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

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

#191

Post by davvolun » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #127

davvolun wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 d…

Unionize! My union doesn't do collective bargaining negotiations.. I'm a tech worker... It covers me legally should employers take too much of an interest in my personal life, etc... They also run a news paper about engineering topics..

Unfortunately, "union" is a basically a four-letter word where I am.

Also, not trying to overstate my "struggle" or anything -- the reason I'm active politically is because of the impact on people I care about, not the impact on me. I'm fully aware I'm pretty damn privileged to be able to write what I wrote above.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 6:44 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…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by whatyoucantsay » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 6:45 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…

Well done! It sounds like you've done well at avoiding the various social media landmines.

I suspect most suffer from facebook because of its Skinner Box nature and due to comparing their real selves with their peer's crafted outward-facing personas.

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

#194

Post by ohmichel » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

This is a powerful piece. Definitely Cal have a point when he says "If you’re serious about making an impact in the world, power down your smartphone, close your browser tabs, roll up your sleeves and get to work. ".

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

#195

Post by justherefortart » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

psyc wrote: post #89

justherefortart wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So close... Help a brother out! ;-)

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

#196

Post by nopacience » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

Something curious about facebook is, they let anyone access user profile/pages (or whatever it is called), so visitor can see the user profile picture and might be able to see other stuff. Facebook "protects" the privacy of the "visitor" because the user cannot see what visitors have visited their profiles.

So, users have no privacy, but visitors have their privacy protected.

Facebook should list "who" visited user profiles. I dont know why they dont do this already. And even more, they could somehow list what photos the visitor chose to see, how long visitor stayed on user profile, which 'full resolution pictures' visitor had downloaded. If they only saw thumbnails then no need to list, but if visitor made the effort to download all full resolution user pictures then the owner of those pictures should be able to see who has downloaded them.

So this way, the user would be able to see how frequently visitor X, Y, Z has stayed on their profiles, and how many/which full res pictures they have downloaded/seen.

If the user profile is not a person, but a store (or company snooping on you), then the store would be able to benefit from this data and send some message saying "We noticed you have been visiting us lately, and you seem to have a lot of intrest in product X. Do you want to know the price or make an offer?"

Or, if the user is a person and has seen weird behaviour from weird users, then user would be able to take precautions.

So in the end, the user profiles are public and have no privacy. But the visitors/consumer of other people profiles can snoop on other lifes and have their privacy protected because the page they visited is never able to know they have been visited by visitor X Ntimes.

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

#197

Post by justherefortart » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

scient wrote: post #148

justherefortart wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should happen and what does happen are two completely separate things in reality. If performance actually mattered I'd venture to guess 95%+ of people would be fired immediately. Maybe I'm cynical about it in my advancing years, but kissing ass pays off exponentially more than producing good work (unless you own your own business).

In my experience for whatever reason a lot of software engineers consider normal functional communication with their peers and managers as ass kissing. Is it because of being introverted?

I'd say there's a large streak of being self absorbed and thinking their shit doesn't stink.

I'm likely just as guilty of this. More so in the past as I continually try to correct my behavior (not always successful but I'm trying!).

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

#198

Post by paulie_a » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 7:02 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #108

On the other hand, there has been an increasing trend of companies adding a red this-is-required star to social media links on applications. I've been outright rejected for several jobs because I said I have no useful SM presence. I could understand this for something like band promotion, but for programming and similar jobs, it makes zero sense. I don't post pictures of me online, and even so, I never take photos wh…

Even if you do have a social media presence that should be considered a red flag about the company.

Personally I would fill those blanks in with http://notapplicable.com

It probably wouldn't result in a response but at least it would send a message.

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

#199

Post by rdiddly » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #155

jacobkg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do i…

Bacon... Hamming... I see what you probably quite unintentionally did there.

Anyway, doors are nice because you have the luxury of opening and closing them. Just remember what open and closed doors are for. Open it to see what's worth doing; close it when it's time to go do it.

Ideally this all applies in the metaphorical sense to social media too, if one has the discipline to handle it that way. But the problem for a lot of people, and the problem with this door analogy, is that a door doesn't nag you, Hey. Hey. Hey. You haven't opened me lately. Hey. Tons of cool stuff is going on beyond this door. Hey. Are you okay? I'm worried about you and so are your friends. Hey. Still there?

Also the door doesn't record your phone calls and so forth.

If only social media were as flexible, disinterested and unobtrusive as the lowly, everyday door.

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

#200

Post by duncanawoods » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

nopacience wrote: post #196

Something curious about facebook is, they let anyone access user profile/pages (or whatever it is called), so visitor can see the user profile picture and might be able to see other stuff. Facebook "protects" the privacy of the "visitor" because the user cannot see what visitors have visited their profiles. So, users have no privacy, but visitors have their privacy protected. Facebook should list "who" visited user p…

> I dont know why they dont do this already

Because people would use Facebook less.

Creeping is one of the core values of FB whether its acquaintances you think you want to know more or the old flames you think you want to forget. It may not be entirely negative as it sounds - its essentially gossip with a digital middleman and no distortion. Or at least a different kind of distortion with more control by the source.