Is it bad practice to make a setter return “this”?

Question

Is it a good or bad idea to make setters in java return \"this\"?

public Employee setName(String name){
   this.name = name;
   return this;
}

Answer 1

On first sight: "Ghastly!".

On further thought

list.add(new Employee().setName("Jack Sparrow").setId(1).setFoo("bacon!"));

is actually less error prone than

Employee anEmployee = new Employee();
anEmployee.setName("xxx");
...
list.add(anEmployee);

So quite interesting. Adding idea to toolbag ...