At work I'm constantly researching how to do various technical things using Google. Usually I'm trying to figure out a feature of some software component that has little or no official documentation on the subject. More often than not I end up on someone's blog reading a post saying they spent hours and hours looking into whatever I'm trying to figure out, and they provide the answer.
That's one of the reasons I started this blog - I had some vague idea that when I figured out some interesting technical thing I would post about it, and maybe someday someone would find it useful. Plus there's some egotistical satisfaction in writing things when you pretend somebody might actually be interested in reading them.
But I started realizing that the things I'm researching are almost always for work purposes, and maybe it's a bad idea to share that knowledge with others. I'm not sure any one thing I find out is especially important or secret, but if over time I share lots of things I learn I'm sort of giving away what work is paying me to do.
So what to do? If everybody had this concern, most regular working people like me would never post things on their blogs and my source of technical knowledge would dry up. From that perspective I want to add to this community. But on the other hand, I don't want to give away too much.
So, I wonder: who is it who posts technical knowledge on their blogs? Is it really just people who are doing things in their free time, or am I using research others were paid to do?
