Ask HN: Developers, how do you deal with socials, blogging, etc | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Developers, how do you deal with socials, blogging, etc

Throwaway.. because I don't want to tie my actual account to this one.

People - how do you deal with the ongoing requirements it appears that jobs place, such as social network involvement. To me - this means LinkedIn posting rubbish, Twitter bollocks, public GitHub repos for sharing - even the asks from employers to post here.

I, as a person have zero accounts anywhere, except for one here. I've been gainfully employed in industry for ~2 decades, and frankly I have neither need nor desire to have a "social profile". I speak at conferences when I want to, sans twitter, linkedin, etc. Moreso - I find the amount of developer advocate written blogspam (let's just call it marketing crap) only contributes to the web problems - and hence have started to block... everything, including my employer's search results (personally, with a plugin in DuckDuckGo and Google.

I'm not interested in writing blog things. I'm interested in continuing my ongoing work as a principal engineer, without marketing externally on the fakery of "how great we/I am/are", or "humbelbragging", or frankly any of the rubbish I keep encountering. I just want to focus on the things we're collectively doing to be successful.

So... how do you handle this?

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Like many others and OP - I don't participate in "social" part at all and the employer does not require it and I too have been employed for ~2 decades in the industry, 17 of which with same employer (with full freedom to be creative and everything a senior dev expects from a good employer).

I'm not interested in writing blogs, I use Obsidian to create snippets and link up things I stumble upon and find useful or to note down my own code snippets, techniques and similar. I find blogs very hard to read, I often need technical info only (i.e. config reference, code sample or syntax example).

The whole "social" part of the current web is not something I can relate to at all, it feels fake and too inflated with useless information so I tend to avoid it.

If there were requirements to virtue signal, to write blogs, to write all over Linkedin "I am great but I would not be here without my $team of awesome $people who inspire me $some_other_generic_motivational_anal_alpinism" - I think I'd burn out and pursue a different career.

I ignore the popular "social" platforms, I use IRC and phpbb/vbulletin based forums to interact with people that have similar non-work-related interests. I don't think I'm missing out on anything and I feel no curiosity to be a part of this post-2010. part of social web.

Simple

- No linkedin, no instagram, no fb, and afaic not even a google account (yes android works, rooted)

When my employer asks me to "publish", "have a presence" or "shine for the company" in any way I find the NDA, security rules and legalese I've signed and reply

1. This is against cybersecurity rules, can you sign me a paper stating you want me to break rule #37 and rule #61

2. Then I ask him to accept all the end-user agreements in the company name or its own personal name, and send me back the login+password so I can contribute daily BS - oh and buy me a company owned phone if such interactions involve using a MobileApp(tm), no way I'm mixing personal and work on my phone

The discussion stopped here, never got a reply, did this to 3 employers already

If you would have just said "sorry I'm not really into social media" then perhaps you could have ended the conversation in 2 minutes and wouldn't have had to repeat it to further 2 employers shortly later.

Perhaps I didn't explain it well. Those employers kept me ! and I didn't have to repeat it to other potential employers "shortly" later.

It just ended the conversation there. The crucial part being I'm not against publishing as a part of my job, but no way you're making it a personal requirement / on my behalf.

The outcome being "let's stay good friends", not "you're fired"/"don't get the job", I did get it. As such, not ending the conversation in 2 mins but letting them reviewing their argument is crucial : the constraints are yours, and you don't have anything to blame me for ..

Fair enough :)

It was just funny to read "never got a reply, did this to 3 employers already" and then I couldn't resist this tongue in cheek response. Sorry ^^

It was a nice troll, gave me a chuckle.

I still think your "sorry I'm not really into social media" would have most likely ended it as well and would have come off a lot more polite. Could have escalated it if needed from there

> did this to 3 employers already

Let me guess — in the last month?

Nope, 10 years, 2 years and 4 years resp.

I don’t want to interrupt your “stuck it to the man” story but I’m just curious whether it was HR telling you to participate with a clear message you’d otherwise be fired, or whether it was just over enthusiastic marketing folk?

Over-enthusiastic marketing. Sometimes it was HR promoting participating in social networks "for the company". Nobody ever threatened me, they were just really pushy, until the pushback

Lol, that's a simple "no, I don't want to do that"

Unless it’s already included in your job description - don’t do it.

Typically companies are paying for your expertise and your ability to execute on it. Documenting that expertise and giving it away for free through company-branded properties devalues your knowledge.

If a company wants you to create that then they should pay you, make it part of your job, or make a content creator at the company interview you and write it.

If you really want to create blog or social content about your abilities stick it on your personal website where you can own it and reference it in the future.

It’s usually obvious when friends and coworkers are pushing the company line on their personal social profiles. It usually comes across as disingenuous and lowers the value of the content even more.

I'd even go so far to say this ask is a sign of ill health of the company. Requiring everyone to do what are essentially marketing activities is a red flag imo. If the products and services aren't connecting with the market such that customers or potential customers aren't independently posting about it, that's a problem. Or if the product isn't discoverable via traditional methods, that's another problem.

I work for a real jerk (myself).

I believe in a “personal brand,” but probably not in the way that a lot of the cynics think.

I feel as if each of my public interactions reflect on me, personally, so I’m careful about what I post.

That may not seem apparent, but I’m retired, and not interested in rejoining the rat race, so I tend to post stuff that may seem TMI, to a lot of pros.

