Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#81

Post by jehlakj » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

luckydude wrote: post #64

tapeleg wrote: post #20

Career and social life should be completely and utterly separated. The content on your social media page should have no bearing on your ability to perform the job at hand. Quite honestly, an employer that even looks at your social media profile to do a sort of casual "character check" on you, is not one that you should want to work for in the first place. Especially true in the realm of IT, where there just simply ar…

I'm pretty much retired but I was an engineer and then a manager and then a CEO/VP engineering for ~20 years. If you think I'm not going to google you before I offered you a job you are mistaken. Of course I'm going to do that. Think of it this way. One of the questions we asked ourselves about every hire is "would they pass the grocery store test?" Which is: if we saw that person in the store would we go chat with t…

You mention you judge a candidates social media prior to offering the job. Does that mean you have at least done an in person interview with them? I ask because it’s really hard to determine a person by their social media. Maybe unless for an older generation where their real life aligns with their social media presence. But for many younger generations, they couldn’t be more different.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#82

Post by geofft » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #67

gnicholas wrote: post #55

> In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I currently have filters on my website aimed at reducing, not increasing, the number of offers and introductions I receive....My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the market…

I don’t see many founders on HN or social media after they get funded.. if anything they may post about their company

But that's true of both founders whose companies will succeed and founders whose companies will fail - they both need to focus on the one thing they're doing in the hope of not making it fail.

The interesting question is whether they were spending time on social media before getting funded, and whether that correlates with later success, perhaps due to having better ideas or better offline networking opportunities or whatever.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#83

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

jacobkg wrote: post #69

RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

I've never seen stories like that in my Facebook page?

Either your have horrible friends or you've responded repeatedly to this type of article in your Facebook feed, resulting in the algorithm promoting those posts. You can remove posts like that from your feed by clicking on the little gear in the top right.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#84

Post by davvolun » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

> If I wouldn't do something in public, I wouldn't post it to social media.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately in calling and sending emails to my government representatives, attending marches and protests. By definition, these are done in public; there's no point otherwise! But there's nothing preventing my employer from deciding they don't like what I'm putting out there and doing .. something about it.

I don't see anything to be done about this, certainly not in the short term, but it's a very different sort of thing than supposing there's something on social media I would be "embarrassed" about my employer seeing.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#85

Post by psyc » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

I only use Twitter, and I only follow interesting or noteworthy people in my specific industry. I've been exposed to interesting techniques and papers, made valuable connections, and found paid jobs. However, I have also felt distracted and distressed by the significant amount of [men vs women, black vs white, gay vs straight, cis vs trans] bickering and put-downs coming from even these people, because apparently that's what you do on Twitter. It's a trade-off, but I cannot call this healthy.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#86

Post by amelius » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

ensignro2340 wrote: post #27

I don't remember where I heard/read it, but I always think about something someone said along the lines of "I want to be the person who creates a social media app, not the person using it every day" I've found more and more time in the day the fewer social media accounts I have. I just wish the industry could step a little further away from LinkedIn. It's the only social media site I feel has any bearing on my career…

> I just wish the industry could step a little further away from LinkedIn.

Are there any open-source and federated alternatives to LinkedIn? (Other than just posting your resume as a HTML page)

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#87

Post by heymijo » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #55

> In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I currently have filters on my website aimed at reducing, not increasing, the number of offers and introductions I receive....My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the market…

I think what the author describes about a tipping point in receiving offers/intros is true. I also think he is right about social media (FB, Instagram, Twitter) for someone like him. This is also in-line with the author's writing on 'Deep Work' so his stance is not a surprise. However, I see a great great counter-example--Patrick McKenzie (Patio11).

I just checked and he has over 42k Twitter followers and is regularly brought up on HN.

Yet, here's the third paragraph on his personal website:

"I love talking to other small businesses at any time, for any reason: please, drop me an email. I respond to as many as I can, time permitting. Nothing makes me happier than helping people out. See the Standing Invitation for details." https://www.kalzumeus.com/

I wonder if the way Patrick portrays himself and his openness to connecting, ends up with him having a higher quality of inbound than the author. I realize that's a conjecture wrapped up as a question.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#88

Post by tzahola » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

luckydude wrote: post #64

tapeleg wrote: post #20

Career and social life should be completely and utterly separated. The content on your social media page should have no bearing on your ability to perform the job at hand. Quite honestly, an employer that even looks at your social media profile to do a sort of casual "character check" on you, is not one that you should want to work for in the first place. Especially true in the realm of IT, where there just simply ar…

I'm pretty much retired but I was an engineer and then a manager and then a CEO/VP engineering for ~20 years. If you think I'm not going to google you before I offered you a job you are mistaken. Of course I'm going to do that. Think of it this way. One of the questions we asked ourselves about every hire is "would they pass the grocery store test?" Which is: if we saw that person in the store would we go chat with t…

I never talk to strangers in the grocery store. Do you?

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#89

Post by psyc » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

justherefortart wrote: post #42

thisisit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense, yes. A friend of mine, once got obsessed over the karma he was generating on HN. Every two hours he would check his HN profile, just to see if his karma had increased or not.

What does karma do for you here? I still can't downvote so it seems pointless.

I don't know the exact number, but I believe you get downvotes around 500. It may have changed.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#90

Post by tzahola » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #51

tapeleg wrote: post #20

Career and social life should be completely and utterly separated. The content on your social media page should have no bearing on your ability to perform the job at hand. Quite honestly, an employer that even looks at your social media profile to do a sort of casual "character check" on you, is not one that you should want to work for in the first place. Especially true in the realm of IT, where there just simply ar…

I think it's OK to the check Facebook profiles and look for stupidly shared information around drugs or something like this. I wouldn't want to hire a specialist who is publicly promoting drug usage. On the other hand if you Google me you find something related to me liking ganja. Which imo helps future bosses to filter me if they aren't OK with that.

Meanwhile, SV enterpreneurs take daily microdoses of LSD.