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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)

#251

Post by Balgair »

crowbahr wrote: post #145
Balgair wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is the false positive/false negative rate and a lack of data in general. Without any measure of how 'good' the info gained via social media is, the data is essentially useless. For large companies like Walmart, they can garner this data and see if it correlates at all. Google used to use GPA in their hiring decisions, but dropped it as it did not correlate to how good an employee is. For example: drug use.…

Yes but if you post pictures of yourself holding up signs at a KKK rally then a company hiring you is a PR liability for them if the could've checked and didn't.

Yes, but you've said nothing about the cost-profit ratio about a hypothetical horrible racist. Even discounting the cost of the negative PR, do they still make more for you than otherwise? Is horrible racism something that your company cares about other than the money? Maybe having them work for you is a better thing than them not working at all?

Social media can be very 'noisy' and should be one of a number of factors that are used in decisions.

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

#252

Post by ant6n »

turc1656 wrote: post #166

"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 of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom." While I do not use social media (have FB but don't use it, never had Twitter, Instagram, etc.), and have taken steps to minimizing distractions like using the browser add-on Distraction-free Youtube (which is gre…

HN _is_ social media.

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

#253

Post by alexandercrohde »

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…

Just as a counter to this, consider something like linked in. Suppose you innocently get a new job, and it doesn't work out pretty quickly (e.g. within a month you realize it was a huge mistake). Suppose you also marked this job on your linked in.

Now you have to ask yourself if linked In is selling this private information to new employers about this recent bad-role. Also, there are firms that sell info to your employer about you updating your linked in (because it may mean you're looking to quit).

So it could affect your career negatively, even if you're super happy and don't see the effects directly.

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

#254

Post by Karupan »

dionidium wrote: post #142
borplk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Companies aren't going to ignore "free information available at your fingertips" about the candidates they hire. For example a problem candidate may have easily accessible "red flags" on their social media such as racist stuff and drug use. They co…

"Companies aren't going to ignore "free information available at your fingertips" about the candidates they hire." I do. I often interview candidates in my role as a software developer at my company. Finding them on social media would be trivial. But I don't look for them there. I don't care. I don't even want to know their politics before giving my recommendation and I'm deeply suspicious of anybody who thinks they…

Second this. I make it a point not to look them up on social media. There have been a couple of occasions where I’ve checked their LinkedIn profile if I feel something’s amiss, but that’s quite rare.

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

#257

Post by ams6110 »

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…

Your chance of dying is 100%. I'd rather enjoy some bacon every once in awhile then worry about single digit variations in my chances of getting cancer. I do tend to buy uncured bacon anyway though.

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

#258

Post by sidlls »

luckydude wrote: post #249
sidlls wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think it gives an accurate or actionable glimpse?

Man, so much of what seems defensive pushback, I don't get it. Here's the deal. I ran a small company for almost 2 decades in the valley. Everyone worked with everyone else very closely. One bad apple can screw up the whole company, make everyone miserable. So I used every chunk of info I could get to make sure that a potential hire was gonna be a fit. That's just being prudent. If you are posting on mailing lists ab…

I am a manager. I wouldn't look because I understand that online representations of a person paint an incomplete at best and extremely inaccurate at worst picture of the person, especially as it pertains to their ability to work, and that there isn't any solid empirical data supporting assertions like the ones you're making.

Do you actually believe most of what you read on the internet? It's just amazing to me that anyone actually takes these things as seriously as you do.

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

#259

Post by drb91 »

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…

> It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.

Counting the years you live always struck me as distracting from the things that matter: quality of life, and sticking around to see things that you might reasonably hope to see. In this worldview, bacon might totally be worth the extra 1.5% absolute chance of colorectal cancer.

That said, I was under the impression the problem was more the preservatives and the smoking part of bacon rather than the "red" or "processed" part of meat.

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

#260

Post by purplezooey »

Kind of a simplified argument. "...foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things..."

yeah that sort of overlooks a lot of stuff, like bullshitting skills (very important today).

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