However, I keep it positive, almost always, and tend to be vague about negative stuff.

I feel as if I should not add to the negativity I see everywhere. I’m quite capable of it, but I consciously choose to avoid it; even though folks think I’m a stuffy old fart.

This is actually a bit stressful, so this joint is really the only place I participate much.

I have a bunch of social media accounts, but most are really “placeholders.”

I've been thinking about how I interact on HN and "being careful about what I post" but I realized that if I'm "being careful" then there are parts of myself that I actually don't agree with because I'm not willing to broadcast them or I'm scared about being judged.

I think I've realized I need to let go of that and just let me be me. Not everyone is going to agree with what I say and that's ok, at least I either know or can reflect on the things people disagree with and either change or feel more confident in the end.

Well, I can report that there are reasons that we don't "say what we think."

That's what people say about some of these hate jockeys: ("They're just saying what everyone thinks").

I am being "me," when I'm careful about what I post. I've learned (the hard way, mostly), to install a filter on my fool mouth.

Yeah I agree. It's hard to get sucked into emotional debates where you end up saying things that you believe but things lose context because it's all text. I find myself thinking hard about what to say but either I realize it'll turn into a diatribe and not worth the effort or it doesn't accurately convey my entire point...

Bit of a different take - I'm a programmer, but I've held the title CTO for the last 8 years.

As a CTO, I've been routinely asked by non-technical peers and PR departments to represent the company more. Sometimes citing obscure reasons such as attracting technical talent - when we never had an issue with that.

So far, I've largely resisted it by reasoning that it's not the most valuable thing I could be doing. As soon as I asked folks about concrete goals, KPIs, and business value, the arguments fell apart. If someone's job is to "do marketing", especially if they're inexperienced and/or have a small budget, they'll look to what they see other companies do and try to delegate it as much as they can. Even for marketing people, conference talks and blogging rarely have that much proven business value compared to other things they could be doing, in my experience. For programmers, that's all the more true.

Even now that I went into consulting, I don't think hopping conferences and writing blog posts is gonna pay off more than other things I could be doing. I enjoy discussion (like here on HN), but something in me is averse to generating more noise - which most of my thoughts probably are. I'd rather build a few deeper relationships than an order of magnitude more shallow ones.

> it's not the most valuable thing I could be doing

> Even now that I went into consulting

I have a couple counter points on this. Previous CTOs I know that post to LinkedIn a lot, helped fill open roles, share company developments, and appear well networked "IT gurus". Then eventually started their consulting firms. Thing was, they were like executive celebrities to their dozens->hundreds of reports they managed over the years while holding their CTO roles. Fast forward a few years, many of those reports are now >=director levels managing $xxx million of budget dollars at various other companies. So, when they hear their old CTO is starting a consulting company, well you know how that goes. The CTO consulting firm is quickly a 100+ team. So maybe not the best use of your time for the company you work for at the moment, but it can pay dividends in the future for you personally.

> how do you deal with the ongoing requirements it appears that jobs place, such as social network involvement. To me - this means LinkedIn posting rubbish, Twitter bollocks, public GitHub repos for sharing - even the asks from employers to post here.

I don't. I've never seen or heard of it being an "ongoing requirement" of any kind.

> even the asks from employers to post here.

Your employers ask you to post here? As in, a directive from C-Suite? Or is it just a rogue manager trying to make themselves look good?

I've had friends at other companies ask me if I could do something about a post here because of my karma. There's an impression that it matters somehow...

>I've been gainfully employed in industry for ~2 decades

For someone with that amount of history, it will not matter.

But for new people: Just keep a generic linkedin that looks professional (you dont have to use it, just have a profile). It's going to look sus to have zero social presence; might as well give HR something to chew on. Don't add your managers or bosses on your personal social accounts.

You're better off having some generic stuff up when someone google's your name than nothing at all or worse- some embarrassing shit you posted 10 years ago.

If that looks "suspicious" to an employer, you don't want to work there.

For the interview at my current job they didn't even ask for a resume/CV they just had the interviewers take a look at my Linkedin and asked if there was anything not represented on there I wanted them to know about. I barely use Linkedin and aside from the major milestones my page is pretty sparse. I agree it's advisable for the younger crowd to have something for potential employers to take a look at.

I'm not on Twitter/LinkedIn and have basically nothing on public on Github. Hasn't been an issue for me somehow.

I just say I don't have any social media accounts and that I'm a private person. I've not felt pressured to post something, but if I was, I'd just refuse. I guess in the worst case they fire me, but I'd just find a job somewhere somewhere else.

I guess my advice is just keep ignoring the bullshit as long as the consequences aren't something you can't handle. Obviously if you're the single earner in your family and barely making ends meat, you might have to suck it up.

I sense some FOMO from your post. If it works for you without having these accounts and engaging in getting more social online, then why bother with getting onboard, but it really feels you don't want any of this.

> I just want to focus on the things we're collectively doing to be successful.

What's preventing you doing it?

I personally have a bunch of social media accounts and post stuff regularly, but only stuff I care about, so I can get behind them 100%. Sometimes it's deep stuff, but mostly rubbish shitpost, it just entertains me.

I don't think it's required to land a job to have these accounts. A LinkedIn one is the only one that's good to have, but only to get discovered more easily. You don't need to contribute to the cringefest that's 98% of the content there.

