Don’t blog about work
Michael Hanscom began keeping an online journal, commonly known as a weblog, several years ago. He started his job as a contract worker in Microsoft’s print shop last year. Last week, he mixed the two.
This week, he’s looking for a new job, after becoming an unwilling case study in the fine line walked by corporate employees who write about work in their personal weblogs.
It all started when Hanscom noticed something interesting on the loading dock on his way into work a week ago — three pallets of shiny new Apple Power Mac G5 computers, clearly destined for somewhere on the company’s Redmond campus.
My advice for bloggers:
Blog anonymously (or at least with a psuedonym). You never know when a coworker will find your site and take offense to it. Or you may run for office someday and have said something stupid on your site a while back. Or you may get get put on someone’s blacklist.
Don’t blog work or personal things without changing names.
Don’t say stupid stuff. Do as I say, not as I do.
October 30th, 2003 at 11:47 am
Great. Now you tell me!
October 30th, 2003 at 12:09 pm
That’s good advice but I believe signing your name lends (some) credibility to what you have to say. Yes of course there are some great annony bloggers out there so this isn’t a universal truth or anything but …. It does take guts to use your real name when writing opinions online, especially when tackling controversial issues.
I have thought about this subject often. Early on I made the decision that I would never say anything on my forum or Blog that I wouldn’t say to my grandmother or openly at my place of work. That has worked pretty well for me but I still get surprised from time to time about the perception that many people have of me before they actually meet me. I always get a variation of this “Your not the right wing wacko I thought you was.”
Funny that you bring up the political thing because I happen to be running for office right now and have often wondered about my how my frequently stated stances on the 1st and 2nd Amendment go over among the potential voters in the area I live.
Sure a huge percentage of those potential voters have never read what I say online but they could. It’s out there for everyone to see.
One person did tell me that they would not vote for me because of a stance I took online. I think they were more miffed that I wouldn’t back down and continued to stand by my words then there were about what I actually said. Anyway I seen your topic and just wanted to chime in about it.
Buck Hicks
October 30th, 2003 at 12:17 pm
I left my previous job in June. For reasons of my own privacy (and the fact that I hate hearing people gripe about their jobs…and if I talked, I griped), I just didn’t talk about my job, or the people I worked with.
But in one of my comments, a friend of mine made a comment, and without thinking about it, I asked if it was a crack about working at ____. And I said a couple of other disparaging remarks. So I did mention my job a couple of times.
Like I said, I left that job (for my sanity). I got an e-mail from one of my friends at the big office, who didn’t know I’d had a blog until after I’d left.
She said simply, it’s a good thing I didn’t mention my blog to anybody. Because she had. And a couple of people read it, and didn’t care much for either my humor and a couple of things I’d said, however vague, about my work (and possibly both those things).
She said my writing could have been easily construed as talking about the workings of the company to outsiders, which was a violation of the media/privacy agreement I’d signed.
I could have come in one morning, and been dismissed. Because once or twice I have used my real name here on the blog (generally along with one of my fictional works).
Granted, the company I worked for (which I still won’t mention) seemed to think its internal workings were a little more interesting to everybody else than they actually were…but that’s neither here nor there. I’d have been in the wrong.
I guess my advice, in addition to Say Uncle’s, is to look at all the things you’ve signed when you started to work someplace. A lot of places have similar media/P.R. rules, where only certain employees are allowed to publicly comment on the workings of a company.
October 30th, 2003 at 4:45 pm
Hatamaran keeps me honest. I see her every day across the hall from me…
October 30th, 2003 at 5:44 pm
I’ve rarely blogged on the personal stuff, and never on family or work because they might read it. I have a tendency to bluntness that, in print, can come off pretty badly (something I finally learned in real life).
October 30th, 2003 at 5:44 pm
I’ve rarely blogged on the personal stuff, and never on family or work because they might read it. I have a tendency to bluntness that, in print, can come off pretty badly (something I finally learned in real life).