a rather large anarchy symbol painted on it and a Eff The System type logo painted on the side (this was pre-911, pre-Oklahoma which was lucky as I was interviewing with the IRS) -- he laughed in the straight laced sort of way that I ended up loving him for, and said if he I could point out the car in the parking lot from the window, I had the job -- and when he saw how obnoxious it was he just laughed and shook my hand welcoming me to the job pending background checks and internal lie detector testing (and believe me, my 'love of the system' came up with the polygrapher telling me that I was one of the more honest people he had ever interviewed -- ended up getting security clearance that a college intern shouldn't have possibly been given, IMHO).

So the point is, if its you and you are comfortable with it, post it online. If you aren't and you are ashamed of your personality to the point you think that you need to make accomodations in public for it -- then there is something you need to change in yourself and as a current employeer, I wouldn't hire you either if your private personality didn't live up to your professional one.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[jrockway]

> Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

True, but passing up people that post pictures of themselves violating several local laws whilst naked is not necessarily a bad idea. Have you seen some people's facebook pages? "Hi there, I'm completely wasted and people are drawing on me with a permanent marker. Hire me?"

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

or.. their personalities could brighten up a dull, unproductive workplace. imagine a setting where no one knows how to socialize with others at work, whether for casual conversation or for collaboration. a lively personality may help the situation. of course, both of our ideas are possibilities and not concrete facts. so it's a toss-up either way, which i believe is what the GP was getting at.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[rm999]

How would people with vapid social lives brighten up a dull workplace? In my experience people who don't have social lives aren't exactly that exciting...

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[kfg]

"Hi there, I'm completely wasted and people are drawing on me with a permanent marker. Hire me?"

What's she look like? I might have an opening.

KFG

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they might have Social Anxiety, which usually dims one's social life, but might not change anything workwise

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

No dude -- *she* has a couple of openings I'm interested in.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Umbral Blot]

Imagine a workplace where I am actually trying to accomplish something and then add some chatty fool who keeps trying to tell me about his personal life, preventing me from getting said work done. That is the situation I have in mind.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Confused]

Musings on MySpace don't have a strong correlation with how an employee composes himself.

Don't they really? if you spend 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours at the job per day, your employer will get your wonderful personality for 50% of your conscious time. That's probably more than your kids see you. There's a really good guess, that most of your self will come true and influence your behaviour at work sooner or later. As a crass example, if I'm running a call-center for the republican party, it wouldn't be such a good idea to hire people who profess on myspace a strong involvement with the communist party and the first church of Satan. I'd be better served by hiring people with details on myspace about their sunday school and latest abortion clinic bombings.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[kesuki]

Online persona can affect one's carrer possibilities, true enough, but with all the statues on the books, chances are everyone has broken more than a few 'local laws' automatically rejecting people based on having a negative past is stupid, isn't it better to already know what's wrong with someone than to hire someone who you have no idea of what sorta laws they might break?

There is such a thing as being too perfect, Frankly I'd rather try to defend my flaws than try to claim I'm perfect, because really nobody is perfect :)

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Gnostic Ronin]

I think it depends on the job honestly.

For things like sales, you want an employee that's somewhat like the people you're selling to. You don't want a frat-party-going, heavy-drinking, womanizer doing corprate sales. If that personality comes out (and eventually it will), the company could lose sales, and possibly get a bad rep in the industry, or even bad press if your womanizing/drinking makes the local paper. That will ultimately hurt the company -- most of the time corprate culture is pretty conservative (somewhat in the political sense, but mostly in the social sense), and they want college grads who can fit in.

It also matters in highly professional positions. What would you think of a lawyer or doctor who spends his free time drinking? What if the lawyer about to defend you admits to spending most of his free time playing HALO online? Can you honestly tell me that you'd feel great about your chances if the guy came in to the first day of trial bragging to you about how he fragged an 8-year-old last night? For most people, they'd look elsewhere for a doctor or lawyer.

Maybe for a few positions excentric behavior is valued -- advertising, movies, tv, music, video games, possibly some high tech research -- but for most jobs you'll get, excentricity is a liability both to you professionaly AND to the employer. They need someone who fits into corprate culture and can act proffesional.

Reading myspace or facebooks and blogs may be going a bit far. I think you should have someplace to vent, without fear of it hurting you proffessionaly. Maybe just a journal (offline), or a blog that's in no way connected to your real name.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[xstonedogx]

Amazingly enough there is something known as anonymity on the internet. In other words you make sure it's not easy to find your blog using whatever info you provide to your employer.

I've always view these types of things as great filters, removing the people from my life that I would not want to associate with anyway. Don't like me because I'm funny/had purple hair when I was younger/listen to Dream Theater/love Sushi/am left handed/have OMG, political views/get drunk once in a while/whatever? Oh well, have a nice life.

Who really cares what they find out about me? I don't apologize for having freedom and using it; and I accept the consequences of the same. I don't want to associate with people (including employers) who would first hunt down that information and second use it to discriminate against me in some way. With friends/employers like that, who needs enemies?

(And ya, I realize the irony in posting this as a more or less anonymous identity, but this is /. afterall.) :)

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Muramasa]

Yes, I'd also much rather work with a bunch of hostile zombie-nerds.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

A person doesn't need to have a vapid social life to be a chatty fool. I work with with a guy who babbles incessantly about his (in my opinion) agonizingly dull social life. It is extremely annoying when I'm trying to concentrate on getting some work done. Interesting social life or not, I don't care what this guy has to say. It just makes it that much worse that he's such a boring person.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[carpeweb]

I'm not sure I buy your last premise: Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

It just seems too general. As an employer, I want to know as much as possible about prospective employees. Some eccentricities, quirks and even political views would lead me to question a prospective employee's value to my organization.

Having said that, I still agree that lots of eccenricities, quirks or political views are irrelevant to job performance, etc. But I'd want to exercise my own judgment about that.

As for how far I'd go to learn about my prospective employees, well, I'd go a different direction than checking out their personal web presence. For example, I might devise interview questions that actually had something to do with evaluating future performance (something almost no employer does, sadly).

Checking out a prospective employee's myspace postings or their web site is just the digital age's equivalent of "so, what do you like to do in your free time?" A nice "warm and fuzzy", but typically a worthless interview question, unless the interviewee says "well, I like to kill kittens and drag them behind me at neo-Nazi parades".

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

"these employers using google and myspace to research their prospective employees may as well be basing their decisions on the bible or the magic 8 ball."

Fuck that - I just ask them how many digits their Slashdot UID has - if it's over 900000, I politely bring the interview to an end, and move on to the next candidate.

It's been my experience that anyone with a UID over 900000 is pretty much a waste of genetic material... but anything over 6 digits is suspect.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Bing Tsher E]

For things like sales, you want an employee that's somewhat like the people you're selling to. You don't want a frat-party-going, heavy-drinking, womanizer doing corprate sales.

Funny concidence. In my experience you just described the 'sales types' to a T. Where *would* we stick those cretin types if not in the sales department where they can interface with their fellow cretins in other companies?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Bing Tsher E]

True, but how unreasonable is it to reject somebody because they not only broke 'statutes on the books' but were retarded enough and/or 'fuck the system' enough to then post documented evidence of it on a public web space?

Everybody farts from time to time. Do you want to sit in a meeting full of people who are proud of their farts?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Jasin Natael]

And this point brings up something really scary. What happens when you use your rights to privacy, and choose not to post anything about your private life on the Internet? Do employers start interviewing MySpace users first (because they are at least a known quantity), or even dropping your resume completely?

IMO, this is just a question of references. If you are able to provide suitable character and work references on your resume, then your employers shouldn't be considering additional references that you did not provide. Maybe it will be decided that listing MySpace as a reference is acceptable, but there is no guarantee as to accuracy. Prospective employers don't have the right (as far as I know) to call random co-workers from your past, your drinking buddies, or your old high school friends to dig for dirt. I can't imagine that they would examine the transcript of an argument you got in at a bar, which is what a lot of online flames degenerate to. If employees want their online lives evaluated, it should be optional, with no reasonable expectation of consequence if they refuse.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[flibuste]

The fact is, employers don't want to work with people who publicly admit using drugs and dirty sex as their recreational time.

It may appear sad but it's the terrible truth

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[KiloByte]

And I don't want to have coworkers (or employees if I'll ever run a company) who would touch MySpace even with a 10-foot pole.

Come on, when I tried to take a look at MySpace, my eyes almost fell out. It was truly a traumatic experience. Please, don't even try to claim that an intelligent -- or even just sentient -- being would come anywhere near that site.

There may be intelligent people with a lack of good taste, but every page of ~10 I dared to look at on MySpace was beyond all reasonable limites.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude you need to stop being soo uptight lol.
Pot is like awesomme lol.
Your a faggot.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[rjhubs]

Yet, when the public learns about those details the would-be politician is automatically done for

Automatically done for!? As far as pot smoking goes, that has not affected the outcome of the last 4 presidential elections. Clinton smoked but did not "inhale" and George W. was just "really young and irresponsible". And these are just some of the minor "socially questionable things" these presidents have done, yet they still got elected.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[CTho9305]

Sure, everyone breaks laws, but do you really want to hire someone stupid enough to advertise that (and provide photographic evidence) on the web?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hazah]

See, there you go just running off with your mouth. How can one be both a chatty FOOL and INTELLIGENT? You are contradicting yourself completely. Look, if the person is indeed smart, he or she will KNOW when to shut up. However, when they do talk about something personal, it would be foolish of you not to listen. Cheers.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Descalzo]

Prospective employers don't have the right (as far as I know) to...

What do you mean "do not have the right?" It is you who doesn't have the right to hide what's in plain sight. If you have posted information for the whole world to see, how can you reasonably expect the whole world to look at it? And why is it that the prospective employee should be able to completely control where the prospective employer gets his information?

There are some concerns about whether or not the future boss is looking at your info or someone else's, but I am trying to figure out how valid they are. Is the danger of having some other guy's face drinking vodka with a minor mistaken for your face that dangerous?

I suppose that if you are trying to be hired by Apple and your name happens to be the same as someone who runs a pro-MS blog or something like that, this could be a problem, or maybe if you share a name with the founder of NAMBLA. But the clever job hunter will forsee such problems and provide his prospective employer with a link to his real webpage.

There are real problems here, I know, but we live in this high-tech world and there's no use pretending we don't.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Shajenko42]

You'll also notice that people will fake having a hobby if it will help their image, like wannabe executives who try to learn to play golf just to get in good with the boss, and politicians who go on a staged hunt to prove to the voters that they are rugged outdoorsy types.

Sometimes just not liking golf can kill your career just as much as enjoying various unsavory hobbies.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[fermion]

Which is why net posting is probably only an issue if you are a marginal candidate in search of specific job.

The problem with getting a job is that the interviewer is often instructed to find a particular person that will "fit into" the company. Sometimes this is done by a personality test, sometimes by interviews, sometimes on the basis of superficial qualities. The challange, expecially to the large firm, is that the government often limits on what can disqualify a candidate. In these cases, finding evidence of illegal or lewd behavior can avoid a lawsuit.

We are all very aware that sometimes the joint smoking, draft dodging perv is put on trial and sometimes the draft dodging, coke snorting, drunk driving perv is put up as a role model. It has nothing to do with behavior. It has to do with what people want to believe.

For the most part companies get many resumes, and after pruning for skill sets they will prune for other characteristics to try to limit the interviews. Might they do a quick search and try to find a disqualifying attribute if the do not like the way the peson looks. Probably. Might we say that this is thier loss of productivitiy. Maybe, buy the US has survived for 200 years on a such a basis, and no one is admitting we have a problem.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[clifyt]

"For most people, they'd look elsewhere for a doctor or lawyer."

Thats pretty funny.

In this field, one of my better friends is a well respected lawyer in the intellectual properties arena -- and he is the biggest commie hippy you could come across, but he makes certain his clients get their due because they afford him the lifestyle he wants (and then turns around and donates a good chunk every year to the EFF and other causes directly against him). His clients know this and its always a joke. His latest venture was to buy land in Honduras so that he could eventually start a law school to help the leftists get into power through the backdoor (without the guns).

Another good friend is a well regarded child psychologist. Because of this, he has to blunt some of his reputation because he can't seem overly familiar to his clients and hus doesn't go on line at all. But he is asigned a *LOT* of court cases and the folks in the courts that make these referals so that he can work with the troubled youth. He is generally the first person I know that raves about games like GTA and we've gone to many concerts such as NIN and Marilyn Manson over the years that his clients actually go to him for (because their child is posessed!!! You gotta deprogram that devil music outta him) -- everyone that he works with from the courts knows that he is a huge gamer and likes the darker side of music (I've actually heard a few of them state that if he turned out so well, maybe this stuff isn't so bad).

And I can go on with examples like this for a few hours because if there is any common tie between me and my friends it is the fact that we are all pretty opinionated (generally not in agreeance) and we have all been somewhat successful in our areas of expertise. Might help that we all refer each other to others as well and thus we have like minded people coming to us. Who knows.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my current job as a result of posting my resume on the Internet. Someone did a keyword search on Google, found my resume, e-mailed me, put me in touch with a company, and I got hired. Narcissism can, in fact, pay off.

Of course, the rest of my web site is pretty inoffensive. There are a few pictures of a party but I don't list my interests as including "smoking blunts" on the home page.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[TubeSteak]

It isn't even that.

Publicly admitting it, from an employers POV, is a disaster. Loose lips sinks ships and all that. But even if they found out through some not-so-public method, they'd still have reservations about you.

As far as they are concerned, anything shiatty you do in life reflects on them. Imagine one day your name gets in the newspaper because of your alcohol/drug/hooker/gambling/other problem. The company name is going to get brought into it. The PR people hate that, even if it's only the local papers.

All this of course, ignores the way in which personal stuff creeps into the workplace and turns into gossip. Managers don't want to deal with that.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[pafrusurewa]

As I see it this has a lot in common with politics. What does it matter if a political candidate smoked pot or even if he's into S&M? Isn't his competence the only thing that matters? Yet, when the public learns about those details the would-be politician is automatically done for, even if the voters or political opponents do as bad or even worse than him.

This is mostly an American phenomenon. Politicians campaigning with their families on their side and presidential candidates showing movies about their family life, that just doesn't happen here. I mean, why would I care?

There are many politicians here who are openly or not so openly gay (but nobody cares when they admit to it). And digging up dirt about a politician's past pretty much only happens when he is a hypocrite, e.g. a former pot smoker saying something negative about other former pot smokers.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

love Sushi

Ewww. I don't think I can be your friend anymore.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Moofdot]

They aren't very intelligent if they post about it publicly online. Certainly you know that different people are intelligent in different ways.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

I'm curious, what did they search for?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Firehed]

But there's a difference between a conflict of interests and questionable social behavior. Your example refers to the former, whereas most potential employers are checking for both (and if they don't find the former, they will base decisions on the latter).

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[deesine]

>"Look, if the person is indeed smart, he or she will KNOW when to shut up."

Intelligence != good social graces

Intelligence != interesting

Intelligence != wisdom

Smart people say & do stupid things all the time.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

*exhaling large toke*

Dude, what are you talking about?!

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

Social lives are, by their very nature, vapid, insignificant, and irrelevant. People live within small worlds. Why on earth would you judge them for it?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[MKalus]

As a crass example, if I'm running a call-center for the republican party, it wouldn't be such a good idea to hire people who profess on myspace a strong involvement with the communist party and the first church of Satan. I'd be better served by hiring people with details on myspace about their sunday school and latest abortion clinic bombings.

Oh come on now, this could actually be fun to watch.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[quantax]

I don't know, you are pretty stupid if you post to a public place online that can be easily searched, 'I LIKE TO SMOKE BLUNTS AND GET FUCKED UP' since a) pot is illegal and b) the entire sentence shows a total lack of discretion (atleast, in the USA). One of the things about drug 'culture' is that I tend to find two schools of thought, one is the above person who shouts about their habit and probably has stupid pot posters or something, and the second is the type who enjoys all the habits of the first person except they just do it, they dont brag about it or hang up pictures of themselves getting screwed up. This is called not airing your own dirty laundry whether you think other people should be accepting of it or not.

Personally, I try not to let people take pictures of me doing illegal things and I definitely do not post said images in a public location, nor do I brag about my vices. Between family members and employers, there is really no need to advertise that this goes on since the people I'd want to know about it already do since I am doing it with them. I understand people saying employers shouldnt have any say over your personal life, but posting pictures of yourself & admitting to doing illegal stuff, looking drunk to a public place does not fall under this category. If it was really personal, they wouldn't be able to see it in the first place since you'd have posted it to friends-only or somesuch non-public forum.

Seriously, there is no moral high-ground to stand on here as this is basic common sense; you can keep all your bad habits but just demonstrate an ounce of discretion. If you can't, don't complain about the results since you knew the risks to start with, if you didn't then you're naive as hell.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

According to my logs, the exact query on Google was:

computer-science inurl:resume java OR c++ "carnegie mellon " -phd -ph.d

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

Then why do you insist on posting here, a veritable black hole of social lives?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Detritus]

What's "dirty sex"? I'd hate to think that I was missing out on something fun.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder you're on slashdot! ;)

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[kesuki]

Well, you might not want to 'officially' hire anyone that retarded, unless it was something that would benefit your corporate image.

OTOH, If you came across a really smart person, who you really thought wow, (s)he's the best. And they'd made mistakes, even boneheaded ones, you might still want to hire them.

not everyone needs to have a 6 figure digit salary to find happiness, so let's say hypothetically you knew of a guy who was really smart but had a questionable past. If that person only needed stuff that was easy to arrange, and they were working for free, or on an 'unspoken' agreement, that as long as they were doing good stuff for you good things that were easy enough to arrange would happen for them... kinda sounds like the mafia :) but still...

well let's look at this from a different angle. Let's say you were a 'concerned' party, interested in making people happier and more productive. and you knew there were people flaws, that were making it hard for them to find 'employment'. especially employment that they 'loved' doing every day. and you understood that happy people, are productive people, happy people work hard and give it all.

productive people boost the wealth of everyone, so if you were interested in becoming wealthy establishing a 'system' where everyone could consistantly be made happier, and more productive... with less negativity, and more positive energy... and there were no negative side effects, wouldn't you try to deploy such a system?

Corporate america struggles with that every single day, they try to create a working system that keeps people at their maximum productivity. while allowing them to be happy :) I worked for 3 years at taco bell under a manager who could really read how I was feeling. She wasn't the best store maanger, but she could really tell what to say to certain people. There were days where she had me moving over half the stores sales with just the aid of her assistant manager. and it wasn't some itty bitty fast food, either. we're talking the fast food right by the mall.