I'm in a similar position, and I don't really see any problems. Unlike you, I have accounts on these services, I just hardly ever log in and don't actively use them. I've had multiple employers tweet about my conference talks and add my twitter handle, I see that someone asked me a question on twitter 1-2 years later when I randomly decide to login. I never post on LinkedIn, and I don't really share much of anything on GitHub, because most of the work I've done in my career either was proprietary and hidden or was very much open-source but likely mediated through other parties.

At any rate, I'd say don't worry about it. I don't bother even being concerned with this, as what ultimately matters is your direct professional network and reputation. Giving talks at conferences and getting things done, being involved in interesting work, is more than sufficient to sustain and grow your career. In fact, my experience interacting with a lot of technical folks who have huge social media presences is that they have lost some of their technical skills (or maybe never had them at the level they claim) and have become mostly focused on marketing fluff. I have found that as an engineer, and now as a PM, that concentrating on substance over flash is the right approach. Flash can definitely be a way to get things too, but if there's no substance there, it's not sustainable. Social media is just an accelerator for people who know how to market themselves, but without the underlying substance it ultimately goes nowhere meaningful.

You do you, don't worry about what other folks are doing, just keep doing good work and talking about it with people you respect.

In my current job they asked me to update my linkedin. I said "haha nope". Latest entry is from 2017. Never heard from it again in the past 5y.

In a previous job, they asked me to post a review on glassdoor. I said "haha nope". They came back after 6 months insisting I do so, I told them "no.". They came back at it after another 6 months, I asked what was their budget for bribing glassdoor into removing a bad review. They finally go it.

I've never had issues with not having "social" accounts. Every time it was mentioned during an interview I just jokingly said it is time that I reinvest in my own projects then usually they were (rightfully) more interested to see what I did which I would show from my laptop or my personal website (that would be up during my job search and put to rest right after). So in other terms, I'm playing the game when I want to and/or when there's something in it for me.

That said my profile is a bit of a niche one and I'm not really making public talks etc so ymmv.

That's very interesting that you ramp up the personal marketing via your website when searching but bring it down again afterwards. I think that's a really good approach. My instinct is that this would reduce the chances that people would see your website and come to you with potentially more interesting or aligned work but in my 15 years with my website up and running I think this has happened to me so little that it's not worth worrying about.

Personally speaking, until I have "fuck you" money, I would not choose to be active in public social media under my own name while worrying about maintaining or finding a job. Even if it's innocuous today, you have no idea what random comment you make will be deemed offensive by someone in the future and come back to harm you. Jokes that were commonplace and seen as mild humor even a few years ago can turn into cancel-worthy offenses if a mob comes after you.

What can you do if your job is demanding it? You might be able to get out of that requirement by citing privacy concerns and requesting reasonable accommodation: claim that somebody has been stalking and harassing you in the past for instance and you're concerned about cyber-bullying.

If they still insist, maybe it's not too hard to create a barebones account and just occasionally repost some of your company's press releases or blog posts. You're complying with their request even if it's pointless and stupid.

If the software engineering market shrinks as investment slows down, good paying / high quality jobs will become more rare and competition for them will become more fierce. If you love what you, it may be a good idea to plan for rainy days ahead and play the game of social posting and marketing.

"Mmmm tastes like boot"

I don't do any of this stuff. I have never had an employer ask me to. If they did, I would tell them honestly that I don't want to participate in that. I would be surprised if that were a deal-breaker, since I am a lot more better at the job they hired me for than I am at marketing.

> continuing my ongoing work as a principal engineer, without marketing externally

Then you have misunderstood the responsibilities of a principal engineer.

While I don't think there is any need to have social media accounts, publishing engineering articles is a perfectly reasonable ask as part of your work responsibilities.

If you think the blogs are little more than spam, then be the one writing better articles instead of complaining.

I agree with this. The titles of Staff and Principal, generally, include some responsibility for teaching others (writing articles is one of many good methods for this) and helping to recruit people to your team through external marketing.

I use twitter (https://twitter.com/strzibnyj) and I have a blog (https://nts.strzibny.name) but I don't think you have to market yourself this way per se at all. But it's 100% helpful.

It is so interesting to me that people use this thread as an opportunity to market their Twitter/blog. I know this is common on Hackernews, but for some reason this one irked me more than the others.

Sleaze gonna sleaze.

I don’t have socials. Removed all of them because they are a waste of time and I don’t care about what other people ”are doing” (if I'll ever care, I'll text them). When you realise that there are engineers put in place to make them addictive to the point of making you waste 6+ hrs a day, your eyes will open instantly. No matter how much control of yourself you have, you are going to fall for it one way or another.

I have a LinkedIn account on which I don’t follow anyone so I don’t get to see what others are doing on the platform. I don’t press like on anything, I don’t comment on a single thing. I have to have it because you’ll never know about future job opportunities.

I hate that YouTube introduced shorts.

I have a website, people can read what I write there and can find my contacts and CV. If I'll ever think about praising a company, you're going to find it there (spoiler: it's never going to happen).

Personally I’ve never seen anyone requiring socials for a position, I would probably reject the offer.

When Frederick the Great repeatedly ordered Seydlitz to attack at Zorndorf, eventually threatening that he would pay with his head for insubordination, Seydlitz replied:

> Tell the King my head will be at his disposal after the battle. During the battle, I hope he will allow me to employ it, to gain victory for him.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Le...

