uplIft: Feb 24, 2022
Perspective
Social Media
“Social media we use isn’t free.
It comes to us at a tremendous cost.
These platforms are designed in a way that aims to keep us hooked onto the screen. It’s akin to us being the product and fuel powering these platforms.
Yet the biggest damage though isn’t limited to wasted time alone, but rather an illusion of reality it creates for us.
Our realities are no longer shaped by the truth but the illusion that these sites create for us. The world getting more polarized over the last few years, in many ways, is highly correlated to the growing usage of these ‘free’ social media sites.”
Career Conundrum
Question: How important are designations when choosing between two competing opportunities?
Over the last few years, there has been title inflation at the workplace coupled with faster career growth trajectory for our generation compared with our parents’ generation. Greater interconnectedness of the professional networks through social media has meant that these inflated titles are more widely seen and heard. With this there is always a question on how much importance to give to titles when comparing two or more competing opportunities.
My experience is that work profile, company culture and stability, and compensation almost always trump titles for three reasons.
First, what’s known to you is also known to your network and future employer i.e. if your company liberally offers titles the future recruiter will discount it when you try for your next opportunity.
Second, and more importantly, once you have joined your workplace, the title will not be sufficient for you to stay motivated. The work mix, the culture of the workplace (and to some extent) the compensation will remain front and center.
Third, some roles, especially those that are customer or market facing (such as sales or Investment Banking) have more fancy sounding titles (to help convince prospective customers about the seniority of those they are dealing with) vs. some of the more operations centric roles. So titles cannot really be compared across functions/ roles.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that titles aren’t important. Everything else being the same on compensation, company culture, and the work mix, the better/ greater the title the more it helps in your career journey especially if it brings with it an enhanced responsibility set. If you feel you deserve a certain title or designation don’t be shy about articulating it to you potential employer once they have selected you. As they say, if you don’t ask you don’t get. Try and use competing offers to negotiate a better title/ designation with your preferred prospective employer vs. settling for what’s offered.
POint to POnder
If you were intentional about your social media usage, how much time would you allocate to it on a daily basis vs. the actual time you end up spending on social media. If you could cut down your social media time by 50%, what would you replace it with?
