I thought this article over on InfoRiskToday brought up a interesting question we might all need to ask ourselves at some point. Although it’s a formal opinion survey, which I normally don’t like because it’s not fact-based, it got me thinking how I do things.
via InfoRiskToday.com
Should you accept a Facebook friend request from your boss? And if you don’t accept the invitation, could that decision possibly hurt your career?
According to a new survey of 1,000 U.S. residents by Russell Herder, a marketing firm in Minneapolis, many professionals now find themselves faced with this dilemma, which often challenges their definition of the boundary between personal and professional lives.
There is no black-and-white answer. Each of us has differing perspectives on the distinction between our personal and professional lives.
Continued here.
As expected the key takeaway was that younger people would be more likely to friend their bosses (26% versus 10%). Unfortunately, I fall in the “older” range but I use a slightly different approach so in a lot of cases I would actually friend my boss.
I generally keep two Facebook profiles (yes I’m pretty sure this is against their terms of service), one for family and close friends outside of the infosec world and another for friends and colleagues within the infosec world. I talk personal stuff on the former one while limiting the later one to only infosec posts and career discussions. If my boss is someone I might grab a beer with or invite over for a BBQ, then maybe I’ll friend them on both. Otherwise they get delegated to the career-only profile.
I found that I do tend to use certain social networks more depending on the people I connect with on each. For example, most of my posts on Facebook are in my personal account, which consists of mainly family at this point. Twitter is the exact opposite where I generally use the infosec one the most. I have LinkedIn accounts for both but rarely log in. Regarding Facebook, I guess I could do the Facebook groups or social circle thing and post relevant content to each circle … but that just seems like a pain.
I’ve heard of other more clean-cut social network dependent approaches. As an example people use LinkedIn for career, Facebook for personal, and Twitter for something else. I find that a little too constricting though as you might miss out on connections with people who have slightly different social networking philosophies.
Regardless, everything, and I mean everything, I post on any social network I treat as it being open to the world. There’s the old postcard, stuff you wouldn’t mind letting your grandmother read, or Washington Post front page analogies to contemplate whether you should post something or not.
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What’s your strategy? Would you friend your boss? Let us know in the comments below. Today’s post pic is from GlobalNerdy.com. See ya!