(I've been RIF'd before, and it's nothing like decapitation)

> In 1758 he fought at Hochkirch (14 October) and Zorndorf (24 August). In the latter action, he was given command of the cavalry on the left wing. He refused to obey the initial orders given to him by Frederick and awaited what he considered to be the proper moment to launch a cavalry charge against the advancing Russians. He quickly routed the enemy cavalry; he then rallied and charged the Russian infantry, but failed to break it.

> He rallied his cavalry behind Zorndorf, waiting for a better moment to attack. Just when all seemed lost for the Prussians, Seydlitz led 61 squadrons against the Russian cavalry, pushing it back into the marshes by the village of Quartschen. He then returned to rescue the Prussian infantry, forcing the Russians to fall back.

https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/Prussia...

I don't get it.

When refusing to attack he is threatened he will be killed. His reply is: Don't kill me before I attack.

So you are saying OP should refuse until he is threatened to be fired?

His reply, reminding Frederick that S. is in charge of the squadrons of horse because he knows how (most importantly, when) to use them, reminded me of OP; rephrasing slightly: "I'm interested in continuing my ongoing work as a principal cavalryman ... to focus on the things[0] we're collectively doing to be successful."

I am saying that although we could imagine OP might possibly be fired for refusing to publish rubbish, OP's worst case scenario is still far better than Seydlitz'[1].

[0] Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments — ANW

[1] During their After Action Review, Frederick conceded, at least implicitly, that Seydlitz had indeed made better use of his little grey cells: https://www.meisterdrucke.com/kunstwerke/1200w/Richard%20Kno...

Most people I work with just laugh and ignore it. Our employers are welcome to make any request they want, but unless you work in marketing it falls outside the scope of our jobs, and we can simply not do it. It doesn't even need a reply of any kind.

A few thoughts...

- I have written a book and the publisher obviously wants to spread the word. Do I want to spread the word? Yes, I also want to spread the word. Why? Because I think it's a good book and it might help some people. So I try to create content to spread the word. This results in 80% of people coming across this content thinking "I don't need that, that's marketing", vs. 20% who might think "Great, I need that".

- If I want to join a new company, a technical blog or active developer advocates help me decide. I can get a sense of a company culture through what they chose to post and whom they hire for their advocate roles.

- Twitter, LinkedIn etc. are a complete waste of time for me personally. But again, other people build their presents their to sell you their ideas. Is it legit? Sure, why not. How else do you get informed about new ideas and thoughts?

All of that means there is tons of noise, since everyone is using the same channel (s), and for you, the consumer, means you have to filter these channels _a lot_.

I think in the current day&age, where computation and technology is part of every day life, your job description changes, and educating and "spreading the word" is part of it. But, this can be done in an authentic manner. You don't have to lie, or put up a big show. Writing and exposing your ideas can also help identifying who you are and getting in touch with people and the community can help shaping your thoughts and reflecting back on yourself.

So all in all, these environments are great for narcissists and "bubble people" , which is "bad", but I personally just see these social media platforms as channels now of information, where I can get new insights, articles and ideas from.

I personally restrict the usage of these platforms now to exactly this: Inflow of information. I am building actively a social network which is close to me, has nothing to do with being online. But I, every now and then, try to contribute to the online discourse through articles and blog posts.

What I find liberating is seeing how other professions are doing this: I follow endurance sports and psychology on YouTube, and what they do is is basically teaching and answering questions.

> - If I want to join a new company, a technical blog or active developer advocates help me decide. I can get a sense of a company culture through what they chose to post and whom they hire for their advocate roles.

Working with some of these over the last forever.. I don't in any way believe they share anything about the company culture, or frankly the correct usage of the company's technology as it wants.

I very much see this as people who want to be fully-time developers, but aren't currently. Across orgs - I have yet to see this not be true, but maybe it's just me, and the others with whom I discuss this. Echo champers are very much a thing.

That's a very bleak outlook on another profession to be honest!

I met a few who were developers for 10+ years and wanted to shift, some just wanted to work more client/customer facing but still enjoyed the technical work. I mean, if you look at everything from an angle of "Coding is the best, everything else is marketing crap and sucks", sure, you will find lots of evidence for it.

But coding is a very small percentage of the work done by the population as a whole. Feeling superior is just damaging your mental health and is doing nothing to else.

So yeah, I worked with dev revels. And with every profession I crossed path before: Some I liked, some I didn't. Some work I thought was necessary, some wasn't.

I'm curious about this, how does this help you figure out culture? Is it a "what's their priority" type of thing? Have you been wrong before? What the company communicated public was not the reality?

Personally I'm trying to become better at gauging this myself, and I've only ever been able to make a "culture" opinion during the interview process when I get to hang out and small talk with the actual devs I'd be working with.

Generally, the more technical the Dev Revels are, the more technical is the mindset of the company.

If the DevRevel is promoting work culture 50% of their time, it‘s a priority for the employer and personally, for me, a small red flag (you might think otherwise).

Each person you are in touch with from a company gives you a sense whom they hire and what the company agenda and priority is.

