Regarding Employment and Blogging

In my CotC post I said:

Whatever I find for work, it cannot preclude running CotC, blogging, or doing work on the side.

This disturbed Deb a bit in its absolutism, as well as being a shortened version of what I meant by the statement.  In the context, it worked better edited down, but I initially started to caveat it.

Obviously if someone wants to offer me a dream job at excellent pay and Not Blogging At All is a condition, I would be silly to turn it down.  Nor would I, but any rational employer would have to know that they would be starting with a morale deficit.  I’m not exactly a job hopper, but I’d be more inclined to become one under that restriction.

Equally obviously, I would be prepared not to name or even discuss the employer or job in the course of blogging, in any but the most indirect way.  You know, I couldn’t not acknowledge that such a job exists or that it’s in a particular field.

There is also a difference between never blogging while so employed and redacting my past blogging, which could not now happen 100% without affecting Deb, any other co-blogging, and Carnival of the Capitalists.  Having watched a good blogger go through shutting down everything, despite not using his real name, so his new employer wouldn’t have to worry about anything he had ever written being construed as their opinion, I wouldn’t want to do that.

I find it hard to imagine an employer banning or redacting it entirely.  It’s reasonable to expect restrictions on blogging from or about work.  That’s a different animal.  It’s even reasonable to expect to run into trouble over saying the wrong thing if there are no official rules.

So yeah.  I’m not suicidal.  It’s a strong preference, but if they’re making it worth my while, it’d like being paid to blog and then instructed to post nothing.

Posted by on 10/16 at 10:03 PM

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