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

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

#111

Post by kcorbitt »

davis wrote: post #56
kcorbitt wrote: post #9

This is self-promotional, but also highly relevant! A few moths ago after reading Cal Newport's book "Deep Work", I decided to try to improve my social media usage by writing an app that could block HN/Twitter/Google News (the big 3 digital distractions for me) by default, and force me to go to an extra step to temporarily unblock them when I wanted to use them. It seems like a small thing, but that extra friction of…

This is amazing! So it looks like the app is setting up a VPN and doing traffic filtering there. How exactly does it work? Also, one question I have: what sort of transparency/guarantees do you have about data privacy? I saw the notification when I installed it but would like more considering all traffic will go through this local VPN.

There is no exfiltration of data from the client device. Unfortunately I don't know of a technical way to prove that though.

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

#112

Post by s73v3r_ »

Humdeee wrote: post #102
virtuabhi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like your grocery store test at all. Before I give reasons, can you elaborate on what things make you "cringe"? Edit: Surprised at the support for grocery store test. If I was hiring and doing the grocery store test, then I would reject everyone who has posted in support of this test as they make me "cringe".

Is it not obvious? It's a visual opinion that is open to interpretation as much as any company that can consider you a fit for their culture. It's not a universal cringe per se, but likely falls into 'outside of social norms' cringe.

I really doubt the "grocery store test" is based at all on appearances, but if, after knowing you, would they want to go up and talk to you if they saw you outside of work, or would they try and hide, and hope you don't notice them.

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

#113

Post by garrettdc »

jehlakj wrote: post #81
luckydude wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Regardless, a social media profile displays the things that you value - or at least that you claim to value. Social media tends to be a highlight reel for many younger people, so having insight into what they view as "highlights" gives you insight into what they value and how they want to be perceived. If you see someone with wildly differing values on social media from the ones that they portrayed in an interview or application, then that should definitely be a red flag when reviewing their application.

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

#114

Post by jancsika »

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. Maybe I'm unique in being able to restrain myself.

Another possibility occurs to me: you are on a path in your life where, for whatever reason, you rarely engage politically with the world. Or at least you rarely engage politically in a way that would bring a substantial risk to your career, personal, or political life. Or you are lucky enough to be in a situation where you don't have to do that in order to protect yourself.

I'm not implying that you do this consciously (though that is a possibility). It may be something like the mathematician who finds a job at the NSA that fits their interests like a glove and burrows away their for the rest of their life. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with the person who just "clicks" with adversarial political action their whole adult life.

However, while I'm not particularly political myself it takes me maybe 3 seconds to imagine people who are (esp. people affected by Trump administrations policy toward immigration). So I'm left confused by your apparent inability to do the same. I am certainly not unique in being able to empathize with people who's safety is at risk from Facebook's creepy, leaky, sniff-it-all system of social media.

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

#115

Post by promeus »

Social media is not a problem. Tools for social internet connections are. Before all centralized tools we stayed connected with blogs, forums, etc. Fragmentation is important. Practically speaking, content is king. By giving your content to someone for free, you are creating a precedent in which, someone will explore your effort for nothing in exchange. Facebook is bottomless pit of greed. Thats why they are failing. Yes if you are technically and psychologically educated individual you can make this tools to work for you. But in a long run this is not true solution.

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

#116

Post by delerio »

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 stuff like that, but then again I heavily control my fb feed by only following "close" friends and select family members. I don't follow any news sites, and pretty much only follow art pages/ and a few programmers that have public profiles. This has more to do with people who have family/friends who enjoy stuff like that, but it's easily possible to never run across articles like that on fb. I sure haven't.

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

#117

Post by alex_young »

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #59

Last week I watched a homeless man: - Get a phone - Start a twitter account - Start mico-blogging - Get offered a job - Get the job - Become no longer homeless https://mobile.twitter.com/CharlieBinbags

Thank you for sharing that. Inspiring story. Social media clearly has positive and negative properties just like any other form of communication. I'm glad it's helping here.

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

#119

Post by dfmooreqqq »

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…

But that seems like more of a problem with news in general than Facebook - nightly news/news websites include headlines and stories like that - but we shouldn't encourage people to just put their heads in the sand...

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

#120

Post by AlexCoventry »

hashkb wrote: post #2

Social Media is so obviously bad for you/society and good only for platform owners and advertisers. Most obvious thing in the world. To me, it's not at all obvious that crack addiction is, socially, any different.

> not at all obvious that crack addiction is, socially, any different.

I don't know; I'm addicted to reddit right now, and haven't noticed any greater tendencies to risky behaviors or violence.

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