One of the questions that I often wonder about is how maintaining a public persona (for example, by publishing your thoughts on certain topics on a public Web site for five years or so) affects one’s ability to get a job. In the glory years, my perspective was that if somebody didn’t like what I had to say on this site, they’d be better off not hiring me. That’s the luxury that a seller’s market for software development skills affords. Now that the job market sucks, I wonder whether I can afford to be so brazen. If someone does find this site troublesome, though, chances are they would be better off not hiring me, because I really don’t have any interest in shutting it down. In any case, Dave Johnson has an interesting post about the role that developing Roller had in his finding a new job. I would think that developing a popular open source software package would give you a huge leg up in the job market, and would be seen as a nice advantage by all but the most cretinous employers.