i recently lost my job and it’s horrible being in the ‘unemployed’ class – you’re made to feel worthless, you have to take advice from people, perfectly well meaning of course, that are basically encouragement on digging your own grave - i love being in the position where i have to do some fake elizabethian courting ritual where i have to pretend i’m super excited to do whatever tf they do, oh and i’m the best man for the job! – when you’ve just sent in 200 applications and gotten nothing back, when you’ve just been let go for dubious bullshit reasons, you’re supposed to act like you’re ready for a challenge!
important video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYHNO2vNG4
How Women Rise touches on this to an extent. With just a little bit of editorializing,
- What do you want to do? Have interesting experiences and spend time with your close ones? Work is a necessary means to that end in probably any system to provide the resources you need. Your perspective stops being “fuck I gotta go make widgets for a bit” and becomes “making widgets helps me achieve my goal of doing cool shit.” This also changes the discourse to “how do we the widget process better for people just trying to do cool shit” and “Is making these widgets the best way for me to do cool shit?” You’re not telling the widget maker you’re perfect for this role, you’re excited about this role because of its ability to help you achieve your goals. Note that goals are not just capitalism. Several of my goals revolve around me being a better person and a better partner.
- Networking specifically is only gross if you view as taking advantage of other people. If you shift your perspective to “we all gotta work together so let’s figure out better ways to do that” networking becomes a conversation about how I can achieve my goals while helping you achieve yours and is only gross if I’m not going to help you achieve yours. Sometimes helping you achieve your goals is just being around until you need something from me, even if I’m getting things from you the whole time. As a mentor, most of what I get out of networking is practicing teaching. I give a lot more than I get from a certain perspective. Some day I might need help and the people I’ve mentored will hopefully be willing to pitch in.
There’s no world where the things you have to do to survive make you happy all of the time. Ask any neurodivergent person with executive dysfunction about necessary chores. There’s also no world where you’re happy all the time even with a perspective shift. There is a world where we recognize that we all have to do things to get along. If we’re honest about that from the start, the hiring conversations get better.
It’s telling, and sad, that everyone thinks networking is shmoozing and disingenuous. Networking is nothing more than meeting people and building relationships, if those relationships make sense.
I’m tight with my customers and vendors. Know why? Because I like them treat them like friends. We look for each other. They’re familiar with my experience and personality. If I ever need a new job, I could probably get with one of those businesses quick.
It’s nice to know people. Sometimes you can help them, sometimes they can help you. And if you treat it like some kind of filthy ladder climbing exercise, they’ll know you’re fake.
doing it in the context of being approachable and normal in the job you already have is way way different than somehow having it as a requirement to get a job though
Yeah it is super disappointing to essentially beg or call up your friends to see if they can get you into a job where they work.
Applying to jobs on my own it takes like 200 tries to find one. Getting an in with someone I know has worked 100% of the time for me. Everyone else i know it is around 50-60%
I know a lot of people are talking about the disingenuous nature of networking and your response is totally valid. Business runs on relationships.
But those relationships don’t form if it wasn’t for business. Sometimes beneficial for all parties, sometimes not. Hopefully people understand that this should not be the extent of all your relationships nor should you confuse work friends with friends outside of work.
In a world where the dominant culture emphasizes our ability to do work and create fiscal value it can seem like people have excised an important part of themselves.
I’m afraid the business bro does this exclusively rather than anything useful which is why you always get such bad advice like this.
I doubt Gen Z has any different feelings about schmoozing with others than the other generations. There always have been, and likely always will be, 1. people who mildly dislike trying to make acquaintances who are useful (a large minority), 2. people who generally like making acquaintances and are okay with using them (the majority), 3. people who absolutely love schmoozing and will seek out the ‘best’ acquaintance for their purpose (a small minority), and people like us, who detest everything about the concept (a very small minority).
I bet every person reading this who has a large pool of coworkers can name a person in each of the categories, and probably a bunch in category 1/2. Your category 2s are planning the holiday party and smile the whole time they’re there, a category 1 will hang out in a specific corner with specific folks, category 3s are the ones who whispered in the ear of the manager about having a party, and 4s just don’t show up.
Would you rather hire someone excited to be there or someone who doesn’t give a shit?
I definetely don’t trust someone who claims to be super excited to do accounting for a company that sells something like actuators for windshield wipers.
