Blogger beware!

The French do that. I am sure that would never happen in the UK, would it?...Would it?

Catherine

Anyone who has published in a journal/mag/book can expect their writings to follow them these days. Now that publishers are putting their product on the web the record will extend many more years than the teen blogs of Myspace etc.

All the best

Far be it for an employer to judge you on your own words.

berdo

Well said, of course you mean an employer should judge you on your work and nothing more, and that your life outside the confines of your forfilling your obligations to your employer is your own and not your employers to judge.

Glad you say so, excellent, because these days there are those who would be happy to see so much personal liberty removed, and frankly Im geting a bit sick of them. Good to see your on the right track!

I take Berdo and Lester's point on board with the caveat that very very few of us work in isolation. Jobs require us to get along with our colleagues and direct managers.

Castigating either group in a blog, even if done outside of working hours, isn't constructive, and in either instance (as an employer) I would be inclined to fire you, were your remarks to make it back to the working environment.

By all means employees are free to have a life, any sort of life, outside of the office or factory or shop or whatever, (assuming they have the time hoho) but if they bring the topic of their work up, they should surely expect their employer to have a vested interest in what they say, and some comeback too.

@LesterJones

That tickled me :)

It is a bit disturbing though; a digital ghost in the closet just waiting to be found by anyone with a nose for being nosy. We can assume that there are at least a few business managers and employers who have blogs etc, and that they also expect their digital foot print to be analyzed by other employers? I suppose that all you can do is stand by what you say.

I was rather tickled by that. I keep several blogs, none very anonymous, and even link to my ex employer who I do lampoon a bit. But then I am always keen to find ever more reasons to not apply for any jobs.

Being freelance, it's actually worked in my favour to have a slightly suspect blog that talks about sex and drugs and other comedy mishaps, mostly because it filters out the people I wouldn't want to work for anyway. That said, it did bother me a little bit for a while when the first link to my name on google was to a story about taking khat in South Africa.

Still, we live and learn. On the same trip, a South African stranger came up to me and told me he read my blog. I guess it works both ways.

I'd be more likely to fire someone for having a blog with photos of kittens in it, anyway.

That ex-boss didn't deserve you, Catherine. Hope your book goes great.

== Donuts :

of course employers have a right to get upset if they are being discussed - whether with your mate in a bar or in front of 1,000s on internet - if these employers are specified and identifyable. Just as employees can get rather upset if they find that their characteristics are being discussed by their employers when talking in the club or in their association. However, Catherine Sanderson did make the point that she wrote anonymously, hence the company was not identified by her. She was outed by friends (with friends like this who needs enemies) and a paper, but the fact that the company took umbrage says more about the company than the blogger. And if she finds herself rejected by companies because of what she wrote, who knows that prospective employees or customers will not reject the company because of the way they treat their employees? It cuts both ways. Of course, if there is a shortage of jobs, the company wins, but sometimes there is a shortage of skills, in which a company that behaves badly loses out. Perhaps, if the company took umbrage it was because the description of how they treated their staff is not something they are necessarily proud of.

Like zombiecoterie, I find that my blog brings in job offers, not puts people off.

TimWorstall,

Has Polly Toynbee been asking you to tutor her kids in quantitative methods?

Nice one, Lester Jones.

Donuts
'I take Berdo and Lester's point on board with the caveat that very very few of us work in isolation. Jobs require us to get along with our colleagues and direct managers.'

Before allowing such points to board HMS donuts, perhaps you should check to see whether either is tainted by irony.

I can safely assume, I think, that you have some sort of managerial position, in which case I'm sure your employees are suitably grateful for your agreement to their having 'any sort of life, outside of the office or factory or shop or whatever'.

For what it's worth, I think you all steal far too much of our valuable time already.

Ps. Hope it's your time I'm writing this on...

Hi JanFrank.

The critical line in my comment was '[I'd fire you] were your remarks to make it back to the working environment'.

Provided somebody is pseudonymous (is that right?) and everybody mentioned in the blog is treated similarly, then no probs from me.

Frankly, there is a Darwin-Award-like natural selection process going on here. If you are thick enough to get caught, you are too thick to be employed wherever you were working! [No Offence, Catherine]

Self selection at its finest!

All the names in the above have been changed and bear no relation to any persons living or dead.

"Like zombiecoterie, I find that my blog brings in job offers, not puts people off."

:**(

Its content, innit? If you keep a blog regarding your hobby of classic car restoration which is full of nerd like advice and information for other petrolheads, then any passing references to your job are probably going to be seen as benign by an employer. If, however, your blog is gossip orientated then your employer may well have a right to feel nervous. It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes on the petite anglaise blog to find that she seperated with the father of her child due to an infidelity she commited with somebody she met through blogging. So... personal information about morally dubious behaviour in the real world commited because of her blog posted on the internet. I'm not saying she should have been fired, but if I was her employer I'd be concerned about what else she might be interested in posting.

