Blogs as career accessories for the clueless

Is blogging good for your career? Well, duh -- yes and no. It depends. The Boston Globe’s recent article, “Blogs 'essential' to a good career,” drops the qualifiers and offers some simplistic bullet points -- blogging is great training, blogging provides more opportunities, blogging can move your name up in Google rankings, etc., etc.

The problem isn’t with what the Globe says. If people are looking for obvious tips, these are as good as any. What’s more troubling is the suggestion that we all want to be relentless corporate networkers with everything in our lives -- blogs included -- dedicated to constant career advancement.

''I used to have liberal politics on my website as well, but my mentor said, 'Dude, you gotta trim that off.' Which was fine because in the world of liberal politics I was just another piece of noise."

Now his blog is all about software development with an emphasis on technologies such as NHibernate and C#.

Sounds like someone’s been to a corporate reeducation camp and come out bland and harmless. Fortunately, it’s probably a self-limiting trend. Blogging that has become just another business card exchange is boring blogging that won’t find much of a readership.