[FormulaFox]

Originally Posted by Richard Casto

1. I assume that you are not on the payroll yet. Regardless it doesn’t matter. Even if you are, or if you have a contract or offer (verbal or written) in hand, nothing is set in stone. You could still very well screw yourself and your chances to make this work.

That's why I'm being so cautious on specifics. If it doesn't pertain to matters the team is trying to keep under wraps, they don't particularly care.

2. You have an expectations that you can both keep your identity a secret and also that you have your disclaimer that your opinions are your own and not those of the team. You may eventually be exposed and while you would like to think that you are keeping your work and personal opinions separate, sadly that is now how the world works. Your future employer may not care about your attempt at segregation and how consider how you act outside of work as reflecting upon them.

I have already been quite clearly told they do not care how I act outside of work as long as I am not claiming to represent the team at the time, and am not doing anything illegal.

3. You may or may not know what you are talking about. But given you are hiding behind a secret identity, it also creates a situation in which you have close to zero credibility because you can’t validate your bonafides. Anyone can claim the things you are saying (even if you might actually be telling the truth). You are currently in a no-win position when trying to use your “inside” knowledge. Your forum "reputation" rating here reflects that.

If I cared about reputation, I'd have given up on these things long ago. Despite my current forum reputation, I have a long-standing reputation outside of here of being disturbingly accurate - when dealing with claimed fact or predicting future trends I'm usually either spot on or at the very least on the right track.

Despite this, I've always been treated by a great many people as someone who knows nothing because they don't want to acknowledge that someone they don't know the identity of could possibly know anything or figure things out.

That said, however, I have not yet had enough to establish this pattern on THIS forum, so I make it a point to only take issue with people who have crossed the line between "forceful debate" and "outright insults."

4. If I was you, I would crank it down a few notches. Your priority should be on making your new job successful and not about proving you are right or “in the know” online. And you get too easily sucked into arguments. I am not sure who plays the role of “troll” in some of your flame wars. I suspect there is a bit of it on both sides. But you take the bait too easily. Someone is going to goad you into screwing up if you let them.

All I'm going to say to this is that I've done nothing here that wasn't part of the sort of comments in other places that attracted the attention of the team in the first place.