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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

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Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?

Well, the quality of the discussions on HN have taken a dive dramatically since about a year and a half. So maybe he just doesn't feel theres much to comment these days.

From my perspective, from a very humble position, the content on this site seems to skew toward the "harder" science problems lately, a far cry from when 5 out of the top 10 stories were RoR related and many other stories were related to pushing CSS and JS to the extreme with a smattering of stories about startups and people hitting it big or failing.

I think we have since learned about the influence of survivor bias, that you can really accomplish the same things in any programming language and that since YC itself is now focusing on larger problems, some with sociological and political leanings, that it is best to move on from looking at things at the code level and instead look at the bigger picture.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#313
post #22
post #4

There is also another aspect. In theory your personal life and work are separated. Your religion or political opinions should not matter at work. But many people (sadly even on HN) think it is ok to fire people, based on their opinions.

> fire people, based on their opinions. Lest we forget: - Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, fired for a donation, - Douglas Crockford, uninvited from NodeVember, the general opinion is that he said something that a woman didn't like, - Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, upon an unproven accusation, - And all people and the 2 colleagues who have been fired in smaller companies, in smaller even…

> Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, fired for a donation,

Fired for a donation that supported enshrining discrimination in a state constitution. It was a good firing.

Support nasty causes, win nasty prizes.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't know. I think Nazis are categorically and fundamentally different than, say, anti-vaxxers. I mean, if you don't want to vaccinate your child, fine. I don't agree with it, but I can live with it. If you identify with a group that literally burned people in ovens though? Yeah, I can't live with that, sorry.

Interesting you compare those two groups where, in the 21st century, an anti-vaxxer is more likely to be responsible for causing a death.

That's a good point.

Yeah, don't get me wrong: not vaccinating your child is a very shitty decision, and dangerous both for the child and other children they interact with. Herd immunity and all that.

But let's be fair: one major difference between anti-vaxxers and Nazis is that anti-vaxxers are simply misguided and ignorant. The Nazis on the other hand knew exactly what they were doing (exterminating people) and even developed fucked up methodologies for doing it more efficiently. So I stand by my previous assertion that the two groups are categorically and fundamentally different.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#315
post #209
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

I have the same problem. I found editing my hosts files helps. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com When or if I try to go to HN I get an error in my browser and instantly reminded. Then I get back to work. One time I went 6 months without visiting HN.

I had a little cron job that swapped in a hosts file with entries like that at 8 am and then swapped it back out at 5 pm. Helped me break the habit of going on reddit during downtime during work hours.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#316
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fire people, based on their opinions. Lest we forget: - Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, fired for a donation, - Douglas Crockford, uninvited from NodeVember, the general opinion is that he said something that a woman didn't like, - Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, upon an unproven accusation, - And all people and the 2 colleagues who have been fired in smaller companies, in smaller even…

- Curtis Yarvin, creator of Urbit, disinvited from presenting at the Strange Loop conference on programming languages after Steve Klabnik and perhaps other participants threatened to withdraw over Yarvin's political blog posts.

Calling other races well-suited to slavery isn't political, it's hate speech.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#317

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

I have a legitimate question. If you delete your Facebook account, how does that affect your OAuth logins on other websites? I've been tempted to delete my Facebook account but there are unknowns about how that would play out in the social login space, so I'd be interested in your thoughts.

I can only speak for my own site. We don't receive any notifications from third-parties when accounts are closed. If you don't login again, you can use password reset with your email address to get a password for your account. Which email address depends on the primary address set at Facebook.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the political arguments would -never- have been tolerated in the early years. Users and moderators would have quickly suppressed them...but they seem to have infested the forum since then.

100 times this. There needs to be a coordinated effort to stamp out all political material on HN so we can focus on actual Hacker News and not the Silicon Valley political sphere.

I was away for awhile...came back and was shocked at the level of political bickering and posts that were allowed to stay. A lot of the old members have moved on, it's a different place these days. Such is life.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#319

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

i just put together a small script if you're interested!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000254

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