We're talking anywhere up to 300 orders* of food going out the window, in an hour.
normally they would have to have like 3-4 people running a drive thru side doing that much vollume. And i never would have become that productive ever, without the manager who knew when to put me on drive and when not to. and when to have someone else help me, etc. and it took me at least 3 months of training to even be close to being ready to handle that volume, and i would have never lasted 3 months if my manager wasn't able to try and help me. eventually though i got completely negative about myself. Instead of taking the progress I had made, and finding a place to build upon that progress i locked myself in a feedback loop. the point is though, that as you can see with the right people, i'm capable of doing amazing things not even i thought i'd be able to do, until i did them.

And so, anyone who thinks they can do something with someone with a negative past, would be a fool to pass up the opportunity. They'd need to have the tools, and the understanding of the person's problems to really fully help them. but only a fool would say 'damn you posted nude pics on the internet so fu i'm not gonna hire you'

If they were boasting about how they'd done that, that's different. but you can still communicate your concerns to the person, and if they listen give them tests, and decide if they're going to work out or not. Preferably the testing and such would take place before the hiring, and be part of a hiring process... but heh.

*= a guess, when days were that busy i didn't stop to count, but we went through a lot or reciept rolls on driee side

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hazem]

these employers using google and myspace to research their prospective employees may as well be basing their decisions on the bible or the magic 8 ball.

And to take it a step further, how can they even know that the myspace account that is "yours" is really by you?

Suppose you made enemies at a previous job or in school and they decide to set up a myspace account that portrays you as a drug using pedophile. They're good with photoshop, so it looks like you in the pictures with the 12-year olds, etc.

While I'm sure that would probably be considered libel, but I'm sure the employer is not going to tell you that they didn't hire you because of what they saw on myspace. You didn't get the job - the damage is done.

This just seems like an unreliable way to screen candidates and I think any HR department would be foolish to rely on such an unreliable source of information.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Iron Condor]

"Is sex dirty?" "Only if you do it right." -- Woody Allen

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

DO ***NOT*** MAKE ME EAT YOUR BRAINS.

Because I will. And you know what? The protien will metabolize at 70% efficiency. Thus, I can eat 30% more if I only eat brains. I bet you didn't know that, did you? DID YOU? Well, Maybe your brains aren't worth eating then.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[SeaFox]

There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

I don't think these companies are looking to avoid employees that distract others from getting work done at the office, but avoid any connection between the company and individuals with infamous political view or personal lives. A good employee who happens to moonlight as a stripper or have an S&M interest who be looked upon as a liability to the public perception in the bible-wielding consumer groups.

Given the state of "coporate ethics" I find it funny these companies are so worried about the employees sullying the company's public image.

Also, executives hardly ever look at what their actions mean "in the end" just what benifits they'll gain in the immediate.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

It has been said a million times, and it will be said a quadrillion more: Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing. An intelligent person has tha ability to understand many things, but the wise person actually does.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[DerekLyons]

Or perhaps they feel the value of having a place, public or not, where they can vent themselves is worth the price of a couple missed jobs due to employers who demand that people they consider for jobs be identically stiff at work and away from work.

it's much more likely that they don't think about the issue at all. Like excessive drug or alchohol use - it's what they do, and the concept of longer term repercussions is absent from their reality.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Suidae]

if you spend 8 hours sleeping and 8 hours at the job per day, your employer will get your wonderful personality for 50% of your conscious time.

Your employer gets your personality 100% of the time you are at work? What are you, a clown? Maybe a mime?

Get back to work or I'll put an invisible wall over your cubical door.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[OzoneLad]

"As far as they are concerned, anything shiatty you do in life reflects on them. Imagine one day your name gets in the newspaper because of your alcohol/drug/hooker/gambling/other problem. The company name is going to get brought into it. The PR people hate that, even if it's only the local papers."

What if their definition of "shiatty" includes being gay, having been divorced or just being a member of the wrong religion/denomination?

-HT

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[cgenman]

A successful person once told me that successful people generally call a spade a spade. You don't bullshit, you don't dance, you don't pretend to be something you're not. You assert that you are who you are, and that you have the power to pull off being who you are. And anyone who doesn't like who you are can go screw.

Now they didn't adequately prove the causal connection, but the fact remains that successful people generally don't hide. They keep their lives, in that way, simple, so that they can accomplish more. They exhude confidence and composure. And part of that is not pretending to be something they're not. They unappologetically say they haven't the slightest clue about computers, or banking, or whatever isn't their field. They just get stuff done, as themselves, without worrying about what people will think.

That seems like a pretty nice way to live. And if you lose a client here and there because they don't want a liberal activist building their computer system or running their carpet cleaning business, so what? They didn't deserve your work anyway.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[TubeSteak]

What if their definition of "shiatty" includes being gay, having been divorced or just being a member of the wrong religion/denomination?

Then you sue them for discrimination/violating your civil rights?

If you can prove that's why they didn't give you the job, you'll win. Of course, it's that whole 'proving it' part that is difficult.

Certain forms of discrimination are illegal under State/Federal laws.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Surt]

Personally, I set up a couple of fake myspace accounts for 'former employers' where they have a reference to what great work i've done, or how I solved a problem that really saved the companies ass ('sometimes I wonder if this company could have survived the last 2 years without the help of surt's real name here'. I bury it in with a ton of other material about the daughter's birthday or this or that so it won't look too blatant or fake hopefully. I believe it would be enough to fool most people's first search efforts, and should even pass an uncareful examination.

Anyone who goes googling for me on the internet is going to find that apparently there are a number of people who think really highly of me as a coworker.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[frank_adrian314159]

What's "dirty sex"?

Given that you read Slashdot, I doubt you have to worry about non-dirty sex, let alone the other kind.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Brandybuck]

But what if I don't want people with vapid social lives working for me?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[aj50]

Arrgh, I spen half a year sitting next to a guy who got progressively more like that. Eventually I moved.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hazah]

Ok, well, in this case, the subject matter is entierly different. I really haven't met people that are intelligent but not wise. I guess I just don't call them intelligent.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Pentrant]

Of course, it could turn out the other way - if I were looking at your profile, my reaction would be "Ooh, a fellow Dream Theater fan!", which could lead to a job... or at the very least, a bit of closer scrutiny and evaluation.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Jace of Fuse!]

The fact is, employers don't want to work with people who publicly admit using drugs and dirty sex as their recreational time.

HR: What about that one gal you said you gathered lots of information about? From Myspace, was it?
DRONE: Ah yes, this one. *flips through the folder* She says she likes to "get drunk and have sex in an office setting."
HR: She's hired.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Scudsucker]

Sure, everyone breaks laws, but do you really want to hire someone stupid enough to advertise that (and provide photographic evidence) on the web?

I don't know, are you stupid enough to think those are the only people that would apply to? Somebody could Google your name and find a pic of you with marker on your face that was taken and posted without your permission on someone else's Myspace page. Or they might find pictures on your site that you took of your high, smashed friends at a party where you were the designated driver. Even though you were clean and sober, you get passed up via guilt by association.

There's a good rule here for people on both sides of this issue: just because you can doesn't mean you should. Just because you can post pictures of you and your friends streaking through campus doesn't mean that you should. And just because employers can use Google to dig through employee's personal lives, doesn't mean that they should.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hawfizzle]

if we were all concsious of the same long-term consequences, and equally aware of avoiding them, wouldn't we all turn out the same? monoculture is SCARY

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[xski]

Imagine a workplace where I am actually trying to accomplish something and then add some chatty fool who keeps trying to tell me about his personal life, preventing me from getting said work done. That is the situation I have in mind.

This you can get from any old jackass who things their life is better than yours. Church people, for instance, can go on and on about the poor underpriviledged folks they're group helps out on weekends and so forth. Frankly, the folks with the wilder lives tend to keep it more to themselves to avoid listening to the recriminations from the churchpeople.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[clifyt]

"A successful person once told me that successful people generally call a spade a spade."

And that is my point about a lot of this. I find the folks that don't know what they are doing do a lot of what you say. Lots of shucking and jiving and a lot of times I have the guys trying to sell me something doing just this while I sit there in disgust. Usually formulate a question or two that could be answered in a simple sentence if they in fact know what they are doing and see how they answer. If I don't get what I need, I thank them for their time, explain the correct answer and let them know that if they have anyone on their staff that understands the problem and won't waste my time, please have them contact me, but I won't be dealing with you again.

Life is far too short to waste anyones time. I don't want to sit in my office any longer than I need to. I'd rather get to my lab, get to a studio, work one on one with students, or otherwise that doesn't have anything to do with the minutia that bullshit artists that don't know what they are doing seem to be good at.

All in all, I hope my clients and my employer support my causes. If they don't, they don't. And if someone doesn't want to hire me because of certain beliefs I can understand. I'd love to see the new Mission Impossible movie -- but Tom Cruise has left just being a minor propogandaist for his religion and demonifying an entire area of study that I observe. I know he is going to be just as good of an actor without my dollars and I know his production studio is going to make just as much money regardless, but I refuse to see the movie regardless of how inconsequential my boycott is. If someone feels the same about me, I can respect that -- I'd actually be more pissed if someone hired me and asked me to tone down my beliefs -- and I've had it happen and neither side left happy with the results.

Anyhoo...

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Psyonic]

Right... since G.W.B. DIDN'T have a DUI, DIDN'T admit to living an "irresponsible lifestyle" til he was 40, and DIDN'T essentially admit to using marijuana and possibly cocaine. That's why he got "hired" for the most important job position in the country. Thanks for reminding me how logical and consistent our country is.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Scudsucker]

If you can prove that's why they didn't give you the job, you'll win. Of course, it's that whole 'proving it' part that is difficult.

Exactly. And even if you do get the job, if management doesn't like you, you'll find there are a lot of ways to get fired. And that's assuming you don't live in a Right to be Fired state, where they wont need any reason at all.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[xquark]

I don't think its got much to do with eccentricity, but more to do with the things they are seen dong in those photos,
such as being pissed off their heads, mixing with groups that may be seen as undesirable but said recuiter or employer
etc.

Places such as myspace etc can convey a very candid view of the person's personality and personal interests, things
they say wouldn't list on their resume or might like to be confronted with in a professional environment.

Also as mentioned by others, such personalities tend to be the cause of problems and personality clashes within the work
environment (regardless of the field/profession).

In my opinion an employer has the right to use any kind of investigative techniques they see fit to convince themselves
one way or another if they should be hiring a particular applicant.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[xski]

Its a filter. Use it.

If someone doesn't interview or hire me based on something they found on the Internet -- that bastion of solid, credible information -- without bringing it to my attention then I believe the chances are very high that this is not a place I'd be happy working.

I believe we should encourage this sort of activity as a way of preventing them from wasting my time in the first place.

-x

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[ottothecow]

Same here, top school, lots of smart people, lots of facebook and while I havnt met anyone who admits to doing this, there certainly have to be people who check facebook for companies (hell, offer me enough money and I will do it...or even better, I'll sell you the use of one of my extra emails to make an account and check on people yourself...$1000 shoudl buy enough textbooks to make it worth my while while it is nothing compared to waht you will pay these people if you hire them)

While there are definately people who do things that employers might not like but can then switch and become great workers (they made it to this school somehow), the ones who do a lot of stupid (and illegal) things and put them clearly visible on facebook kind of deserve what tehy get. It just shows your prospective employer that you lack the common sense to keep some things private. They arent going to care when they see pictures of you drinking and having fun wtih people (they probobly expect it, its college after all and its a good sign that you get along with people) but they might not like the pictures of you using famous statues to smoke pot or lighting property on fire in public parks...

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Iron Condor]

OTOH, If you came across a really smart person, who you really thought wow, (s)he's the best. And they'd made mistakes, even boneheaded ones, you might still want to hire them.

But at that point you're talking a pretty special case that has little to do with the average hiring situation. Of course Taco Bell isn't going to scrutinize your background terribly much.

In the real world, I have three jobs to fill and two hundred resumes on my table. The first hundred are weeded out by cursory inspection of the cover letter. Another fifty or so with a somewhat closer reading of the precise background, ambitions, qualifications. That leaves me ffity or so perfectly qualified folks - and I'm not going to interview that many people. With three open positions, I'm gonna interview, say, ten or twelve. I start calling people to get a better grasp on them and throw out another bunch. And then? How do I eliminate another factor of two or three of otherwise all perfectly fine-looking folks?

At that point I might well be tempted to poke around the 'net a little. I wouldn't start at myspace or facebook, but if that's where I end up -- hey, it's all voluntarily shared information. So this guy says he was on the track team. Star athlete or mascot dummy? Does his school's paper have a mention of his name. Ah, yes, here it is with a picture: "joe bloe blowing off steam after an excruciating defeat in the such-n-such competition. Oh, well, no problem. Oh and they give a link to his myspace page. Humm ... seems to be blowing off a whole lot of steam, me thinks. Whoa: '...smokin the phat ones daily since I was 15...' maybe not this one after all..."

If I make these decisions on limited information people are calling me biased. But if I try to gather as much information as I can, people tell me that what they're saying about themselves should not enter into the decision.

How should I make this decision? Isn't it desirable when hiring decisions aren't narrowly focussed on GPA and publication record? I can do that but then people tell me that there's more to an employee than the narrow academics. That I should look for a more three-dimensional picture. But if the third dimensions of some people looks good, of some people neutral and of some people looks ugly...

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the EEOc And Us Federal Law it is against the law to discriminate based on any criteria that might be listed on a personal online profile. Period. Go vist the eeoc website, and take a look at what protections and rights an an employee you have. There is no hiding whats in plain sight, its your right to keep business, business, and personal, personal.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[tftp]

This just seems like an unreliable way to screen candidates and I think any HR department would be foolish to rely on such an unreliable source of information.

HR department would be delighted to have such a valuable tool to disqualify candidates. If that helps reduce the stack of applications from 500 to 50 then it's great. If that reduces the stack to zero, they have more work coming (more publications, more people to check) and that means job security. What's there for HR to complain about?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Gertlex]

But at the same time people (non "professional" blog people) often want their MyfriendBooksterFacespaceXanga to be found by their friends.

But Anonymity has its needs... so we're just looking for a balance.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Jedi Alec]

It has been said a million times, and it will be said a quadrillion more: Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing. An intelligent person has tha ability to understand many things, but the wise person actually does.

d) I'm a sorcerer you insensitive clod!

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[jedidiah]

Translate that page in to Swahili and most people would take it for an article on the last presidential election given the US State map at the bottom...

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[nappingcracker]

People with vapid social lives may be generally annoying to their co-workers, and thus actually be a hindrance to a group effort.

...says the square!
party! wooooooo!

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[jbash]

If it's your money on the line and you're about to hire someone, you don't want to take risks. If you've got a business with $500k in annual revenues and you're going to hire someone for $50k a year, that means you're risking 10% of your gross annual revenues on that one person. Assuming you're rational and aren't just flushing money down the toilet, you're gonna want to minimize your risks and hire the most law-abiding, boring workaholic possible.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[AJWM]

How can one be both a chatty FOOL and INTELLIGENT?

Never been to a Mensa meeting, have you?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hazah]

Unfortunately it seems that everyone has missed the point that I was trying to make, so I will reply to myself rather than anyone specific.

Why call someone intelligent if they continually do stupid things? Mind you, I'm not talking about mistakes. Intelligent people make mistakes all the time, and recognize them as such. The people that do stupid things regularly aren't learning anything, so where does intelligence play its role?

Are you all absolutely positive that we are all talking about the same type of people? It doesn't seem like that to me at all. Seems more likely that either my interpertation, or yours, of what constitutes an intelligent person is severely warped.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[whyde]

It may be illegal to use this "additional information" about prospective employees, since the types of information you would find out from social network sites (and personal web pages) have a high probability of crossing the line into areas that are illegal to inquire about during an interview:

    * Race
    * Religion
    * Marital/family/sexual status
    * Age
    * Sexual preference

If HR departments, or hiring managers, deny an applicant based on looking at his/her info on some random internet page, and that can be proven to be the cause of denial, then their decision could be subject to litigation over protected status.

Whether a candidate is "some chatty fool" should be determined during the interview process, if that matters to you. It should not be divined from googling them after they've left your office.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

You can vent where you want even online.
 
Just keep your sordid social life under another moniker, and keep your insert real name here profile clean. What's the issue?

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[triso]

or.. their personalities could brighten up a dull, unproductive workplace. imagine a setting where no one knows how to socialize with others at work, whether for casual conversation or for collaboration. a lively personality may help the situation. of course, both of our ideas are possibilities and not concrete facts. so it's a toss-up either way, which i believe is what the GP was getting at.

or...she might be hot with a nice rack.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hesiod]

> The people that do stupid things regularly aren't learning anything, so where does intelligence play its role?

Stupid actions don't always necessarily arise from stupidity. Perhaps past influences, upbringing, and previous misinformation cause otherwise intelligent people to do stupid things. And as for repetition, "old habits are hard to break."

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hazah]

That is exactly what I'm refraining from calling intellingent.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

Why is it that the word "Professionalism" means so little these days?

Part of that little word is being able to say "This is my life, this is my work.", and thus, if you exersize a tiny bit of professionalism, it doesn't matter what your church is, or what your political affiliation is, you'll do your best every day at work.

If you're hiring based on a persons personal life and disregarding professionalism, You're going to get useless people no matter how much sunday school they attend.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[hesiod]

The actions may be... short-sighted, but that doesn't necessarily reflect an individual's stupidity or intelligence.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here

[Sj0]

I'm being dead serious. The people we surround ourselves with are important to US, but they aren't important to anyone else. Jimmy is going to jail soon for beating Jane, who has a son on the way but it belongs to Trevor and I hate that prick and Rosa and I are going to tahiti this weekend where I'll propose.

Or somesuch. Nobody cares. The fact that these are huge events in the lives of the induvidual people involved doesn't change the fact that they're the insignificant minutae of the lives of people almost nobody knows. You don't need to read a persons blog to realize that, unless you haven't been watching.

More news from the obvious forefront

[obscurelyfamous]

While it's not much a surprise that employers would do some unconventional background checking, the article seems to make it seem increasingly prevalent. Unless you are completely in an online pseudonym, don't portray yourself in a manner online that you wouldn't want seen in real life. As far as a Google search is concerned, I can't find much with just a straight name search. My only online profile would be a Facebook listing where nothing is risque.

