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.
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, 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.