Do All Tech Bloggers Secretly Dream of Working for Tech Companies?
Today, CNET social media blogger Caroline McCarthy announced she had been hired by Google to join its "Trends and Insights team." She's far from the first tech blogger to become a tech employee.
There exists something of a revolving door between tech journalists and the companies they cover. Well, not so much a revolving door as a one-way conveyor belt from tech journalism to the tech industry. In addition to McCarthy, we counted four other tech bloggers who made or strongly contemplated the jump over the last year or so:
- National Journal tech blogger Andrew Noyes became manager of public policy communications at Facebook.
- Vadim Lavrusik, a blogger and community manager at Mashable, became manager of Facebook's journalism outreach program.
- Forbes.com tech blogger Oliver Chang became a Google Books strategist.
- TechCrunch mobile editor Greg Kumparak was spotted with a job offer packet from Apple at a bar outside Apple HQ. He's still hanging around TechCrunch, though.
Obvious conflict-of-interest issues aside—McCarthy's last post for CNET before announcing she was going to Google was about, yep, Google—we feel obliged here to make the case for the lowly tech blogger before they all get jobs at tech companies. Sure, you may be tempted by the leaping fountains of molten gold we imagine grace the lobby of the Googleplex. You may think it grand to help build world-changing technologies instead of slogging through comment wars; perhaps you're attracted by the prospect of enough discretionary income to buy a second pair of pants.
But there are tons of awesome things about being a tech blogger. When's the last time Facebook let their employees work at home, like a blogger? Right from their bedroom in their underwear! Wait… Facebook employees can work from home? Huh. That's actually all I got.
