The story of the lost warranty repair, and a very non-scientific discussion about the conspiracy behind planned obsolescences. Not to mention we tangent into how social networks are weird, but work related social networks are even weirder.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
The story of the lost warranty repair, and a very non-scientific discussion about the conspiracy behind planned obsolescences. Not to mention we tangent into how social networks are weird, but work related social networks are even weirder.
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie 0:07
Hi everyone, and welcome back to a another episode of Toast & Roast. I am here with Geoff, my co host, and I am Georgie. How’s it going?
Geoff 0:19
Do doo doo doo doo.
Georgie 0:22
Wait, you’re not supposed to mention the jingle.
Geoff 0:25
Oh, I mean, like, it’s stuck in my head. That’s all I think in the beginning.
Georgie 0:30
Yeah, we’ve never we’ve never talked about it.
Geoff 0:32
Yeah, let’s talk about this jingle. Nah, jokes. We’re not gonna talk about it. Yeah, so my story for today is my battle with RMA, or as some people might call it, warranty fixing. And basically, I had a microphone arm for this, for my microphone, obviously. And it like had this minor fault. Like, my microphone would spin freely, like it, like literally you can like hit it with the least amount of pressure and it’ll just spin. So I’m like, you know why I like my microphone to stay exactly where I put it when, when I’m speaking, so I took it to the store, and the store is 40 minutes away. So I drove down to the store. And I gave it to them and you know, they troubleshooted it. I was like, can I get this warranty fixed? Like, sure, they sent it away. This was in October, October 2021. So like every now and then I remember that, oh, I haven’t got this, this arm back yet. I haven’t got this microphone arm back. And I’m like, okay, so I follow up. And the first time I followed up, I said, what’s happening? I called them and they said, oh, they’re, they’ve got it. They’re, they’re gonna ship out a new one next week or something like that. I’m like, okay. Like a month pass maybe one month and a half. And I’m like, what’s happening? They said, oh, they’re trying to find parts. They can’t get parts. And I’m like, okay, that makes sense. Because you know, we have we have a bit of a—if no one’s noticed—we have a bit of a shortage on manual labour. And, and then I follow up again, and they said, oh, yeah, they’re shipping one out next week. And you know what? I asked them for a straight refund. I was like, I’ll ask, I’ll for a straight refund. And then they came back and they said, they got an email from the manufacturer themselves. And they said the manufacturer is now sending it out. So here I am, November, December with three months into this warranty fight. I wouldn’t call it a fight actually, call it like, I don’t know, a piss. And there’s there’s just no, there’s no no end in sight. I don’t understand why they can’t just give me a new one. Since they’ve spent three months just sitting on their arses. And yeah, and, I’m never going to try and return anything for warranty ever again.
Georgie 3:11
Wow.
Geoff 3:20
Yeah.
Georgie 3:30
That’s terrible.
Geoff 3:33
But yeah, I mean, like, I mean, I guess how often do people actually use their warranty?
Georgie 3:39
Yes. So you couldn’t take this like physically to anywhere to get it sorted? You had to like—
Geoff 3:46
Oh, that’s a good point huh. Could I have just gotten it, gone to like some watch key fixer and like, can you fix, can you fix this?
Georgie 3:56
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Yeah, warranties are a funny thing aren’t they. Like there’s that whole thing about how products are made deliberately so that they kind of stop working the way they’re supposed to immediately after the warranty expired.
Geoff 4:14
I was just thinking about that actually, like planned obsolescence and the right to repair movement. But do you believe there’s planned obsolescence? Do you think your phone is like hitting its prime time and just going downhill?
Georgie 4:33
It’s hard to say because I have my, I have the iPhone 12 Mini, which is like it’s like one and a half years old now almost. And before that I had the iPhone 7 and I had that for four years, which I think might have been the longest I’ve owned a smartphone. And it definitely, you know, it wasn’t with the times by the, by the time I was about, like almost got, almost upgraded it. And I have heard stories of not necessarily technology, but I think I don’t remember if it was Nick or my brother or someone I know, had a chair, like a desk chair, it had a two year warranty. It might have been Nick actually. And after the two years was up, the leather on the chair just like started to peel.
