That Email You Wrote Won't Damage Your Career... Sometimes... Maybe

2/21/2006 4:57:37 PM - Techdirt

There have been plenty of examples of people sending out emails they'd later regret after they got forwarded around the internet -- just ask Peter Chung, the guy that worked for the Carlyle Group and sent the infamous email bragging about his sexual prowess and high-dollar lifestyle that made its way all around the world and back into the inbox of a managing director at the firm, costing him his job. A column in The Wall Street Journal's taken another look at the issue, weakly concluding that writing a nasty email that gets forwarded around might not hurt your career. Possibly. Maybe. If you're in an industry where "where unmitigated gall can be more marketable than galling". The (largely superficial) article focuses on just two examples from the legal world where people's email indiscretions don't appear to have hurt their professional lives, apparently not deciding to dig much deeper, or find some examples where things didn't work out so well. It relies heavily on the experience of one fresh law school graduate who had a pretty rude email exchange in which she derisively declined a job a prospective employer thought she'd already accepted. While it's easy to blow off the effect of the email, she's now had a WSJ article written about her that really doesn't paint a good picture of her personality -- she said the firm's offer couldn't support her lifestyle, while she's living off Daddy's money. Given how employers use search engines as reference checks, that may do more damage. The woman in question says she's starting her own practice because she's "never been the type to work under someone". Somehow that's not very surprising.

Link: Techdirt

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