Trashing may be too strong a word, granted. But it's making public unflattering internal details about a company that employed him. I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager.
Coming across material like that when researching someone for a job would probably be a no-hire flag for me - and many others. I'm sure he's a great designer, but does a post like that expand or limit the number of future gigs he might get? You could say "he wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway", but I'd rather have that decision left to me rather than a lack of response when I'm looking for work.
Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.
This sounds like you have no clue of who the guy is. I don't think there's a single company or start-up that wouldn't hire him.
You're talking about a guy who talks at numerous conferences every year (or at least did), who designed Blogger templates before being employed by Google, who designed Webmonkey, Wired, etc. (http://stopdesign.com/about)
Besides, he was simply pointing out that this was a complete mismatch for him and I can understand his "frustration", given the fact that he was supposed to be a UI Lead at Google. He wasn't hired to be some low-level pixel pusher.
I would be personally irritated if I was this guy's manager.
Who cares about some middle manager's opinion?
Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.
It sounds like you are looking for people who will shut up and churn out mediocre code for 8 hours a day. There's certainly a market for that, but I doubt the author of this article is interested.
If I write a blog post about how much I hate cleaning up toxic waste, that will limit my opportunities for employment cleaning up toxic waste. But who cares, I would never do that anyway.
It's bad form to diss your employer, current or former, in public.
Even more so for a senior guy like that. He's leaving one hot company to go work at another - he can talk about the great opportunity at Twitter. He doesn't need to gripe about the job he's leaving.
His post spawned a bunch of mildly unfavorable press, which is currently #1 on Techmeme. Bad form.
Paul Graham once wrote that "unprofessional" was the null criticism. It says nothing other than expresses your distaste. I wonder if "bad form" is the same thing, spoken with a slightly English Public School accent?
Coming across material like that when researching someone for a job would probably be a no-hire flag for me - and many others. I'm sure he's a great designer, but does a post like that expand or limit the number of future gigs he might get? You could say "he wouldn't want to work at places like that anyway", but I'd rather have that decision left to me rather than a lack of response when I'm looking for work.
Offering this in the spirit of advice. I've been hiring people in the valley for 10+ years. I used dejanews to screen applicants prior to google... today yes we will read your tweets, find your blog, and skim it all to get a sense of who you are. Be thoughtful about what you post.