Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

Re:Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume con... by JohnFen on Monday March 06, 2023 @01:14PM (#35045052)

> It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

It's barely tolerable when used in that sense, but typically it's not used in that sense. The problem is the widespread abuse of the term. When I first started hearing it used, it was weird but didn't irritate me because it was usually used in the sense you're saying here. But then it started being used all over the place, even when speaking of a single sort of media.

I'm not saying this is right, but it has become a bit of a "red flag" word to me these days, indicating to me that the the piece where it's being used is not of great quality.

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Re:Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume con... by inanutshellus on Monday March 06, 2023 @02:30PM (#35046378)

You're letting something irritate you that's not wrong.

It's like getting mad when someone says "I had noodles for lunch" when you know perfectly well they had /spaghetti/, and if they'd said /spaghetti/ you could get irate because they actually had /ragu/ spaghetti (meat in the spaghetti sauce).

Using the abstract word it still "fine" if that's the level the speaker wants to give.

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Re:Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume con... by JohnFen on Monday March 06, 2023 @02:44PM (#35046581)

I don't think that analogy captures my problem with those words. My problem, really, is that they devalue what they refer to. "Consumer" devalues people, and "content" devalues creative effort.

Saying "noodles" doesn't devalue spaghetti.

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Re:Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume con... by slt2021 on Monday March 06, 2023 @06:36PM (#35049449)

"Consuming content" is term used by VCs, because when evaluating startups they are mainly concerned about dry, dehumanized, KPI type metrics, like:

1) attracting XXX eyeballs/consumers per quarter

2) producing YYY amount of content for consumption

3) monetizing consumers for $ZZ/mo

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Re:Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume con... by inanutshellus on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @10:49AM (#35070450)

I think it would devalue the ragu Bolognese spaghetti from the context of the chef! "They called my beautiful creation 'noodles!' My life is a sham! quickly commits seppuku" :-)

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