Boss Bitching: Managing Your Online Boss Brand

Have you had a really stand-out, terrible boss in your past? One that manipulates you, takes credit for your work, or just makes you feel small? Or worse, are you still working for the nightmare? With all of the social networking sites enabling people to connect to one another and sites like MySpace encouraging collegiate users to “Rate their Professors” – you knew it was just a matter of time before employees began using the technology to rate their employers.

Jobster recently launched their new functionality allowing employees to tell their stories about companies they have worked for. Critics worry that it will just become a venting ground for disgruntled workers – but so far not much trolling seems to be occurring. Now employees have another place to vent – but it is a much more webilicious place.

Today, TechCrunch tipped me off to Boss Bitching, created by an Unknown Tech Guy. Boss Bitching is a user driven social content website that allows anonymous postings of stories about bosses. Visitors to Boss Bitching will read and rate posts. The posts that receive the most attention via the ratings will get promoted to the front page. Users can receive updates of the most popular posts through RSS.

The site waxes Jungian and classifies the bosses into types including:

• The Credit Stealer
• The Criticizer
• The Insensitive
• The Micro Manager
• The Tyrant
• All Purpose Asshole

While using actual company or boss names would be frowned upon – there are no community rules barring such an outing. What will this (and the numerous other sites that will undoubtedly launch in the coming months) do to employer brands? How will companies manage their Online Boss Brands?

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