I wanted a FAANG job so I followed on Twitter every engineer I could find from the company I wanted to work at. Reading them every day gave me the impression that I too had to be popular on Twitter to get a job there.

I got the job and soon realised that no one I work with is a Twitter personality. I'm not aware of anyone I work with having a social media presence at all. These are some of the world's best engineers, they do hugely influential work and outside of their colleagues no one has ever heard of them.

When you're on Twitter you get the impression that the whole world is there and anyone who isn't there is not relevant.

There are thousands of engineers where I work, why did I think that you had to be a Twitter personality just based on a few dozen people I could find on Twitter?

Brent Simmons noted this on his blog after joining Audible:

> "I haven’t noticed that the people I work with have a lot of public social media presence. (Maybe I just haven’t gotten clued-in yet?)"

The majority of people don't use Twitter at all. Of those who do, the majority aren't Twitter "personalities".

I deleted my Twitter account and haven't looked back.

Tech Support. A lot of companies will keep you in phone hell, but complain at them on Twitter gets a response (well, except Apple - they don't give a damn about anything, looking at you Apple Maps).

I recently closed my Twitter account though. For the last 3 years I'd exclusively used it to complain about companies without adequate support systems elsewhere, but anyone googling me would have come off with a bad impression as the last 2 pages of tweets were complaints and it ranked highly for my name

Delete the tweets after the issue is resolved. No real need to leave those type of things on Twitter. Also, search is time limited on Twitter, but I cannot remember the exact limit.

> How does any sane, professional person even use Twitter?

Follow people in your chosen field who tweet mostly/exclusively about a domain you want to stay up to date on. Lists are also good for this.

I mostly follow people who work in/around my specific engineering niche and it's amazing for that and really the only way that I stay in contact with them. It's a lot like reddit, you can stick with the terrible default subreddits or unfollow them and branch off on your own journey. That could be a positive one, news-flush, or maybe you go for the redpill. But you do control who you follow.

It also leads to me getting breaking news before it's even put out, whether that's political news, or an OSS project launching something new, etc.

I've learned a LOT following lawyers/professors/historians/scientists/engineers over the last year. But now I need to go in and clear out the accounts that aren't really bringing anything positive into my life.

I basically treat Twitter as the millennials Linkedin and I stay far as possible from Linkedin now.

I don't understand the question. People have time for Twitter the same way you have time for HN and Netflix.

The term "social media" kinda puts Twitter on equal footing with Facebook, but it's really not. FB is over 2.5 billion active users worldwide, while Twitter has around 300 million. Twitter can be good for finding original sources around newsworthy events, but it's not that good for connecting socially because the majority of people aren't on Twitter.

I'm always a little surprised by these sorts of views of Twitter. In my areas, nearly everyone is there. Twitter is full of Academics, and often the most successful ones are the heaviest users.

the question is though, do you get anything out of it by reading all that stuff. And I mean actually getting something out of it other than just the feeling you've read something useful?

It's not like anyone actually becomes an academic by following academic conversation on twitter, or as if one learns science or maths by reading "mathy" threads on twitter.

I think like news even "high-brow" twitter conversations are essentially just infotainment. You can read news for four hours a day and you feel informed, but often you can just drop 90% of it and you don't lose any actual in-depth knowledge.

Sure I do - I get to see what people in various fields are writing and thinking about at a broad level, which I find interesting. I see the work of the many artists and creators I follow. I get to see what people think of my own work, which is the whole point of producing it in the first place.

I don't use Twitter to get in-depth information, and I'm not sure why you'd think that was the purpose (although people might link to where you can get that information, obviously).

I'd prefer it if it was an open platform, but it is what it is.

Fair enough - but what do they put in 200 characters that is important, and how often?

I mean, when they release a paper? How often is that?

What % of their tweets are of interest, and what % are them being 'forced' to play the social media game to improve their 'stature' among funders, peers etc.? I often wonder how much they might loathe it themselves.

As someone 'social media adjacent' - having been forced to think of a few things to Tweet once for a company, it was probably one of the more ridiculous things I've ever done as a professional. Invent something out of total thin air, to stir the pot, for no reason other than to stir the pot to garner attention.

I understand the dynamic people are pressed into - and I don't blame a soul for it ... however I get this funny feeling that a lot of people Tweeting hate it just as much (ie making up stuff) and resent the fact they feel compelled to do it, and another group who derive way too much sense of false identity out of it.