Re:More news from the obvious forefront

[Khaed]

This is one case where having a boring name would help. If you have some oddball you-kneek* name spelling, it makes Googling for you that much easier. If your name is John or Bob or Christina, with a common or at least not unusual last name, finding you on the internet can be a bitch. Unless you have pictures up or give out a ton of details.

I do not post anything under my real name that I would be ashamed of my mother reading. I pretty much just write reviews for gadgets on newegg under my real name. I don't post my picture, either. The world isn't interested in what I did last night, and I'm not interested in anyone pathetic enough to care what I did last night -- unless I already know them, that's just freaking creepy. I'm not Tucker Max, my life isn't interesting enough to blab about.

I guess being more familiar with technology, I know how easy stuff can be found -- and how hard it is to get rid of it once it's out there.

Just ask Libby Hoeler.

* Intentional destruction of the word unique.

Re:More news from the obvious forefront

[TERdON]

Doesn't help - you'll have to come from a pretty big city as well. Just combining my name (both my first and last name are very common Swedish names) with the town I live in, will instantly grant you a great deal of access to information about me, just by doing a Google search. Actually, there even is one hit when searching for just my name, but it's one that I intended to be found - and unless you already knew quite a bit about me it would just be lost in the hay stack.

Re:More news from the obvious forefront

[Sepodati]

This is one case where having a boring name would help.

Or a name that'll get them in trouble if they click on any of the results... ;)

---John Holmes...

Re:More news from the obvious forefront

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Unless you are completely in an online pseudonym"

Sometimes not even that works. A recent example was when an intern at my office friended me on MySpace. I do not use my real name, nor list my job and I was not a friend of a friend of hers in any way.

My only guess is that she searched locally and found me. I mean, I'm not complaining cuz she's cute, but its a little weird to just get friended like that by someone you work with out of the blue.

And now with sites like Stalkerati, its become kind of a game to stalk people online. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess we'll see how the climate evolves and whether or not people actually care about people seeing that deep into their lives.

I mean, everybody has pretty much accepted how much corporations peer into their lives, whats wrong with everybody else finding out about you.

People want to have an online presence and some moreso than others.

nothing to fear

[Anonymous Coward]

I have nothing to fear

-- Charlie Manson

Modern Net Exhibitionism and Slutism ...

[orangeguru]

On the Internet - everybody knows that you are a perv' ...

Re:Modern Net Exhibitionism and Slutism ...

[Mathness]

*chokes on the morning tea and drops a monocle*

Dear lord, engage the stealth mode James. By golly I hope it works.

Come on

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a job which would pass you over because of your personal life really one worth having anyway? I mean really?
Some people need spines.

Re:Come on

[MT628496]

Enjoy the rest of your life. You're going to have a lot of free time.

Re:Come on

[half_dead_working_st]

Ok my two cents is this, And I know this is an old gripe. Isn't it illegal for companies to go by what your personal life is? Minus the usual criminal background checks I know it's supposed to be illegal due to the EOE act. Yeah I know sometimes I agree that act is @$#@#%$ but hey its a law. I'm curious as if to anyone actually asking companies why wasnt I offered the job? I mean I understand Federal and state jobs. But has this next Generation after the gen Xers gotten that soft and non-curious? Ok my two cents have been added

Re:Come on

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Is a job which would pass you over because of your personal life really one worth having anyway? I mean really?"

Not everybody can go job shopping as if it were a pair of shoes. So, no, you're not going to get a unanimous answer on this.

Should you post that pic or not...

[badran]

This should make those people think before they post their info online.... or not.. coz if they wanted to hide it they would not have been doing so in the first place..

Re:Should you post that pic or not...

[themusicgod1]

Irrelevant. That picture, if it's interesting, will find its way online, whether you want it to or not.

Overhype, Inc?

[Zx-man]

I've been in the Biz for some time, being on both sides, that is. Actually, an employer has a reasonable right to check how do you behave in a informal online situation as it might also be reflect what you do in an informal situation offline. Now way am I advocating it, but it seems to me that data mining is a significant part of future's corporate intelligence. And if you think you can spy on your partners or competition, your moral will allow you to spy on your employees.

Re:Overhype, Inc?

[kfg]

. . . it seems to me that data mining is a significant part of future's corporate intelligence. And if you think you can spy on your partners or competition, your moral will allow you. . .

I just spied on Microsoft.

I typed "http://www.microsoft.com" into my browser.

I expect to sleep well tonight, but YMMV.

KFG

Re:Overhype, Inc?

[tomjen]

I for one would certainly behave differently online than offline.

But maybe I should add some funny pictures of myself online - if for nothing else then because an employer stupid enough to trust something like that is not one I would work for

Re:Overhype, Inc?

[Oligonicella]

Webster's:
5. to observe secretively or furtively with hostile intent (often fol. by on or upon).

There is nothing hostile about checking a prospective employee for idiocy off the site. That idiocy is what allowed those VA records to be stolen. Don't want to look like a fool? Don't act like one. If you post info on a public forum, expect all sections of the public to have access.

This is hard to wrap the mind around, how?

The rule is simple...

[kripkenstein]

...don't post anything online that you don't want to be known about you. Unless you are using an alias and post no identifying details at all.

Of course employers are looking for information online, why wouldn't they? It's easy, fast, and most importantly: the person you are scanning has no idea about it.

Not only MySpace...

[Bjarke Roune]

Unfortunate postings to Slashdot are also pretty, well, unfortunate, because Slashdot has a high Google-rank, so your Slashdot postings will place highly in Google on a search for your name. I don't think you can get a Slashdot comment removed.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Umbral Blot]

That is why people don't make their username their real life name, or allow their real email to be shown publicly next to it. (duh)

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just join Scientology and then demand the comment be removed. Of course then you have the much bigger problem of being a Scientologist, but perhaps you can figure a way out of that one.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[zlogic]

Well, I've just searched for my nickname on Google, and the fist two and the fourth links were some unrelated companies, the third was my profile on OSNews (where I have something like 10 postings or even less) and the fifth was my personal website. No sign of Slashdot anywhere on the first page of Google's results, although I am a member since 2005 and I have over 200 postings.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, that's why I never get called into any job interviews.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[phatslug]

When I first visited slashdot years ago my normal username for forums was taken. Unfortunatley I used my real name. I posted a few comments before realizing they'd turn up in google. I don't think there's anything that would hurt my prospects with an employer, but I must say it is very frustrating having them appear.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[maxume]

I shall be careful not to let potential employers associate 'maxume' with my real identity. Internet psuedonyms work great, at least until you post a photo.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Bjarke Roune]

I don't have a Slashdot hit on the first page in a Google search for my name either, but there is one on the second page, and there are several more on the following pages. The way I remember it, the last time I did a search for my name, there were several Slashdot hits on the first page. Maybe my memory is wrong or maybe Google changed their algorithm.

In any case the point stands: If you don't want to have what you are posting to Slashdot (or similar places) to be attached to your name in 10 years time, do not use your real name. It is worth considering that many of one's opinions can change in 10 years.

I myself have some 5 year old postings to Slashdot and other places on the net in my name that I would like to have removed. I absolutely believed in what I was writing at the time, but I since have changed my mind radically on some things. I do not like having these things available anymore as they do not reflect me as I am now.

I can definately recommend using pseudonyms. Yes, I realize that I am not doing that myself right now.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[MT628496]

I'm a college freshman, I work as a network tech at our school. There are a grand total of three people maintaining our network. I'm mostly responsible for field work such as installing new or replacing dead switches, access points, data drops and the like. I'm also the resident scripter. In the interview, when my boss found out I read slashdot, it actually helped my chances. Part of our morning ritual is to talk about the previous day's slashdot stories and this even went so far that when they interviewed a second person to work over the summer, they asked him if he had heard of slashdot.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Golthar]

More scary than that, I have somebody living in this country with the exact same first and last name and a birthdate close to mine.
He has also sent in some questionable jokes to a dutch radio station :-/

This is in my opinion the danger of depending on information you find online using google on somebody's name.
You never know if it's about the same person.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Bender0x7D1]

You might consider throwing in a middle initial if you have one. While it might not help in all cases, it can make a difference if they include the initial in the search. Just make sure all of your "official" pages have the initial.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[darkmeridian]

Unfortunate postings to Slashdot are also pretty, well, unfortunate, because Slashdot has a high Google-rank, so your Slashdot postings will place highly in Google on a search for your name. I don't think you can get a Slashdot comment removed.

No kidding. I hope your real name isn't really Bjarke Roune. Otherwise, be very, very careful with what you say on slashdot.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[ModernGeek]

I've been modded way down in the past, and then had my comment removed after there was a big uproar on the subject. It was strange, I came back to see what people had said, and it was just a blank comment with a bunch of replies. I remember my fan and foe list had members added to it because the issue was seen as very controversial at the time (abit more public to us today). Slashdot will remove comments, but only had the higher-ups will.

Re:Not only MySpace...

[Aceticon]

Unfortunate postings to Slashdot are also pretty, well, unfortunate, because Slashdot has a high Google-rank, so your Slashdot postings will place highly in Google on a search for your name. I don't think you can get a Slashdot comment removed.

Which is why most of us use nicknames which are totally unrelated to our real names and don't post our real names anywhere on slashdot.

I would rather save sharing my political opinions until after i get the job and only to those i think will care.

In the same way i would rather save my opinion on the average competence (or should i say incompetence) of management in IT until after i've been working for a month or two and management thinks that when it comes to software development i'm more productive than a truck full of gurus, wiser than Buda and more experienced than Don Juan - at that point they actually listen to my advice.

It's really a good thing

[Umbral Blot]

In my opinion this could be as much of a good thing as it is a bad thing. Sure if you write all sorts of useless MySpace one line "lol ponies are cute!!!!" comments then yes, you may be less likely to be hired. But then again making such comments indicates that you are a fairly shallow, and possibly annoying person, and thus may not be a good person to hire. On the other hand if you are generally insightful and have useful things to say then it would seem that you would be more likely to be hired, and I can't think of that as a bad thing. So in general if you act like an idiot you are less likely to be hired, if you act like an adult you are more likely to be hired. If we feel that this is an acceptable consequence of real life behavior why shouldn't it be an acceptable consequence of online behavior?

Re:It's really a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

well, looks like 99% of myspace is out.

Then again, the way American business is getting, they want you to be an idiot, to a certain degree anyway. That way you dont threaten your employers' ego or intelligence. If anything, you having intelligence on myspace would be grounds for not being hired.

Then again, if you seriously use myspace, your intelligence is questionable anyway.

Re:It's really a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

"If we feel that this is an acceptable consequence of real life behavior why shouldn't it be an acceptable consequence of online behavior?"

Because the internet isn't real life. Why should your private life be up for judgement by someone who gives you a pay check? Granted, if you put that stuff on the internet, it's your own fault, but this could get to the point where, if you don't have a myspace profile (like me), they'll look at you just as suspiciously as if you had one where you posted all kinds of "unsavory" crap.

They might say things like, "We tried to look you up on myspace, but didn't find anything...why is that, aren't you social?" It'll be like when someone lives in a rich neighborhood, and they have to "fit in", or living in a small town, where your life is always being judged by someone else.

2 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article: Facebook and MySpace are only two years old but have attracted millions of avid young participants, who mingle online by sharing biographical and other information, often intended to show how funny, cool or outrageous they are. I think Myspace has been around a little longer than that.

Google for potential candidates

[Shano]

Every so often, I get an email from someone I've never heard of, asking how I've been and why I never respond to email at some other account. Turns out there's someone else with my name, of a similar age (well, plus or minus 5 years, I guess), in the same country, and studying informatics of some form (AI rather than CS). Also, he appears to be impossible to find contact details for. I'm not making this up, and unless spammers have suddenly become much more intelligent and literate (and created a specialist website to back up their story), these are quite genuine requests.

What's to guarantee that the person a company finds on Myspace or Livejournal - I don't know much about Facebook - is the same person they're actually considering employing? I'd be quite upset to find I'm suddenly employed and expected to be an expert in genetic algorithms, when my total experience with them is a couple of lectures several years ago. Names aren't unique, and sometimes there are enough similarities that I'm contacted by people who believe they know me personally.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

I found out a couple of years ago that there is a gay porn star who has the same name as me. (Or rather, his "stage" name is the same as my real name.)

If an employer actually CLICKS on the link in the Google search, they will be able to see (in full, explicit color) that the gay porn guy isn't me (he doesn't look anything like me).

But I worry sometimes: how many won't bother clicking in the link to see?

Re:Google for potential candidates

[Grey Ninja]

No offense man... but if I was trying to figure out what sort of person you were by looking online, and I found your name associated with gay porn... I probably wouldn't want to click on the picture either.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[Anonymous Coward]

This has happened to me, but from the employer's perspective. A quick google search for on google resulted in first hit to be a homosexual adult movie star. Yes, it was funny for a few minutes at the office; however, we proceeded with the interview process like we would with anybody else.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[nobleheath]

When I was setting up my Skype account about 9 months ago, skype went through my Outlook contacts and sent off messages to Skype users with the same name as my contacts. I got a message back from this guy asking who I was and where did I get his contact details. Turns out he has the same name, works in the same industry and used to live in the same suburb as a friend of mine. I applogised profusely for thoughtlessly clicking "OK" during the installation, but to get back to topic, just because you can find something about someone on the net doesnt mean that they're the some one you're looking for dirt on.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[PeterBrett]

What's to guarantee that the person a company finds on Myspace or Livejournal - I don't know much about Facebook - is the same person they're actually considering employing?

I don't mind, if people Google for me they come to the conclusion that I own this company.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[David Off]

> What's to guarantee that the person a company finds on Myspace or Livejournal - I don't know much about Facebook - is the same person they're actually considering employing?

As someone who has actually had a responsible job and been in the hiring process I will let you into a secret. Either you use a bit of intelligence to cross-check that the person posting the views is the person being interviewed (same email, same pseudo, same home address etc) or when you interview the person you ask them:

Do you have a website?
Do you have interested in manufacture of biological weapons?
What is your homepage URL?
etc...

With MySpace it is usually obvious that the girl with her knickers round her ankles dogging in the local car-park is the girl in the pinstripe across the desk... and in this case was the clincher that got her the job. :-)

In the UK (and possibly elsewhere) a bigger bar to getting a job can be incorrect information in the Police Criminal Records Database (errors in up to 10% of records they say) as personel departments trust this kind of information more than a search on Google.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[Bing Tsher E]

What are 'Outlook contacts'? Is Outlook in pkgsrc? I've been pretty happy with Sypheed for a few years now.

Re:Google for potential candidates

[RESPAWN]

Actually, when I google my name, it comes up with another gentleman from my home state who has published some sort of book of poetry.

It also turns out that there is a gay porn star with my name.

The first thing I found that was actually attributable to me was a petition I signed back in 2001 to port Half-life to Linux. I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad.

(Although I guess it's better than Googling my AIM screen name which, among other things, comes up with a post on Arstechnica where I ask a pointed and informed question about some sort of acid -- I'm sure to be on a terrorism watch list now. :-P)

My employer

[ValiantSoul]

I'm an intern at a software development firm and when looking for another intern, my employer asked me to look the person up on Facebook - so this is a very real issue.

But I did not know the person, nor did anyone I knew, so it had no effect on the hiring of them.

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[ForestGrump]

Nope,just throws me to the consumerist.com homepage. Try again.

Well

[Sv-Manowar]

No real suprise here, it's been coming for a long time. With so many people thinking they will never be seen on the net and that only a small amount of people can reach their personal pages, smart employers will google around for them and find out a lot more about the person than they need to know and you can't blame them, that way they will find the best candidate for the job no matter what CV they are presented with or how many qualifications you have.

It may be a harsh way to do things, and some may argue that work should stay work and personal life should be private, but if you compromise yourself publically on the web - expect to reap what you sow.

Re:Well

[Jerim]

I agree. I am a manager and just recently searched for an employee that we just hired. What I found was quite disturbing. The employee in sexually suggestive poses, and entries about a night out on the town along with blatant postings about going after other people's jobs. (Talk about a hostile work environment.) I haven't seen anything devestating yet. However, if I had seen the page before hand, I probably would not have hired this person.

I want an employee who is going to use proper judgement. It is not a good decision to post stuff like that under your real name, with pictures. If you can't understand why that isn't a good idea, then you may not understand why it is not a good idea to come to work drunk, or why it is not a good idea to have sex in the bathroom with a coworker.

That is the relevance that your personal life will have on your work. If you have poor judgement in your personal life, you are more likely to have poor judgement in your professional life. Even lawyers and doctors are subject to the same standard. A doctor who gets arrested for drunk driving is usually suspended if not fired. Same rule applies to everyone, so there isn't any elitism.

That is why people don't

[hyfe]

.. or link to their own blogs?

Re:That is why people don't

[Umbral Blot]

Ah but if you search for my name my slashdot comments won't come up. Plus I try not to say anything too stupid. However if I really wanted to troll obviously I would make a new account. Plus who says that's my blog? Maybe I just like it.

Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[SmallFurryCreature]

Doctors spend a lot of time in school and if you ever lived in a uni town then you will know that they are not exactly known as responsible mature adults. Best that you don't know what that young intern in charge of saving your life was upto just last year. Hell better not know what he was up to last night. (Although to be honest what he did 24 hours ago was probably being on the same shift he is still on)

What seems kinda silly is however to go to far with this. The odd thing is that those kids who do extreme things are the ones who do best in real life. I should know, I didn't as a kid and I am very mediocre in my adult life.

Who do you want in your company? Joe Average or somebody going places? For certain jobs yes somebody with a solid boring past is perhaps best. Chartered accountants would be nice to know they never ever broke any law of any kind ever. Read up on Arthur Andersen to see what happens when you go from the boring accountants to the exciting ones.

What is a problem is that people who do stuff like posting pictures of themselves smoking pot online then seem to want the kind of job that calls for people who think a cup of tea is a rollercoaster ride. There are just certain kind of proffesions where your entire life will come under close scrutiny. It doesn't matter so much as what you did but how easily it can be found out. Have an affair as president just don't let it get into the papers.

The problem is that we fear overlap. Is the guy who smoked pot in college still doing it? That doesn't really even matter, cocaine has a certain respectability. What matters, is he still stupid enough to post evidence of criminal behaviour for the entire world to see?

