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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

#341
post #338
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It was before the law was voted, and the law was in favor of his opinion at the time, therefore there was nothing reprehensible at the time. Plus, the point is, if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy?

> there was nothing reprehensible at the time

Lots of people knew proposition 8 was reprehensible and protested accordingly. Eich chose not to listen.

> if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy

Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function. We regularly vote politicians out of office because of their political opinions. What other criterion should a democracy use to select leaders?

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

#342
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to work with a nazi, or with a racist, or with a fundamentalist zealot. I believe it's absolutely okay to get rid of these people in a company, as work is a social environment, no matter the level of professionalism. And also they may cause harm to the organisations they're part of.

> I believe it's absolutely okay to get rid of these people in a company Once you start thinking like that, it becomes easy to find any way to rationalize firing anyone for any reason.

Lots of places have 'at will' employment conditions which mean you can in fact be fired for any reason whatsoever. Oddly enough this seems to be more popular in conservative jurisdictions.

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

#344
post #178
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.

Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News. HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this: 1) "Oh, interesting topic!" 2) Open in a tab 3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly) 4) Come back N hours later, rea…

I follow a very similar pattern here on HN. One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I always read the comments first and only sometimes visit the link. The links act as topics that allow for discussion more than an end/reward in and of themselves (like on reddit for example). I'm always interested in hearing domain expertise, anecdotes, opinions, etc from the HN crowd which is, admittedly, much different than my active social circle.

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

#345

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'm curious, what is it in the human psyche that causes us to have such a desire to stay plugged in to social media? Especially when the content we go through usually only ends up white noise to us.

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

#347
post #341
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was before the law was voted, and the law was in favor of his opinion at the time, therefore there was nothing reprehensible at the time. Plus, the point is, if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy?

> there was nothing reprehensible at the time Lots of people knew proposition 8 was reprehensible and protested accordingly. Eich chose not to listen. > if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function . We regularly vote politicians out of office because of their political opinions. What other c…

"Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function."

What does "purging" mean to you in this case? You've now provided two examples: firing and voting. What level of political disagreement justifies what actions? I don't think there's widespread agreement, and it's something I'm trying to figure out for myself.

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

#348
post #43

I found this hard truth by myself. I noticed how my attention spans were decreasing. I've always been a really distracted person, but social media made it worst. I ended up adding Facebook, Twitter,9gag, Reddit and other sites to my /etc/hosts (0.0.0.0). Was the only way to fix it. While I work I leave my phone at a distant table, with notifications turned down. The only thing that I get are phone calls. I remember S…

> What does that make you if the first thing you do when you wake up is checking Facebook? Under 30?

More like 25-35. I'm a high school teacher and most of my current crop of students spend virtually no time on Facebook.

Twitter and Snapchat, on the other hand....

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

#349

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…

Years ago I caught myself watching Entertainment Tonight this was around or a bit past the Mary Hart and John Tesh days. I caught myself with a smile but my eyes following along if that makes sense I call it the Joker smile it was terrifying to think what I had become. So I stopped watching any stupid tabloid shows outright starting that at that moment.

The other day I realized that social media is essentially the same thing tabloid junk. Only now in the social media we choose to watch it we seek it out and then comment on it we become part of it.

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

#350

The general message is good: stop procrastinating and actually work (which is what I should be doing instead of mulling over the wording of this comment). The way it is written, however, is less than ideal because it has entirely too many unsupported claims. Without evidence it isn't a solid argument. For example: "My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to conce…

> I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so.

Recommend reading up on the "Hook Model" - http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked - or watch this video - https://youtu.be/oQBsnSC_TRM - the techniques for building addictive products are well known, with a history that goes back to Las Vegas and the gambling industry.

Most social media companies - with the exception of one or two like Zynga - of course aren't overly announcing "we're building stuff to get you addicted" but their business depends on audience numbers so guess what: try searching LinkedIn jobs for "Facebook" and "psychology" and it's pretty clear

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