> Co-branded employees should get some workday time for
> activities that support the company's goals. But
> setting limits on those activities, along with clear
> expectations for what else these employees need to
> accomplish, can help ensure that they complete their
> primary work and avoid resentment from their
> nonblogging, nontweeting colleagues.
The paternalism of this remark is mindblowing. It reads like advice for parents whose children like videogames. Nobody in any job I've ever had has had to explicitly "set limits" on things because part of the point of hiring somebody is that you ensure that you think they're a responsible grown-up who can be trusted to work hard. I don't see why that would suddenly change if I happened to have a blog with thousands of readers.
The entire article reads like a howto manual for parenting.
It's articles like these that remind me why I hate working with BigCo. This kind of crap never happens at a small company. Sure, you have problems and clashes, but they're resolved ad hoc by humans, rather than by policies designed to align drones with the corporate culture.
Absolutely true. But equally, don't expect special treatment if you are blogging instead of producing. If your blogging overlaps with work interests, it becomes even more complicated, especially if part of your job becomes blogging for work.
All this paragraph means is that if you put your blogging ahead of your job, you shouldn't be too surprised by pushback or even being let go. Every relationship is two ways, and if you honour your employment agreement you should be fine. Though I understand not all employers may think that way.
Younger employees show up on the job with an existing social-media presence, which they aren't about to abandon—especially since they see their personal brands lasting longer than any single job or career.
This seems like a rather biased formulation. It's not because they're a bunch of arrogant little Millenial shits. They're responding to the collapse of the bilateral social contract between companies and career employees that was said to have traditionally existed, in their parents' generation and so on. In other words, this is reactive. A few years is the most you can hope to get out of any company now, not a lifelong career.
That's not the Millenials' fault. They didn't ask for that.
Minor niggle: Not their parents’ generation, maybe their grandparents’.
Some one who’s 20 today, and entering the workforce, would have been born in ’92. In ’92 lifelong single employer employment was well dead.
I see comments like this (and the WSJ’s) a bit, and it amazes me how slowly awareness of cultural changes percolate in to the mainstream. I’m nearing 40 and my parents didn’t expect life long employment. (Though they clearly desired it and went big time for stable employers: Banks, academia, government.)
This article is so east coast. Next thing you know the WSJ might have an article saying that some young people are questioning the need for business cards!
I can't help but feel that this issue has been addressed long ago in the context of patents.
If as an employee you invent something that is related to your normal job activities, then it is deemed the property of your employer. So a travel agent tweeting airline deals should be considered to be doing their job, and if they are better than their colleagues, then indeed they should get a raise (unless they are sending customers towards a competitor, in which case they get fired). The same person tweeting about racing cars would not be deemed to be doing employment-related activity. An employer simply has to know that a potential employee is "famous online" before deciding whether or not to hire her, along with the risks that that might entail.
> If as an employee you invent something that is related to your normal job activities, then it is deemed the property of your employer
You have not fully digested the implications of the invention-rights assignment that all large companies (and most small companies) will make you sign.
The rest of the article is so-so, but the emphasis on avoiding offending one's cow-orkers misses the key point: if employee A is annoyed that employee B is getting more money for doing more and better work, it should be reasonably obvious that employee B isn't the problem.
I thought the problem was stated as employee A complains that employee B is spending all his time writing personal blog posts instead of doing "his fair share" of the work.
I will encourage people to build their own online fame, then the daily work they do, they are not only doing it for the company, but also for their personal honor, thus they will be more willing to produce good work even maybe that means some extra work.
I see a far better society where individuals are respected more.
"Celebrity" is a clumsy metaphor for this because most celebrities are made by behind-the-scenes executives and agents who have a lot of power. Celebrities are mostly made products. Establishing independent credibility is something else. It's not outsized fame, but it's still enough of a force that companies are beginning to see it as dangerous.
Thirty years ago, companies held all the cards, because credibility came from job titles and references that only a hand-picked class of stewards called "managers" could hand out, then managed to convince the peasants that it was "unethical" to play out-of-band (by having a friend give a reference as manager, or upgrading a title). If they wanted to reduce a target's career credibility to zero, they could do so. They could fire that person and give a terrible reference and call the person "disgruntled" if he said anything bad about them. They could even reduce the employee's job title and fail to acknowledge that he held the higher one at any time: their word against his. The only recourse an employee had was to sue the employer, which is mutually assured destruction at best, because even winning a termination suit is usually bad for a person's career.
Companies could also bring ruin upon people who spoke the truth about them, so almost no one did, and this kept their pristine organizational reputations (and thus, their credibility) intact.
We're moving toward a different sort of economy in which these middlemen are losing their hold. The one-sided expectation of "professionalism" (companies can be abusive, but employees and exes are expected to keep their interests and secrets no matter what) is ending. It's a very good thing, but it's scary for corporations because they've lost control of information, and because it's not hard to make recruiting just enough harder to cost the company more than, say, a 6- to 12-month severance (which is extremely generous, at least in the U.S.) would cost.
This just in after the wsj that likely used the co-branded celebrity HN comment from earlier as the source for it's repeatedly vaguely mentioned source.
[+] [-] h2s|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MicahWedemeyer|13 years ago|reply
It's articles like these that remind me why I hate working with BigCo. This kind of crap never happens at a small company. Sure, you have problems and clashes, but they're resolved ad hoc by humans, rather than by policies designed to align drones with the corporate culture.
[+] [-] tensor|13 years ago|reply
All this paragraph means is that if you put your blogging ahead of your job, you shouldn't be too surprised by pushback or even being let go. Every relationship is two ways, and if you honour your employment agreement you should be fine. Though I understand not all employers may think that way.
[+] [-] alexchamberlain|13 years ago|reply
(I think that's pretty clear from the context of the article though.)
[+] [-] abalashov|13 years ago|reply
This seems like a rather biased formulation. It's not because they're a bunch of arrogant little Millenial shits. They're responding to the collapse of the bilateral social contract between companies and career employees that was said to have traditionally existed, in their parents' generation and so on. In other words, this is reactive. A few years is the most you can hope to get out of any company now, not a lifelong career.
That's not the Millenials' fault. They didn't ask for that.
[+] [-] nmcfarl|13 years ago|reply
Some one who’s 20 today, and entering the workforce, would have been born in ’92. In ’92 lifelong single employer employment was well dead.
I see comments like this (and the WSJ’s) a bit, and it amazes me how slowly awareness of cultural changes percolate in to the mainstream. I’m nearing 40 and my parents didn’t expect life long employment. (Though they clearly desired it and went big time for stable employers: Banks, academia, government.)
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
Its starting to feel like the whole notion of "employee" is fading fast. We're contractors now, all of us, and we are our own brand.
[+] [-] Natsu|13 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over...
[+] [-] paulsutter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcrh|13 years ago|reply
If as an employee you invent something that is related to your normal job activities, then it is deemed the property of your employer. So a travel agent tweeting airline deals should be considered to be doing their job, and if they are better than their colleagues, then indeed they should get a raise (unless they are sending customers towards a competitor, in which case they get fired). The same person tweeting about racing cars would not be deemed to be doing employment-related activity. An employer simply has to know that a potential employee is "famous online" before deciding whether or not to hire her, along with the risks that that might entail.
[+] [-] jpdoctor|13 years ago|reply
You have not fully digested the implications of the invention-rights assignment that all large companies (and most small companies) will make you sign.
Note that CA has interesting differences.
[+] [-] etfb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moconnor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] happypeter|13 years ago|reply
I see a far better society where individuals are respected more.
[+] [-] michaelochurch|13 years ago|reply
Thirty years ago, companies held all the cards, because credibility came from job titles and references that only a hand-picked class of stewards called "managers" could hand out, then managed to convince the peasants that it was "unethical" to play out-of-band (by having a friend give a reference as manager, or upgrading a title). If they wanted to reduce a target's career credibility to zero, they could do so. They could fire that person and give a terrible reference and call the person "disgruntled" if he said anything bad about them. They could even reduce the employee's job title and fail to acknowledge that he held the higher one at any time: their word against his. The only recourse an employee had was to sue the employer, which is mutually assured destruction at best, because even winning a termination suit is usually bad for a person's career.
Companies could also bring ruin upon people who spoke the truth about them, so almost no one did, and this kept their pristine organizational reputations (and thus, their credibility) intact.
We're moving toward a different sort of economy in which these middlemen are losing their hold. The one-sided expectation of "professionalism" (companies can be abusive, but employees and exes are expected to keep their interests and secrets no matter what) is ending. It's a very good thing, but it's scary for corporations because they've lost control of information, and because it's not hard to make recruiting just enough harder to cost the company more than, say, a 6- to 12-month severance (which is extremely generous, at least in the U.S.) would cost.
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|13 years ago|reply