Slashdot Mirror
'Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.' (nytimes.com)
The New York Times ran a strong opinion piece that talks about one critical reason why everyone should quit social media: your career is dependent on it. The other argues that by spending time on social media and sharing our thoughts, we are demeaning the value of our work, our ideas. (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source.) Select excerpts from the story follows:In a capitalist economy, the market rewards things that are rare and valuable. Social media use is decidedly not rare or valuable. Any 16-year-old with a smartphone can invent a hashtag or repost a viral article. The idea that if you engage in enough of this low-value activity, it will somehow add up to something of high value in your career is the same dubious alchemy that forms the core of most snake oil and flimflam in business. Professional success is hard, but it's not complicated. The foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things that people care about. [...] Interesting opportunities and useful connections are not as scarce as social media proponents claim. 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. As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find you. To be clear, I'm not arguing that new opportunities and connections are unimportant. I'm instead arguing that you don't need social media's help to attract them. My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it's engineered to be addictive. 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. Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won't tolerate such a long period without a fix. Indeed, part of my own rejection of social media comes from this fear that these services will diminish my ability to concentrate -- the skill on which I make my living. A dedication to cultivating your social media brand is a fundamentally passive approach to professional advancement. It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter. The latter activity is seductive, especially for many members of my generation who were raised on this message, but it can be disastrously counterproductive.
fake opinion. at least, that's my fake opinion.
Too long, didn't read. However, I'll just go ahead and share this on facebook anyway..
That title suggests that the article is about the very real idea that what you post on social media can cost you your career. Instead, it's an article saying that posting on social media won't magically lead to a career. I'm confused as to why the author would ever think that posting on social media could lead to anything in the first place. Very strange premise.
I don't respond to AC's.
Yes if you are just retweeting a bunch of stuff your Twitter feed will do nothing for you.
But if you have a professional Twitter feed that you contribute valuable material to, that would be looked on pretty favorably by someone hiring at a company. It's not that much different than having a good record of contribution on GitHub, which I know some employers also look at.
Basically just be aware that anything you do on social media these days will be accessible to companies you may want to work for, use that to your advantage - post responsibly my friends.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I highly highly doubt it's a career. Or you could just be really, really shitty at your job. I made it about 2 paragraphs but had to stop when he was talking about some guy who felt the need to update his blog every 30 minutes. That's just an abnormal amount of anxiety and narcissism, not to mention an insane outlook on social media and modern life.
I, Anonymous Coward, will stop giving you all my great comments and ideas. My valuable work will go elsewhere.
People go to amusement parks which doesn't contribute anything to their careers either. Author clearly doesn't understand the text based amusement park we call social media.
Author conflates "good things" with "paying gigs", nice in the short-term but unfortunately self-centered and foolish. Basically, "shut up and don't think for yourself, and you can get whored out to the higest bidder like I did!"
The other argues that by spending time on social media and sharing our thoughts, we are demeaning the value of our work, our ideas. (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source.)
What a shocker. An organization that exists solely because people pay them for their ideas advocates against other people giving away ideas for free. Next, you'll tell me that oil and coal companies argue that renewable energy has more negative environmental impact than fossil fuels and that the gun control crowd says that the more law abiding citizens have guns the more crime we will have.
In my profession, the (US) military, actual work and accomplishments are ignored in favor of social behaviors. Party planners get much more attention than operators.
Aristotle had it right -- moderation is critical. Personally, I participate very little in social media, and I have strong concerns (as do many people here) about stuff like Facebook's policies and agendas. That said, if you're willing to put up with that stuff, I don't see a problem with someone maintaining a social media account just to, for example, keep up with the activities of old friends and acquaintances. I know some people who don't even seem to know how to use email anymore, so this is the reality of the world we live in.
TFA is talking about a completely different scale of a social media use, which lamentably has become the norm for many people. There's this belief that activity on social media promotes your "personal brand" and that constant updating and activity is necessary.
But I agree with TFA that good, solid work comes from time, attention, and reflection. In an era of short tweets and Facebook/blog updates every hour, the person who can actually write something more than 140 characters coherently stands out. Someone who can make an argument in prose -- not just rehash existing stories like some bad computer algorithm -- they can get noticed. Perhaps not by the online rabble (who can't be bothered to read beyond a headline). But if you want to impress someone for a job or promotion, your want to stand out from the crowd, not join in its continuous ephemeral (and meaningless) din.
