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Your employment with them does not reflect on you professionally or personally. You should list the work you did while employed for them and be proud of it. There's no shame in doing that.

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SCO really is toxic in a lot of circles, and most people don't remember the real history.

I'll bet that he could get away with describing his time at the "Santa Cruz Operation", though, for the same reason.

He is Charlie Stross. He doesn't need a resumé.

I would probably just say Tarantella.

cstross has had a bit of a career change since then. I suspect he'll be okay.

I would be leery hiring anybody associated with SCO. I'm not saying that it would be a "No-Hire" - but it is a big red flag would involve a lot of questions. It's far enough back now, that I would not mention them on your resume (Typically resumes don't include every company you've ever worked for) unless you were applying for a position that requires "100% disclosure" of all companies you've been associated with. cstross, though, is one of the few people who has told the SCO story in a way that it probably might not hurt him too much... In general - just agreeing that what they did was bad, might be enough in most "Side of Light" companies.

On the flip side - if you are applying for a job at a Patent troll (Side of darkness) - then maybe a person's time at SCO might be a bonus?

SCO really is a very, very toxic company - and there are a number of senior managers of that company that I wouldn't eat dinner with, and certainly would never shake their hands. The way I explain it to my friends - As Enron was to manipulating markets and shady financials, SCO was to open source software. Good riddance, one of the very few companies I'm happy to see die.

Under UK employment law, there's a precedent that says that, just as an ex-employee shouldn't libel their former employer, employers have a duty not to bring their former staff's resume into disrepture. I'm told by a barrister of my acquaintance that if I was still working in IT, and SCO was still doing business in the UK, I'd have a reasonable claim against them in court ...

(The precedent was set when former employees of BCCI sued that bank in the wake of its collapse in the 1990s. They cleaned up.)

I think we all agree with you about the recent incarnation of SCO, but the point is that the original SCO was a perfectly legitimate business.

Ah - that point got by me, Sorry. Now, the challenge is, on your resume (in this, and any other situation) is to differentiate between when the company was wonderful, and did good things, and when it was under new management, and, to capture how long you stuck around under the new management.

For example - I wonder if there was a time that Enron was a great company as well?

Perfectly legitimate and pretty awesome, even.

Useful employees lest tSCOg years and years ago. Only a few executives and book keepers worked there. And an outside trustee was brought in as well.

I guess one take away is don't hire Davide Boise law firm.

That's silly. Anyone who worked at SCO was gone before Dark McBride took the paper shell of the corporation to court.

Maybe not anymore but at the time SCO was laying off employees (2007), there were a bunch of posts saying how whatever person/company wouldn't be hiring them or in general that they wouldn't get hired. It probably had an effect on some of them.

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