I’ve had one employer that “soft” pushed employees to do social advertising on their personal accounts. I quit shortly after, it made me unbelievably uncomfortable and was a sign of a culture that my life is incompatible with my temperament. Before quitting I just completely disengaged from social media (no apps on my phone, passwords too confusing to remember stored on a computer I didn’t bring to work). I don’t think I even realized I was doing it, and in the language of 2023, I think I was “soft quitting”

Everything I do is under NDA. So I blog about films instead. shrug

I have a LinkedIn, which I log into when I'm actually looking for a job. I never "post" there, it's a wasteland.

Don't drink. Don't do drugs. Don't do social networks.

Don't get involved in company Patent applications.

Can you share more about this?

Don't get involved in sharing more about this.

Mixing work and personal accounts is a strict no for me. I have no problem at all blogging, tweeting, etc for an employer ... as long it's published on my employer's account. I'm selling time and expertise to the company, not unfettered access to my personal accounts.

Unless you're explicitly selling ad space on your social media profile as an part of your contract ("influencer" style), it's completely unreasonable for the company to assume they have access to your property.

Handle what, exactly? Are you actually experiencing any issues from not doing these things or are you experiencing FOMO? You've not articulated any problem you're facing.

Accusing others of being fake and producing crap may make you feel better for not being good at it, but it won't help you either way. I hope you're not a Principal Engineer I'm forced to work with - the work of those people are important for what we work on to succeed, whether you value it or not.

> "So... how do you handle this?"

Same as you, I don't bother. I've only been working professionally for 14 years, and have also gotten this advice fed to me from my friends, "write a blog", "contribute to open source", "portfolio portfolio portfolio". And never once have I gotten jobs based on these things, nor have I hired anyone based on these things. That's not to say they aren't valuable, but I don't think they're as valuable as lots of people say they are. Or rather the companies that hire people who care about these things / find them useful are a smaller segment than people think.

Linkedin is an interesting one. It's the only "social" account I have, and that's because, for me, it does provide actual value. I never post, but I get lots of messages from talent acquisition people and can see when former coworkers are available for new positions or have positions open at their orgs. So in that capacity it still provides value to me.

That being said, does anyone actually read company blogs? I can only remember a handful of posts over the last 10 years that actually held technical depth to be interesting. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or maybe they're not intended for me.

Great question! For context, I'm someone who is active in the social web. Been blogging since 2003 and have created a couple of books out of blogs. I've been in devrel since 2019 and hopefully haven't created the marketing spam you mention.

Anyhoo, I think that socials and blogging are just one way to raise your profile and get opportunities. There are certainly others. The one that you seem to have chosen is: "do good work". That's not as simple as it sounds. As a principal engineer, I'm sure you understand that you can't just do the good work, you need to build a coalition around it, get sponsors, and/or publicize the benefits of it. It's awesome that you share your knowledge at conferences, too.

So if you want to continue down that path, I'd lean intensely on your network for job opportunities. They know you and they know the quality of your work. Simply don't apply at any companies that need social network involvement unless you already have a connection there.

In short, if it works for you, keep doing it! You may miss opportunities choosing this path, but there are benefits too.

Same! I've been paid to produce and deploy software solutions for maybe slightly less time than you (under 20 years, more than 15). I technically still have a Twitter account that I literally never login to or interact with in any way. I have zero "social" apps on my rooted phone. I dumped Facebook after grad school. I never opened any insta, tiktok, etc. I do not blog. I do not post weird updates on LinkedIn either. I basically opted out of the entire "digital social" thing altogether. People who are important to me know how to contact me. I don't feel any need to "have a presence" in the digital social sphere, outside of leaving my thoughts here sometimes (because I respect this site, how it operates and it's community)...and because it hardly feels like typical "social" stuff we see today.

So, I guess my point is that like you I've found that it doesn't really seem to matter to my career, my compensation or my ability to be happy or feel connected to others. You're in good company. Cheers!

This whole showboating culture in our industry started mid-2000s but really accelerated badly with the arrival of Twitter. I have always felt it's a real problem. Engineering decisions in software should be driven by best practices and methodical application of the best technology; not whatever is making its way through the hype cycle.

Twitter in particular with its word limits and drive-by comment culture is supremely unsuited for technical discussions, and yet it gets used this way all the time. It's Wrong(tm).

I've worked in the industry for 25 years, and while I have social media accounts they are primarily strictly personal. Other than some LinkedIn usage in the last year while hunting for work, it's just here on HN, really. (That and a Slack for ex-Googlers, and a private Discord for some tech friends I've known since the LambdaMOO days)

Here on HN is probably the best "social networking" I've had in our industry and where I've encountered the most interesting people.

Anyways, if an employer is looking for that kind of showboating, peacock-display, it's not a job I want.

I tend to keep things separate, too. Having little to no socials helps my mental health. If my hobby (oil painting) started to outpace my work (sw eng) - maybe I’d start a site, but thats about it.

I have old retired / deleted accts from before I prioritized health.

Thus: If a future employer OSINTs my names and says “this you?” I can honestly say, “no.” It’s all spam, ai, whatever you want to call it.

> how do you deal with the ongoing requirements it appears that jobs place, such as social network involvement

I have no idea who on earth is bothering you with this but I know for sure that if you tell them that you are happy to post about the company at their behest on your Gab/Parler account they will immediately leave you alone. Try to keep a straight face.

Well, I think I can write about what I did by now.