It's a complete waste of time and, unless you're a buffoon running for political office, nobody cares what you have to say.
Imagine the writer gurgling as he runs short of energy to continue treading water. There, now you have the idea.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Don't quit social media, if you do you will be one of very few who do. I don't post anywhere except 2 sites really, here and youtube, very rarely do I post anything anywhere else. I don't view social media as a way to improve the career, I view it as a debate forum.
If everybody quits social media then will go absolutely unnoticed, which is what the main stream media and the powers that be want.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
And nothing of value was lost.
(Isn't that the point of the article?)
In Soviet Amerika, NYT is Pravda!
People telling other people how to live their lives is kind of how lots of society's problems started...
What works for you may not be what works for someone else's.
After much whining that fake news on Facebook swung the election, now the NYT is trying to discourage people from using social media at all.
Yup, stick to reliable journalists like them so you get the message they want you to get.
He'll just keep posting under his AC sock puppet account anyway.
Social media has replaced email for instant simulation at work. No wonder my coworkers are always looking at their cellphones.
Facebook is the opiate of the masses.
Interesting opportunities and useful connections are not as scarce as social media proponents claim. In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer
Academics is all about getting works published. Writing is all about getting works published. In 95% of all careers, only your boss, coworkers and maybe a few direct recipients know what you've done. From him it's probably not wise to put out to much drivel on social media because he'll become another blogger with mouth diarrhea, if you read anything with his name on it should be a high quality work that leaves you impressed. For most everybody else though networking is their little way of telling the world here am I and these are my skills, recognition by other professionals is key to making a career. Not that I really have the patience or desire to engage in much of that outside working hours, but there's no denying that a lot of people who are good at it and spend a lot of time doing it get good opportunities.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I can't tell if you were kidding or not but, if there truly was no value you wouldn't have commented.
In ages past, people advocated taking up things like Golf (or Tennis or simply going to the Gym) to help develop contacts to improve your career options.
Some people took this to extremes and started to waste copious time playing Golf and weakly justifying the time spent to themselves (or their spouses) as somehow related advancing their careers even though it was probably holding them back because it became a distraction to their jobs.
I don't see social media as any different than a modern form of "golf"...
On the flip side, other work related distractions (like volunteering at your local technical society), might seem like it is more related, but I've known folks that have been addicted to that and have taken that to an extreme so that when they lost their day job (layoff) and attempt to make up for it by being "president" of the local society and spending all their spare moments on that (with a job title self-employed as a consultant and not really looking for a real job).
Short story, sometimes you should concentrate on your day job and avoid too many distractions.
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
...does Slashdot count as "social media". If so, title seems correct to me...
She said, she said
'You don't know shit,
Because you've never been there'
She turned upon him,
Took him by the hair
Spun him round about,
Laughing as he fell about,
Sat down for a drink
In her father's favourite chair
Kill your Television
I've never heard of him. he has no reputation.
At least 5 people found value in his comment, as it is at +5 as I type this.
Hahaha... Disregard that. I suck cocks.
The only winning move is not to play.
Ess Pee Aitch - still the best advice you ever had from /.
I have a deadline coming up for this NYT article, and I haven't done anything but Facebook and Twitter all week so I don't even have an idea for a topic yet.....WAIT! I'VE GOT IT!
I already changed my mind. Tell my parents I'm gay, too.
Ideas, kept locked in your brain and taken to your grave are worthless.
Ideas that are shared with others go through a Darwinian evolution where others can scrutinize the idea before committing any resources to that idea.
Simply put - sharing your idea with others could save you from trying to develop a bad one - and encourage the development of good ones.
Maybe the NYT should run its opinions by a few people on social media before deciding to post really stupid ones like the article above.
The guy that wrong this from NYTimes obviously did drugs before writing it. The company that I work for, having over 400K employees, actually condones employees to take breaks and share opinions on social media.
...recommends not using social media. His proof that social media is bad is that he doesn't use it. In other news, vegan recommends T-bone over New York Strip.
The NYT is still butt-hurt that they were unable to wield their influence over the Presidential election, and they blame it on social media. Instead of learning from their folly they've decided to double-down on their failed strategy of manipulating public opinion.