Geoff 5:23
Oh that’s the worst when you get this fake shit.
Georgie 5:27
Sidebar, my my brother. Like my parents were kind of more into trying to pick up like a second hand like secondhand furniture and things. So my brother had a rather old secondhand desk chair, and he just didn’t really care about how good or comfortable the chair was. And he just put up with this old chair to the point that the fabric of the seat tore, and the sponge inside was falling out and leaving little yellow balls on the carpet. And it was just destroyed. And you would just walk in his room and you see the little yellow spongy balls just sitting on the floor and his, like, you probably—exaggerating—I probably couldn’t recognize it as being a chair anymore. But to answer your question, I don’t know if I fully believe that products are entirely made to just malfunction by the time it’s time to upgrade them.
Geoff 6:36
Yeah.
Georgie 6:37
Yeah, I don’t think I fully believe that.
Geoff 6:40
PSA, though. Care about your chair.
Georgie 6:44
Yes, yes, please do. It’s really important.
Geoff 6:47
Care about your chair, it rhymes, you can remember it really easily. Care about your chair. And your ergonomics. Because honestly, like when when you hit 25 plus, it matters so much. But I think it’s only really perceived planned obsolescence. I know a lot of people would just like see the, like, their phone degrade. Sure. Batteries degrade. That makes sense. But I think mostly with phones, they slow down because just the software gets more and more needy, more powerful software, your phone is just not as powerful. On, the, I mean, they were, it was powerful-feeling with the older software and you get the newest software that needs more resources, and your phone just doesn’t have it. So I think like in general, the, the it’s not planned obsolescence, it’s just the way software works. We’re always constantly building our software with more features, more more powerful features. You know, this whole bloody augmented reality stuff... is honestly not getting better. I thought it would get better.
Georgie 8:09
Nah.
Geoff 8:10
Yeah, we, we started with, I kind of get why we started with Memojis. If anyone doesn’t know what a Memoji is, it’s literally a emoji that is based on your appearance. And it uses facial mapping technology to accurately flex, like the emoji with your expressions based based on your face, so you can record those. So I was a bit disappointed with Memojis. Like we have. This is a great piece of technology, and we’re just shoving it into Memojis.
Georgie 8:52
It’s okay, I guess. There’s a novelty in it.
Geoff 8:57
There’s a novelty and I think it’s kind of like get I know, it’s kind of like trying to get people familiar with the technology. So it’s not as freaky when you do something a little bit crazier. I don’t know, like deep fakes. But, but yeah, I don’t think it’s gotten too much more useful. Other than, like, in the recent years, so hopefully it gets better.
Georgie 9:23
You know, that reminds me every time we FaceTime, with Nick’s family, sometimes just for funsies I’ll turn on the stickers, and then I’ll put the Memoji on and it’s on. We usually do this on Nick’s iPad. So it’s the one that he created for himself. And it will just like, what you got, superimpose his Memoji on one of our faces and they’re always so entertained by it, it’s still... Yeah, and it reminds me of at work or like during the, during the pandemic, did you mostly use like zoom or Google Meet or?
Geoff 10:00
Yeah, oh with the family?
Georgie 10:02
Or just in general, because I was going to talk about the Zoom filters.
Geoff 10:07
Yeah, yeah. So used to use Google Meets. And of course, Discord. I eventually got like the whole, like personal stuff, everybody like family and friends and stuff that wanted to video call. We all went on to Discord.
Georgie 10:25
Yeah.
Geoff 10:25
So I kind of consolidated that. But yeah, the filters.