Girl with a one track mind also got outed recently, which could lead to a lot of people that she wrote about in a deeply personal way being identified. Being anonymous isn't good enough because, as we've seen, identity has a way of being revealed. Gossip overheard has often got people into trouble, gossip posted where anyone can see.......what do you expect to happen?

sealion - you're absolutely right. Bet she wears a short skirt too...

I'd love to know what the ex of petite anglaise thinks of it all ;-)

So what's the problem with people being held responsible for what they write? If you did it in the regular press you'd have to be careful about having a dig at someone so why should online be any different?

@TimWorstall

'I find that my blog brings in job offers, not puts people off.'

I find that my website brings in death threats and incessant references to me being a complete and utter lady garden. Or an over indulger in the solitary act.

tuppenceworth - 'If you did it in the regular press you'd have to be careful about having a dig at someone..'

Not sure your point's valid in this case. Newspapers are full of fairly strident criticism of S. McClaren and the FA at the moment. Before him they had, for example' Jade Goody.
If I find my boss incompetent, arrogant or in any other way lacking, why should I not be free to do so? After all, mine didn't mind writing 'lacks enthusiasm' on my yearly assessment.

I am self employed Catherine, so I don't give a toss,but I can well imagine what it must be like for a Blogger to feel the hot breath of the Boss breathing down your neck. Work for yourself girl:it's the only way to fly.

I'm self-employed and not likely to fire myself for my on-line writings, some "signed" with an abbreviated form of my actual present name, others using the name of illustrious predecessor selves. (The vast majority of my predecessor selves are completely obscure and many are illiterate; if a very few of them are known writers found in our history books, why not use the Internet to give them voice, using experimental processes and techniques? Whether there is any validity to this beyond my own intuitive sense of things doesn't matter; the creation itself is its own reward -- I find doing this fun, in other words.)

My clients could terminate my services after viewing some of this, I suppose, particularly as such activities can be easily seen as bordering on lunacy, but then I believe it's safe to characterize these as a particular form of creative writing.

The truth is stranger, very complex, frequently difficult to believe, and nearly impossible to prove.

Here is an area wherein facts -- as in "facts are sacred" -- are exceedingly difficult to come by.

Bill I.

http://www.realitytest.com/see.htm

I'm retired. I don't give a toss either.

martillo - by press, I of course mean media. I don't have a problem with any one expressing their opinion, just don't be surprised if they take offence or even ask you to clarify what you mean.

For instance, how many times have people sued over deflamatory comments in newspapers.

Slag off your job/boss, who cares - just accept that if you say something contentious and they happen to read it, you might be asked to explain yourself....for instance, if you asked your boss to explain "lacks enthusiasm", I'm fairly sure he/she could probably do so.

I agree with Sealion, if you're going to post something into a public space then you need to understand that it can be read well into the past; if, as we do, claim free speech as a right, then does it follow that an individual may be penalized for exercising what that right? I suppose its the nature of the internet, new technology testing society's self awareness, to present both freedoms and pitfalls simultaneously. If employers began to press the idea that they could control what their employees do on or with the internet, then that would be a different matter all together, and something to be fought against tooth and nail. We'll have to wait and see which way the wind blows.

tuppenceworth - I already asked. It seems that 'lacks enthusiasm' is US managementspeak for 'thinks his working hours should have some relationship to those mentioned in his contract'. I also refused to join in the singing of 'I feel good (daa da da da da da da' at the beginning of each working day. You can't say that's fair, can you?

After reading this article about blogging and prospective employers looking up your name online I have just looked up my (slightly uncommon) name on google and discovered postings from someone with the same name and a hotmail account on a nigerian website, a football website and a couple of other miscellaneous sites.
Unfortunately (it now seems) I was listed legitimately on a number of websites as the editor of a book from several years ago. I now wonder whether this might be the reason someone could appropriate my name online and make up fake email accounts etc. Suddenly the ramifications are even more scary?

People should probably be aware that it's not just what you write but when and where. What boards you post on and whether you're posting regulalry during normal working hours.

A wonder if we'd all feel the same if Catherine were writing a far right facist blog castigating her black colleagues?

I'm not sure; afterall, does abuse exist if the victim doesn't hear it?

Ooo moral nightmare...

Well I'd fire the bloody lot of you!

Except donuts. I'd eat you.

berdo is my boss. He likes being spanked with rhubarb and I'm using a false name. Ha!

I just have to ask - all of you who are stating people should be free to do as they wish in their own time wouldn't be the same happy little band who wanted a ballerina sacking for belonging to the BNP? You'd all be happy if your nanny was an active member of that party? And if not, why not - her (his) own free time, her own life? Or would that be different?

Oooooh Martillo you're on double rhubarb duty when I find out who you are.

berdo ok, I want a rise. I'm Watkinson from accounts.

Should have known. It's always the quiet ones.

All you Guardian writers and posters better keep in mind that what you say here is going to be analysed when you apply for jobs at Halliburton.

As if we weren't paranoid enough with the NSA listening in to phone calls and trawling through everything written on the net, we now have to worry about employers! While the net seemed to open up the world, it is compressing on itself. What a very small world we live in now! Will I stop speaking my mind because of it. Eef no! :-)

RogerInTheUSA,

LOL, That was a good one.

