Topic / Won't Get Dooced Again

The June 2006 issue of Corporate Counsel, a magazine for in-house lawyers, had a short piece on corporate policies toward employee blogging.

"Dooced" is a slang term meaning fired for blogging, and no one so dismissed has (yet) been reinstated. Such include folks who discussed office mates in unflattering terms (one woman referred to her boss as "Her Wretchedness") or revealed company secrets. Employees may have a First Amendment right to "free speech," but that does NOT include keeping your job!

Rather than ban blogging, which seems impossible, 14% of companies (so far) have developed "acceptable blogging policies," notably Sun Microsystems, whose new CEO Jonathan Schwartz is a long time blogger. These policies may encourage employees to talk about their work in ways that reach out to customers and the community but lay down rules. Sun's policy states "you may not reveal the recipe for one of our secret sauces."

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Note: I come from an era when any public comment was grounds for termination, so this blog ("Over the Horizon") is limited to critical reviews of public information of a non-controversial nature. Thus if my current or future employers read it, they will find some nice writing samples, but hopefully little else to be concerned about.

My reason for blogging (raison de blog?) is that I love drafting and polishing short essays, which I may revise a dozen times before I'm satisfied, and it seemed a shame not to share them. I have done little to promote it, so it probably goes unnoticed by all but a few friends. (Allegedly 1,000s of blogs are scams created solely to raise a website's search engine rankings.)

However, if you are seeking tightly written, bite-sized, timely, literate, casual, congeneal, and/or insightful writing, it is hoped that you will find "Over the Horizon" a satisfactory resource.