Georgie 10:28
Yeah, the Zoom, the Zoom filters, when we first started, you know, beginning of 2020, this whole shit, like working from home, everyone was obsessed with Zoom filters, we could add like sunglasses, like, something like a plant on top of your head, or an animal face, and then you could change the background and it would do the green screen for you. So you could put whatever is your background. And then, you know, at some point, we thought, ah, it’s so old now, right? But then every now and then it just comes back and someone starts using a filter or a background and it becomes funny. I remember, I remember keeping like, because I had my desk on my computer in a different spot. And you can actually see like, basically half of my apartment, which I didn’t like, so I always had like, some kind of background. And then I moved it but like, for some time I cared about people not seeing my apartment, then I’m like, I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m at home. What do you what do you expect? Yes, you can see the the kettle in the background. You can see like the dining table, whatever. A little troll that we did at work was if somebody had to go and like, answer the doorbell or tend to the children or their pet or something, we’d take a screenshot of their background and set it as our background and that kind of thing.
Geoff 12:00
That sounds fun.
Georgie 12:01
It was yeah, we’d change our, we’d change our name to somebody else. So like two Geoff Chongs were like talking or something. Yeah, but yeah.
Geoff 12:12
Some people took pictures of the office and used it as their background picture.
Georgie 12:17
Yeah, yeah.
Geoff 12:19
I was like, someone, one person went into the office. At the time, one person went in and went around to everyone’s chairs and took pictures of their, their, like, whatever was behind the—
Georgie 12:33
Behind you.
Geoff 12:34
Sent it to us so that we could all basically change our background to where we sit. But yeah, do you think... we... like now that we’re basically you’re in half into almost 100% working from home? Do you think it’s been good?
Georgie 12:53
Hasn’t it been two years?
Geoff 12:55
Two years, whatever. Who knows?
Georgie 12:57
Do I think it’s been good? Actually... I do wonder because I was thinking about it this morning after I woke up. Last year, the latter half of last year was a bit stressful for me, I got a bit burned out. And I remember being quite emotional. And then like, recently, and so, obviously, I took like 10 days off, like over Christmas and New Year. And I feel like this year so far has been less stressful. Obviously, some things have changed at work in that I’m not really working with as many people so at the same time, so I’m not in as many meetings. And I sort of wondered, before the pandemic, before working from home, people who were working remotely, I wonder if there’s been any research done into how much stress they experience versus people going into a physical office regularly. So that was something I was curious about and haven’t read into. But yeah, I think it’s really important when working from home to like, have boundaries and stuff because it was something I didn’t really do last year. That’s why I burned out.
Geoff 14:09
Yeah.
Georgie 14:09
So yeah.
Geoff 14:13
On the fence, yeah. I think I found what I found interesting because well—on a on a similar topic, and I’ll probably get back to it—Atlassian, they when they apparently when they announced their work anywhere policy and only mandating maybe four days a year to come into the office, 25% of their workforce literal—like literally moved out of Sydney CBD like in like the Greater Sydney area, and they’re all like maybe one or two hours away from from the office now. Which is quite staggering for Atlassian being a huge, huge, like—
Georgie 15:00
Huge company.
Geoff 15:01
Huge company. But yeah, I, I think for for like, life in general, it’s pretty good to work from home. But back when I was working, you know, in the office, those forced kind of lunchtime interactions were... like, helped me get to know—either get to know more people or get to... yeah. Have, have that conversation between different teams. Like I feel like I’ve been working in like such a silo because I don’t have that natural cross team conversations. Like, it’s like the other person on the team is getting up. It’s like, oh, yeah, I kind of know them. It’s like hey, do you want to go have lunch? Or the just just recognising a few people from other teams and just maybe having a conversation with them randomly. And then understanding some pain points maybe. So I think from a like a work perspective, I don’t know if it’s been all that good. And taking that away, of course, you need to then compensate, right, you need to compensate with maybe reaching out specifically. But man, that’s weird for me. Like—
Georgie 16:34
Yeah, yeah, I do kind of, like I really enjoy the flexibility of working from home. And that I’m not necessarily forced to socialise with people. But I do miss kind of just being in the office amongst people. And then sometimes I didn’t mind just, like getting up and going for a walk around and just saying hi to whoever was there. And then yeah, like at lunchtime. Talking to people. Didn’t always like that, either. But it was nice.