We make actuators for windshield wipers because someone gotta do it. We are good at it and we make good money with it. But anyone claiming this is their greatest dream in life is either lying or a weirdo in the dangerous kind of way. So give me someone that cuts the crap, shows up to work on time, works disciplined and dilligently and then clocks out on time to go home and enjoy his hobbies and social relationships. Because that is someone that can work 20 years and not burn down half the company, when inevitably burning out over the fact that actuators for windshield wipers are in fact not the most exciting thing in the world.
Accounting would be their dream. Or accounting at a windshield wiper company.
I understand why people do it but it’s a superficial and bad metric. Some people are bubbly and excited all the time, meanwhile I rarely tend be visibly excited. Plus the way it’s gamed these days, it’s a better indicator of how much of a suck up someone is and how willing they are to fake their emotions.
how much of a suck up someone is
something every manager values
and how willing they are to fake their emotions.
a useful skill in every public-facing profession
The community’s called work reform.
which is why I didn’t think I needed to highlight the irony with a sarcasm tag, but apparently I was wrong
That’s true, but it’s basic human nature. Given two candidates who are both qualified but have different strengths, most likely the hiring manager will pick the person that seems easier to work with. This won’t always be the person who’s bubblier, but will usually be the person who’s more engaged during the interview. It’s not just about what someone’s like on paper, it’s also about being able to create enough of an impression with whoever’s hiring them that they’re memorable in a positive way.
This isn’t malicious, it’s just how almost everyone works. It, of course, also presents challenges for people who are neurodivergent. There’s no easy solution here, telling the hiring manager they’re neurodivergent is a mixed bag.
Part of why the interpersonal part matters is because most every person who has hired someone has been burned by someone who seemed fine on paper, so they gave the new hire a shot despite some flags during the interview. It’s happened to me, it sucks and feels shitty. When that happens, if they’re competent, the manager starts going for people who seem more engaged during the interview (as opposed to super eager, which can be a red flag).
Lastly, hiring people is a skill. Some people are good at it, I am not. At least I learned very quickly that I should let others handle it, which I hope prevented future mismatches between the candidate and the job.
See how you’re being downvoted for stating some simple, human, truths? That kinda thing makes me think lemmy is mainly a bunch of pissy teens with no real-world experience.
Sure, but let’s face it: Nobody is ever excited to carry out work for someone else. If you disagree, I have a lawn you can mow if you think that work is so exciting on it’s own.
It’s a management task to motivate employees to show up and spend a considerable amount of time of their life working to generate a profit for the company owner.
They can do so by compensating the employees reasonably and allowing them to have influence on how the work is done.
That’s why managers are often more excited about their work. They get paid better and get to make more interesting decisions.
Minimum pay for being told what to do will result in minimum excitement and only doing the minimum effort. It’s stupid to expect or have the audacity to demand anything more.
Nobody is ever excited to carry out work for someone else. If you disagree, I have a lawn you can mow if you think that work is so exciting on it’s own.
I might if I was at all interested in plants, gardening, keeping outdoors neat etc. Yes, not every job is exciting to do for someone else but there are many areas that people are excited and happy to work for…
My friends are tolerating going through hell in med school, awful residency pay because they want to help cure people. If they thought all work was equally unexciting then they could become some middle manager in the finance sector.
As someone who posts in [email protected] and [email protected] a fair bit wouldn’t it make sense that carrying out work for someone where I help improve public transport in some way is exciting?
You’re right. If you can find a work doing something that you find useful, then it makes perfect sense to do it. The difficult part is to find anyone willing to pay for it.
But at the end of the day you are still competing against someone who says they are happy to take the job
They can have it if want if they want those kind of jobs. Jobs do exist where bootlicking isn’t an unpaid requirement.
People are different though. Some actually prefer that shit. Maybe they don’t have anything else to offer or they have some kind of pleasing instinct or maybe it’s just plain old masochism, I dunno. It’s not for me and I still have plenty of jobs to choose from. I’ve left job interviews before because the “chemistry” wasn’t right for me.
If you want a good job you’re going to have to feign at least a little excitement once.
I guess that’s the difference between excited and doesn’t give a shit, really. Ones a better liar.
Is ‘doesn’t give a shit’ a wrong answer? No I don’t need someone who is desperate for the job. I’ll take anyone who is qualified.