A few years back, there was a sort of internal competition to see who could get the most LinkedIn exposure. I decided to take it as a challenge, so I wrote a set of JavaScript snippets that would go over my timeline and give me a break down of the correlation between keywords/hashtags and "likes" or reactions, and set to work.

Since I blog regularly (on a personal level, with a disclaimer), wrote Marketing copy in my deep dark past, worked in a place that did online advertising and happen to track a lot of tech/industry RSS feeds, I had zero issues with coming up with relevant, informative and _technical_ posts on a daily basis - posts that very seldom had anything at all to do with my employer at the time, although they did follow a theme around what we provided.

But I eventually limited myself to two/three a week, and used my scripts to figure out what hashtags and wording got the most reactions/views. I'd post, wait a couple of days, let Chrome scroll through the timeline, "train" the system on my previous post, save a .csv file, rinse, repeat.

In less than a month, I was already "winning" the thing by any stretch of the imagination, although in the end they awarded the "prize" to a sales guy who, despite a lot of pure Marketing content, was obviously picked to win due to local politics (I can't be more specific than that).

In the process, I learned a fair bit about how effective Bayesian classifiers can be and how to combine them for ranking stuff, although to be honest I still dislike JavaScript.

So keep in mind that you _can_ do this, have fun, and... not win anything, really. I wouldn't do it again, because in the end what matters is what you deliver and what kind of reputation you have by it, and that's not reinforced by any kind of social network _except_ the one where you have people who actually know you.

You might find out where the requests to participate in all those things are coming from, and what's actually important.

It could be some random person or department making a request they thought up on their own, and/or it could've been an initiative down from some upper level that lost some clarity by the time it got implemented.

It could also be that -- separate from any requests coming from other departments -- the person you report to sees part of a Principal role as representing the company publicly in industry techie circles (e.g., conferences, online forums, company engineering blog posts, standards committee). But maybe they don't care whether you Like company posts on LinkedIn.

It could also be that the company doesn't realize that encouraging employees to get out there and effectively market their personal brands could be bad for retention.

Github is for myself and my own enjoyment. I'm not incredibly active, just a PR here and a new repo there.

Haven't used twitter in about two years and actually just deleted it about two days ago. Just deactivated my facebook after not using it for 5+ years as well.

I do use Linkedin, but I don't post. I actually did post once after an award at work, but that was both a "thanks to everyone" and a "by the way if any recruiters wander by". Other than that, I don't think I've ever posted and it's really just a live Resume for me.

I don't think social media is a requirement at all, at least in my world. The people I care about contact me in other ways and the people I work with contact me over slack, and if we don't work together currently, on LinkedIn. I guess you could call LinkedIn useful for me then, but I really just use it as a resume.

If my task for an entire 2 week period was to write a blog post explaining part of an API I worked on, I'd be fine with that. I'd also be fine with interacting sporadically on public issues. But I try and make it crystal clear that if they want me to start regularly interacting with customers, I'm not their guy, and I'll never be their guy; it's not remotely my core-competency, it takes me way more effort and energy to try and maintain consistent feedback loops with people than it would for someone else. I'm also not paraphrasing, that's exactly what I say.

My productivity is lowest when I'm dealing with many async interactions, such as iterating during code review, unless I have extremely good systems to make that a brainless task.

I also only use social media for shitposting or talking to actual friends, I'm not a sales communicator.

I'd have one question: What's the charge number for this?

I'm willing to play the game and do what's necessary, that includes paperwork, filling out the correct acronyms my company expects in JIRA stories, bullshit compliance training and potentially writing marketing material. Assuming it doesn't become a primary focus of my job I'd just do it. If it becomes too much or interferes with my primary duties, I'd bring that up with management.

My program is in a funny position where we get corporate emails from the marketing department strongly suggesting we do things like wear company branded apparel and spam our social media profiles with corporate propaganda, only to get a followup from security saying "yeah that email? Don't do any of that stuff". Needless to say we listen to security.

Personally, I find many LinkedIn posts a bit ridiculous to the point it's a negative signal in some instances. I would just avoid a workplace that require this kind of things. What is ok though, is the occasional blog post to present an interesting piece of technical work without overselling it.

1. Don't mix work and personal accounts.

2. For regular people, it's good to have at least one public communication method in case of virality

3. Don't bother with regular posting unless you have regular source of content. (Project/Research/Business) It's a surprising amount of work to post weekly.

Like you, I don't. And I think most people don't, but you never hear about that because people like us don't have blogs. =)

That said, I do have a website, and I occasionally write about things I find interesting on it, but it's not a blog, and I only update it once or twice a year. I think in 2020 I updated it a whopping four times (Maybe you can guess why).

Twitter? Nah. I have an account, but I only use it for contacting companies when the usual channels don't work. LinkedIn? There's an account, but again it's almost entirely disused.

I've never had a company ask me to do anything with my own personal social media accounts, aside from a general, "Hey we're launching this new thing, if anyone wants to like and share, that would be cool."

I largely just don’t.

My employer regularly asks us to share/like/discuss company content on social media.

I just don’t have accounts, so don’t participate. To be honest even if I did I still would not.

I was only asked about this once and I just said I didn’t do social media in general and they were happy with that answer.