Geoff 17:12
Yeah. I also don’t like, while I say I did it. It’s not, I don’t think I particularly enjoyed being forced to socialise, in general. But now it’s been taken away. I’m like, sweet, this is awesome. I can talk to nobody. But I’m talking to nobody. And then I guess it depends on the type of work you would do, if you have to, if you have to have kind of that awareness of what other teams are doing, then it’s much easier, because then I found out that I have very little awareness of what other teams are doing outside of a three hour like showcase suite. It’s like, oh, my god.
Georgie 17:55
Yeah. Yeah, that’s funny, our showcases like one hour. And we’re like, strictly limited, like to keep it to like five minutes. But yet, early, early 20—oh, 2020, last year, as well, we were working, our team was working quite closely with other teams. And so I got a lot of social interaction from all of the Zoom calls and meetings that we had with all these other teams. And I didn’t feel like it was too much different from being in the in the office, and I look forward to just coming to standup and, you know, cracking all these jokes and stuff. And now that we’re not really doing that as much anymore, because our focus changed, it does sort of feel like something I kind of miss. And at the same time, it’s like, weird to go to those people and try and like strike up a conversation with them randomly on Slack or something.
Geoff 18:53
You have to be really—that’s the thing, right? Whenever I thought about, you know, talking to someone on Slack, it seems like it has to be very purposeful. Of course it doesn’t. But it is very, very much like sending an email and giving someone a meeting like, like, you’re trying to, I think a lot of people struggle with this earlier, they tried to replace everything with a meeting like every, every one of those little interactions got replaced with a meeting, and then you just basically have a full, full day of meetings. But yeah, I’m also kind of on the fence of whether or not working from home is like entirely good. Sure. I’m—I, I lean towards introversion. So generally, this is all really good for me. But does it make you a better co worker? Who knows?
Georgie 19:44
I don’t know. But going back to what you’re saying about sort of like, I think you mentioned there’s some effort required to I—
Geoff 19:57
Like to reach out and make those meetings.
Georgie 19:58
Yeah, that, yeah, to reach out. It made me think of people who had joined our company during this working from home remote time. And some of them left. And I sort of thought, well, I’ve never met that person in person. And I started thinking that this is a thing now. And every time these people are introduced, like new employees introduced, there’s still that kind of... there’s still that feeling that they want to say, or, somebody says, I hope we get to see each other in person sometime soon. Like, people still want to, like, hang out, and that’s cool. But I was thinking about how, what my attitude towards this is like, especially when someone new joins the company and whether or not they have worked remotely. It’s like they’re new and you want to make them feel welcome. And you want to make sure they don’t like, aren’t sitting alone at home going, “oh, my god, what am I doing?” Yeah, like, I have this personal thing... the only way I can explain it is like, I feel like I need to make myself known to people to like, what I do. It sounds really obnoxious.
Geoff 21:25
Yeah.
Georgie 21:26
And kind of up myself. But it’s basically like, it does require, like more communication to, like, reach out and help people when they ask something and you know, you can help them. Or I’m trying to think of a concrete example. So someone makes like a pull request, which for people who don’t work in tech, it’s like, it’s a sort of...
Geoff 21:50
Review process.
Georgie 21:50
Like an update. Yeah, yeah. So you want someone to review your code, and then they, when it’s approved, you can like it goes out and it’s all good. Sometimes there’s a communication required, or maybe some discussion needs to happen, maybe some corrections need to be made, it’s all fine. And every time some new person creates one of these reviews, I feel the need to make myself extremely available to help them. But that’s just, it’s a lot of effort as well. And I also am wary of coming across as too like fucking friendly. Like, yo, let me know if you have any. You have any questions? I but I do want to make them feel welcome.
Geoff 22:30
My thing is that, is that I’m worried that they would think that I think that they don’t know how to do their job.
Georgie 22:37
Yeah, like pushy thing, right?
Geoff 22:39
Yeah.
Georgie 22:40
Or, like a control thing. And I think this is like a communication sort of thing that you skill that you need to, like, work on. I’m not saying like, you. I mean, just in general.
Geoff 22:54
Yeah.
Georgie 22:55
It’s about communication, right? You want to strike a good balance between, like, helping the person and not offending them. And yeah.