Work for a large, faceless company where your immediate superiors are illiterate, incurious, dullards, whose only interests are well covered by both Take a Break and a donut. Then you can slag them all off in your blog knowing they'll never read it and report you.

Having a shit job helps too, it means less people care what you think.

If I did have a good job that I wanted to keep, I might refrain from blogging about nonsense at work.

If all else fails remember that IT guys are always pretty sex-starved.

Work for a large, faceless company where your immediate superiors are illiterate, incurious, dullards, whose only interests are well covered by both Take a Break and a donut. Then you can slag them all off in your blog knowing they'll never read it and report you.

Having a shit job helps too, it means less people care what you think.

If I did have a good job that I wanted to keep, I might refrain from blogging about nonsense at work.

If all else fails remember that IT guys are always pretty sex-starved.

Everything you post on the internet has the potential of coming back to you fifty years from now. Anonymity is very much an illusion; happily (hopefully) no one would give a damn what I write, but I'd never put diary-like stuff on-line. Not that I ever do anything interesting or illegal but the problem is, that information is too easy to copy these days, so maybe 'they' would keep my stuff anyway just for completeness sake.

Never mind Halliburton, but now - in Denmark - the ISP has to keep the IP-addresses of all internet activities for two years, just in case the police would need to establish incontrovertible proof of my connections to Al Qaeda. Today it takes a court order to release that information, but I'm confident that in a couple of years our Leaders would find it much safer if the police had direct access to the ISPs' servers. The idea has already been aired in parliament, but I gather it was not technologically feasible. Yet.

ErikD,

If you are outed as an al-qaeda type I will find sanctuary for you. Oops! Now I will have the NSA and the CIA and assorted other three-letter angencies on my trail.

Lelia and RogerInTheUSA,

I belong to a large clan that spends an inordinate amount of time and energy in cyberspace, cluttering it with an incredible amount of junk. Good luck to Haliburton and others who try to decypher our tripe.

Deception has always been essential to success in the socio-economic environment, where Homo sapiens' Darwinian struggle for survival and advantage continues, misplaced but unabated, now greatly facilitated by an economy that developed specifically to serve and exploit our animal nature and behaviour.

What about giving some thought to creating a very different kind of socio-economic environment, rooted in our more enlightened, human - rather than our animal - nature, in which who we really are and what we actually do are given more importance than spin and image (Sein statt Schein)?

My homepage: http:/www.spaceship-earth.org

[Lynds], we ALL feel, think and sometimes express things we wouldn't want everyone to know about. Technology has created situations and problems which evolution has not adapted us to deal with. We are well out of our depth, and it is no wonder we are struggling.

The first thing we need to do is admit it. Instead of racing ahead faster and faster (as our leaders insist we must), we need to slow down - and think.

RogerHicks,

Yes indeed, our technological capabilities run ahead of our intellectual ones. I guess we are like teenagers at the wheel of a powerful car.

However, there is a "freedom of speech" issue here. If you are anonymous or pseudonymous (is that a word?) and you roast your employers/bosses digsuising them by pseudonyms, do you really do damage? It may be in poor taste, like a lot of free speech, but the issue remains the same.

"like teenagers at the wheel of a powerful car".

Morning, Teacup, and nicely put. We urgently need to take our foot of the accelerator, pull over to the side of the road, get our maps and compasses out, put the kettle on for tea, relax and settle down for some deep thinking about where we've come from, where we are, and where we want to be heading.

"TimWorstall,

Has Polly Toynbee been asking you to tutor her kids in quantitative methods?"

No, not yet, although to my joy I do know that the boyfriend of Polly's sister (at least that is how it has been explained to me) does read to said sister my commentaries on Polly's pieces. Not necessarily to said sister's joy either.

slightly beside the point, but i loved the "34 things about me" on your blog. unfortunately comments had foreclosed by the time i read them. that "thing" about morris dancing must have made for a truly scarifying adolescence. how could a parent do that?

your blog is very engaging, and the feeling between madame and tadpole is lovely, but how did it get so popular? usually the superpopular blogs are about sex. what a surprise.

Martillo:

Very funny posts. If it's any consolation, I'm sat in my office looking very seriously at the computer screen in a way that hopefully conveys concentration.

All this reminds me of the Dilbert joke about a guy in his appraisal. Asked to think of a fault (std technique - it invites the employee to give you a stick to beat him/her with), he tries to come up with something that portrays him in a good light.

Employee:'Sometimes I work too hard'

Employer:'Why is that a fault?'

I found myself blogging about my last job in hopes that they would fire me, at least then I'd get some money out of it. Sadly, the person who was my boss could just about manage their blackberry and nothing else technological.

As a rule I don't blog about what I do or who I work for. It's just not that interesting, in fact my blog just isn't interesting at all.

I'm a contractor, I don't think it's had any effect on me getting a job, but as another commenter says, it's natural selection if it does. I quite possibly wouldn't want to work for a company that read my blog and didn't like me. Surely to be a well rounded individual, you should have a work personality and a home personality. It can't be healthy to be one "working person" all the time.