Hardly any presence. I have a twitter account but it's practically dead. The only social media account I use regularly is my reddit account but only for administrative purposes: I'm a moderator of one of the top-5 largest subs. Some people at work know about this but not because they needed to know, I just shared it in an informal conversation. Also my reddit account can't be tied to me so... Also, as I said, purely administrative and I don't really engage with users or the content. Most of what I do is fully automated at this point. Blogging - I try to get in it every now and then but purely for the sake of keeping track of what I do in my spare time as experiments but I don't have enough time to devote to it unfortunately.

Every time I've been asked to do this, a simple "I don't have any social media accounts" has usually been enough.

In the old days I kept a few BS accounts around so that I could demonstrate posting company stuff, but I don't do that anymore and the accounts are long gone anyway.

At the end of the day, I won't make a social media account, and even if I did, it would never get used for anything personal. If pressed, explaining that a social media account that posts nothing but company PR would actually be detrimental to the company, should be enough to make them drop the idea. If not, there are plenty of other companies out there that will accept non-social-media types.

> I've been gainfully employed in industry for ~2 decades

Seems like you have the social network you need and the others would simply be a waste of time.

When I have a meeting with someone I don't already know I like to look them up on linkedin beforehand. But occasionally someone doesn't have a profile (or a useful one) there and that's OK by me. It's just a convenience feature ("Oh look, they worked at XXX too!").

If your company wants all that fluff, and you don't work in the company's marketing department, there's something wrong with the company.

> So... how do you handle this?

Here is some practical advice

It seems like an expectation from your current management and you being a principal engineer they expect you to follow whatever their current policy for the team is. Either convince your manager about your stand or just go with the flow. You don't have to come up with original post every time. You can simply repost/retweet or "like" other's stuff.

Based on my experience all these kinds of initiatives are temporary and likely to change or lose relevance over time. All of this will stop if you get a new management in future.

> or just go with the flow

How does one do this with social media?

Half-ass some tweets and blog posts until people stop asking?

Or try to write the smartest tweet ever and spend 12 paid hours on refining the wording?

Just retweet or reshare your friends or coworkers posts if you can’t or don’t have time to come up with something original.

I'm in the same boat with you. Been in the industry for 20+ years and I do not have any social media. One of my employers constantly pushes for LinkedIn involvement/activity but I simply refuse to participate. I did not become an engineer to share blog posts or comment on things in front of hundreds or thousands of folks.

However, I do have a few different websites that I used to be very active in but have since (for the past 5 years) rarely use them. It's usually only to share something interesting and to keep my web-deb skills somewhat sharpened.

i've literally never had any of my employers require me to sign up for social networks. on the contrary, my current employer recently made everybody take an online course on what not to say on social media, and the general gist of it was that it would be best if i never talked about work at all.

obviously i have hackernews (even though i hate it), reddit (even though i *really* hate it), github (although im contemplating moving my project to gitlab or bitbucket due to recent openai shenanigans) and fediverse for my own personal time-wasting but none of those ever intersect with my job.

i also used to have a linked-in but i deleted it because i only ever got communications from spammy job-recruiters who didn't even bother to read my profile before messaging me (seriously, they'd ask me if i want to interview for a job as a webdev, i'd say yes even though im not a web-dev because i was interested in changing to a new field at the time, then during the phone interview the same person would tell me that i'm not qualified for the job because i've only ever worked on compilers and low-level kernel/device driver stuff).

The same way you deal with other processes you don't like - don't. Same goes for leetcode, work trials, etc.

It is a kind of cultural filter. If you think doing it would make you better at your job, then use it as motivation to do it. Otherwise, there's plenty of other places to work. It will likely get worse once you join; sometimes things like "knowledge sharing" becomes part of the performance review.

I use only FB and Telegram for sharing links to my portfolio. For FB I use plugin to block chat and timeline. I simply dont care.

As freelancer in art industry I find soc. media frustrating. It stole uniqueness in creativity, because consuming work from others shaped my work to be more liked by others. But it is not what I really want to create or like.

Be independent in creativity means doing more than consuming it.

Online socials starting with BBS were simply a way of life for me growing up. It has followed me into adulthood. I don’t think you are missing out, we just operate differently.

I don’t interact with anyone on linkedin other than recruiters. For ephemeral thoughts I put them on mastodon. I tried twitter for a bit but it didn’t suit me. Reddit exists for random things like bike tag and catching up on local news.

To add to the anecdotes, I've never felt pressured by any of my employers (explicitly or implicitly) to talk publicly about them on social media, my blog, or anything else. I would feel pretty weird if that happened, especially on a regular basis. If it's a recurring point of contention for you, I would suggest telling a higher-up how you feel and/or looking at other jobs

I used to work for a trade show marketing company, so we all jumped on board (in about 2010ish) to get a feel for the space, and are all Facebook friends with each other.

I'm glad to still here from them, and keep up on how everyone is doing. I never pushed work's stuff on my friends, or did any blogspam stuff, and would have refused to do so.

I don't do social media on my phone, neither should you.

Not my job. If they make a big deal out of it they can find a new engineer that really needs to be active on social networks.

Anything I'm active on gainfully is as a psuedoanon; it's none of their business what I do there. Separation of business and pleasure. If asked any accounts that do happen to exist do not exist.

Only real name thing I have is a LinkedIn for old coworkers to find me on / networking.

I have played along a little. I created a one or two blog posts. Many people don't. It is not a requirement and seems to have zero impact on raises. Writing blog posts are hard and draining, and of course done on your own time, but it is not a bad idea to give it a shot once or twice for the experience.

