7 ms·

Your Employee Is an Online Celebrity. Now What Do You Do?

65 points by nikunjk 14y ago

noonespecial 14y ago
tl;dr : Bad news BigCo, you can't own your employee's entire lives anymore. 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 14y ago
  You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over-employees-social-media-account-a-ok-under-cfaa/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over...
  - donaldc 14y ago
    You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over: Some of them will try, from time to time, but they will largely fail. Though to be on the safe side, don't share your social networking account passwords with anyone at the company you work for..
  - theorique 14y ago
    Create a honeypot profile with photos of you in a suit, at church, volunteering. Share the password to this one (if they give you no other choice). Hey, it's a social media profile, it's got your name on it, and pictures of you.
paulsutter 14y ago
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!
drivebyacct2 14y ago
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 14y ago
> 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.
- tensor 14y ago
  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.
  - mattmanser 14y ago
    Ugh, I really hope you're not a manager. This sort of infantile world view is why I'm so glad I'm self-employed now. Let your employees determine their own work.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      And if they're not working because all they do is blog?
      - stephencanon 14y ago
        Then you fire them for the cause of not doing their work. You don't fire them because they were blogging.
etfb 14y ago
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.
- moconnor 14y ago
  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.
happypeter 14y ago
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.
pcrh 14y ago
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.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > 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. Note that CA has interesting differences.
  - pcrh 14y ago
    Care to clarify? I'm in the UK, though have worked in the Bay Area for many years.
    - jpdoctor 14y ago
      First IANAL. That said: In the US, invention-rights assignment assigns all of your inventions to the companies, whether it relates to your normal job activities or not. CA labor law is (as usual) a little different: If the invention is on your own time, with no resources whatsoever of the company, then the invention is yours regardless of the assignment . Of course, proving that you did not use company resources comes down to $$ in lawyers and court costs.
      - pcrh 14y ago
        That's how I saw it. The "no company resources" angle is why so many people have their inspirational idea "while on vacation, and driving a friend's car" ;-)
abalashov 14y ago
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.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  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.)
  - jpdoctor 14y ago
    Just to try and pinpoint the time frame: I'm 48, my dad worked the same place for 35 years. He made comments about seeing the implied-employment structure break down during his time. It probably had a lot to do with the failure of unions, but that's just my guess.
    - nicholas73 14y ago
      I read it had to do with the corporate raider buyouts of the 80's. Companies discovered that they could shed liabilities to employees this way. It also probably is due to it being easier to hire employees at far off locations. Further since college became more prevalent and often vocational by major, companies did not need to invest in training the employee, making them easier to replace.
michaelochurch 14y ago
"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.

65 points by nikunjk 14y ago

tl;dr : Bad news BigCo, you can't own your employee's entire lives anymore. 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 14y ago
You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over-employees-social-media-account-a-ok-under-cfaa/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/court-taking-over...
- donaldc 14y ago
  You say that as if companies won't find a way to take over: Some of them will try, from time to time, but they will largely fail. Though to be on the safe side, don't share your social networking account passwords with anyone at the company you work for..
- theorique 14y ago
  Create a honeypot profile with photos of you in a suit, at church, volunteering. Share the password to this one (if they give you no other choice). Hey, it's a social media profile, it's got your name on it, and pictures of you.

paulsutter 14y ago

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!

drivebyacct2 14y ago

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 14y ago

> 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.

tensor 14y ago
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.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  Ugh, I really hope you're not a manager. This sort of infantile world view is why I'm so glad I'm self-employed now. Let your employees determine their own work.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    And if they're not working because all they do is blog?
    - stephencanon 14y ago
      Then you fire them for the cause of not doing their work. You don't fire them because they were blogging.

etfb 14y ago

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.

moconnor 14y ago
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.

happypeter 14y ago

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.

pcrh 14y ago

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.

jpdoctor 14y ago
> 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. Note that CA has interesting differences.
- pcrh 14y ago
  Care to clarify? I'm in the UK, though have worked in the Bay Area for many years.
  - jpdoctor 14y ago
    First IANAL. That said: In the US, invention-rights assignment assigns all of your inventions to the companies, whether it relates to your normal job activities or not. CA labor law is (as usual) a little different: If the invention is on your own time, with no resources whatsoever of the company, then the invention is yours regardless of the assignment . Of course, proving that you did not use company resources comes down to $$ in lawyers and court costs.
    - pcrh 14y ago
      That's how I saw it. The "no company resources" angle is why so many people have their inspirational idea "while on vacation, and driving a friend's car" ;-)

abalashov 14y ago

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.

nmcfarl 14y ago
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.)
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  Just to try and pinpoint the time frame: I'm 48, my dad worked the same place for 35 years. He made comments about seeing the implied-employment structure break down during his time. It probably had a lot to do with the failure of unions, but that's just my guess.
  - nicholas73 14y ago
    I read it had to do with the corporate raider buyouts of the 80's. Companies discovered that they could shed liabilities to employees this way. It also probably is due to it being easier to hire employees at far off locations. Further since college became more prevalent and often vocational by major, companies did not need to invest in training the employee, making them easier to replace.

michaelochurch 14y ago

"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.