Women especially are truly stupid in this regard. Take your top off in front of a camera and those pictures WILL find their way onto the internet. Surely everyone knows this by now? Yes women still take their kit off and act all suprised when they end up on the net. How much are you willing to bet that if these women ever want to have a position with any importance later in life these pictures will come back to haunt them?

I bring this up because I recently had a rather weird discussion with a co-worker about this whose pictures off an art thing she did in university came up. She was full frontal in some play they did. It was art. When I asked her why none of her fellow male students were in any kind of naked state she was unable to find a reason. I noticed this before. A lot of times women in art go naked while the males telling them it is for art keep their clothes on. Odd that.

But she is now known on the workfloor not for her brains or years of good work but her perky tits. This doesn't matter if like me you got no ambition but if you want to move up who do you think they are going to choose. The guy who jerked off to naked girls or the girl that got naked?

Life ain't fair, that boss who drives his suv while drunk will not hire the kid who smoked a joint and the boss who fucks his secretary half his age will not give a promotion to a woman who got her kit off. If you got ambition, think about what you do. And while it ain't entirely fair, I am not certain I want the world to be run by people who can't think ahead. Is somebody who can't think ahead about his own future really fit to think ahead about say a companies future or even the entire country?

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[Tim C]

The odd thing is that those kids who do extreme things are the ones who do best in real life. I should know, I didn't as a kid and I am very mediocre in my adult life.

Well, you clearly didn't spend your time studying statistics...

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[A beautiful mind]

"But she is now known on the workfloor not for her brains or years of good work but her perky tits. This doesn't matter if like me you got no ambition but if you want to move up who do you think they are going to choose. The guy who jerked off to naked girls or the girl that got naked?"

I seriously don't get this culture. As if seeing someone naked would be such a big thing. Sometimes I wonder how these people reproduce at all.

"Is somebody who can't think ahead about his own future really fit to think ahead about say a companies future or even the entire country?"

To be honest if someone wants to run a country they better be thinking about things of more importance than their ambitions or "how good will this look like 20 years from now on". Social bigotry is not as important than other things like making the ethical choice as a president (one of the reasons why Bush sucks, btw).

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[elpapacito]

This must be the biggest concentration of nonsensical rambling I have heard in some time

Read up on Arthur Andersen to see what happens when you go from the boring accountants to the exciting ones.

The emotive characteristic of a person have little to share with their intellectual honesty: there could be a boring obnoxious accountant stealing billions and an extremely extroverted accountant that becomes near-to-infinity accurate in classification and proper representation of economics and financial facts.

How much are you willing to bet that if these women ever want to have a position with any importance later in life these pictures will come back to haunt them?

To haunt ? What the fuck is wrong with a picture of sexual behavior ? There is people that remain fully clothed and absurdly incompetent and people who enjoy having pictures of themselves taken and you can bet your jewels they know exactly what to do and how. Why should a person, even an incompetent one, be haunted by pictures of his/her body ?

Curiously enough some people , on the contrary, think it is OK to vote professional, well dressed, moralistic thieves who often are caught in shady dealings ; some think it's ok to vote them because they really never got caught stealing..and if they were stealing, that doesn't imply they are now.

Life ain't fair, that boss who drives his suv while drunk will not hire the kid who smoked a joint and the boss who fucks his secretary half his age will not give a promotion to a woman who got her kit off.

The boss can drive his SUV drunk, so as long as he doesn't crash on anybody. He can certainly fuck the secretary half his age no problem, but the fact he may not hire the joint smoking kid and secretary is NOT caused by is being preoccupied by "evidence" they may have left of "immoral" behavior (if he was preoccupied he would not be doing "immoral" things himself to begin with) but it is caused also by his desire to appear as a "moral policeman" who chastized a convient victim to show he/she is a guardian of 'good' and 'irreprensible'

Such people will suggest that the thing you should most preoccupied with is "not getting caught" doing something your boss disapproves of personally or chastizes by company policy ; but in doing soing the person that is "hiding" is accepting to do the hard job of covering up leaving not traces . On top of this, the person is accepting to be moralized-by-proxy, comformed into having a lifestyle dictated by a loser mentality, the losing mentality of "keeping things secret" ..it simply doesn't work, secret don't remain secret for long and if you are caught keeping some "forbidden behavior" secret you end up like Clinton, accused of covering up something he shouldn't be moralized into covering up to being with. It's the moral of cover up that is faulty.

Such kind of boss is far too preoccupied by morals he doesn't respect to begin with and he/she is a liability to any company, because he is the most likely to have _hidden_ tons of "evidence" that may come back to haunt the company.

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[Anonymous Coward]

the boss who fucks his secretary half his age will not give a promotion to a woman who got her kit off.

In some ways, you and I live in very different worlds.

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[lavaface]

But she is now known on the workfloor not for her brains or years of good work but her perky tits.

link to pics,plz ; )

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[Anonymous Coward]

But she is now known on the workfloor not for her brains or years of good work but her perky tits.

Do you really think this happens only with people with naked pictures on the internet? This happens everyday, at every office. There is a woman at my office (in another department) who is known for doing great work, having an explosive temper, and also for having an absolutely smokin body. As far as I know there are no nudie pics of her floating around, but I can tell you that what comes to every guy's mind first when they talk about her is not her good work, but her amazing body. Why shouldn't it? That is a very basic human reaction. People don't become asexual when they put on a suit or go to the office. Sure, it's wrong to make hiring/promotion decisions based on looks, but it's been happening since long before the internet came along and allowed us to show the world what jackasses we can be. And don't think for a second that the women at the office aren't checking out the men too.

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[ScentCone]

Who do you want in your company? Joe Average or somebody going places?

Except, a lot of the people "going places" (to the extent that their more spectacular youthful indescretions are an indication of their future ways of being) are going... to jail. Or rehab.

Acute exhuberance and risky behavior does not necessarily lead to or imply life-long resourcefulness, or creativity, or diligence, or leadership. Sometimes it's just a form of self-medication by adrenaline for slightly (or very) broken people. The narcisism-fest that is MySpace is as likely to showcase future Enron execs as it is top notch wireframe animators looking to work for Pixar.

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[turgid]

I was a very good boy. I was thinking abead to careers at the age of 12. I did everything by the book. Now I have a mediocre job and I'm miserable.

Go ahead and enjoy yourself while you're young. There's plenty of time to get serious when you're older.

And do you really want to work for people who think it's a big deal that you were once an exuberant youth or young adult?

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[hawfizzle]

what? where am i? self expression is narcissism? you're not allowed to love yourself? GET ME OUT OF HEREEEE

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[Eskarel]

Well first off I'd like everyone who never did anything ridiculous in Uni to raise their hands. I can think of at least a dozen myself, and that's only the ones I can specifically remember. I'm sure I'm not alone even on slashdot, home of many guys with even less of a social life than I had in those days. Now, seven years later, I almost never get drunk or even consume more than a glass of wine, I'm not the same person I was then and most people aren't.

Then there's the "thinking ahead to your future" line. Personally as I get older I've discovered that more and more of what I thought was important for my future really isn't. A lot of the things I thought would assure my future didn't, and a lot of the things I thought would destroy it wouldn't have. No one knows what their future will be.

Re:Good thing this doesn't happen to doctors

[tehcyder]

The odd thing is that those kids who do extreme things are the ones who do best in real life

I think that depends on your definition of the word "extreme".

If you mean "have a few beers, experiment with soft drugs under the age of 21 and get a few B grades", maybe they do.

But if you mean "shoot up heroin at 11, have unprotected sex from 12, drop out of school at 13 and go to prison at 14 for rape and murder" , probably they don't.

Duh!

[apathy maybe]

This is a DUPE! The fact that people have been able to search for your name online has been around for years. I swear I saw an article a year or more ago with virtually the exact same wording.

I never use my real name as a handle except where I want people to know who I am. Generally in these cases the online has a basis in real life (a forum discussing a conference or something). But for sites like Slashdot, I can post anything I like and people are not going to be able to associate my comments with me in real life.

The lesson we learn from this, on the Internet people can find out stuff about you. Therefore if you have stuff you do not want people to find out about, do not put it on the Internet!

Re:Duh!

[jalefkowit]

But they made it an ALL NEW STORY by taking out the word "blog" (which was all over the 2005 edition of this story) and replacing it with "MySpace" (tres 2006)!

For that matter, I remember seeing the same story in the early 90s, but the magic buzzword was "Usenet". The venue changes but the inane paranoia remains...

Re:Duh!

[djmurdoch]

I never use my real name as a handle except where I want people to know who I am. Generally in these cases the online has a basis in real life (a forum discussing a conference or something). But for sites like Slashdot, I can post anything I like and people are not going to be able to associate my comments with me in real life.

That's fairly naive, you know. Right now it's relatively difficult to work out your real name from your Slashdot or other handle, but it will only get easier over time. Certainly anyone who really cared could do it right now. I'd guess in 5 years Google will do it automatically.

Re:Duh!

[Bing Tsher E]

I'll have to assume that your name is D J Murdoch. And yes, in some cases it apparently *ahem* is fairly easy to work out your real name from your slashdot handle.

Nobody who 'really cared' could do it right now from mine. Or from the 12-15 previous 'handles' I've had here since 1998.

You'd better toe the line, though, Mister 'Real Name On Slashdot.'

Re:Duh!

[djmurdoch]

Nobody who 'really cared' could do it right now from mine. Or from the 12-15 previous 'handles' I've had here since 1998.

You may be right that it's impossible right now, but I would guess it won't stay that way. Here are a couple of ways to do it:

1. Download all of the Slashdot archives. (Google has probably done this already.) Look for writing styles that match yours. That will probably be enough to make a pretty good guess at your 12-15 handles, and may be enough to recognize your writing style on some external web site where your name is shown. If not, it will at least give hundreds of messages in which you have released bits and pieces about your history, and those might be enough to uniquely identify you.

2. Break in to the Slashdot logs to find the IP addresses you've been posting from, and to find the email address you used to register. Correlate those with records of postings on other locations, look for revealing information, etc.

You'd better toe the line, though, Mister 'Real Name On Slashdot.'

Of course. I don't have any illusions of anonymity here. But I don't mind taking responsibility for my postings, even though I'm sure they contain errors, and probably embarrassing inconsistencies.

Re:Duh!

[Bing Tsher E]

It's too expensive to do your 1. and 2. steps, and every day the mass of information grows and it becomes increasingly more expensive. I'll just rest secure in the knowledge that nothing I've done draws enough attention to me to make it worth the trouble of conducting such a search.

Anonymnity is an illusion, this is true, but it's not difficult to disappear into a crowd in the quasi-anonymous state of the 'net as things stand now.

It's a 'tough nut' that the people 'in charge' are working hard to crack, of course. The Internet won't forever remain the open consensus-based amorphous mass that it is presently.

Re:Duh!

[Professor_UNIX]

It's too expensive to do your 1. and 2. steps, and every day the mass of information grows and it becomes increasingly more expensive.

You may not be aware of this, CmdrTaco doesn't like to advertise it much, but one of the Google Summer of Code projects from last year involved creating an API to interface between Slashdot and the Google Search engine... not to search Google though, for Google to search Slashdot and all its logs going back to 1998. Very disturbing stuff. I don't have the link available right now, but go look up last year's summer of code at Google. Anyone can instantly search Google with the prefix "slashdot:" in the keyword and it'll correlate usernames to IP addresses, e-mail addresses, and so forth.

/not really

Re:Duh!

[djmurdoch]

I generally agree with you, except I think the searches are getting much cheaper, and material on the net has a long lifetime. So even if it would cost someone thousands of dollars to figure out your real name today, I really do suspect that in five years they'll be able to look it up on Google -- and they'll be able to see the full history of your postings under multiple pseudonyms.

Re:Duh!

[davidsyes]

Well, since you bring up the subject of dupes:

Then from:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=1 3&art_id=vn20060611102509470C487626

This has been a long-time fact in many countries, and many people don't give much thought to it:

"Even if you give a cellphone away you will have to obtain and keep the information about the recipient. The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Amendment Act (Rica) will regulate the lawful interception of certain communication and will oblige sellers of cellphones and SIM cards to keep records of their clients. Internet service providers will also be required to store personal information before entering into a service contract."

But, how many telecoms/phone providers are there in the US which DON'T yet demand a photo ID. With the preponderance of information and databases, is it more a formality to ensure bills get paid, or a way of larger-scheme cross-checking to track down some specific people?

"The act states that before any person sells, or in any manner provides telecommunication services, they must obtain the recipient's full name, identity number, residential and business or postal address as well as a certified photocopy of his or her identity document. Proper records of the information must be kept as well as the number of the cellphone concerned."

Ofcourse...

[ZeroExistenZ]

Just imagine a client looking up an adress or email to contact someone he had a meeting with / phone conversation or anything really, and stumbling on ms. X her profile where she's whoring herself or any content that could be offensive to any of your clients.

There are things where you want to keep neutral about as a company (political issues, current affairs, racism ...) or do not want to be associated with (mentions or display of druguse, your amateur porn movie, stories about how slutty you are, ignorance and hateful behaviour, ...). Your employees will form together what you will across your clients. If you can find dirt, they will be able to find dirt.

Not only MySpace

[cheese-cube]

Imagine if a prospective employer saw your Slashdot postings!

Employer: I'm sorry but your just not the person we're looking for.
You: But why?
Employer: We saw that all your Slashdot posts were rated -1 Troll and our company doesn't need anymore trolls.
You: Damn it!

Re:Not only MySpace

[Anonymous Coward]

First resume !

Re:Not only MySpace

[Dirtside]

Employer: I'm sorry but your just not the person we're looking for.

You: I'm not the person you're looking for.
Employer: You can go about your business.
You: I can go about my business.
Employer: Move along.
You: Move along, move along. (gets up and leaves)

Unnecessary fear by employers

[MavEtJu]

By a previous employer, I was working in a team with a horror-writer, a amateur[sp] lockpicker, a juggler and firebreather, a bunch of people with an interesting history of computer security and somebody who was so socially unreliable that it was remarkable he never got kicked out.

Guess what? That was the only part of the company (AFAIK) which was a real team, and the only department in the company which made a real profit.

So, just because your name shows up in the internet no questionable sites shouldn't be how they judge you. How good you are at your job and in your team, that's how they should judge you.

Re:Unnecessary fear by employers

[Oligonicella]

And what will they use to judge you before they hire you? Trust?

Re:Unnecessary fear by employers

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be that those who avoid public appearance in unpopular context, the same people that do not tell their chiefs and colleagues when they have breaken some internal rules - like inserting a found USB disk into their computer - and therefore do maximise the damages?

Depends on the job surely?

[SmallFurryCreature]

I already posted this link in a other replay, but they this is slashdot and posting a dupe might just get me to be an editor. Arthur Andersen was a boring stiff off an accountant who build up a highly successfull firm. Then it all went to hell. Now how much do you want to bet that the guys who ruined the firm were the kind of people that if myspace had been available in their time would have posted pics of themselves doing stuff frowned upon at the time.

Yes a marketting job could well do with someone who stands out. For a lot of real jobs it don't matter shit. You don't care what your plumber did in school did you?

But for a lot of the more exciting/succesfull jobs who you are matters because the risk for choosing the wrong person are high.

Tell me, what kind of pilot do you want. One who leads a perfectly boring life who just spend a quiet weekend home with his wife and kids or one who just spend the weekend on a drug and booze filled rampage? Who do you want managing your stocks. Someone with all the political motivation of a jellyfish or someone who firmly believes money is the root of all evil?

Do you want an eccentric person in charge or a nuclear powerplant. A police officer with quircks, a judge with political views (especially one that doesn't agree with yours)?

Luckily most people never need to worry about this. There are plenty of jobs out there where they don't give a shit what you do in your private life. And I can't help but feel that if you want a bigger job then you should be willing to adjust what you do in your private life so you can get the big bucks.

If you want to be your own person in your personal life then the price is that you will have to accept the kind of job where your personal life don't matter. The fast majority of jobs will be open to you. Sure the fast majority of jobs also have bad pay and are boring but hey, at least you got a full and un-spyed upon private life.

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[plasmacutter]

While I can understand that mentality with corporate execs or individuals who will be regularly scrutinized by media, I think your comments adequately illuminate how terrible it can be for individuals looking for jobs, and I believe the use of such things in consideration for employment should constitute unfair discrimination, especially as there are no guarantees the pages you find for the name you search will be the same person you are considering.

That said though.. the case for unfair discrimination and the case that such discrimination also harms employers are not mutually exclusive.

I believe as more net savvy individuals rise in the ranks of various employers, this "trend"(for lack of a better word) will disappear, as quite frankly when put to logical tests, it really amounts to nothing more than superstition.

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[maxume]

I want the pilot who does his job the best. I don't care what he does when he isn't at the controls.

As long as the nuclear plant runs well, a schizoid squirrel is fine with me.

The same percentage of cops are dicks as any other group of people. This sucks, but I don't really see what can be done about it.

A judge who admits his political views is a damn sight better than one who pretends not to have any.

The beauty of the myspace generation is that so damn many kids are doing stupid shit and posting it that at some point in the near future, everyone who worry's too much about what other people do on their own time is going to be forced to re-evaluate that prediliction. The question of whether personal lives should matter at work is just as important as the question of whether posting 'OMG Boobies' to myspace is a good idea.

And to clarify, in case it wasn't on purpose, the idiom is 'vast majority' not 'fast majority'

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[Bing Tsher E]

I believe as more net savvy individuals rise in the ranks of various employers, this "trend"(for lack of a better word) will disappear,

Actually, it's a few 'net savvy' individuals in the HR department who caused this 'trend' to appear in the first place.

The info is out there (if you place it there). They will find it.

Part of being 'the new net savvy' might include not blatting out all details of your life on web pages as if anybody cared (the wrong person might 'care' sometime in the future).

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[MickLinux]

Actually, for managing my stocks, had I any, I think I would much prefer the one who firmly believes money is the root of all evil.

You see, I've had some real bad experience with run-of-the-mill stock brokers at Merrill Lynch. So has my brother, in a separate incident. I can only guess that these guys thought that money was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and went out of their way to get extra by not-so-ethical means.

But I'd guess that a stockbroker who firmly believes that money is the root of all evil, (a) understands that evil is bad (b) understands that love of money can driver a person to that evil, (c) has strong beliefs that seem to be centered outside of himself (d) still finds himself in need of a job, and therefore (e) is bowing to authority and (f) is therefore probably in good control of himself, and has true authority within himself.

So I'd probably be less likely to be burned.

