Blogosphere yields gem of a job journal and takes me for a Saturday ride that beats heck out of reading the paper

Before I tell you about the wonderful — though somewhat lengthy — “job journal,” allow me a moment to trace my disjointed Saturday morning surf that led to this gem.

(This occurred moments after my daughter asked: “Dad, do you have ADD?” — You can answer for yourself after you read about where I went while following the links)

First, I glanced at Bloglines and saw a new post at Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins’ About.com Web Logs Blog

Sheila mentions that “Once again, BoingBoing.net wins “Weblog of The Year” in the 2005 Bloggies.” I think: “Gee, what am I missing in not having this popular blog on my bloglines reading list of 139 sources? Is it right to exclude it just because it’s not employment related?”

So I click the link over to BoingBoing. Seeing the tag line “A directory of wonderful things,” I think “maybe the occasional ‘wonderful thing’ may be worth throwing into my Blawg; I bet this guy reads tons of diverse stuff that might broaden my horizons”

Next, a quick right-click and “subscribe to this page” and I’ve added BoingBoing to my bloglines list, which means it now appears in the blogroll at right under Blogs, Misc.

I scroll down a bit to see what might be interesting, and I see this gem:
“Ex-coder’s account of life as a bike courier”

I read the blurb, see it’s a potentially interesting writeup of life in an unusual occupation, and click the link to the original post, “A Coder in Courierland” on Kuro5hin.org

Highly recommended read. No direct lesson for HR or employment law, but here are my thoughts on some indirect lessons:

1) Wouldn’t it be great to have a collection of such well-written, enthusiastic job journals about all sorts of jobs and careers available and indexed on the Internet, for students and career-changers of all ages to review, instead of the dry descriptions found in more traditional career resources?

2) Some people will definitely take a pay cut to do what they consider more fun and interesting work under better working conditions. Don’t assume they won’t when you consider hiring someone whose previous pay was higher.

Instead, ask them if and why they’d work for less. If they immediately highlight what they see as an opportunity that is superior in important — if intangible– ways, and do so with apparent credibility, drop the assumption that they’ll be miserable making less money.

3) Is there value in appealing to such workers’ desire for independence and freedom from supervisor-over-shoulder discomfort, in order to keep good, creative people? (Might this guy have become a better, happier coder under different terms and conditions of employment?)

Regarding these important issues, see the headings “You’re not the Boss of Me” and “But Tell Me, Does it Rock?” even if you don’t read the whole story.

OK, I’ll confess this was not the end of my ADD websurf.

Next, I noticed that BoingBoing credited the bike courier link to Accordion Guy, so I looked at his blog. Nice blog, but one of the millions of “personal” ones, and I can’t read them all!

I did check out one humerous Accordion Guy post, “Home Sweet Meth Lab,” illustrated with an image that may say something about the “housing bubble,” at least in Seattle.

I then clicked back to the site where the courier story appeared, Kuro5hin.org finding it appears to be a valuable, deep source for a wide variety of well-written original blog journalism (yes, I bloglined it under “blogs, misc”).

As a timely for-example, here’s something on the Terry Schiavo fiasco that quotes medical literature making the key point a very wise and thoughtful doctor friend of mine made (but I never saw in the mainstream press): “Terri’s tube, morals, lies, and justice”

The point: “Patients in [persistent vegatative state] can demonstrate behaviours that are associated in non-brain injured individuals with emotional experience, such as crying, grimacing, smiling, or laughing (Royal College of Physicians, 2003). When the patient fulfils diagnostic criteria for VS, these behaviours must reflect subcortical functions and are not indicative of subjective distress. Not surprisingly, this can be difficult for relatives to understand, and many families reasonably perceive these behaviours as signs that the patient is intentionally trying to ‘wake up’ (Jacobs et al., 1986).” (emphasis added).

[I'm not taking a position here on a controversial non-employment issue; my point is the value of good blogosphere content brought out by knowledgeable people with access to good primary source material (e.g., medical journals)]

Now I’ll end with a frivolous distraction. I’m listening to one of my favorite radio shows: “Midday Jamboree” on KDHX St. Louis, an excellent and fairly unique “community radio station” available over the internet. If you like blues, reggae, Irish music, rockabilly, classic country, grateful dead, obscure 60’s pop and soul, to name a few, you might want to listen in, wherever you may be located.

They’re doing car songs today in honor of the Easter car show in St. Louis tomorrow (I hope to go).

The car songs led off with “Hot Rod Lincoln,” an old fave of mine, and they mentioned a website about the song. Can you guess what I immediately did? Firefox>Open New Tab>Google>”hot rod lincoln.” Without disrupting any of the other surfing described above, I found this lovely story: “Hot Rod Lincoln - The Car behind The Song” Here are the lyrics to this first car song to hit Billboard #1.

Now as I write they’re playing a car song that actually has an HR/employment connection. It’s the ultimate “shrinkage” story: Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time” (and it didn’t cost me a dime).

Now you know it: my mind wanders a tad when I’m in front of a computer with Internet (which is most of my waking hours). And I have a few other interests you don’t normally hear about, because I try to keep this blawg “professional.”

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