Mentioning my company during technical talks?
I've been doing a couple of technical talks this year. Nothing fancy, but it's been a good time. I haven't really included an "About me" slide, but since everyone seems to do it I figure that I should do this as well for my next talk. My question is: should I mention the company that I work for? e.g. "I work at company ABC. A fantastic company where we do DEF. We're actually hiring so feel free to reach out" or something like that? My company know that I do these talks but it's been during my spare time. The tech talks is about the programming languages that I use at my job, but that's the only connection to my work otherwise.
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
![Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3] at Google company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fgoogle.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3D780356ef-3efc-4728-9eb4-d909b75bb4a6&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 1
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2 years agoSenior Software Engineer and Career CoachI think it kinda depends. For me, I don't necessarily want my company super involved with the outside stuff I'm doing or concerned that it will impact my work--so I keep a lower profile. Additionally, I wouldn't want any of my personal opinions to be tied to the company and backfire on them and it become a problem with HR for me.
But if that is different for your situation and you're just educating on more "matter-of-fact" things like teaching a programming language, the harm seems minimal especially if you make the slide not a big deal and just a kind of "hey, by the way"
- 1
2 years agoSenior DevOps EngineerMake sure you reach out to your companies legal department (or whoever's closes) before you do anything official.
Once you add that company slide, you're presenting yourself as a representative of the company, and there's serious implications there.