You see, one of the first things that evil does to its perpetrator, is that it blinds the perp to the truth about evil. So one who firmly believed money was the root of all evil at least isn't blind. Therefore, he probably isn't evil.

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[themusicgod1]

Part of being 'the new net savvy' might include not blatting out all details of your life on web pages as if anybody cared (the wrong person might 'care' sometime in the future).

What do you have to hide?

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[cgenman]

I was actually thinking the same thing. Functionally speaking, those who turn to evil out of greed and feel bad about it tend to be the most extremely methodically evil people.

It's sort of like the people who are extremely heterosexual because they can't deal with being a bit gay. I'd much rather have a money manager who is extremely greedy because he can't deal with being a little communist.

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[tftp]

I want the pilot who does his job the best. I don't care what he does when he isn't at the controls. As long as the nuclear plant runs well, a schizoid squirrel is fine with me.

You are right only if we assume that the pilot, or the squirrel, is always in control of his behavior. If that is so then there is no problem indeed. For example, you can have a pilot who sings country songs, badly and loudly, when in cockpit - but instantly stops and focuses on the job at hand when something happens. Such a pilot indeed knows when it's OK to have fun and when it's not OK.

But in many, if not most, cases, people can not easily switch between behaviors. Someone who does drugs at home will show up at work under the influence, sooner or later - just because of a bad judgement, and it will go downhill from there. Some say that the very fact of having an unhealthy addiction (to anything) is a sure sign that the person can not control himself.

Now, would you like to have a pilot who must have his drug injection just when he is supposed to land, or to perform some other tricky piloting job? Would you like to entrust a nuclear plant to someone who may or may not be out of his mind? We don't care how good they are when they are under control; we only need to worry how bad they are when they are not under control, and what are the chances of that loss of control happening.

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[Sj0]

If you think you're going to find control specialists who aren't eccentric, you're in for a long wait. Anyone with the qualifications to do the job is certifiably nuts, or they would have taken the nice and easy electrical route. :P

Re:Depends on the job surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love when this argument comes up, because it's inteded to imply that if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. Too bad 'wrong' is entirely subjective.

Ask any person who's been in any position of power or responsibility, and see what their opinion is. In a position of scrutiny, no matter what you do, people can twist and turn it to make you the bad guy. Often, the more you do right, the more people talk about you doing wrong (it's almost one of the indicators that you're on the right track). As a person with any kind of visibility, even leading a small group of 50 people, you're damn sure to apreciate any kind of privacy you can get -- and not because you're doing anything wrong.

It works both ways of course

[Tim Ward]

Next time you're going for an interview, look up the interviewer.

You might find that the higly professional lady wearing a smart business suit spends her weekends dressed up in strange clothing and hanging around with a motorcycle gang, to pick a real example at random.

Re:It works both ways of course

[DigiShaman]

MySpace.com = a treasure trove of blackmail material

Re:It works both ways of course

[Vengeance]

'Strange clothing'...

Do you mean protective stuff, leathers or tough textiles or whatnot? The kind of thing anyone with a quarter of a brain should be wearing if riding a motorcyle?

Or do you mean she's wearing LARPing gear on the weekends, and for some reason the 'gang' doesn't send her far, far away?

Re:It works both ways of course

[ThePeeWeeMan]

I could be wrong, but I think in the majority of cases, you won't know who your interviewer is until the actual interview or at best the day before.

How would you be able to look up the interviewer then, and how (if at all) would it help you?

Re:It works both ways of course

[Tim Ward]

On this occasion I was told "turn up at reception and ask for Ms --- ----". So I put her name into Google the night before.

Re:It works both ways of course

[Anonymous Coward]

MySpace.com = a treasure trove of blackmail material

MySpace.com == an online hangout for morons is more like it...

The same can be said for a load of meaningless "pour your heart out for everybody" type blogs out there.

Re:It works both ways of course

[Kjella]

Next time you're going for an interview, look up the interviewer.

Which could flip both ways, depending on how open that is on the workplace. If the interviewers first thought is "OMG I won't have someone walking around talking about my _____ hobby", your application will mysteriously be rejected.

Re:It works both ways of course

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're saying we should start the blackmail the instant we walk in the door? I think I need to investigate the interview board in future...

Re:It works both ways of course

[Anonymous Coward]

"You might find that the higly professional lady wearing a smart business suit spends her weekends dressed up in strange clothing and hanging around with a motorcycle gang, to pick a real example at random."

That stereotype is so out of date. The average Harley driver now is an accountant, a dentist, engineer or investment banker - and its been this way for long time. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but its just not really rebellious anymore.

Re:It works both ways of course

[Sj0]

If you were a REAL bad boy, you'd want a bike that could actually outrun police cars, right?

There's something to this, in fairness.

[Ivan Matveitch]

A blog full of half-literate paeans to partying does suggest that you are overeducated and perhaps incompetent.

Smart people often break taboos: Richard Feynman loved strip clubs and Paul Erdös took amphetamines, to name but a couple.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[mlush]

A blog full of half-literate paeans to partying does suggest that you are overeducated and perhaps incompetent.
Smart people often break taboos: Richard Feynman loved strip clubs and Paul Erdös took amphetamines, to name but a couple.

I think your first statement had it right:-

• Smart people break taboos, but they cover their tracks
• Towering Geniuses can break taboos and they normally have enough reputation to survive any blowback.
• Idiots break taboos, post it on MySpace and act suprised when employers don't want to hire a stoner

Most employers don't want to hire people who rock the boat they want warm bodies that do the job their asked to do. Given the choice of Richard Feynman, a known stoner and a guy in a smart suit and tie, they will go for the suit and tie almost every time. Feynman would be great to have round the office playing the bongos and being insightful, but productivity would plumit and he'd make a rotten DB admin.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[mr_tenor]

In all fairness, Erdos took amphetamines so he could continue doing math 24 hours a day.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[Bing Tsher E]

That brings out an interesting point:

stupid people take random mixes of drugs because of the bewildering but 'cool' effects it has.

smart people take specific drugs for specific purposes.

'back in the day' people took hallucinogens very deliberately and in discrete doses and carefully exprienced the phenomenon. setting and context was very important to keep it from turning into a 'bad trip.'

these days one hears about people just mixing a cocktail of dope and booze and 'going for the ride.' I know that when *I* was in school alcohol was considered completely uncool, a 'death trip' because all it accomplished was killing brain cells.

But 'party down' dooods.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[djdavetrouble]

Smart people often break taboos: Richard Feynman loved strip clubs and Paul Erdös took amphetamines, to name but a couple.

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant, who was very rarely stable,
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar, who could drink you under the table,
David Hulme could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Heigel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just about as sloshed as Shegal.
There's nothing Nietschze couldn't teach about the raising of the wrist,
Socrates himself was permanently pissed!
John Stuart Mill (of his own free will) on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away - half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for a dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart - "I drink therefore I am!"
Yes Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[dodobh]

But Feynman would make a great programmer or architect.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[mlush]

But Feynman would make a great programmer or architect.

Feynman could write the sort of code only a genius could write groundbreaking, fast, compact, elegent... Thats wonderful......

I once went to a (perl) talk whos thesis was that debugging is harder than coding so if you were clever when you were coding you are by definition not smart enough to debug the code. Its even harder to debug someone elses code, you would need someone much smarter then Feynman to maintain his code base. Feynman would have a very hard time finding 'bread and butter' coding jobs he would have to be project leader or nothing.

I've been stuck in that position. I have a PhD. When between Postdoc jobs I'd had a hard time finding work, even getting shelfstacking work in a supermarket I would have to lie about my qualification (I have some O levels, no no I don't have A levels. a degree or a PhD it says Dr on my bank account because its my fist name.....) I understand the reasons but it did not help me pay the bills :-(

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[Everleet]

I know that when *I* was in school alcohol was considered completely uncool, a 'death trip' because all it accomplished was killing brain cells.

Interesting...see, when I was in school, jail was considered completely uncool, a 'death trip' because all it accomplished was stealing a few years of your life. Everyone did the only drugs that were left, regardless of the painful but much-less-fascist physical effects.

But 'do tremendously illegal things in discrete doses and carefully experience the phenomenon' dooods.

Re:There's something to this, in fairness.

[dodobh]

True. And you do need one or two people like Feynman to actually design the project. That he would be a misfit for bread and butter coding is actually irrelevant. John Carmcak isn't good for that either. In the right niche, these people rock. In the wrong place, they are miserable and their lives suck.

I can understand your plight (been in the same situation for the past two/three years). Now I am employed in a job which gives some satisfaction, in a small company. I am finding useful tricks, and we are hiring more staff to handle the grunt work (yay!) so that my brains are actually utilizied.

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[chimpo13]

I had one a couple years ago that got "killed by Tom" back when you could review pictures and make comments. Maybe you still can, I don't know. I'd comment on girls in bikinis by saying stuff like, "Not so bad, you can hardly see his adams apple" and, "Pretty good with the tuck and roll -- not much visible mangina".

That got some girl saying her marine boyfriend was going to kick my ass. I offered to give directions to my house. Then my account was deleted.

Exact Opposite.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the facebook's Illinois Enema Bandit.

"Wanna, wanna, wanna, wanna enema

Enema?"

if you didn't get the joke... google Frank Zappa.. fools.

Common Sense Serves the Intelligent Ones Only...

[Dark Coder]

We can pretty much assure that the average IQ of MySpace participants is far lower than the general population (for the other half, that is less than 100).

Only post what you are...willing to show to your neighbors.

Like a bulletin board stand next to your local neighorbood mailbox.

Big Brother can be anyone, not just the government

[Anonymous Coward]

Let this be a lesson to anyone who doesn't object to more and more monitoring of our innane boring lives, especially those of you who justify such activities with the trite response "If you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear". Turns out "wrong" is very very subjective.

It's time to learn from Maddox

[VxJasonxV]

Learn? From Maddox?
Yes, I said that...
Pardon the language, but you know how he is:

  FUCK!
  my mom just found my website
  isn't she proud?
  ha
  you've been on tv 2 times, in the newspapers several times, been banned from a country, has 40 million pageviews
  and you didn't tell your mother?
  "what is this? Did you draw this? It looks like a penis." "No mom, I didn't draw a penis"
  ROFL
  "no mom, i didn't draw a penis" thats good
  now she's crying
  haha, your mom doesn't know about your website?
  (on the phone)
  maddox: did she see the "suprise - I have a penis"-greeting card?
  dmtec: oh fuck, I forgot about that.. yeah I guess I did draw a penis.
  bahahahaha
  hahahahahaha she just said "I wish I would have died and not raised you"
  rofl
  she hung up
  You are dispwned maddox
( courtesy of http://bash.org/?203247 )

Re:It's time to learn from Maddox

[VxJasonxV]

Why does plain text mode still cause HTML (specifically <>'s) to be trimmed? ...
REPOST!

<@maddox> FUCK!
<@maddox> my mom just found my website
<+DMTec> isn't she proud?
<+khoveraki> ha
<@naken> you've been on tv 2 times, in the newspapers several times, been banned from a country, has 40 million pageviews
<@naken> and you didn't tell your mother?
<@maddox> "what is this? Did you draw this? It looks like a penis." "No mom, I didn't draw a penis"
<+DMTec> ROFL
<+DMTec> "no mom, i didn't draw a penis" thats good
<@maddox> now she's crying
<RichK> haha, your mom doesn't know about your website?
<@maddox> (on the phone)
<+DMTec> maddox: did she see the "suprise - I have a penis"-greeting card?
<@maddox> dmtec: oh fuck, I forgot about that.. yeah I guess I did draw a penis.
<RichK> bahahahaha
<@maddox> hahahahahaha she just said "I wish I would have died and not raised you"
<+khoveraki> rofl
<@maddox> she hung up
<RichK> You are dispwned maddox

Irrelevant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.

That doesn't mean the employers won't do it. Many managers would also discriminate on the basis of race, sex, and age if the law let them get away with it. Yes, any selection criterion other than "pick the best person for the job" damages the company the manager works for. But that never stopped them from doing it.

Myspace and net savvy?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Well, we will just let that one slide. I think I know what you are trying to say. I just don't get where you get the discrimation thing from.

Discrimination is against something you are that can't be changed. Your skin color is easy (and yes I have heard of Michael Jackson but lets not go there) since it is fixed from birth and will never ever change. You therefore should not be choosen based on your skin color. Right? Right.

But is a myspace account the same thing? Yes "I won't hire you because you are black" is bad. "I won't hire you because you posted pics of yourselve online doing illegal or stupid things wich make me think you are an idiot who can't be trusted with any reponsibility" is entirely different in my eyes.

Granted it comes close. For instance in holland smoking pot is semi-legal. The smoking itself is legal but the sale isn't wich makes it all a bit of a legal mess. Yet this leaves the fact that if a dutch person shows pictures of himself smoking a joint (on dutch soil) there is no crime being committed and it is really no different then say a picture of him drinking a beer.

So should this person then not be hired for a job just because the boss considers pot wrong in his views? Is this the same as not hiring a gay person because you consider homosexuality wrong? For that matter is it wrong to not hire a person using any drug is you consider drug use wrong?

I don't think it can be called discrimination because I just hope that we won't go that far. When you have to fire a person you will have to decide in wich person to invest a small fortune of time and real hard cash in the hope you will be getting some value out of them after training and orientation.

It is hard and I always try not to get involved but being the tech guy in a non-tech company I have to try to determine how good they will be in the tech role. Personality then comes into play. If I would find a tech with a myspace account I wouldn't not just hire them. I would fire them. Twice. Just to be sure.

It may not be scientific but suprise suprise, human resource management ain't a hard science.

Not only your (future) employer is watching..

[Anonymous Coward]

Also your government:

""I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves." So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop's dream.

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."

Full story at: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg190255 56.200

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia protects us from the evil of 'Mangina'

Employer Filter

[xPsi]

Probably like many slashdotters I've had a web presence for a while. In my case, I've had a persistent web page since 1996 - the early middle part of the contemporary Web's ramp up. Since putting the site up, I've been very careful about what information I choose to put in public directories about myself -- knowing full well that the information is, well, PUBLIC. I'm not saying I shy away from controversy. I'm an atheist, skeptic, scientist, and writer and have many links and comments about said topics on my site. Some of these things are not generally popular. When I hit the job market after my Ph.D. I simply ASSUMED people would Google me. And, lo and behold, in at least half the interviews someone would say "I saw your website and loved such-and-such." In some ways I used my website as an employer filter: if someone would not hire me based on information on my site, I would not want to work for them anyway.

Clearly many people who are creating myspace sites have a strange relationship with this very public forum. On one hand they view it and understand it as public. It is the web afterall and everyone is just a Google search away. But yet they still seem to place a psychological shield around it. So while they surely must know it is public, they still regard it as somehow very private and personal ("my space") and are shocked when people hold them accountable for the information content they advertise.

Re:Employer Filter

[timholman]

Clearly many people who are creating myspace sites have a strange relationship with this very public forum. On one hand they view it and understand it as public. It is the web afterall and everyone is just a Google search away. But yet they still seem to place a psychological shield around it. So while they surely must know it is public, they still regard it as somehow very private and personal ("my space") and are shocked when people hold them accountable for the information content they advertise.

Agreed. In reading many of the postings on this topic, I'm surprised at how many people are missing the point of what's going on. 25 years ago, your employers, your supervisors, and your parents spent as much time in a drug, alcohol, and sex-induced stupor as today's college students. College recruiters absolutely do not care about such matters, unless company policy requires a drug test. Your private life is your private life, because they remember they were every bit as bad in their own college days.

What is bothering them is that today's students are violating a strict social/corporate taboo - they are deliberately advertising their private lives to the entire world. When a potential competitor or customer can do a quick web search and find photographs of an employee at an S&M gangbang, that's a huge source of potential embarrassment to the company. Companies will instead hire the S&M gangbanger who had the good sense not to post pictures of his/her latest party for the entire universe to see.

People using MySpace and Facebook need to apply an old time-honored litmus test: "Would I feel comfortable if my family / relatives / minister saw this?" By all means have fun so you can swap those wild college-day stories with your co-workers ten or twenty years from now. But never put yourself in a situation where some crazy co-worker will be able to anonymously embarrass you by forwarding online photographs of something you did years earlier.

Re:Employer Filter

[hyfe]

I'm not saying I shy away from controversy. I'm an atheist, skeptic, scientist, and writer and have many links and comments about said topics on my site.

Congratulations; I think you managed to sum up everything that's wrong with America... completely unindended too :(

(for the dim: neither of these shouldhave been controversial in any way)

Re:Employer Filter

[aussersterne]

"If someone would not hire me based on information on my site, I would not want to work for them anyway."

Exactly my feelings, and something I'm surprised I don't hear more of on Slashdot beneath these types of stories. Instead, I see hundreds of geeks clamoring to say "Keep your mouth shut and stay repressed in your personal life! Only then can you land the job that will also force you to keep your mouth shut and stay repressed in your professional life!"

I think things. I think them at home, and I think them at work. And if I put myself in a position by which I can't ever say them, at home or at work, then I'm not much of a person.

I certainly refuse to work for any employer who is unwilling to countenance the notion that employers have a unique, interesting, and un-work-like private life.

Re:Employer Filter

[IANAAC]

But you surely understand that when you put something online, it s no longer personal, right?

That's fine that you think things at work and at home. Once you put those thoughts in a PUBLIC place, it's fair game for any and all use.

The web is not anything that any one person can claim as his or her personal domain. It's there for all.

Re:Employer Filter

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

well they aren't controversial to me, that baffled me a bit too

Re:Employer Filter

[aussersterne]

You miss the point. Employees employ people--at least, any company I ever work for will employ people--rather than automatons. And thus, anything they do is personal, at work or at home.

Persons have ideas. They are who they are. And it's immoral for employers to demand that persons become non-persons just so that they can work. A healthy company will employ people from a wide variety of backgrounds, opinions, political orientations, and practices. A piss-poor, PHB company will employ a whole bunch of identicaloids who have agreed to be nobodies 24/7.

If I can't be at work the person that I am at home, then I am in the wrong line of work, and so are you.

Same problem with UseNet

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a pretty wild time at University and eventually dropped out because of it. This was back in 1991, and some of my posts on Usenet were pretty telling about what I was doing in my life at the time.

Of course, at that time we were quite naive and none of us realised what the Internet would turn into.

When Google released the Usenet archives for searching I had to scamper to get all my posts (hundreds of them) removed from the archive, as my employers would probably not have been too pleased - for a week or so my name in the google search engine produced thousands of posts none of which I am proud of now.

