Would/Could I have blogged at my prior job?
Category Blogging
And by prior job, I don't mean my consulting gig with Marquam Group...
I was reading some blogs today about corporate control of bloggers and such, and I started to wonder... If blogging had been the hot new technology between 1998 and 2001 when I was at Enron Broadband, would I (or *could* I) have been a blogger?
Hmmm...
It was a heady time... Dot.com boom (followed towards the end by the bust). Watching your paper net worth go into the seven figure range. Having a T1 line running directly into your house. We were going to "change the world"... We did, but not in the way we all expected.
On the other hand, it was not an easy time towards the end... Trying everything we could in Portland to avoid having our jobs shipped off to Houston. Undergoing weekly (and sometimes daily) priority changes in our projects. Re-orgs every three months. Working with people who would dream up some "cool" project on Wednesday night, promise to demo it to the CIO Monday morning, and then assume that we would work all weekend long to make his vision happen. All proof-of-concept, mind you... and smoke and mirrors would be required, but it was going to be *cool*... a | Big Win |... Yeah, right...
And all before I discovered my serotonin deficiency which is so nicely handled with SSRI medication now. :-)
Tom was not a happy camper, and I was almost glad to see the doors close with our tidy severance package on September 1, 2001. Until September 11 happened and I wondered if I would ever find another job...
But back to blogging... would I have been a blogger back then? Probably more relevant, *could* I have been a blogger back then? Enron was fanatical about their security department. It was rumored that ex-CIA/FBI personnel made up the group, and that they kept a close watch on anything and everything. I'm not sure that a blogger would have been tolerated in that environment, regardless of how generic the content was or whether the content even had anything to do with Enron. It's not a stretch to imagine that you could come in one day, get called into your boss's office, be told you were fired for inappropriate conduct (blogging), and be gone before you know what hit you. And I'm sure if you were talking up the latest and greatest ways that Enron Broadband would revolutionize the internet, your departure would be even more swift...
I think I like my current life much more, thank you... Enron was a good experience with some excellent benefits, and it taught me a lot about myself. But looking back, it was a very dysfunctional atmosphere. While no company is perfect, my current environment borders on nirvana compared to what I went through in 2001. I don't think that blogging would have been in my best interests while at Enron.
And by prior job, I don't mean my consulting gig with Marquam Group...
I was reading some blogs today about corporate control of bloggers and such, and I started to wonder... If blogging had been the hot new technology between 1998 and 2001 when I was at Enron Broadband, would I (or *could* I) have been a blogger?
Hmmm...
It was a heady time... Dot.com boom (followed towards the end by the bust). Watching your paper net worth go into the seven figure range. Having a T1 line running directly into your house. We were going to "change the world"... We did, but not in the way we all expected.
On the other hand, it was not an easy time towards the end... Trying everything we could in Portland to avoid having our jobs shipped off to Houston. Undergoing weekly (and sometimes daily) priority changes in our projects. Re-orgs every three months. Working with people who would dream up some "cool" project on Wednesday night, promise to demo it to the CIO Monday morning, and then assume that we would work all weekend long to make his vision happen. All proof-of-concept, mind you... and smoke and mirrors would be required, but it was going to be *cool*... a | Big Win |... Yeah, right...
And all before I discovered my serotonin deficiency which is so nicely handled with SSRI medication now. :-)
Tom was not a happy camper, and I was almost glad to see the doors close with our tidy severance package on September 1, 2001. Until September 11 happened and I wondered if I would ever find another job...
But back to blogging... would I have been a blogger back then? Probably more relevant, *could* I have been a blogger back then? Enron was fanatical about their security department. It was rumored that ex-CIA/FBI personnel made up the group, and that they kept a close watch on anything and everything. I'm not sure that a blogger would have been tolerated in that environment, regardless of how generic the content was or whether the content even had anything to do with Enron. It's not a stretch to imagine that you could come in one day, get called into your boss's office, be told you were fired for inappropriate conduct (blogging), and be gone before you know what hit you. And I'm sure if you were talking up the latest and greatest ways that Enron Broadband would revolutionize the internet, your departure would be even more swift...
I think I like my current life much more, thank you... Enron was a good experience with some excellent benefits, and it taught me a lot about myself. But looking back, it was a very dysfunctional atmosphere. While no company is perfect, my current environment borders on nirvana compared to what I went through in 2001. I don't think that blogging would have been in my best interests while at Enron.
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Posted by robin At 06:04:12 On 27/03/2007 | - Website - |