Online Personas and a Virus Name

What is this Site?

After much internal deliberation about what this site should be, I have landed on the decision to make this space (subseven.io) strictly “professional”. Shocking, right?

Separation of Concerns

I think it’s safe to say most of us deal with the concept of separating concerns. E.g. in web development, you usually want you visual styles to be decoupled from your business logic. Why? Because otherwise things would get messy and hard to maintain!

Similarly: I, Dan, am a whole human being; as complex as you: another human being. Most (if not all) humans aren’t monolithic. We have many opinions, interests, and activities we both enjoy and not enjoy. However, sometimes these things will have a hard time occupying the same space.

This isn’t a groundbreaking revelation. We all do this to an extent when we go to work—twice as much if you are a minority. To me though, the online world seemed walk a much thinner line between professionalism and personalism—especially in the tech space.

In a world caught between borderline tech monopolies and the commoditization of personality, I took the concept of the personal homepage to heart. The concept of having a space just for you is what initially got me coding in the first place.

There are so many folks online that are able walk (if not outright reject) the line I mentioned so beautifully and unapologetically. But as it turns out, I’m not one of them.

I have a Dilemma

Originally inspired by the virus with the same name, I’ve been using variations of the moniker @subseven across many platforms since at least 2011. In 2017 I decided that since I’ve been using the name for so long, I might as well buy a domain of the word. What can I say? I’m attached to the name.

My indecisiveness about what to do with this site have also been in part due to that attachment.

Should I use it as my personal home page? Should it be my resume? Maybe both?

The current iteration is a presentation trying to lay the foundation to do both: casual tone, but here are my projects. Here are some of my personal thoughts and some technical things I’ve learned.

At the moment, I’m job hunting and refactoring the site. As with any job hunting, I’ve also been sending out my site. It wasn’t until recently where I found myself writing an article about the music I make, games I’ve played, and personal explorations that I began to think to myself: hmm, perhaps these should go elsewhere.

But, why? These things comprise me—I should be able to do express them freely right? True, but one thing I can’t escape the nagging in the back of my head to keep the branding™ separate. Would recruiters care? Probably not. But someone looking over my resume might.

The commoditization of the self is small price for potential employment after all, right?

SubSeven™

Let me be clear about one thing: I dislike corporate façades. Even after finding the focus on this site, I have no intention to deliberately tailor anything I make fit a corporate mold; it’s going to be “professionalism” on my terms.

I’m not changing my tone. Future posts will likely contain bleed from my opinions (read: this post). I’m certainly not going to start blessed-posting on LinkedIn. I’m buried in so many layers of irony that I don’t even think I could.

With that said, I still can’t ignore the fact that a compromise is being made, but it’s one that, at least for now is acceptable.

While I won’t be posting things of the personal flavour here, that doesn’t mean I won’t post them elsewhere. My hobby of collecting domains has finally paid off!

Conclusion

I would like to hear the thoughts of others, especially from folks in underrepresented groups. Should we compromise? How do you approach your own presence online, in the context of professionalism? Does it differ from how your approach it in the real world?