Social Networking at Work
Yesterday on FriendFeed, I brought up a question about private feeds, I simply didn’t understand why someone would join a social sharing site, and restrict people from seeing if they share interesting things prior to subscribing… I saw a dilemma.
During the course of the conversation a number of people brought up an excellent point, something I had long forgotten about, even though it happened to me not 3 months ago:
I have a private feed. I switched it a few weeks ago as certain people at my work kept taking what I post out of context and spreading falsehoods. Plus I do post sometimes at work and while my boss is cool with it, other people have reacted poorly to it… – Johnny Worthington
It’s easy for me, as a web developer, to forget that some people still don’t understand the Internet, nor do they basque in all its glory. I was in a performance evaluation meeting at a previous job wherein my boss quoted my twitter time line, wherein my cynicism and sarcasm was taken to be literal and caused “trust issues”. Ultimately, the mere fact that I was being stalked online by a professional, especially a superior, was shocking. The result was a few things, the realization I was working for the wrong type of person was one of them. From my point of view, coworkers who choose to misinterpret and leverage stuff like Twitter or FriendFeed are about as immature and misinformed as the guy in the office that brings up personal things that go on after hours with co-workers to clients, in front of superiors, in meetings the following week.
Stalking co-workers openly online, whatever; it’s bound to happen when people openly use the web for communications and keeping in touch with the various types of people they know and network with. The line is crossed when those things are brought up in efforts to undermine some one’s status in productivity? Things need to change.
Personally, I browse the web all day looking for new technologies, paying attention to the news, and when something strikes my fancy? I share it. I could care less if it happens between 8am to 5pm Monday through Friday. Jobs are, more often than not, held staring at a screen all day. Learning, laughing and sharing is what the Internet is all about and if you can’t partake in that while you work for fear of being bullied by coworkers and superiors? Some thing’s wrong. Especially if you’re busting your ass more than most, and you’re getting your work done on time.
It touches a nerve when people in a work place limit growth, either when I hear about it or witness it first hand. Maybe I’m taking it a bit far here, but, if someone wants to keep me in a bubble while the world passes by at the speed-of-now online, while I rot in a cubicle and decipher some TPS report… That someone can go to hell.
