Well, everyone and his brother has already posted the news about IBM encouraging employee blogging (link to Scoble, ironically enough), so it's nice to know I won't be summarily dismissed for simply having a blog (The merits of the content may be another matter, but we'll keep our fingers crossed). You can read the guidelines here.
I've skirted with a few of the guidelines on more than one occasion, but there's no reason to link to those now, let them search google for them.
Honestly, this was something I'd been waiting for for many months, as it seemed that every company except Big Blue had a corporate policy, if not an entire infrastructure dedicated to employee blogs. And no, the handful of guys on developerworks don't count.
Of course, the one thing that I've never done, and is now strongly encouraged, is to use a boilerplate disclaimer on my site. I'll be adding that to my about page real soon now, since I've grown accustomed to that IBM deposit in my bank account twice a month.
Yes, I think it's completely obvious that my rants about the MPAA and Ruby on Rails have nothing to do with my day job, or the opinions of the 320,000 other employees of IBM. And yes, it bothers me to no end that my employer feels it has a right to demand what get's placed on my personal, non-work related web site. But there are a million lawyers out there foaming at the mouth, and if there's one thing I know, it's to not start a fight with a lawyer.
So I'll cave and be a good corporate monkey, and add the disclaimer.
And my apologies for getting to this news so late, I was busy following the final guideline, "Don't forget your day job". Sadly, that spills over into my 'night job' more often than not.
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