Re:Same problem with UseNet

[whitehatlurker]

When I had to do interviews, USEnet was one of the things I looked at in order to find out about potential employees. Things like getting in flame wars frequently showed potentially disruptive behaviour. Posting to technical groups (usually) showed a tendancy to be helpful, and illustrated the technical knowledge of the applicant as well.

This isn't new folks - wll okay, it's MyFace or SpaceBook or /digg and not DejaNews or AltaVista, but it's still the "same old".

Re:Same problem with UseNet

[Lactoso]

Dude, are you SURE you removed them? I just googled 'Anonymous Coward' and got like a gazillion hits...

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

we can't have slashdot lose...

Jobsblog

[rx4ever]

Microsoft is doing it too. I found their technical careers blog pretty interesting. http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2006/04/05/ 569559.aspx

Another Warning...

[Anonymous Coward]

An imposter can take your real information, set up another account to match your's and pose as you and even twist some of the information to defame you. There's nothing you can do to stop that from happening besides notifying the site.

Who wants to work there anyway?

[smilindog2000]

At our little company, we interviewed a potential employee, and somebody had the foresight to google him, and found his web site. On his home page, he was shown dressed as a girl. A prominent link showed an unusual hobby: tracking the various names given to the Devil.

Now, many companies are too stuffy to hire individuals who tend to be a bit creative around the fringes of what is considered acceptable in stuffy company. It's their loss. He was a good employee for the years we had him.

Re:Who wants to work there anyway?

[serialdogma]

Well before coming into work one day in a pink dress with names of the Devil with dates on it, but still sacking him because of that still seams harsh to be honest.

Re:Who wants to work there anyway?

[Ash-Fox]

> a pink dress with names of the Devil with dates on it
You sexist and intolerant person!

Re:Who wants to work there anyway?

[serialdogma]

You missunderstand me, I was just providing insight into the "He was a good employee for the years we had him." remark in the Grand-GP. I was saying that the Grand-GPer sacked him for doing that, not that he should of.

Re:Who wants to work there anyway?

[smilindog2000]

Oh, we didn't fire him. We saw the site before we hired him. He left our company a couple years later, looking for better things.

Space is good, spaces in URL usually are not

[ickeicke]

http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/fuck/myspace-i s-a-loser-so-were-resorting-to-porn-178829.php Space is good, spaces in URL usually are not :) .

Re:Space is good, spaces in URL usually are not

[RalphSleigh]

I tried using CSS to cover the adds and pressing report a few times to try and gte mine deleted, as the function in the profile never worked, prehaps I should do some, er, internet research and post my results as well.

"Strange clothing"

[Tim Ward]

I don't recall, I'm afraid, it was years ago.

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

The person that deleted the article and protected it in question, well, this is from his user profile:

"I'm also a practicing homosexual - after all, practice makes perfect! I'm hoping one day to win an award for my contributions and dedicated practical research in this particular area."

Contributions != Deleting all articles that might be offensive/crude/hilarious.

Gotcha too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if a prospective employer saw your Slashdot postings!

Employer: I'm sorry but your just not the person we're looking for.
You: But why?
Employer: We saw that all your Slashdot posts were rated -1 Troll and our company doesn't need anymore trolls.
You: Damn it!

Dear Mr. Cheese Cube,

we saw your posting on /. and we don't need funny people. We do serious work here!

Business plan...

[itsdapead]

1. Read a couple of pop psychology and "how to succeed" books (and maybe buy one of those non-accredited PhDs)
2. Send spam offering your services to college leavers for a "reasonable" fee
3. Set up bogus blogs depicting your clients as mature and charismatic polymaths
4. Hey! There's no "..?" step!
5. Profit!!!
6. Blackmail former clients and Profit!!! again.

Right, who knows a good business method patent lawyer?

Re:Business plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that because you just published your idea it is no longer patentable.

A Public Relations Major here

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Ann Coulter wannabe. Boy, you'd be a great salesman or cubefarm rat. Bet you've got a smooth voice, too. With that last line, who'd want you for a copywriter?

Depends on how badly you need it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a job which would pass you over because of your personal life really one worth having anyway?

If your rich parents will make sure you never need to work, no it isn't.

If you're a summa-cum-laude Harvard MBA and can take your pick of employers, no it isn't.

If, like most people, you need a paycheck, are not in the top 2% of achievers, and need to send out about 50 resumes to get one interview, damn right that job is worth having.

I've just spent my first five minutes at myspace.

[way2trivial]

I feel bad for those employed to do the research, and I will not be returning..

what a bunch of crap?? did I miss something? annoying music- nothing redeeming, it's a big dating + a few other features site?

every user page looks awful, and they all load with music -- my average webbrowsing session is multiple site windows open- this would kill me..

Actually, the problem is...

[Stormwatch]

...they don't want to hire emos. And if you're on MySpace, you're probably an emo.

Re:Actually, the problem is...

[MrSquirrel]

Most people on myspace are hardly "emo" -- I believe the word you're looking for is "scenester". "Emo" people don't advertise themselves, in addition -- they don't listen to crappy pop music (Hawthorne Heights? *baaaarf*), as well as not engaging in many activities that the typical myspacer does. If you want to categorize the average myspace user as scenesters, then yes -- you are correct. Scenesters are all about group indentification (and thus the need to have 5,000 friends on an internet site) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenester (god damn... I love wikipedia!). Yes, there are emo-scenesters -- however, as mentioned previously, the typical myspace user's musical preferences do not match the emo genre. My final point -- what's wrong with hiring a so-called "emo"? I find people typically labeled as emo are much more fun to be around, more intelligent, and harder working than many other conventional stereotypes (jocks, druggies, gangsters, preps). Happy (no, 'cause you're emo OHHHHHH BURN)?

elpapacito, may introduce The Real World

[SmallFurryCreature]

You and I don't disagree you just seem to want the world to work differently then it does. You are probably young. That is okay, you will grow out of it.

The simple fact is that what you describe as wrong is just the way it is. You can try to change it and you may be successfull, after all the days women were considered totally incapable of doing anything but be mothers and nurses is long gone (says a while middle aged male who thinks a glass ceiling is nice for letting in natural light) so maybe one day this will change too.

Maybe one day nude photos of a famous person will not have every tabloid drooling. Maybe one day a politician can freely admit to have smoked pot. Maybe one day not every word you say will be weighed on a silver scale.

For now the practical terms is that you either carefully examine everystep you take OR be prepared to accept that someday somebody might hold it against you.

You can rant against it for all you want but that does not change the way things are now. I got long hair, almost to my ass and I am male. Not really for fashion, I just like it. The price I pay is that I have been invited several times by high profile companies for job interviews based on previous work they have seen of me. When they then get a look off me their jaws literally drop.

I am good, they like my work but to the suits long hair like mine just doesn't work. Is it wrong? Not really. It is my choice to have long hair and it is their choice not to hire people that don't fit their idea of a well groomed employee.

As for my co-worker (well actually she is a manager of a different department and I only took notice off it because this piece of gossip included nudie pics) she will just have to accept that all men are pigs and all women are vindictive bitches. I personally couldn't care less but that is probably why I am not management at middle age. She is finding that something she did ten years ago is now biting her in the butt. Oh sure she may do wonderfull work and there is that email that circulated with her in the buff. Also up for a promotion is a guy who does not have nudie pics circulating.

You would claim the past of a person makes no difference. But does it?

My long hair is perhaps a way of me saying that I am not like everyone else. A rebel or just a social misfit? Perhaps I just can't be bothered with convention? Whatever the reason you think up it might be enough for you to consider me too big a risk to hire.

Same with the woman appearing nude in a play. As I pointed out this is something that a lot of woman do for the sake of art while all the male artists keep their clothes on. For me this suggests these women lack a certain amount of logic. Wouldn't it be more arty to keep the women clothed and the men naked? If you look at all those pics of girls caught naked circulating in your email don't you notice how rare it is to see the guy, even if he is in the pic great care has usually been taken to obscure the face.

Don't any of these girls who pose ever ask the guy to pose for them? If you want to be save as a girl posing nude just ask the guy to pose naked for you so when he releases your photographs you can release his.

That no women does this suggests to me women ain't paranoid enough and I would never hire any person as a system administrator who isn't 100% paranoid. Cause on the web they really are out to get you.

Re:elpapacito, may introduce The Real World

[themusicgod1]

That no women does this suggests to me women ain't paranoid enough and I would never hire any person as a system administrator who isn't 100% paranoid.
I'm sorry but nobody is 100% paranoid. 99% perhaps, 99.99% on a good day, but not 100%. Even at 99.999999% you're going to be paying through the roof.

If you look at all those pics of girls caught naked circulating in your email don't you notice how rare it is to see the guy, even if he is in the pic great care has usually been taken to obscure the face.
Or mabye you're just not getting those emails?

Re:elpapacito, may introduce The Real World

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Wouldn't it be more arty to keep the women clothed and the men naked?

Uh, no. Art is entertainment. Whether the entertainment is base or thought-provoking doesn't matter so much in the grand scheme. People - men and even straight women - like to see decent looking women naked. The demand for decent looking naked men is much smaller. The straight women like seeing other women because they can at least do the comparison thing if nothing else, the men like it for obvious reasons. Naked men? No straight guy cares how good looking the guy is, they aren't interested, period.

Any chick good looking enough to have people asking her to get naked implicitly knows this. That's why the girls are always naked and the men hardly ever are.

Re:elpapacito, may introduce The Real World

[Grrr]

"Am I Art Or Not?"

<grrr />

No, I'm sorry

[Unski]

I have no idea what is so bad about MySpace. You are clearly missing something..

Public vs private lives

[Attacked by Snakes]

A lot of folks have talked about jobs and public life. Perfectly good stuff, having a public life on the internet. But the internet is also an important forum for our "private" lives. The places where we connect with other people in our imperfect ways, where we are vulnerable and confused. People here will go on and on about keeping things locked behind passwords and such, but that is the antithesis of trying to reach out and find people and know something about them.

In a world where many people feel isolated, it seems like a failure to say that you can either find community or a job, but you can't have both. I think employers need to understand this and either not search, or ask for web references just like they ask for other references.

So?

[crhylove]

I'm all for personal privacy, but I think one great thing about MySpace is that it's hard to "fake it". You can pretend to be somebody you're not, but by and large kids in particular are really savvy to this kind of "fronting". Let's just all be who we are, whether we smoke weed, like kinky wierd sex acts, or are a creepy vegetarian. Let's stop lying about it and just have a good time, online and off. People are such fucking cry babies I swear. If every person in the country was totally honest about who they were, and these lame corporations still had all their lame "standards", they'd quickly not have ANY employees. Trying to make everyone pretend to be something they're not is just stupid.

Go ahead and check my MySpace, my piss, my driving record, and my credit record. I ain't perfect, but I'm a good worker and I get the job done, and there's probably about 200 million others of me in this country so STFU.

rhY

Re:So?

[colinrichardday]

You can pretend to be somebody you're not, but by and large kids in particular are really savvy to this kind of "fronting".

So teenagers never get fooled by 40 year-old guys pretending to be seventeen?

Re:So?

[duodave]

That's easy for you to say. If your included link is you, then your job is basically a party lifestyle. Fine. But lets say you're a college graduate with a nice job, and maybe you have a future in management. If it comes down to 2 people for promotion and your boss googles the two candidates, he's gonna pick the guy who didn't have a myspace profile or nasty usenet posts. Just look at modern politics, how many people don't run because they have something that the FBI will find in a background check. Look 15 years down the road even. You're married, you have a 13 year old kid. You're trying to be the responsible adult teaching your kid through example. Suddenly your kid googles you, and finds a photo of you partying on someone else's profile or something. How many parents don't like admitting to their kids that they smoked pot in school, and now theres pictures?

Re:So?

[mbius]

You can pretend to be somebody you're not, but by and large kids in particular are really savvy to this kind of "fronting"

By other kids who aren't very good at it. It's not too hard to bust the 17 year old claiming to have bought an M3 or the 21 year old with a four-figure bar tab. The fake White House reporter pretending he's not the webmaster for a gay military porn site is harder to detect.

If every person in the country was totally honest about who they were

There's the rub...some people want to bullshit and be bullshitted. It's how dating works, how religion works, how raising kids works, and how business works...people bring that to personal and work relationships because we punish the ones who are hypocrites only some of the time. Full-time hypocrites have "strong personalities."

Re:So?

[crhylove]

Yep. I agree with you. However aiming for something, even on an individual basis, is a good idea.

Re:So?

[crhylove]

Well if you're going to lie to your kids about who you were, and as a result who you are, you're destined to not be the best of parents anyway.

rhY

Re:So?

[crhylove]

I try hard not to use words like never, as they almost always prove to make my statements false. Hence it is very easy to discern your paraphrasing as a straw man and discard it imediately.

Furthermore, you could consider that kind of sexual predator an outlier. A simple statistical analysis of anything is going to suggest that outlier research can lead to dangerous dead ends and assumptions, and over all not be especially useful "on the whole". Not to say that being aware of outliers isn't an essential part of any analysis.

And in this case I think it is essential to be very aware of sexual predators, and make wise decisions not based on them, but based on the rest of us, who ultimately matter a great deal more.

rhY

Re:So?

[Loquis]

http://www.myspace.com/abscess

was made by a friend of mine and seems to have fooled quite a few people

Re:So?

[colinrichardday]

OK. But what evidence do you have that teens are savvy about such matters?

Vapid isn't the word you are looking for

[technoextreme]

There are many highly qualified and intelligent people here (it's a top 20 university) with very vapid social lives.

I have a very vapid social life but Im pretty sure that employers will still flock to me. Searching on goolge will result in the fact that I like robots, I once counted gypsy mothes, and I one a scholarship. The only thing that doesn't belong is Kaiju Big Battel.

Re:Vapid isn't the word you are looking for

[Transcendent]

...and I one a scholarship.

It wasn't for spelling or grammar was it?

Most people don't care

[ateves]

I don't think that this is a serious problem for people posting everything on the web. I just entered the name of some people at university into a search engine and found tons of pictures and ridiculous comments all over, showing racism, violence and anything else.

You should think about the privacy of your name.

It's as much the employer's loss here-Game face.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are many people who can quickly switch personalities to a work mode, many of the most intelligent are also the most eccentric as well. Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end."

Essentially the story is "people judge other people through their public face". That's been true since we started walking upright, and the only difference is that technology makes it easier. This really is a non-story, and it's also not the end of the world...or employers.

BTW your post assumes that people can consistently hide their true personalities. Try it, it's harder than you think. Ir also assumes that there's no correllation between personality and outward manifestations. As much as psychology and other soft-sciences are poo-pooed around here, there is a solid basis for them, and their results.

Parent +1 Gets it.

[Random Destruction]

Exactly! With everyone bitching about losing freedoms, you'd think more people would share that healthy view of yours.

Finally,

[frostoftheblack]

Finally, some repercussions for people who some how think the Internet is a separate dimension where whatever you do on the Information Super Highway does not affect what you do in Real Life (r).

I don't think it's such a bad idea. I don't know many people who are able to isolate the crazy, law-breaking, alcohol-chugging, insane part of their lives from their professional, money-raking, meat-on-the-table-getting parts of their lives. If they act this way on the Internet, they're bound to act that way somewhere else. Where that someone else is is left up to the job recruiters.

Re:Finally,

[Anonymous Coward]

hypocrite. I'll bet you were just as nuts in college. I'll bet you've broken the law on more than one occasion. The only difference is that you won't admit to it and these people do. Stop fronting...or maybe you are a stodgy bore, in which case you need to get off your soap box and be more tolerant.

Re:Finally,

[frostoftheblack]

I'm starting college August 27. And I'm moving into Wellness Housing. So yeah, I'm a stodgy bore. Sorry.


Point is, people shouldn't complain when their employers find out they've done something bad. Who cares if it's "just" on the Internet. They did it, and their employers should think what they want of whatever they did.

What if it is fake?

[Zeinfeld]

I have never been to myspace, I would never use a Murdoch controlled site.

So what if someone went off and created a profile for me? Posted the untrue story about me calling into a conference call while in a hot tub (I was sitting next to it and the clean cycle went off). I'll admit I did call in from a bar on a beach in Jamaca while on a cruise and yes I did call in from the delivery room after our first child was born but the kid was asleep and the mother said she didn't mind.

You could really do a number on someone and they likely would never find out why. Particularly effective if you knew the other people applying, say you met them in the waiting room before the interview and remembered their names.

Post an essay from a jihadi site praising Bin Laden. Post some of the nuttier rantings of Ward Churchill and Ann Coulter on the 9/11 victims.

Re:What if it is fake?

[mdecarle]

Happens daily. I know a few girls who find at least one fake account each month, featuring numerous pictures of themselves. I'm thinking of people like josienutter, triplesix and DJ Pixi.

It's as much the posters loss here

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, how else can one explain the fact that your personal life can influence your getting a/the job?"

So are you saying your two different people? Schizoid much?

"From where I stand, companies seem to want to control every single aspect of their employers' lives - so if you do not conform to the company standards in all aspects of your life, you are not really wanted here, thank you."

And this is diferent from all other forms of social interaction how?

Re:It's as much the posters loss here

[cp.tar]

And this is diferent from all other forms of social interaction how?

Well, I'd always thought of professional interactions as formally social; I don't mind you as long as you make me money.

What I'm talking about is more like new forms of slavery.

It's a metric

[DuctTape]

Just as hours put into working is [not] a useful metric to determine dedication and effort, mySpace and their ilk is another way to [sometimes inaccurately] see what kind of person you're hiring. It's more information. Not the best information, but more information.

And information is good.

DT

One less idiot on the job

[flibuste]

Well. It's so hilariously obvious it's funny.

One must really be a non-hireable idiot if he thinks he can post anything on the Internet and then stay anonymous.

Re:One less idiot on the job

[Detritus]

Young adults are, in general, idiots. Most of them grow out of it.

Who Cares...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put it on the web for everyone in the world to see then your asking for it. Why the hell do you people keep your lives on webpages? I hate the fact that people get pissy because they say something on MySpace or another forum and then they get flamed or fired/not hired. But you know what?

IF YOU PUT YOUR SELF IN THE PUBLIC EYE THEN YOU WILL BE WATCHED. IF YOU DONT WANT TO ACCEPT OTHERS COMMENTS OR VIEWS ABOUT YOU THEN DONT POST YOUR CRAP?