Guys, the golden age of media conglomerates being able to control the public's access to information is over. The ability to manipulate public opinion on an issue so thoroughly is lost and you will never get it back. You guys gambled all of your credibility points trying to get Hillary elected, and you lost. Now the poker match is over and you have nothing left to bargain with. Your customers know it, which is why your profits are tanking. You can still survive if you would actually get back to reporting the news, but somehow I doubt that will ever happen.
Hahaha... Disregard that. I suck cocks.
Hey don't judge. At least I have a job.
Maybe that is his job.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/life/...
California may have the 6th largest economy in the world but my LinkedIn contact network is probably in the top 20.
The difference is that Golf generally had a better chance to put you in touch with the class of people who would likely improve your monetary standing, as they generally could afford hobbies like golf.
I look at it like this: If you are already able to play golf with someone then you playing golf with them doesn't help you much - you already have them as a contact. If someone is already willing to read your social media posts then it doesn't really help you much when they actually read them. In other words, if someone is already "in" your network, additional superficial networking is only marginally helpful on average and is potentially damaging some of the time (you say the wrong things or remind them that they should be bidding out your services, etc.)
The opposite way of looking at this:
1) You can't network while playing golf if you have no people to play with
2) Posting crap on social media isn't helpful if no one is reading it
The idea that because you post, people will be interested is just about equally compelling as the idea that because you are good at golf people will want to network with you.
If your social media posts are of the quality to earn real business/networking then this is a whole different issue and you should be questioning why you are at your current position and why you have time to be making these uncompensated posts. (Think of this like if a professional golfer used his golfing abilities to network rather than play in tournaments)
To paraphrase a certain highly-acclaimed movie, I Wish I Knew How to Quit You, Slashdot...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As a computer expert I avoid social media for anything mission critical, as I suppose many here do.
I also use fake names, just as in the days of old on IRC and Usenet.
Personally, I see 3-4 big dangers in social media:
1) The first is the obvious one: Total surveillance. Brave New World meets 1984 meets Neuromancer meets Snow Crash. And all in bad ways. Not for me. And I tell everyone I meet what FarceBook and WhatsCrap mean for their privacy.
2) Social Media is very short lived and eats up time at the same time.
3) The negative impact social media has on the human psyche is, in my opinion, quite significant. FOMO, self-esteem issues and F4ceb00k depression are real things and they exist with a measurable amount of people who live through mass social media. Social media emulates belonging to a community whilst at the same time causing us to drift further and further apart.
A point in case: My fiancé is an online PR / SMM worker and loves her job although she's being paid pretty crappy. ... It's a bit scary to be honest. I don't want to know what people will be like 30 years from now.
Just watching her being sucked up into some online thing going on that she has to attend to for private or work reasons at just about any possible occasion makes me look like a super-relaxed shepherd in comparsion.
4) Addiction and behavioral imacpt: I see this issue with younger generations who live through social media and I think it's turning a large portion of those using social media into an ADHD-driven OCD candidates.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
"I’m a millennial computer scientist."
The opening sentence of his article explains every reason you should ignore him.
Slashdot has been making me less productive since before Twitter and Facebook were a gleam in the eye of Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg's eyes. And I've been using "well, it's technical, so maybe I'll meet someone or learn something" as an excuse to read slashdot the whole time. Doh! I'm doing it again, right now, as I type. Screw this trash. I'm done with it. I hereby give up caffeine too, since its clearly just a tool the Illuminati use to control us all.
Sure, we'll all leave social media, and then who will be left? Just him. Reaping all of the rewards. Nice try, batman.
Your career does depend on it, but not on the way this article claims.
Both in China, with the creation of the "Social Credit Score" system, and in the west, with the rise of the 'reputation economy', do we see how your posts on social media are used to create reputation scores. You will pay more for loans or insurance, and you may even miss out on a nice job, because of these scores.
Databrokers use sentiment analysis and other automated scoring systems, and then sell these scores you companies that want to calculate the risk you pose to them. Of course this is not new (credit ratings have existed for some time), but the scale is new.
