christopherowen.id.au

While a fellow Atlassian recently lamented losing his number one position on Google after five years on top, for the first time ever, I now appear as the number one hit for “Christopher Owen“.

While I have been the number one hit on google.com.au for some time, on google.com I had been battling the awesome power of the actor Chris Owen (the Sherminator of American Pie fame) and, even more embarrassing, the previous number one hit: a page on mugshots.org listed under the “Sex Offender” category. Hurrah!

I do actually encourage readers to check out the mugshot and verify that indeed the photograph looks nothing like me… thankfully. I won’t link to the pages in question for fear of losing this hallowed status.

I interview a fair few people applying for jobs at Atlassian and more often than not candidates are making reference to various things I’ve posted here on this blog. While this is still a relatively new phenomenon for me it is not at all creepy. Yet most people I talk to seem to be almost relunctant to make it known that they’ve read my blog or apologise about “blog stalking” in the same breath. It is quite okay to talk to me about anything I post here; part of the reason I do write is to encourage discussion, either amongst my colleagues or people I’ve yet to meet. I don’t post anything here that I am not comfortable for a complete stranger to read. In fact, you actually win a bonus point with me when you do show signs of having done some research on me before speaking with me. This isn’t (necessarily) because of any inflation of my ego; the fact that you care enough about the discussion to spend some time getting to know me before hand is a desirable trait. It doesn’t even really matter that much if you try to gain some crude advantage by dropping in a statement such as “Super Mario 64 is the greatest game ever made and Cream by Prince has no equal in pop music”.

In the end, I know a bit about you via your resume so I think it is only fair that you are able to know a bit about me before we meet. It tends to make the discussion smoother because there is already some degree of familiarity between the people involved as the ice is already partially broken. I think that is very much a good thing.