No Hire
A personal observation: I'm also a hiring manager, and I struggle with this problem on both sides of the table.<p>I Google candidates for their professional opinions and activities. But what do I do if I find their profile on a public site like HN? Some of the comments are going to be useful fodder for an interview <i>I noticed you posted a comment on HN suggesting OOP has had its fifteen minutes of fame. What do you see replacing it? ...</i> But I might also read opinions about politics. What if the same person has posted HN comments about Obama the Magic Negro? I really don't want to know what they think and why in the context of hiring them.<p>Worse, what if I see a comment from the same person saying one of <i>my</i> posts is absolute garbage and that I'm an idiot? Now I may have compromised my impartiality.<p>I don't know the answer. I wouldn't look up a candidate in something obviously personal like Facebook or MySpace, but I have no idea how to handle stuff like HN that contains what I perceive to be a mix of relevant technical opinions and personal, wrong-side-of-the-privacy-line stuff.<p>I don't know.