EOF

School paper

[VanHalensing]

We had an article about this in our school paper almost a year ago. Employers really do do this. IT isnt hard to get an alumni account on facebook, and then they can see all the ones for that school.

Judge not, les yea be judged.

[Anonymous Coward]

"And what will they use to judge you before they hire you? Trust?"

Lets go farther along this path. How many here judge others based on what they say and do?* How many show others the same level of trust that they demand from employers?

*Let's ignore the fact that "/."-moderation is exactly that.

Not just MySpace...

[Mendy]

Last year we were interviewing for a helpdesk position and one of the candidates mentioned that he'd written tools to aid posting to LiveJournal. This meant that there was a good chance he had an LJ himself so, out of interest we did some googling and found it.

In it he had written...

-That he was currently suspended from work for misuse of IT equipment.
-That his current duties were less technical than the impression he'd given in the interview.
-That he wasn't really interested in the position we were offering and would be hoping to leave within a few months.

Needless to say he didn't get the position.

His blog also went into some detail about his sexual fetishes. This wouldn't have been a reason not to employ him, but it might have made things a bit awkward in the office especially with him not knowing we knew and such.

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[tsajeff]

If the accounts are closed, are the pages still cached on other servers (such as google)? There might be a considerable time lag between closing an account and having the data "disappear" from the internet.

The recruiters should be just as cautious

[cazbar]

I threw my name in Yahoo people search and it came back with 10 results, none of which included me. I've thrown my name in google and there was plenty of results, but again mostly referring to other people. There's even a myspace page by somebody else with the same name. Recruiters should be cautious to make sure that when they are investigating somebody, the information they find really is about the right person. The world is a big place and the internet is accessible from just about anywhere so it's just about guaranteed that there are other internet users with the same name as you. Now if there's photos of you on myspace, then they will know it's you. And you will deserve everything you get.

Re:The recruiters should be just as cautious

[assassinator42]

Plus, someone who doesn't like you can put up a page claiming to be you and destroying your reputation. They could even modify some photos.
The whole thing seems like a bad idea.

Thanks...

[way2trivial]

strangely, in highschool, this is the kind of thing I'd go to the internet to avoid....

Re:Thanks...

[Unski]

I can't bring myself to type the acronym, but you did have me Laughing Out Loud there. The irony, the sweet sweet irony of it. You are completely correct, what have we come to?! The Internet is now a frat-boy-jock hookup zone. Maybe your High Schools will now be for education, social development and the like..

Public Data

[nurb432]

No one should be suprised this is happening. The job market is tough and HR will use anything they can to weed out the freaks. The hiring process isnt free, and every loser they deal with costs the company money.

Not saying you are a loser beacuse you have a stupid webpage, but its not worth the risk if you have stupid stuff posted up there.

And if you think that is invasive, wait until you get a 'security clearance audit'.. Then they come to your house personally..

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Steve Jobs would be hired at their own company. His website would probably be about selling blue boxes with Woz, drugs use, looking like a complete hippie, going to india when he should be looking for a job, dropping out of college because it was a waste of time,..

Re:Common Sense Serves the Intelligent Ones Only..

[Bing Tsher E]

Local neighborhood mailbox?

My 'local' mailbox is a large rural one on the highway. It's big enough that even medium-sized parcels from eBay sellers fit without difficulty. My 'neighbors' mailboxes are long away down the road.

One of my neighbors is somewhat of a carny. He operates hotdog stands at auctions and flea markets. I don't think he cares what I 'show' and occasionally when I don't want to go all the way inside the house, what I 'show' out behind the pickup truck would be considered pruient by some.

It's nice living here in flyover country. Not many busybodies unless you head into town...

More Fearmongering News

[Anonymous Coward]

More fearmongering from corporate news.
Corporate news tells workers to be fearful of managers they haven't even met yet and curb off-job actions for that reason.

I think it's a great idea

[supercrisp]

In general, I think you'd be much better off hiring the quiet, hard-working kid or the kid who's reasonable and talkative. The kids who posture in stupid and irresponsible ways are, surprise surprise, not as smart nor as hard-working as the other kids. I don't think this has anything to do with smoking the odd blunt or getting loaded or liking satire, but it does have a lot to do with what you think is funny, what your core values are. Why hire the person who blogs vicious gossip? Why hire the person who mocks the boss? Why hire the person who thinks misogyny is funny? Or that vandalism is? And I'm not saying the responsible kids aren't rebellious or critical; they're just not stupid about what they think is funny. Basically what I'm saying here is that many students are irresponsible jerks, and I think it's good to weed them out. In fact, some posters here reveal themselves to be the sort of person I would not hire. I wouldn't want people with such loser ideas about women working around any women I'd hired.

MySpace or Elsewhere

[Greyfox]

My company has a fairly involved hiring process and several of the mid-level programmers influence the hiring decision. The first thing most of us mid-level programmers do is google on a prospective candidate's name. It hasn't made any difference so far, but I would actually tend to lead toward someone who had some level of presence on the net. We're also quite aware that we could be looking at someone else's page entirely.

So far that practise hasn't turned up anything really interesting though. If any of our candidates had really perverted tendencies (Say... enjoying being spanked by a toilet-brush wielding midget while watching live goat porn...) they've kept them well hidden.

If we run across any forum posts from 10 years ago, we tend to ignore those too. Most of us want to reach back in time and bitch-slap ourselves over how clueless we were when we were just starting out.

Re:MySpace or Elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

enjoying being spanked by a toilet-brush wielding midget while watching live goat porn...

That sounds interesting ... I must try that...

Re:MySpace or Elsewhere

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

So what HAVE you found?

Re:MySpace or Elsewhere

[bladesjester]

I have an interesting situation when people look for my name on google. The first few results are my website and blog (which is linked to on my website, so there's nothing to hide there). Past that, about the only presence I have on the net are the articles I've written for the magazine (which are also referenced on my website) and my /. posts.

However, amongst the other results in google for people having my name are another software developer and an apparently former VP at Sun Microsystems. I say former because one day I decided to email the other James and the message bounced.

I try to eliminate this confusion by stating at the bottom of my resume that my website exists and it is where up to date copies of my resume live. It seems to work so far because I've had comments from interviewers about my website and/or blog and no comments about anything I didn't do online.

Insanity

[hazah]

I, for one, find this insane. For anyone thinking that this will actually give you a good idea of what that person is about in their personal lives, snap out of it. There are so many variables to concider. Don't you realize that a person can type just about anything at all on a blog?

Here's a scenario: Someone who isn't very secure in life, and is picked on a lot, comes up with an online persona that of a bully. He tells stories about how he harrasses people, mean while it is he who's being harrased.

Pictures? Ha! Have none... NONE??? of you heard of posing?

Nudity? GROW UP, PEOPLE GET NAKED. I know that generally you can't help but associate nudity with sex. That is what the american culture is about it seems. Sad really, that one cannot feel simply comfortable in their own skin without being objectified one way or another by an idiot who doesn't know better.

Re:Be careful how you try to close your accounts

[demonic-halo]

For those who haven't been following the story. What happened was some guy was trying to cancel his MySpace account because it was attracted some unwanted spam and by ignoring the account it seemed like he was ignoreing his friends.

When he tried to cancel, sending the request was easy, but the instructions they sent back was very unreasonable. Somewhere along the lines of taking a picture of yourself holding a sign saying you wanted to cancel then uploading that picture to your account, then sending another request for cancellation. So he ended up resulting to uploading porn in order to get his account deleted. It got really bad, to the point where you he was uploading granny porn and lesbian strap-on action.

What about that case of the US military guy...

[Attis_The_Bunneh]

that happened to be homosexual, and the government found out? I read in some news report that the US govt kicked him out for his myspace page stating that he was indeed homosexual. Although, the don't ask don't tell policy may apply, it's down right dirty pool to snoop that way, but not unexpected for the government... As for employers, I wouldn't be surprised that my current employer knows I'm a closetted transgendered bisexual evil Objectivist from HECK(TM)! [btw, I am all those except from HECK(TM)! :)] But, if they ever came to confront me about it, I would tell them to go suck up some air since I don't bring it to the workplace, thus it is none of their business. Yet, I can see that with the further advancement of the integration of the Internet into the larger sphere of employment, I dare say, sooner or later [probably sooner] we'll see clauses in employment contracts that state you can and will be terminated for anything you say or do off the job, specifically on the Internet, beyond anything that leads to criminal charges. As such, that's probably why I'm considering opening my own business with the premise that your life off the job is your life, not mine. Too bad, the Corporate Socialists today don't think as such. *Yes, comrade, you must be available for work even after your shift is over. Otherwise, you will be terminated!*

-- Bridget

Re:What about that case of the US military guy...

[swordgeek]

"Don't ask don't tell." Well, he told. In public. How dirty is it for the government to look up public information?

Furthermore, you have some very "creative" ideas about what socialism entails. You might want to spend some money on a dictionary.

Re:What about that case of the US military guy...

[Attis_The_Bunneh]

-------
Furthermore, you have some very "creative" ideas about what socialism entails. You might want to spend some money on a dictionary.
-------

Socialism is any method in which the State uses force to take control of production for any given purpose. Socialism didn't start with Marxist theory, as most are told in school, but rather a bit earlier with the Left [and Right] Hegelians. :) So, I don't need a dictionary when I know the theory by heart since I was formerly in favor of Socialism...

-- Bridget

First Hand Experience

[imstanny]

I can agree with that 100%. I interned at a corporate office of a Coal Mining company this year, and HR department told me to help them recruit new interns. In essense, all of the resumes filtered through me first. I facebooked all of the candidates... and it just so happened that the number one candidate for the position (with a 3.91 GPA) was part of a malicious environmentalist group on campus at my school. I can give you 2 guesses to whether or not she even got the interview, but you'll only need one.

Re:First Hand Experience

[Scudsucker]

I'm curious: what is the coal industries definition of "malicious environmentalist group"?

Re:First Hand Experience

[plasmacutter]

I'm more curious.. what is this guy's definition of a "malicious environmentalist group".

Re:First Hand Experience

[rhizome]

I can give you 2 guesses to whether or not she even got the interview, but you'll only need one.

So the lesson here is that the company is willing to forego the best candidate for politics.

Re:First Hand Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they just don't want people who are malicious environmentalists. I wouldn't want to hire one of them.

Re:First Hand Experience

[Dionysus]

I take you wouldn't have a problem hiring a neo-nazi, who spends his free time at KKK rallies as long as he's the best candidate for the job?

Re:First Hand Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone searches for my name, they'll find forum posts such as "What a fucking nigger, I hate niggers. First I thought he might have downs syndrome, but when I saw his other posts I realized he had to be a nigger like the fucking moderators. Only niggers are this retarded"

They are written by a guy with the same name as me, but who can tell the difference?

Re:First Hand Experience

[bansai665]

You're safe. I don't think anyone would hire a person named Anonymous Coward anyway.

Re:First Hand Experience

[bansai665]

So then, let's google imstanny:

imstanny's real name is Stan and he lives in NJ.
imstanny likes to kick it "at the hizzy with some fizzies"
We've found photographs of him holding a gun in a glorified stance as well as one that could be him throwing up a gang sign.
He was also found on a site called heatwire.com. Can someone in HR please look into this?
We werent able to find him on MySpace. Can someone please call the folks at MySpace and match the IP used in his email headers to a user on MySpace? I know it costs us 10 bucks, but it's worth it right?

Re:First Hand Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"So the lesson here is that the company is willing to forego the best candidate for politics."

Fucking A Rhizome!! Next thing you know, they'll start turning away otherwise qualified Muslim pilots from commercial airline positions....

Re:First Hand Experience

[imstanny]

I wish I had the website address, I don't remember it. But it's not coal industry's defination of malicious, they literally are. They were behind actual destruction of property. Also, I didn't mean to give the impression that it's so cut and dry in terms of candidates (unless it comes to drug use of course)... I can guarentee that most people I worked with did not vote for Bush.

Re:First Hand Experience

[Scudsucker]

Well, some more details would be nice so we know this person isn't just being hit by the broad brush of guilt-by-association. For example, this group the applicant was a part of might have been a large one, with some zealous members who decided industrial sabotage was more appealing than political lobbying or legal challenges. The applicant might have been a moderate member of the group opposed to such actions. This is of course all conjecture, but that's part of the problem of making business decision based on hersay found online.

Re:First Hand Experience

[MikeBabcock]

An awful lot of environmentalists are against the use of coal for power, so I'd assume just about any militant environmentalist would qualify.

Oh, you mean you don't believe there are militant environmentalists? Just like there aren't militant pro-lifers, right?

Re:First Hand Experience

[Scudsucker]

An awful lot of environmentalists are against the use of coal for power, so I'd assume just about any militant environmentalist would qualify.

To that I would then ask: so what's the coal industy's definition of "militant environmentalist"? These industires are fond of calling zealots "ecoterrorists" when the damage they cause is clearly industrial sabotage, and doesn't have anything to do with causing terror. They might think "militant environmentalist" is anyone who's ever donated money to Greenpeace and paid money to see 'An Inconvienient Truth'.

Oh, you mean you don't believe there are militant environmentalists?

So Mike, how long as it been since you've stopped beating your wife?

Re:First Hand Experience

[Afty0r]

it just so happened that the number one candidate for the position (with a 3.91 GPA) was part of a malicious environmentalist group on campus at my school. I can give you 2 guesses to whether or not she even got the interview

So did she take part in the property-damaging actions you mentioned in a grandchild post or was just a member in name? Did she join it in her first semester, realise her mistake and leave shortly after, or was she a member for several years? Did she just join the organisation because she had a crush on a boy who was part of it? There are a million questions you might ask her to ascertain whether or not this could be an issue for her in employment at her organisation, but you would only be able to ask them at an interview

Re:First Hand Experience

[MikeBabcock]

Industrial sabotage often is terrorism to those working at the locations involved, and to their families and friends. These are real people like you and I you realize.

Secondly, your final statement could be subject to libel. Retract it.

Re:First Hand Experience

[Scudsucker]

Industrial sabotage often is terrorism to those working at the locations involved

When. Your rabbid environmentalist isn't going to engage in industrial sabotage during work hours, where a bunch of beefy rednecks with crowbars can give chase. He's going to do it at 3am on a Sunday morning when nobody's working.

Secondly, your final statement could be subject to libel. Retract it.

O---- the point

O---- your head

O---- my balls you can suck on, you dumb bastard

Employing the Wierd and Creative

[MacroMegaMan]

I am an employer. I hire creative and skilled people to develop software for me (games, accounting packages, robotics, etc). I don't care that in their off hours, they post nude pictures of themselves in latex and/or body paint. In fact for me, those kind of erratic, purely creative behaviors set them apart from the crowd, and let me know what kinds of ingenuity they can apply to problems. I want to see how they solve problems in real life, as well as a work environment. It tells me more about their character than a plain white-paper resume will ever reveal. If other employers pas these people up, so much the better for me. I'll hire them, build a great team, and my competition will never see know what hit them..

That said, I do draw the line at doing drugs and other illegal behavior. That stuff ruins lives, and inevitably bleeds over into work.

Bring me the creative, motivated, and the weird any day!

Re:Employing the Wierd and Creative

[Anonymous Coward]

What if it's a software developer that does fetish modeling and acts in burlesque shows in the weekends?

Well, she stopped doing the shows, and now limits het modeling to fashion. Because she felt pressure from her colleagues and bosses about her activities. Her pictures, the most important feature of her personal site have disappeared behind a web of links. Not Myspace, though, she's on LiveJournal and has a website.

Question about "educational" blogs

[Anonymous Coward]

To start, I have no blog setup. I am planning to set one up.

I'm a social science student and will be graduating next year. Since there were no co-op positions in my program at the time I applied, its been really difficult getting anything in the way of work placements. Since I'm about to graduate (as opposed to a first or second year student), I think I have enough of a breadth and grasp of the material at hand to make a blog commenting on different trends, etc. A reason that many of us sign up for this degree is to find a way to understand and comment on social issues. This, I think, would make a blog really handy to demonstrate my abilities.

I'd like some feedback on this though from others. The comments I intend to make are not ignorant, disgraceful or insulting to others. However, I have a feeling that if my arguments are the opposite of the HR person's opinion (though my views might be shared or even expressed by employees of the organization), I would think this might limit my abilities to find employment.

I would consider posting under a pseudonym or using only my first name but this limits to copyright my posts.

Any suggestions? Should I pursue the idea or let it go?

The generation gap

[Infonaut]

I'm in my late 30s. I've been on the Internet for twelve or thirteen years, and I'm usually pretty aware of major Web trends. I've been using LinkedIn for some time, and while I don't find it earthshatteringly useful, from time to time I invite people into my LinkedIn network.

Just a couple of days ago, I invited one of my law school classmates, who is in his mid-20s. He jokingly replied to the invitation email, "What, you're too good for Facebook and MySpace?" He had never even heard of LinkedIn. By the same token, I had never even heard of MySpace or Facebook until the first Slashdot stories about them started appearing.

I thought about it some more, and realized that for me the Internet arrived after I had graduated from college. For most of my life to date, the Internet was not part of my existence. Someone in their mid-20s has likely been using the Internet since their teenage years or before. I wonder if in some sense this sort of juvenile behavior on the Net will be regarded in the future the way marijuana use and protesting in college was after the 1960s. Subsequent generations might not get a free pass, but this particular generation, because of its size alone, may. Employers, particularly in businesses where computer skills and creativity are required, may simply choose to gloss over or not inquire too deeply into someone's MySpace/Facebook past.

If history is any indicator, however, the subsequent generation will find the atmosphere much different, and they may be trained from an early age to mind their Ps and Qs on the Net.

That's not why

[SuperKendall]

I've always view these types of things as great filters, removing the people from my life that I would not want to associate with anyway. Don't like me because I'm funny/had purple hair when I was younger/listen to Dream Theater/love Sushi/am left handed/have OMG, political views/get drunk once in a while/whatever? Oh well, have a nice life.

I don't really care about purple hair, Dream Theater, political views (everyone I've ever worked with had wildly divergent political views across the group).

No, the thing that made me think I'd rather not work with you was the end - "have a nice life" (with implied "asshole" tacked on). You see, I really find it cool to have diverse opinions in a group. Wht I don't find cool are people who are in your face about it all the time - like "I have purple hair, got a problem with that?" Just because you've had problems in the past with people harassing you don't asume I'm one of them!

And yes I've worked with people who had every attribute you mentioned (including wild hair) and were never annoying about it, and perfectly fine to work with.

