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June 30, 2004
Blogging for dollars
Jonathan Schwartz started a blog, maybe timed to catch JavaOne. Who knows whether he'll have time to keep it up.
At least he knows enough HTML to code anchor tags. I find that somehow reassuring.
Jonathan reminds those of us blogging for work to "be responsible." (Suggestions summarized by Tim Bray.) Most of the suggestions concern writing itself. In a nutshell, the more you write something people want to read and the more you spin it into the ongoing conversation out there on the web, the more people will read it and think about it and link to it.
But there are two suggestions in there that could be open to debate:
- "Don't Tell Secrets .... it’s not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces."
- "Think About Consequences .... it’s all about judgment: using your weblog to trash or embarrass the company, our customers, or your co-workers, is not only dangerous but stupid."
Concerning the first one, well, one could have a long discussion about intellectual property. A Google search for those two words results in about 7,670,000 hits. Basically, which is more important: humanity benefitting from a good solution to a problem as early as possible, or major stockholders getting a monopoly hold on the idea? (There, is that sufficiently oversimplified? ;-)
Concerning the second one, you have to read between the lines a little bit. It looks like the consequences are that your bad taste could somehow hurt the company, for example, when one of our sales folk is out there negotiating a discount and the customer is able to Google out your blog entry that the product in question sucks. (Why would the customer would even be talking with our sales folk about a product anyone thinks sucks? What would that say about the customer in question?) Between the lines, the fnords appear to say, "Think twice about coloring outside the party line. This whole warning has nothing to do with products and criticism of your peers' work, everything to do with criticism of your betters. Recall that we can lay people off, that your job category is moving to 'low-cost locations,' and that you need us more than we need you."
Odd how that last bit comes in at the same point in the article where news magazines put the nod-to-a-dissenting-view material. Close to the end, but not close enough that you'd read it if you just skipped to the end. And I'll bet Tim Bray did that almost by accident.
Posted by Mark at June 30, 2004 02:58 PM