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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Here is one of my problems with it. Social media mostly happens real time. Because of that it unnecessarily injects drama into your life. I don't use any of the main social media services. But, my wife and kids do. It is not unusual for something to blow up online within their peer groups. So my wife and kids start hyperventilating about what happened and looking for solutions and then something happens and the issue gets resolved pretty much on its own.
So, I manage to get through the whole day without drama. And when I eventually hear about what happened, it is all resolved and everything is back to normal. They on the other hand have spent their day caught up in this non-crisis and wasted all kinds of time, energy and emotion on it.
There is definitely such thing as being too available. Many of the social media services make everything too available.
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
Capitalism is under the mis-impression that it is such a fair an benevolent system that things are only "good" to the extent that they can be monetized, even in the face of clear evidence that some of the most essential activity/technology keeping our society afloat are done for no pay by self-sacrificing volunteers. Those who wield large amounts of capital are especially inclined towards this mode of thought, because they look around and say hey money is power, and I have money, so why can't I get people to do what I want?
That said, weaving conspiracy theories on anyone's page from high school who doesn't have the heart to unfriend you is not productive in either sense, and we do have way too many self-appointed keyboard warriors out there using social media as a prosthesis for actual social activism.
Someone had to do it.
...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.
Hahaha... Disregard that. I suck cocks.
Don't quit social media, if you do you will be one of very few who do.
oh god, not that! What's a lemming to do?
As far as politics go, the big social sites have already chosen sides just like mainstream media. Have fun with your banned accounts.
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!
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.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/life/...
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.
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
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.
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
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
More precisely, employee of a media organization that has lost major ground to social media trash-talks social media in a vain hope to regain mindshare for his employer. Only problem - the news media at large - of which the NYT is a part - has lost credibility w/ people, which is why they turned to social media in the first place
This is very true! Essentially, 'peer to peer' news distribution has replaced 'client server' news distribution. Instead of getting news from organizations whose bias a lot of us can't stand, we get our news from other people we trust, but who do NOT own media organizations. That is what has the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, et al so pissed off. B'cos if this trend continues, advertising on these channels will fall, boardrooms will notice and these organizations will be shut down. All that can't happen soon enough
Uh, he wants us all to stop listening to each other and to listen to only him instead! All of us should oblige
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
but having no social media allows me to not be distracted
You nailed it.
I actually feel sorry for people when I see them constantly checking their phones for some SM update.
In the past we called people with that behavior "crackheads" or "tweakers".
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
...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?!!
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.
"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??