In any group start by assuming that your group actually likes you and only act if they (or individual members) show they don't.

Re:That's not why

[Sj0]

Considering that this thread is about a certain thing -- employers who specifically DO have a problem with that, I don't think it's a terrible thing to say.

Pilots have rights too!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a pilot I object to your discrimination. If I'm not flying then I have the right to do whatever I want. I am most confident that the autopilot can manage just fine without me if I'm wasted and/or coked out. It's people like you that are ruining this country for the rest of us.

Anonymous Coward? --> check!

Track me now Northwest, you'll never guess that pilot #4122 posted this, suckers!

I yawn.

[shnot]

The internet, and Myspace in particular, has never been a place that's considered to be 100% private and anonymous...even less so when you're putting information and images directly involving your personal life on a web site that's as popular as Myspace is. I think Myspace is fantastic. If some jerkass is going to put nothing but pictures of his beerbong/kegstand adventures on his Myspace and then make posts about that kinda stuff, I wouldn't hire him if I saw his Myspace. It's a fantastic way to see a persons character when you're considering them for employment. If you don't know how to make your own web site, do NOT expect privacy on Myspace or any other site like it. I just don't know how or why this is news...we get it. Employers use the internet just like everyone else. NEXT.

How can they be sure it is the same individual?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do employers know the person submitting the resume and the person with a myspace account are the same individual? Are these fools actually including links to their myspace accounts in the resume???

Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, etc..

[The Asmodeus]

People need to realize that the internet is a public forum. IANAL but management training I've been at had the opinion that posting something publicly is the same as volunteering information in an interview. And just because an employer can't ask something doesn't mean that they can't use it as a factor in hiring you or not.

Even if they can't, like posting you're gay for instance, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. People are a slave to their preferences and if a person doesn't like gays, you're less likely to get the job.

Also people need to realize that if you post it on the internet, it may forever be unretractable. Think that picture is gone just because you deleted it from Photobucket? Think again. It may be on the next CD of 2,000+ images of college girls gone wild. Same goes for your friends posting photos/stories of you. It may be gone for years. Then surface when you run for public office.

People have to realize that hiring someone is difficult. I Google people before offering every time as resumes and interviews can only go so far. MTF, since we do internet work, if I DON'T find any trace of someone online that will set of red flags.

Re:Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, etc..

[TeddyR]

Perfect example is of the great google....

Before the google usenet archives, most people thought that something posted on usenet had a maximum lifespan of maybe 2-3 years at most since by then the nntp spool would have reclaimed the space for more data.

That was until google managed to get a hold of old backup tapes of usenet servers and dump all the data into what is now their google groups archives.

Mod parent up

[themusicgod1]

In the UK (and possibly elsewhere) a bigger bar to getting a job can be incorrect information in the Police Criminal Records Database (errors in up to 10% of records they say) as personel departments trust this kind of information more than a search on Google.

This is not a problem local to the UK. Inaccuracies of police and government records are a much much more serious problem then anything your prospective employer can potentially find about you online (unless you're really fucked up). David Burnham's Rise of the Computer State goes into great detail on this topic for those who are curious.

I'm sold

[themusicgod1]

a) is this school in english?
b) what is his website/contact info?

Do you *really* want to work for that company?

[Coleco]

It seems these days that HR people are more concerned with trivial bullshit then what really matters when hiring someone: the ability to do the job well. Some people that I know from university that took lots of drugs and got in trouble with the law also happened to be brilliant and got extremely good grades. As it happens they mostly moved on to advanced degrees in research in acadamia where eccentricity is more accepted.

I mean I look at companies like Microsoft where the employees are expected to stay under the yoke of corporate oppression and what so I see? An environment where everyone is so desparate to do what they are told and not be noticed that they no longer able to ship a product. Why? Because when something goes wrong no one wants to take responsibility. It's easier to pretend that nothing is wrong. To quote Bill Hicks: since when was benality and mediocrity a good thing?

On the hand I understand that people treat myspace/livejournal as anonymous and it's not. I'd say that's a caveat to everyone. People say shit on the net they'd never say to someone's face.

On the other hand, to be quite honest, I don't want to work for a company that's that desparate to pry into my personal life because it's obvious to me that company has lost vision and direction. If they want mindless widget tighteners then they can look elsewhere.

Story from a Church

[Anonymous Coward]

One young woman was recently hired at a local church to work in Chrildren's Ministries. One of her fellow employees did some checking on MySpace and found plenty of pictures of her boozin' it up at parties. Her supervisor had a little chit-chat with her and the photos promptly disappeared.

This is true.

[man_ls]

I own several web presences, all of which I post a variety of personal information on.

My linked web site here, Trendyblog for instance, has my name, picture, and political opinions as well as music tastes stamped all over it.

My personal journal type site, has a variety of personal things posted on it, nothing too risque but it goes into detail about my interpersonal interactions. I also tend to name names in this one, including that of my employer. Most postings on it, however, are set up to be visible to my friends only, for what protection that's worth.

My MySpace is virtually devoid of all content; a half-dozen pictures of me in various places, a paragraph autobiography, and the 8-question demographic survey. And a handful of tame friends who don't have anything else.

For my Facebook, which I have networked to my employer, geographic area, and school, I have around 100+ photographs posted; all of them are configured to be visible to friends only. Not the whole network; not friends-of-friends, just people I've picked out as willing to network with. Of course, this only works if you're picky about who you associate with (as I am, online and in real life) so anyone who clicks "Yes" to any request for anything, and has 900 friends on Facebook, gets very little real protection from this, as opposed to someone like me who only adds people he knows in real life and has talked to in person.

It's not perfect -- I do talk about my work (on Trendyblog, anonymously with all identifying information removed; on my journal, I say names) and I talk about and photodocument my time off -- some of which is "non HR friendly" to say the least. But, I've taken steps to protect myself, and anything that gets through -- well, I probably deserved it, for putting it out there in the first place.

It's a risk I'm knowingly taking, that I might have people I don't want to read it do so. I've weighed it against the risk of not putting it out there at all for my friends, and the risk won.

If stalking on the Internet is okay, then so is

[Catbeller]

If stalking on the Internet is okay, then so is stalking in real life. If they can, without cause other than curiosity, check what you've ever said to anybody (remember, the datamining the NSA et al are devising are done by private entities, who have no reason not to sell the information to anyone who wishes to pay), see who you've talking to (a DailyKos reader, eh? Commie. Not our type of people), see what porn you like, check to see if you're easy to talk into bed -- not all filtering is to block bad immoral types -- some of it will be to find a hot chick employee who gives it up. The possibilities are endless.

Henry Ford used to hire private investigators to follow his employees around to check on their moral fiber. No doubt hornier employers used PI's to find blackmail fodder against female employees. And male, too.

There's no business reason to spy on people. We've gotten along for thousands of years with employers being in the dark, and they can damned stay that way. There are however an infinite number of evil reasons to spy on people.

I wonder how many politicians and businessmen will let their private lives be monitored by their employess. After all, politiicians are public employees, and therefore subject to monitoring. And businessmen are entrusted with corporate licenses, granted by the public through the government, and so therefore should be watched closely, with publically available records datamined from all possible sources, including sex lives and phone conversations.

This is hell on earth. And not many people give a damn.

Not going back in the closet for anyone...

[David's Boy Toy]

My personal life is pretty wild, better than most porn movies. If someone does enough searching they may discover this. However it has nothing to do with my ability to do my job. If anything they'd discover that I take a great deal of care to keep sex safe, turning down some damn hot guys because they are speed freaks or won't play safe. Same attitude I have at work, I put in alot of effort to keep my code bug free...

Don't share with EACH OTHER!!!

[jellybear]

Give your information to credit card companies, big corporations and the government! They will keep your info safe! Don't share information with each other! No no no no no! If everyone had information, no one would have special power!

what about wall st during the 80s?

[Anonymous Coward]

enough cocaine to fund a third-world war, more whips and leather than the middle ages, and so on... but there they were, high-up executives and stockbrokers alike, raking in the money. if only they'd had myspace...

(oh, and myspace/friendster/facebook profiles can be set to private)

Corrections

[Flying pig]

In the interests of archival accuracy, even on /., a correction is needed

Listening to the original, we could never be sure whether it was "drink you under the table" or "think you under the table", which is cleverer.

It's Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL

and SCHLEGEL

There is no Z in Nietsche.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for a bottle

? (can someone supply this one?) was fond of a dram

In philosophy, even cod philosophy, accuracy is essential.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann darüber muß man schweigen.

Re:Corrections

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Z in Nietsche.

I'm only correcting you because you're a spelling nazi. There's nothing worse than a self-righteous jerk who can't even get it right.

Friedrich Nietzsche.

Of course, the OP didn't spell it right either.

Creative Commons

[themusicgod1]

need for worrying about copyright stuff

this sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate that they do this. There's a guy with the same name as me who posts lots of racist comments of several discussion forums. Not nice to be associated with.

Warning: title is misleading!

[Anonymous Coward]

The title should say "More Warnings Against Stupidity Oversharing on MySpace."

Slashdot??

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they mention using slashdot?
NO.
You mean I can stop posting as AC.
Yes
Great...

So then...

[bansai665]

If my name were Bob Jones how would they know which Bob Jones was me on Google or MySpace?

Seriously, there are two others with my exact name on the Internet. One is a travel agent who apparently has a bad reputation for ripping people off. How could a prospective employer discern which person is me and draw a proper conclusion?

Isn't this merely another form of discrimination anyway? I don't care if my employees post photos of their private parts on the web, that's their business. They come to work, they work well and they go home.

At the same time, is it not possible that these employers are keeping tabs on their employee's personal life during the course of their employment terms? That's simply despicable if you ask me.

Of course, we should all be using false names on the Internet anyway. Haven't people learned anything?

It works both ways...

[mi]

Yes, indeed. This can work both ways. A potential employer may look at your profile and figure: "I like this guy/gal!". May improve someone's chances, even if they were too nervous on the interview, or something.

How about it.

[JKConsult]

I recently returned to school to finish my degree. I have a Facebook profile, but it's mainly for searching purposes (there's very little on there.) I did wonder, for internship purposes, what would show up in a Google search for my name, which I haven't done in a few years. I stumbled across some Answer.com pages where they posted the credits from two games I worked tangentially on.

Now all those people who doubt me when I tell them I worked for a game design company will pay! (Of course, now they'll know that those games were Rugrats and Rocket Power titles instead of just "Really cool stuff, but you wouldn't have heard of it", but still.)

Thanks, but...

[Descalzo]

I went to http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeo/overview_practices.ht ml and looked, and saw nothing that might forbid an employer from looking up your myspace account.

I saw protections of race, gender, color, etc., and also pregnancy. Could you point me in the right direction?

search is getting easier and easier everyday

[nitromatt]

'Google' is an everyday word the article is right-on, just google your name; Does anything come up? That is a great, quick first check, but then of course there's the blogs and other social networking sites that the article lists.
Anything you put on the Internet today is pretty much free for anyone to 'grab.' You need to be careful of what you put on there.

I also want to take this time to say hello to any company out there who is reviewing this message.

N00Bs!!

[Anonymous Coward]

N00Bs!!

Just DOS the human resources grunt

[patio11]

He's not going to go through fourty-five pages of Google results to find the juicy stuff. Just make a habit of commenting on a lot of non-controversial stuff ("While Zonk says video game X is the best thing since sliced bread, I would have to recommend "peanut butter" for that title"). I'm sure in 10 years of Internet use I've probably said 15 things which, seen in isolation, would torpedo my chances at Hypothetical Prospective Employer X. But you can't Google them by "things that would make me not hire Patio11 *I'm feeling lucky*". Yet, anyhow.

Analogy

[Stormy Dragon]

Facebook, Myspace, Livejournal, etc. users seem to have become the internet equivalent of people who pick their noses in their cars on the highway.

Believe it or not, we CAN still see you people in there.

Beware the on-campus checking as well..

[fkedupmonkey]

Though this is only relevant to high schoolers and college students, on-campus organizations also frequently use facebook profiles to determine if a particular student will get a job or award. I was a senior last year and actually received a lecture from an organization advisor about making sure our facebook profiles weren't obscene. I knew exactly what he was talking about, as I'd just recently finished interviewing candidates for an Executive Board, and of course we facebooked them. We were curious to know how they interacted with others, what they were interested in, etc. Facebook wasn't the sole decider, but it provided another view. People will use whatever resources they can to help them decide who's going to be on their team, provided its within the confines of the law to do so (and college orgs arent subjected to hiring laws). University committees also use facebook profiles to decide award/scholarship recipients, and admission staffs use facebook to decide who's coming to a university. Also, technical note - facebook profiles are generally hard to fake as they're linked to a person's official university account, which is visible in their profile. Facebook profiles may not provide a comprehensive view of a person, but an interview doesn't necessarily do so either.

These people don't use these sites

[ClamIAm]

I really doubt some of these people have ever gone into the settings available on these sites. I stay far, far, away from Myspace, so I can't comment on that, but Facebook is pretty "secure".

If one wanted to share drunken pictures with select people, it's possible. You can disallow anonymous people from viewing your photos. You can disallow friends from viewing certain parts of your profile, by putting them in a "limited access" quarantine. It's probably called something different, but that's effectively what it is.

You can also disassociate yourself with any photo you wish, although this has drawbacks. A potential employer could look through your friends' photos, brute-forcing the issue.

I realize all of these things are superceded by either A) not caring, or B) getting off social websites, but that's not my point. My point is that the arguments used by these fearmongering articles are easily shot down, once you look at the reality of limited access tool available. When used effectively, they put "incriminating" stuff in the hands of people you trust.

Take it one step further...

[Anonymous Coward]

You ever imagine that 30 or 40 years from, details of the mySpace pages Presidential Candidates will surface. We'll have one candidate who was a Goth and the other will have videos of him imitating stunts he saw on Jackass.

It could happen. Pardon my tinfoil-hat thinking here, but mySpace is owned by the same company as FOX News. If they're still around by then, and still hold their Right-Wing tilt... don't be surprised if they let slip of the details of the Left-Wing candidate. Forces on the left would retaliate by trying to dig details of what the other guy was doing in his teenage years.

So the question becomes... who would you vote for? The Ex-Goth, or the Jackass imitator? Maybe the third party candidate who used to be a Slashdot troll?

Higher Google ranking than employer

[dawnzer]

I have my employment history on my MySpace page, and for awhile, I had a higher ranking in Google than my current and last employer when conducting a search for the company name. Although my page is totally not work related, I don't think it would be a big deal if a future employer saw it. It shows I have a life (if you can call playing on the internet a life). Unfortunately, I have also received msgs from headhunters on MySpace. Those people are relentless!

What of Terms of Service?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You make a good point, but I hope somebody here knows enough to clarify the situation with employers violating the sites' terms of service.

For instance, I know a college girl who recently got chewed out by her boss and threatened to fire her for something (not about work) she posted on FaceBook. Her boss is way out of College, and claimed to have been on FaceBook himself. As far as I understand it, he's not allowed on FaceBook. He told her there's an exception for employers, which sounded like super-bogus bullshit to me. My guess is he has a keylogger on a machine at work which employees are allowed to use for personal use during breaks/lunch.

Anybody know how this kind of situation is falling out? I realize it's a new problem and probably not well-defined but to me it feels like he's at least being a scumbag if not doing something illegal.

Re:response from "some chatty fool"

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a workplace where I am actually trying to accomplish something ...

I am so sorry for interrupting your "slashdot time" with my "personal life". I just thought it would be good for you to interact with another human face to face. I was only trying to help you. But if +5 insightful is more important to you, then I guess I'll leave you be. But don't be telling your little online friends that it is my conversations keeping you from finishing work, you little computer hermit. You're just lucky I don't tell our manager...

The Ghost of Usenet Postings Past

[Matt Perry]

This reminds me of a Dr. Fun cartoon.

Re:It's as much the employer's loss here - HARDLY

[Anonymous Coward]

I do check myspace as well as a few others and do a basic Google search.

I don't care about how "vapid" their social life is but I have seen lots of stuff on Myspace that has turned me off from a potential employee.

1. Candidate said they were currently employed on resume and cover letter. Myspace blog said that they had just be fired.
2. Candidate asked to reschedule interview due to family emergency. Myspace blog showed that personal emergency was ski trip to Tahoe with friends.
3. Current employee started being late to work frequently. Checked her Myspace account and found pics and comments about late nights out at the bars.

Myspace has been a great tool for our hiring process.

You can email me at SFNet@hotmail.com

It Should be Moot

[Anonymous Coward]

What a lot of people fail to realize is that whether or not it's public information has no effect on if it happens. Many of our current pilots, stock brokers, doctors, etc. went to college and partied, and just because it didn't show up on facebook doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Access to someone's myspace profile should not have an effect on a potential job. Companies already have hiring practices consisting of resumes, interviews, and references, and there is no need to go beyond that if it has served you well in the past.

As an additional example, consider two individuals who both have the same qualifications and such. They are equally fit for a job. However, if one keeps a tidy facebook and the other doesn't feel the need to get rid of the risque pictures, why should the first get the job? That is asanine.

My point is they do not

[SuperKendall]

Considering that this thread is about a certain thing -- employers who specifically DO have a problem with that, I don't think it's a terrible thing to say.

You only think they do because you are obnoxious (not you personally, but in the abstract).

People put up with a lot of wierd stuff at work as long as someone is pleasant to work with. If they can tell upfront someone is going to be antagonistic they'll not hire them no matter how they look.

Re:My point is they do not

[Sj0]

To be honest, considering some of the mind games I've seen HR play over the years, I don't see any reason not to believe they'd pull something like this.

That said, the most incriminating thing on my own blog is that I'm very angry with my mother, but I still love her -- and that's pseudonymous.

I'm not really worried about MySpace

[Slaughter'em]

I'm more worried that my boss might have an account on my favorite innerweb forum site . . .

Hey, maybe that's why it's blocked from work now.

Hmmmmmmm.

Well yeah, HR...

[SuperKendall]

To be honest, considering some of the mind games I've seen HR play over the years, I don't see any reason not to believe they'd pull something like this.

Yes but a number of people I've know in HR were pretty much off thier rockers so I'd treat them as an exception. I'm talking about co-workers. Especailly tech co-workers, who are tolerant (and indeed even embracing) of quite a lot.

Profilescreener sends businesses profile reports

[pubeach]

Whats crazy is that now businesses don't even have to search the social netwroks themselves. This company, www.Profilescreener.com, does it for them. Privacy!!??? Dang it!