Industries exposed, one by one

Since the blogging boom began, there have been some well-publicized incidents related to anonymous employee blogs. Companies hate them. Employees who've been found out have lost their jobs. And yet, they continue to spring up, skewering and satirising their industries from the inside out. Some have become must-reads for those in the business or others considering a career change.

Academic James Richards of Edinburgh has made it his calling to track employee blogs across industries here. The airline industry, call centres, education and the emergency services (?) seem to have a disproportionate number of disaffected bloggers... I guess long patches of downtime overlapping with Internet access are the key ingredients.

While some employee blogs have been used to slander co-workers or attack corporate policies in squirm-inducing detail, many are providing hilarious insights into their isolated corporate worlds. The risk of getting caught provides additional spice to the blogger's craft, but let's hope that companies are coming round to the view that they can learn from their own bloggers. Ex-Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble (who should know) suggests that employees should leave companies that don't let them blog.

Below are my favourite anonymous employee blogs. Let me know if you can think of others in the tech industry (where I haven't found that many):

1. Investment Banking - The All Nigher
2. Consulting - Getting Drunk in First Class
3. Law Firms - Anonymous Lawyer
4. Microsoft - Mini-Microsoft
5. Apple - The Masked Blogger
6. IT guy in banking - That's not a bug, it's a feature
7. PR industry - Strumpette
8. UK Teacher - The Report Card

Comments

[The All Nighter]

"I guess long patches of downtime overlapping with Internet access are the key ingredients."

You missed out the essential bucketloads of scorn for the industry one works in :)