Yes, I know this has been posted on every blog in the world.
Much more skilled writers than myself (Hannibal at Ars and eJacqui, for example) have been discussing this article that suggests that people who share their personal lives online in a frank manner may be endangering their prospects for future employment. I don't have much to add that wiser persons haven't already said, but it does get me thinking about this little piece of hodgepodged code that I throw out on a cheap webhost every few days. So I'll talk about that instead.
The subject of the article found himself denied an academic position because his personal weblog was of an overtly technical nature. Apparently the committee deciding the man's fate felt that his love of technology would endanger his commitment to academia. Or something.
My problem is of a much more serious nature. I have actively and, at times, ruthlessly criticized my current employer on this website. Fortunately for me, very few people read it. That doesn't change the fact that these days Google Knows All™ and any prospective employer with enough time and determination could easily find these pages and get a good eyefull of my rage and indignation at the way myself and other state employees have been treated by the Daniels administration. In other cases, I have expressed overtly political opinions of a less-than-popular nature. Should a potential employer discover this website, would these things hurt my chances of being hired (or even granted an interview)? Or, given the technical nature of any job that I'm likely to apply for, am I more likely to be passed over because of the hideous lack of Web Fu exhibited by this website?
I thought about this a while after I read Hannibal's article this morning. It's something I've considered before, and I've always dismissed it for several reasons. For starters, my website is not even remotely popular enough to find itself in the first pages of returns on a Google search for my name (which I have used openly on this site on several occasions). Sure, with enough digging it could be found, but my wee webpages are not as high profile as a lot of other folks. Secondly, I've intentionally begun using an email address hosted at a different domain on my resume, so it's not a simple as plugging the domain of my email address into a browser to find my homepage. I think my relative anonymity and this minor precaution will do a fairly good job of shielding my personal website from all but the most determined of employers.
That being said, if something should change overnight and my website did become high-profile (hey, we're talking theory here), I don't think that even then I would change the way in which I post here. My personal opinions and my right to rail against my perceived persecutors are very important to me. In truth, what I think about the goings on in the world around me are a very large part of my personality, and to censor them for the purposes of this weblog would be disingenuous and would rob my pathetic little website of any flavor it might have. Hell, I've actually had one person tell me that they occasional check my webpage just to see what Herr Mitch is up to. So to edit myself in the interest of eliminating this minor threat to my future employability would be cheating, I think. I may think differently next February when I get tossed out of here on my generous hind-quarters, but until then I'm sticking to my (small, very unread) guns.
Oh, and I promised a follow-up to my mini-review of Nexuiz. Aside from still not being able to figure out how to pronounce it, I did get a chance to play with some bots and they were...underwhelming. Plus any attempt to join a network game locked the game on both my and Jessi's computers. So there.
Happy Tuesday everyone!
-Sam
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