Dooce is back. (Thanks to blamb for the tip.)
As you may or may not know, Dooce is the chick who got fired from her job for what she wrote in her blog. She is, by far, the most famous example of this happening, but I've been told that even two of my fellow GTABs have found themselves in deep yogurt at work as a result of stuff they've posted in their personal blogs.
Seeing as I'm currently among the ranks of the disemployed, I don't have to worry about offending any present work colleagues, but I do occasionally wonder what impact some of my rants would have on future employment prospects. I don't intend to link to this from my resume site once I get that damn thing updated, but it wouldn't be that hard to find me here through a Google search.
Really, though, I'm not that worried. If a potential boss is web-savvy enough to find me here, I figure that's a good thing. And, frankly, if someone is uptight enough about what I write here that they would toss my C.V. in the circular file, they're probably not the sort of employer I want to work for anyway.
From reading some of the stuff I post here, you might think that I have a problem with authority figures. I don't; I have a problem with incompetent authority figures. Managing people is a tough thing to do, and I have a great deal of respect for people who can do it well.
But I've seen too many people substitute a style of petty autocracy (or some other sociopathic behaviour) for real leadership ability, and those are the sorts of people that I'd like to smack upside their heads. Even worse are those who not only can't lead, but don't even display any sort of competency in whatever sort of workplace discipline they should nominally be practising.
I think that the majority of people out there want to do well at what they do, but often that sort of competency and craftmanship isn't rewarded in the workplace. Instead the spoils and perqs go to the suck-ups and backstabbers, and even people who are otherwise decent folk can get sucked into that game. This sort of mentality is wasteful in the short term, and harmful in the long term.
I'd like to think that there are workplaces out there where people do collaborate and support each other. My last place of employ was the closest I'd seen to that ideal. Sure, it wasn't perfect -- there were personality clashes, and a few people that caused you to wonder what the hell they were doing there -- but by and large the company culture was designed to be supportive, employ positive reinforcement, and basically help everyone become the best that they could be.
Maybe the next job I take won't be quite on that level, but I'd like to think that someday I'll work in a place like that again.