Blogging in your career
-
I maintain a few blogs, well I maintain a personal one. The one here at SQLServerCentral.com doesn't get so much work, but I'm trying to get better at that. It's hard for me since this editorial is almost like a blog, so finding a whole separate set of things to write about, and then separate them from articles, is tough.
Lots of companies these days are looking to get their employees to blog, with various degrees of success. Some want the exposure, some want to show off, some think of it as another marketing channel, and some just do it because everyone else is.
However it's not that easy a thing to maintain for a company. I follow lots of blogs and I've seen so many die after a few months because people don't want to be bothered to write. I've got almost as many dead blogs to watch as I do live ones. Thank goodness for Google Reader to allow me to only see new items.
But allowing everyone to blog and express themselves doesn't always work out well. I saw this mention about Google and some employees that write something about the movie Sicko. I could see what the employee was trying to say, but it didn't sound good. And it makes you think that Google puts their profits ahead of the "right" thing to do by supporting companies that we feel aren't being fair with us.
There's also the side of things where bloggers talk about all types of things and get some benefit for their employers because more people read the blog. I guess that's what I kind of do here. I call this an editorial, and it is, but it's also a blog in some ways. It also keeps me busy enough that I tend to neglect my SQLServerCentral.com blog.
There are many thoughts on successful blogs and how to build one for your company. I think that can be good for the company, but what about you personally? What happens if you leave the company? Is your blog lost forever? Most likely it will be, slowly dropping out of the massive cache that Google maintains.
My advice has always been for friends that they should have a professional blog, but keep it professional. No stories about your cats, dates, etc. I know I blur the line here, but I think this forum is a bit of an exception.
My new advice is as follows: keep 3 blogs if you have a corporate blog.
Sounds like a lot of work, but really it's two blogs giving you some disaster recovery. First keep a personal blog if you want. Actually just set one up and put stuff in there that's not related to your career. Put the stuff in there that you wouldn't want someone to ask you on your next interview.
I think it makes some sense to have a corporate blog if you're asked. Use it to put out interesting technical things related to your job or company. But don't expect this blog will get you your next job. It probably works for Raymond Chen and Linus Torvalds, but for most of us this won't help. And you don't want to lose your great technical posts, so set up a third, professional blog for your career. Copy over those posts you want as a part of your online career CV and reference them when you are looking for a new job. Give out this blog to recruiters, interviewers, etc.
You should easily know where a new post should go and try not to mix your professional and personal documentation. Write a new SQL CE app? It could go on all three blogs, but your dog munching on your shoes definitely should only be in one place: the personal blog.
-
>>Lots of companies these days are looking to get their employees to blog...
Why would they enable yet another waste of company time using company resources?
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
Another great editorial Steve!
Corporate blogging is a great way to get the word out about your product or service. It's the internet equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. It can also provide powerful journalism / evangelism.
You're absolutely correct: it's always a good idea to maintain your own blog separate and distinct from any corporate blogging you do.
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
-
I tried maintaining a professional blog but I found I didn't have something to say often enough to make it worth it. Instead, when I've got something I really want to share, I write it up & submit it to you guys as an article. I get more readers than I'd ever get on a blog and, in terms of a resume, it looks pretty good to say you're published as opposed to saying you run a blog.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore RooseveltAuthor of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning -
I'm not sure it's a waste of company time. It does a few things. It lets the world see how employees view things, and shows your talent, which may increase confidence in your products.
It's definitely a fine line between giving away secrets or competitive advantage and showing off your company.
I think publishing is a great way to do things as well, but magazines and sites like this offer limited opportunities. As much as we publish, we couldn't publish from every DBA if they all sent in articles. If you can't get published or don't want to go through the editing hassles, then blogging makes some sense.
Of course, we're pretty light on the editing here, so send in your articles!
-
I wouldn't keep anything of a personal nature in a blog on the internet...HR departments use this stuff to weed out candidates/target employees for dismissal.
Keep your personal life personal...and private.
-
My former manager found out I wrote some articles and submitted questions on SQLServerCentral and he kept encourage me doing it. My new manager the first thing he said was 'I knew you posted questions on some website, but people may give you the wrong answer so I don't think you should keep doing it'.
