With the rising profile of blogs, even the mainstream media is covering a phenomena well-known in the blogosphere: Hey, blog about your job and you might get fired for same.

Duh.

Sacked by Google, an airline and Microsoft. There are about a bazillion other examples, but this handful of links show concrete examples of what I wrote above: Hey, blog about your job and you might get fired for same.

Perhaps the best example – in the blogosphere – is Heather Armstrong, webmistress of dooce.com. Yeah, she got fired for her blog postings (and she was stoooopid, as she admits). Read her; she’s smart and sassy.

This whole leadup is to something wedged into something Jakob Nielsen recently wrote about – about usability and so on for blogs.

I have my differences with Nielsen, but he’s generally 90% on the mark for me.

One item – a lower priority item – on his list for blog usability etc was something I hadn’t really thought about. His issue was the following:

Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
Whenever you post anything to the Internet — whether on a weblog, in a discussion group, or even in an email — think about how it will look to a hiring manager in ten years. Once stuff’s out, it’s archived, cached, and indexed in many services that you might never be aware of.

I’ve thought about the whole Internet archive thing before, but never in terms of a blog and a future boss/employer: This gives one pause.

That post about Sun Niagra servers hurting/helping a job X years from now?

That post showing an obvious tilt toward/against OSS/MS, Blue States/Red State, Pro-Choice/Pro-Life or whatever.

Yep, it’s out there. And it can help/hurt you in the future [which is Nielsen’s postulate]; not just today – which are all the stories you read.

I’ve never read about someone fired/not hired because of some old blog post; but why would that never happen?

It will.

I just never thought about it.

Will I stop blogging/change my voice?

No.

Still – interesting.