These systems are invisible to most users. How will you find out if you are the victim of 'data discrimination'? This problem is now so real that the european union's new privacy law (GDPR), which takes effect in 2018, explicitly forbids systems that 100% automate this scoring proces. A human must always be involved in some point to create a point of accountability, and avoid the cases of "computer says no" that are unfair.
This is why you do have something to hide. Managing algorithmic perception will be essential if you want a career.
Hahaha... Disregard that. I suck cocks.
I get the reference. I guess slashdotters don't read bash.org anymore?
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
i think it is a place to have what information you want and keep things and people updated for buisnesses. you have a choice of what and how much you share as just a person or buisness or groups or a combination. knowing that any one can post should keep a diserning eye and perhaps a good life leason even with so called trusted.
You're looking for a job. Meanwhile, you receive a Facebook friend request from an old acqaintance that you haven't seen for years. You accept, and continue your job search.
A potential employer gets your resume, and has a contractor check your facebook account. They check everything they can, including your friend list. They discover that one of your Facebook friends is an ex-con, who just got out of prison after doing 3 years for drug possession. Let's just say that won't help your chances of getting hired.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5497778/
all this american companies that are instanely valued in wall street, some of them produce a lot, some dont really produce much at all, some might be social media companies themselves like facebook, dont really mean much according to the new york times because they are not doing enough and selling dreams about trips to mars in 20 years and social media accounts
is that what they are saying? " It diverts your time and attention away from producing work that matters and toward convincing the world that you matter." because thats what it sounds like
i might have some kind of allucination hearing someome from america say that selling yourself is not important, or is bad. Its like im taking crazy pills
I'm the only person I know who has never had a social media account and never will.
"You'll never get another job.", they said. No problem finding work.
"You're personal and/or business life will suffer.", they said. No issue there, either.
"You'll miss out on this, that, or the other.", they said. No issue. My friends and family prefer texting, or better yet, face-to-face.
None of the downsides have affected me. I used to work in IT security, now in other IT work, but having no social media allows me to not be distracted when I'm doing research or spending time with my wife and children. My boss and family appreciate that my time is theirs. My personal down time similarly has little to nothing to do with IT or computers, so I'm good there, too.
Social media works for some. Not for others. I have no use for it and never will.
And most of the article is a short paraphrase of Cal Newport's "Deep Work" idea anyway. Not to mention that Deep Work is just one possible way of getting there; consider Kaizen (chipping away) and just plain, dumb luck. Those are two other methods, both of which allow social media overload. Bah.
The poor need capital to compete with the rich. To prevent this, the rich bribe politicians, media etc. to pass laws and write stories criminalizing the right of poor people to raise capital without giving lawyers a million dollars. The communist governments and media are paid agents of the rich oligarchy.
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Translation: if people post news and commentary to social media for free, the NYT is out of business.
Journalists, get used to it: you are as obsolete as buggy whip makers.
Assumed this story was about the dubious photos that will haunt people until they die (for millenials that is). The actual story sounds more like a rant against sharing though... digital protectionism I guess.
My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. 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. Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won’t tolerate such a long period without a fix. Indeed, part of my own rejection of social media comes from this fear that these services will diminish my ability to concentrate — the skill on which I make my living.
This is spot on.
I see this behavior from almost all of my co-workers(millenials...) who are looking at their phones every free second they have. It is disturbing behavior to say the least. FB, Twitter, Snapchat, etc; People have a hard enough time staying focused on daily tasks, whether at home or at work, without the constant firehose of social media "focus" being placed front and center into everyones attention.
All Social Media - All The Time
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I don't want to know what people will be like 30 years from now.
What this means is that in the future people will completely hand over control of everything to AI, because their attention span and critical thinking skills will be in the toilet.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Y'all still usin' that darn socialist media?
Ya t'never lern whats lies them demoncrats tells ya?
...let's go through this article, point by point and weigh up the validity, reliability, and relevance of each one... ...ooh! Is that a photo of a squirrel doing cute human-like things with its tiny paws?!!
All good points.
I would add: What was good yesterday is not good today. Everything you said will be misconstrued and used against you.
Remember that funny joke you cracked off to your friends list when there was maybe 15 in your whole list on facebook? You know that slightly offensive one that everyone liked and mashed the like button? Well guess what now you are a bigot and someone dug up what you said 10 years ago and you are now explaining to your boss why you made racist remarks. He is now letting you go over it. That shit does NOT go away.