We are talking about a job here, right? Not like an all expenses paid vacation to Bermuda?
The only time “networking” has ever resulted in me getting what I wanted was when I worked in the Disney World transportation department. It was my day off, so me and my boy friend at the time decided to go to the parks. We waited in line for two hours for the Rocking Rollercoaster and, after we got off the thing, I spotted another employee who I recognized from Tower of Terror. I didn’t know the guy personally, he was just my favorite lift operator on that ride as he always hammed it up like he was auditioning for a Wes Anderson film. I walked up and told him as much, he thanked me as I explained that I was a cast member in the park on my day off. He asked if I was there with anyone else and I replied my boyfriend. He told me to go get him and to meet him by this door off to the side of gift shop. He took us behind the scenes and back to the front of the line… we got to ride Rocking Rollercoaster almost twenty times without waiting in line. It was fucking incredible.
That’s how networking works. Make good impressions on people and they open doors for you, both literally -like in your case- and figuratively.
Yep. It’s why I tell my students to make friends with people on the “keeping the lights on” side of things. You are friendly in general, no strings attached, and they will move mountains for you because you’re one of the nice ones.
I’m stealing meat riding, but professionally lmao
so much this!
I used to recoil at the thought of “networking” for similar reasons as OOP. I’d rather make smalltalk at a conference for exactly as long as it takesb to find someone to go ditch the entire thing with. I don’t wanna talk shop for the sake of talking shop or “networking”, I wanna go for a beer and talk about fully automated luxury gay space communism 🚀
However, now that I’m professionally doing something that I’m interested in, things have changed a bit. I actually enjoy the challenges at my job and actively seek out people that (hopefully) know more about the pitfalls than me. I want to learn from other people! Hopefully I can pay it forward sometime.
But now, all of a sudden, I’m networking. I know what Rebekah does over at Engineering and I know what Claude is trying to accomplish over at $competitor. They in turn know what’s in my roadmap and where I might need support. They also know how I work.
And now, every now and then I get a LinkedIn message alerting me to a professional learning opportunity or a job opportunity. Likewise, I keep Rebecah and Claude in the loop about things that might be interesting to them.
I hate this usage of “networking”.
I work in IT and this will frequently confuse the shit out of me.
“Join my network” is basically shorthand for: connect to the WiFi.
All this meat space crap drives me up the wall.
Also, we need to normalize giving as a method of showing comfort or condolences. Like, I lose my job and what do I get from people? “You can do it!” Etc, and other useless platitudes. I’d rather have people be like “here’s some cash to help cover your bills” or “I’ll order a pizza to be delivered to your house”.
Same thing with pretty much anything. You were injured on the job, here’s free pizza for you to eat while you’re laid up in bed, recovering. Here’s some money to help cover rent while you’re not earning an income.
Meanwhile, some Putz graduates college and lands their first “real” job, and someone buys them a car.
What the fuck man. To congratulate them on making money, you give them more?
But when grandpa dies and you’re trying to cover funeral expenses, nobody gives you shit.
The whole fucking system is backwards. When we have everything, we’re given more, when we are beat down, the whole thing only ever gets worse.
Another example, you’re diagnosed with an illness, you have to miss work for treatment, the boss reams you out for taking so much time off work, you may get fired. Meanwhile, the medical bills are stacking up and creditors are calling because they want all the money you don’t have. Your paychecks are getting cut because you’re taking so much time off work, meanwhile you feel like shit because you’re sick. A whole lot of fuck you is happening. The social norm is to “be supportive”… What good is that going to do? Nah man, here’s a couple hundred bucks. Get better soon, okay?
Well, there’s better answers than mine here, but there was a recent article on ChatGPT offering better job advice than many other sources, so might be worth a look?
As far as the meme goes, I despised “networking” as a concept since I realized it needed to be done. Probably cost me 6 figures so far in lifetime earnings thanks to missing job opportunities.
I hate kissing ass or chatting with people that I have no interest in other than the purpose of using their position and knowledge to further my own goals. I can’t “fake” interest. Other people simply view it as a social interaction to grease the wheels and excel at gab.
That said, Zoomers sarcastically seeing “networking” for what it is is refreshing, but it unfortunately doesn’t change the “it’s who you know” part of the equation at all.
ong
