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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

#441

Post by ahartman00 »

rjromero wrote: post #345
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

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.

It's the same reason why kids were passing notes in school instead of paying attention. It's no longer called socializing/talking with friends. Its now social media/playing with your phone.

People want to feel like they are part of a group.

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

#442

Post by nether »

defunctirl wrote: post #437

We recently had a presentation at my University from a number of local industry leaders, and the topic of Social Media's role in the hiring process came up. I've been in the process of slowly reducing and removing social media where possible, and the reaction I got to a question regarding an individual's lack of a social media presence was quite negative. Basically the consensus was that if, during the hiring process…

What kinds of companies were these? In many industries you'd seriously compromise your hiring if you ruled out all the experienced 40+ year old candidates who don't care for FB accounts. Mechanical engineering and defense work especially.

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

#443

Post by grzm »

tajen wrote: post #432
grzm wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the law was in favor of his opinion at the time, therefore there was nothing reprehensible at the time." What is legal is not the same as what is moral or ethical. Figuring out how to tolerate dissent is an issue I think a lot of people are trying to figure out right now, as your statement is pointing to.

What about you let people privately support the causes they believe in? He may have good reasons to think that, which aren't forbidden by law. It was legal, it is moral for some people, it is ethical for others, what about we let him do his job of managing a technical company? Companies shouldn't be forced to fire people who are considered as "witches" by the people, as long as they're competent in their job. It take…

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my comment. I'm not taking a position on what happened in with respect to Brendan Eich in particular. As I wrote, I think figuring out how to balance this is a difficult issue. Given the amount of discussion this instance in particular and similar situations, I think it's far from settled for a lot of people. At least there's not wide agreement.

You bring up good points regarding the training and the costs of replacing people. Those costs are balanced against the value brought to the company, right?

One of the reasons I think it's difficult to discuss as when people start giving examples as to what should be tolerated and what shouldn't, some people are going to think it's absurd, and take issue with the discussion as a whole.

For the sake of argument, I'll try.

Let's say one of the goals of the company is to provide honeymoon packages and the target market is gay couples. An employee makes a donation in support of something like Prop 8. Is there a conflict there? Are they a good fit for the company? If not, should they look for someone else? Perhaps the person shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Should the company be able to make that decision based on knowing the candidate made such a donation? Should the candidate look elsewhere and not consider a position at the company? Can a company's goals change over time? Can a company's goals include those broader than just the product they market?

You mention "let him do his job of managing a technical company". I think there's tension here, as well (independent of the situation at Mozilla). People are not purely rational beings. How people get along in the workplace is important to its overall effectiveness. What's acceptable in one workplace is not going to be acceptable in another, similar to how people have different circles of friends. Should companies be able to hire for fit? Fire for it?

I think there are some very real questions there. And a lot of contentious issues. Please don't assume my answers to all of these questions, either. You're guaranteed to be wrong as I haven't come to a firm conclusion on all of them :)

If toleration of political opinion is a settled issue for you, please share :) Can you think of a political position that should not be tolerated?

The whole "what's legal is not necessarily moral or ethical" is another kettle of fish, which is the point I was making initially. Your point about what's moral for some people and ethical for others points to some agreement on your part, doesn't it? Perhaps one difference is whether or not we agree that a company can or should have an ethical purpose or should reflect the ethics of the people who own the company or work of the company. Or do business for the company, for that matter.

I don't expect you to have answers to all of these questions. I'd be surprised if you did. If you don't think these are valid questions, I'd be interested to hear which ones are invalid and why.

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

#444

Post by astrange »

zilchers wrote: post #259
Veen wrote: 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.

Hacker News doesn't have the churn that means other news sites are always different when you visit them...perhaps you could call that a downside, but I actually really like that aspect.

Worryingly, every time I've checked the admin news updates threads on Reddit, users are complaining that the front page changes too slowly. It does only seem to update about once a day.

The comments are seriously addictive; I wish there was a way to hide 90% of them to make it easier to stop reading.

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

#445

Post by Anderkent »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #421

It was interesting that the story was about being distracted rather than having potential future employers seeing you in an earlier and perhaps less flattering context than you currently present yourself. Both are good reasons to avoid social media I suppose.

Yeah, I expected this to be about the small risk of devastating impact, should you make an off-colour joke or an offensive complaint on a public view and it goes viral.

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

#446

Post by defunctirl »

nether wrote: post #442
defunctirl wrote: post #437

We recently had a presentation at my University from a number of local industry leaders, and the topic of Social Media's role in the hiring process came up. I've been in the process of slowly reducing and removing social media where possible, and the reaction I got to a question regarding an individual's lack of a social media presence was quite negative. Basically the consensus was that if, during the hiring process…

What kinds of companies were these? In many industries you'd seriously compromise your hiring if you ruled out all the experienced 40+ year old candidates who don't care for FB accounts. Mechanical engineering and defense work especially.

There isn't a whole lot of dev. work or innovation going on in the private sector where I live. This was local Government and a couple of Software Development Consultancies (who primarily contract with local Govt.).

They did give the impression that the suspicion when finding no internet presence was generally when vetting younger graduates.. ie. Millenials, and those who they felt were more likely 'trying to hide something' by not using social media..

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

#447

Post by wuschel »

greggman wrote: post #367
Veen wrote: 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've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading. I have similar problems with…

To me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.

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

#448

Post by striking »

erichocean wrote: post #177
pault wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best". So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.

The way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child.

It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.

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

#449

Post by nbouscal »

abvdasker wrote: post #433
kowdermeister wrote: post #262

I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped. > I’ve never had a social media account. He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins, bloc…

My take is that this article is also really poorly written. The overly formal tone and extended sentence structure makes it seem like the author is trying too hard to sound smart. He's doing this especially annoying type of bad writing where he thinks the tone he would use for an academic research paper read by one professor is a good fit for an opinion piece that will be seen by thousands. > There are many issues wi…

You think that sounds like a research paper? What field are you reading research papers in?!

For what it's worth, the author of the article has written multiple best-selling books for popular audiences.

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

#450

Post by sjg007 »

Veen wrote: post #35
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

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'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'm making an AI to recommend articles so you can check it once a day or get email alerts for ones you want to comment on. Downside is you have to train it.
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