I can find crap I posted on the net from 25 years ago under my real name. It is still there. Google was kind enough to obscure it slightly. Luckily it was just some noodling around about some video games. You reach into some of the old alt.* groups and that stuff would not fly today. Yet it was at least tolerated then. When posted it was fine. Now not so much. The winds of what is acceptable change.
Hillary lost to Trump because of social media. Now the Left are so desperate they are discrediting social media, their very own baby! Did none of you read Dragonlance? EVIL TURNS ON ITSELF.
I have a sysadmin job by day for my main income. But I am also a craftsman and artist in my free time. I occupy a niche within a niche and I am pretty successful and recognized as a skilled person who makes nice things.
None of that would be possible without social media to share pictures of my work, or having customers contact me. More than half my orders come from people contacting me via my fb page. The rest via a forum on which I am very active, and a handful through my website. So I'd say 90% at least via social media.
If it weren't for social media, I would simply not be able to do what I love. 75% of my customers live in the US and I live in Europe. I think I've only had 2 customers ever in my own country. So noone would buy my things which in turn means I would not have the funds to buy the materials I like to work with or the tools and machines I use. At best I would have to go to every single crafts fair in a 300 mile radius and make / sell 'low cost' (less than 300$) generic things that appeal to most people instead of making the things I love using the materials that I love.
Sure, social media can be a huge timesink and distraction if you let it. It can also be the vital enabler for your ideas or business.
I don't use social media like FB, Twitter, Instagram, snapchat and so on as I get the feeling that I don't get anything done. When my friends ask me why, I tell them that I use computers all the time and prefer not to use them in my down time, then joke that I'd get sucked in and find myself reading about someone's cats at 2:30am. I laugh however it's only half a joke.
Back in the day rec.humor.funny was my favorite but I found that "the net" could really suck you in. Back then I was lucky enough to recognize that in myself for what it was, the addictive properties of the net. So I think he is right and I'm glad this generation is (perhaps, maybe) seeing through the bullshit. Good.
I rationale that time I decide to waste isn't wasted time so I find Slashdot is enough zone time for me.
It's that addictive characteristic that made me decide to hang back from personal media and really evaluate it for what it was. This included /. where I lurked for some time until I commented. The pseudo-anonymity an attractive feature that allows you to say what you want to say with less fear of self-censorship. The permanency makes you consider what you want to say. The effort of that consideration is where I zone before going back to what I was doing. FB didn't have that so I didn't feel like I was missing much.
I think he is right about the productive time aspect as well. I do a lot besides work, jui jitsu, music, surfing, producing, personal programming, things I like and people I like to be around so that you can be interested in people. Life experienced through a FB post makes every encounter seem a little bullshit, like you've already been there. Kinda shallow. So I saved an incredible amount of time letting everyone else be on the bleeding edge for a change and just enjoying the ability to be laid back, relaxed and observing.
So again, I find myself agreeing with this guy about the impact it makes on the world. I found myself reading proposed laws instead of cats, at first for my business interests in technology then, as I understood more, the civil aspects. I've read thousands of pages over the years and I don't have to wonder about the machines of society used to keep an eye on us - they are written in the laws that govern us.
Which brings me, full circle, to the social control aspects of personal media, what better way to know all that needs to be known about a person than social media. The authorization is all in law to see for most western countries to use these tools to monitor us, even slashdot, there is no escape. We know it is there happening, but we are addicted and that is it, it is used against us.
I think these aspects are more important than work aspects which seem to be enhanced by a very controlled diet of information about myself out there. It is not tin foil hat stuff anymore as spying, identity fraud and advertising are all good reasons to keep a lid on my valuable information. All that people see about me is what I tell them and I look like a commodity who knows how to control the digital aspects of my life as a result. Best of both worlds. You either know or are known.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
All opinion, no news.
Maybe you should learn to read - from the first line: The New York Times ran a strong opinion piece...
Emphasis added.
"The other argues that by spending time on social media and sharing our thoughts, we are demeaning the value of our work, our ideas. (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source.)"
Does anyone see a link between extracting every drop of value from a brain and the paywall thrown up by the source?
Doesn't that kinda invalidate their position??