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Networking for introverts

economist.com

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Networking for introverts

#61
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real secret is to save your energy for the people who are most likely to be interesting to you. I think this is the real gem. There are people who do well socially and are energized by other people. That's not me. I can do well socially, but I have a social battery - people drain me and I need to regularly be recharge by being inside my own head for a while.

It's not that anything drains me, I just can't get myself to pretend to care about strangers.

But you care about friends? If yes, then don't forget that there has been a time when they were strangers too.

I don't imply you have to care about strangers, but there are tangible benefits to maintaining a balanced approach (and that, for introverts like us can mean doing more than we would if we just follow our guts).

After all even if you don't care about strangers, being on good terms with them, or even making the occasional friend will have a positive impact on literally everything else that you actually care for, be it your own well being, your projects, etc.

Re: Networking for introverts

#63
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... in the context of career networking... Everybody should just mind their business and leave each other alone?

The entire concept of career networking is rooted in expanding access to nepotism and is a poor substitute for an objective evaluation of merits. With that being said, it obviously has value since nepotism won't be going away anytime soon. What OP likely isn't aware of is the works published over the past 30+ years for managers/owners on how to relate to their probably-introverted programmer employees.

Sure if I meet an executive at a golf course and after a few drinks at the clubhouse, he decides I should get a job he just opened, that's nepotism. But I've been an utter outsider in every industry I've come across, and did not have any family or social connections in any relevant professional or academic circle. If I'm at a conference and jibe with someone in between panels over a common professional perspective, and they later forward me a job opening to apply to within their organization, it's a pretty big stretch to call that nepotism. It's not like you just get dropped in that job without proving your merit. It seems to me that nepotism happens within or through relationships or social/class structures that already exist-- not among people who develop professional relationships outside of their workplaces. It's a pretty huge stretch to say that conferences or any other kind of bona fide career networking facilitates nepotism more than they facilitate genuine professional relationships.

Re: Networking for introverts

#64
post #59

> The researchers randomly changed the “People You May Know” recommendations algorithm that LinkedIn shows its users, so that the prevalence of weaker and stronger connections varied among people on the site. The experiment showed that weaker ties (where a pair of users had only one mutual friend, say) were more likely to lead to job applications and job moves than those where people had 25 mutual friends or more. Wa…

This sounds like a fair question, and it might be (including from a legal standpoint - IANAL), but the way I figure it LinkedIn will be constantly experimenting with their recommendations anyway, whether those results are shared for research purposes or not, and they're not going to ask your permission to do that. It's what you sign up for when you join the site.

And it's the same with other social media. Perhaps it seems more seriously because it's LinkedIn and it's a "professional" network. I'm not really defending them: it's more that I've always taken the view that I am responsible for my career and, whilst LinkedIn's tools and recommendations might be helpful, they're also not definitive, and I'm not going to hold them responsible for either opportunities that don't work out or for failing to show me all possible opportunities that might be a good fit.

Re: Networking for introverts

#66

Most of the article appears to be about what does not work. Here is the relevant part from the bottom of the page- > The real secret is to save your energy for the people who are most likely to be interesting to you. > The sweet spot in networking on LinkedIn is someone with moderately weak ties to you: connecting with a person with ten mutual friends markedly increases the probability of changing jobs compared with…

[deleted]

Re: Networking for introverts

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I pay for information presented in such a short, clear and to-the-point manner? Preferably human generated as well (no to robots). I dream about having access to this kind of internet.

Hacker News, of course! :) I am curious though, why human generated only? AI is getting better at summarizing everyday. Does it really matter if you cannot tell the difference?

> Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Re: Networking for introverts

#70

How come such an article ends up with 30+ points? There's literally no meaningful information. I'd look into what accounts upvoted this link, something seems off.

Flag bad articles and email the mods if you suspect abuse otherwise the forum fills up with meta.
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