I was reading a blog the other day and noticed that it had a lot of profanity. The profanity wasn’t hateful or bitter or anything like that. It was written in a way that was genuinely entertaining. Not only that, this blog contained daunting criticisms of Conservative viewpoints.
My question is, if a normal person who had to work in a day job made a blog such as this and their name and picture were made public on that site but the company they work for wasn’t, would that person be at a risk of being fired? This site wasn’t terribly controversial; it was written in a way that a lot of people talk when they’re being blunt honest. It wasn’t mean-spirited but there was profanity in it that was meant to be humorous.
Could owning a blog or a website like this seriously put someone at risk of being fired from their job even if they don’t make it known which company they work for? Would it also hinder someone’s chances of being hired by a company in the future? If so, why? This has no bearing on the company whatsoever, right? What is the big deal?
I think political commentary is more likely to get a blogger fired than profanity, but it depends 100% entirely on the company, the specific boss, and (of course) whether they find out about it.
Really depends on the type of job and organization. A lot of fairly high-level jobs are looking for someone with the ability to build relationships with people and represent the organization well. A blog like that could get in the way of those objectives, making the person not a good fit for the role. Consider a job that is about getting the owners of other companies to do business with your firm. Some of those guys may not be so eager to do business with an aspiring Al Franken.
In terms of lower level jobs, it might be less of an issue. On the other hand, a lot of companies would prefer the employee who is not into controversial politics, given a choice. If you give off any kind of “stick it to The Man” vibe, The Man tends to be a little less crazy about hiring you.
This reminds me of an issue arising in the last few days about David Feherty, a CBS sports commentator. He wrote a magazine article a little while back suggesting that American soldiers want to kill Nancy Pelosi, and maybe even should want to. This story has been blowing up in just the past couple of days (I did a google news search on Friday and got 4 hits, the same search today gets 200), so we will see what consequences there might be next week. A background story here.
I don’t have a blog. I want a blog. Two things are stopping me.
Time
The need to be careful with what I post making it not “mine” but an exercise in political blandness.
I work in marketing / business development. I would hate to post something on my blog that is going to offend a client / potential client.
My short answer - if the blog owner is a “back of house” type person that has no interaction with the public, no biggie. If the person is somehow the face / representation of the company - then he / she shouldn’t do or say anything potentially controversial on their blog.
I don’t think it should matter, but we all know it does.
It’s not a typical job job, but when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer you’d occasionally hear about people getting in trouble for their blogs. We were supposed to let our country director know about any blogs we were keeping - I didn’t, and was totally paranoid about it, to the point that I eventually stopped updating it. One volunteer I knew got called into the PC office in Sofia for a lecture on her blog. They made her take out a bunch of stuff that they had decided was unacceptable. She was really horrified - she kept saying that her mom read her blog, it wasn’t like she was going to say anything really terrible. The only specific thing I remember was that they made her take out a reference to Bulgaria as Bulgaristan, which is the Turkish word for Bulgaria. (It sounded hilarious to us, but Bulgarians hate Turks and are paranoid that the Ottoman Empire will rise again, or something.) I know that people have been kicked out of Peace Corps for not complying with blogging rules, too.
Using the Peace Corps as an example, the goal of the program is to build support for America and American foreign policy goals, if a blogger is seen as undermining that goal s/he could get kicked out.
I think it would depend on the visibility of the employee within the company. That’s why I would hide behind a nom de net.
Well, not exactly. If you’re quite cynical (and I am), you’ll agree that this is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Peace Corps, but the truth is that no volunteer would ever describe it quite like that. People become volunteers for all sorts of reasons, but furthering American foreign policy isn’t really a big one. Given the political leanings of the average volunteer, I don’t know that they made anyone like the Bush presidency any more, for instance.
Basically, if you’re writing all kinds of nasty things about your host country and one of your colleagues finds it, it’s really going to undermine any hope you might have of “integrating into the community” (PC’s favorite phrase), which is necessary for being a successful volunteer. Being a PCV requires keeping your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself a lot of the time, and that includes on the internet.