One way out of this, outside of outright refusing to comply, is to say that you're a privacy oriented person and limit your presence in social media.

Last time I created a social media account for work was when I was a junior dev and my employer wanted to inflate their apparent size on LinkedIn.

> So... how do you handle this?

By not giving in. My social life is nobody's business but mine.

If I'm asked to share something on my social media accounts, I tell them no.

If they need me to share on social media, they'll need to set up a social media account for me on which to share.

I don't mix work with personal.

At company where I work we have few people that are working in developer relations team. One of them is in change of posting things to company profiles. There is no pressure on anyone to post/share/copy-paste tweeets, etc. If someone wants to do it - it is fine.

It seems like you are handling this rather well. If you ever start to doubt yourself just remember to count all of your past and present colleagues that are not posting their latest and greatest on social media and doing fine regardless. I am certain they are the majority.

"You be you."

There's plenty of demand for engineers like us, and we know that the places that need us often "take what they can get."

And, don't forget that your Hacker News posts are part of your brand, too. You can put a link to your Hacker News profile on your resume.

You don’t have to do it personally if you don’t want to. The company should have a PR department or at least PR people who collect information from you then produce social/promotional articles of their own. They can ask you for feedback, though.

Yeah I don't like the idea that "you should have a blog" unless you legit have something you want to say to the world. Otherwise it just feels pretentious and probably just ends up adding a bunch of vaccuous content to the internet

I like to practice writing, so as to hone that skill. It's a purely selfish exercise, crafting something which I find clever.

I then parlay that skill in professional communications to great effect. It's something of a superpower for a software engineer.

I have a personal site and it is the closest thing I could see to me doing a blog. Basically it's a dumping ground for projects I want to do, I plan on doing a little write up for each one. Right now there's only one project in there but I'm working on another much bigger one. When it is done I'll do one high quality write up of how it works. The ratio of blog:code imo should be low. If you want to do a project really well, focus on writing the code. If you're proud of it and did a good job, do a little write up. Go for quality over quantity, anybody can make "how to get started with React and Typescript" or "How to add TailwindCSS to a Vue project" because it's been done 100 times. Unless you're working on TailwindCSS, this isn't going to impress anyone.

Twitter feels fake. It's like it's a bunch of used-car-salesman-like software developers trying to sell you on web3, or crypto, or their course to teach you how to code like they supposedly do.

The only places I think it makes sense to have any sort of presence might be GitHub, or StackOverflow. On GitHub you might have a project you've done that others find useful, something pretty niche. This happened to me for a project I had barely even started, and a recruiter wound up reaching out over it. This project was on npm and GitHub, it had like zero downloads but because of the niche that it was in, I was one of the only people with a project like this. I could imagine if you get 50 stars on a project any employer will look at that and be impressed.

Tl;dr, do what you like to do. If you're really proud of it and want to show it off, do a write up. Don't churn out easy crap just to do a blog post every week about it.

You have a relatively poor attitude. You’re a principal engineer and sharing things online isn’t just for the ego. I learn from the internet and who creates the things I learn? Well, principal engineers and experienced professionals.

All of those things are just signals to help hirers make the right hiring choices. Some folks are too rigid with requirements, but in my experience other signals will generally suffice. Show them you're the right choice.

Usenet and IRC were the socials when I started. And mailinglists. There was always a crowd there, but I figure most people were just doing work without bothering to post about it. Same as now.

Either 1) don't work in a place that rewards the E in P.I.E. over P. or I., or 2) don't expect the rewards that come with E. in orgs that prioritize it first.

Simple: just no social media, with reasons. Facebook, Instagram, are all a waste of time, employers don't interest in wasting time and it doesn't benefit them in anyway, even in communication.

LinkedIn, people might say it's how you find jobs. Wrong. LinkedIn is basically another social media. Before, companies used to advertise about their open jobs, now it's LinkedIn. It doesn't change how you get hired, only how you find the company.

Basically, social media is not needed, and only wastes your time. Yes it's nice with friends. But frankly, real friends communicate in person, not behind a mask.

I don't think I've ever been asked to participate in social media by employers. I blog because I like doing it, but I've never been mandated to do it.

Employer / Employee has to be a match. If an employer prefers employees who have a social presence, then you and them are not a match.

Is it a requirement as in you are told to post on these mediums by your employer or do you feel its a requirement in order to be hired?

Just say no. There are probably many more reasons to keep you on board than to let you go because you didn't write a blog post.

Honestly... I just don't have time for social media and already spend way too much time in front of a screen anyways.

I don't do any of that and if I was working somewhere where it was required, I'd consider that reason to leave.

I've never experienced this and I've been a developer for 18 years or so.

Find better employer ?

Say no and find a better job if your manager doesn't like it.

I market myself sometimes, but I never market my company

what employer is out there actually requiring you to do any of this? i dont see any evidence that it is becoming required

read the next job listing

employee mentality, employee limitations. Your boss is looking for this stuff for a reason, its worth money. "How" Read Brendan Kane or any other work about marketing in this day. "well we make a better product" everyone does, and its about to be or already is AI automated. Watch "perverts guide to ideology" You are near the end of your career, great for you. I as an employer would never hire you.

TLDR sure, sure, but if you actually want to sell it you have to.

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