I was thinking this guy did not want me to post the question because one time he asked me to do something, I posted the question here and everyone said it was bad idea. I knew it was a bad idea, I posted the question to make sure. He did not want his people to post the question because he did not want his people to know he was not good.
As far as the company, not to mention about the blog, if you talked to someone next to your cube and some people overheard it, they may immediately told your manager that you were not working.
So everyone in the company was frustrated but was afraid to say anything. They did not welcome new employee either because they viewed it was a threat to their job. That's the reason why I am looking for another job.
Each company has its corporate culture. Some are opened door but some are totally closed.
-
I think good blogs are pretty hard to do. Most of us don't solve interesting problems all that often, and blogging about something you read elsewhere isn't very exciting. I pretty much fall into that boat too! I've been blogging for a couple months to see what I could make of it and the answer so far is Im not sure. I've been mixing SQL and user group posts, but out of all of those Im not sure that if someone else was writing it I'd read it directly, though it would have higher value if found as part of a search (due to relevancy only). Blogs work where personal web sites usually fail only because RSS makes it painless to check for new content and it makes loading content super easy.
I do like the idea of a 'professional development' blog that is a lot more like a diary and a lot less about come read what I wrote. One of my fav interview questions is to ask someone what kind of professional development they do to sustain and astonishly few have much of a plan. If you blog about articles you read, some nice tip, etc, it gives you a focus for your blog and conceivably would be helpful to someone following the same path but not quite as far along as you are. It's a great way to keep track of little bits and pieces, and it sure would be nice to have that available for the next job interview.
I agree with Grant that a lot of the 'good stuff' is far more likely to be seen and used when posted as content vs blogged. One thing you might consider is doing an SSC based blog, Steve aggregates all the blogs into one feed (in addition to the standalone blog feed) so it might increase the chances of people seeing it.
-
I enjoy living next to our bog. We can see moose, coyotes, eagles, geese, lynx, fox and the occasional bear. Even had the kids watch two cow moose trying to attract a bull during the fall rut. You don't see that in your backyard every day!
Wait, you said blog.
Sorry, I get those two words mixed up because when you dig into either one of them (corporate blog), it really starts to stink up the place quickly.
Just because you read it in a blog, doesn't make it true. I read that someplace on the Internet.
-
Steve, I don't necessarily disagree with posting blog data on multiple sites as you described (Personal blog = personal + career, career blog = just career), especially for less than consistent bloggers like me. However, I'm a little on the lazy side and don't want to log into 3 sites and enter the same data 3 times (even if it's copy/paste). Do any tools exist to help me centrally manage and publish multiple blogs?
Tim Mitchell, Microsoft Data Platform MVP
Data Warehouse and ETL Consultant
TimMitchell.net | @Tim_Mitchell | Tyleris.com
ETL Best Practices -
There are some tools that help. I know that if you were to have a Blogger or one of the popular sites, Word 2007 can actually publish to that site. I'm sure there are other tools that work with different sites.
However I'd think it would be different content on different sites. My personal site is mostly for family and friends. The SSC one is really for work/career. I never give out my personal site in an interview. Just isn't relevant.
-
I think blogging might not be good idea in a corporate world. It puts too much emphasis on the individual person writing the blog. It's not organized and not consistant. If companies want to post technical information for people to share. Then software programs like Wiki's or Microsoft Sharepoint would be the ideal candidate. Blogs are more personal and should be kept out of the corporate culture.
-
Not srue I agree with that. Replace "blog" with "easy way to post web content" and there are lot of situations where it makes more sense in the corporate world.
-
Like what, Andy? Not challenging you here... I'd really like to know...
I find that most developers are very protective of what they know because of job security and all that... what makes folks think that developers will actually post anything useful? And, where would YOU look for information on a subject like maybe tuning a query or paging in a GUI? A company sponsored blog area?
--Jeff Moden
RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally) -
Jeff, I agreed with you. These days are totally different, no one shares information anymore. Going to work is no more fun !!!!! You have to be careful what you say and what you do. Even I suggest something that it can make the system perform faster, the DBA, the manager may not like it because they are afraid you will take over their job !!! Just pretend to be dumb and do what they tell you to do.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 28 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply