4 ms·

I would say just the opposite - if you don't turn to your network of friends for help with your job, you're probably not very valuable. I know how to do many t

I would say just the opposite - if you don't turn to your network of friends for help with your job, you're probably not very valuable. I know how to do many things, but when I encounter a difficult problem, I will often turn to IM to query my expert friends, if not for answers, then to give me a sanity check on the approach I come up with. This is especially true for start-ups. It's great if you work at Google, where you can get help from thousands of expert engineers. But if you are a two-man start-up team, you need to look outside for help a lot more.

bigiain 17y ago
I think it's even more meta than that. There's "asking everybody you know how to do the bits of your job you're expected to know how to do", which is bad. There's also "having a network of friends who are specific subject matter experts, and knowing which ones to ask in specific cases", which is _enormously_ powerful. There's also a much smaller group of people who have such large and diverse social networks that they can ask pretty much _anything_ completely indiscriminately and get the right answer (look at jwz's blog for his "dear lazyweb" questions). If I had an opportunity to employ one of _them_, I'd jump at it...
jister 17y ago
I would say it depends on what you're asking help for. If you turn to your network of friends asking them how to do your job then that that's a different story. To IM your friends is one thing and to open Twitter and Facebook is another. Some companies do allow their staffs to access those sites but others don't. In this situation, as an employee, you just have to be responsible.
- andrewljohnson 17y ago
  Some companies are dinosaurs, and I would never work somewhere with Draconian internet policies. It's perfectly reasonable to Tweet or post a Facebook message, or send a private message via either of those sites to ask someone for help, assuming you're not giving away confidential information.

bigiain 17y ago

I think it's even more meta than that. There's "asking everybody you know how to do the bits of your job you're expected to know how to do", which is bad. There's also "having a network of friends who are specific subject matter experts, and knowing which ones to ask in specific cases", which is _enormously_ powerful. There's also a much smaller group of people who have such large and diverse social networks that they can ask pretty much _anything_ completely indiscriminately and get the right answer (look at jwz's blog for his "dear lazyweb" questions). If I had an opportunity to employ one of _them_, I'd jump at it...

jister 17y ago

I would say it depends on what you're asking help for. If you turn to your network of friends asking them how to do your job then that that's a different story. To IM your friends is one thing and to open Twitter and Facebook is another. Some companies do allow their staffs to access those sites but others don't. In this situation, as an employee, you just have to be responsible.

andrewljohnson 17y ago
Some companies are dinosaurs, and I would never work somewhere with Draconian internet policies. It's perfectly reasonable to Tweet or post a Facebook message, or send a private message via either of those sites to ask someone for help, assuming you're not giving away confidential information.