Geoff 23:04
This kind of stuff is, I think, very specific to our the fact that we are working from home and we don’t actually see each other face to face, because it all stems from like, that very initial, like, get connections like, oh, you’re like, “oh, you’re new”, like, okay, “so how are you finding it? Let’s get coffee”. That like that kind of like pattern, even though I don’t drink coffee. It I think gives us an opportunity to like, like, focus on doing something and having a casual chat, same time, and then they would know your mannerisms. And they would know that you’re just a helpful kind of person. You’re not malicious, but when you type it out, or when you send someone a meeting, like, why is this random person sending me a meeting? Like, did I do something wrong? Do we need to talk about something specific? And you’re new, you have no no idea.
Georgie 23:58
Agendas people. Agendas.
Geoff 24:00
Yeah, exactly. I... Yeah. So even with the agenda, you’re like, “just checking in to see if I can help you with anything”. I know, it’s actually a little pessimistic to say that everyone would think that you are being like a jerk or being too like micromanaging.
Georgie 24:20
But it’s really forward as well to just set up a meeting. I would message the person be like, “Hey, are you okay if I set up a call?”
Geoff 24:27
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then do you message them on Slack? How long will they take to respond to Slack and they don’t respond to Slack, oh shit, did I say something wrong? So it’s, it’s yeah, I think it’s a it’s a still a, still a weird landscape. Like you said, with new people. It’s hard to strike that balance without having some kind of like, like a, like a personality, initial personality check. But—
Georgie 25:01
Yeah.
Geoff 25:01
I think, the... I think it might get better. I don’t know. I but I’m gonna be starting a new job soon which is why cuz this is like a topic on the top of my mind. So it’s gonna be interesting because I’m, I have to be in a position of tying together I think a lot of pieces across teams perhaps. So it’s, it’s gonna be interesting. Like getting to know a whole bunch of people straight up online because at least in my last roll I met my team once. And I don’t know if I’m going to meet my team this time, because they’re quite remote as well. Think Brisbane, Melbourne. I think there’s only like one person in Sydney. So.
Georgie 25:51
Maybe you should just gather them together. Like for... ask them? Can I have a—
Geoff 25:57
Yeah.
Georgie 25:58
Have all of you intro each other like...
Geoff 26:01
I think that’s, that’s okay. From me into my team. Like.
Georgie 26:06
Yeah, I mean not just randomly.
Geoff 26:08
Yeah.
Georgie 26:09
People you know you’ll be working with. Yeah.
Geoff 26:11
Yeah. But like you said, when you like approach someone that’s new, or, like out of the blue or someone new just approaches you out of the blue. It’s kind of like a bit of a weird mind game for at first.
Georgie 26:24
Yeah.
Geoff 26:25
You get over it, for sure. And I hope no one from my new company’s listening to my podcast.
Georgie 26:31
One day they will. Haha, nah. This um, this, um, I wrote this blog post, like last week or a couple weeks ago, we had this kind of like hackathon thing at our work. And...
Geoff 26:45
For those who don’t know what a hackathon is...
Georgie 26:48
Go on, Geoff, you’re better at these explanations.
Geoff 26:51
It’s a usually a company, company supported thing. You can have charity hackathons, but essentially the idea is, over 48 hours, you and a small team of perhaps possibly randoms come together to try and solve a problem in 48 hours. They usually have prizes for certain aspects. So you may not have to produce something, or at least pitch an idea. But like the ideas, the thing is you come up with a solution in 48 hours.
Georgie 27:28
Yeah.
Geoff 27:28
As far as I know, only code people do this. I don’t know any other like, lawyers? “48 hours. Let’s do this. Let’s try solve this case!”
Georgie 27:37
You’d be effed. I’m just like thinking of my mum who like does stuff in cosmetics. I’m like, how many faces can you do? So what Geoff said about potentially randoms, possibly randoms random people. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the important part. So I’m talking about this hackathon that happened specifically at my workplace. So it’s people in the company. The blog post was about like how I’m a bit, I had this like trauma associated with negative like toxic hackathon culture, because 48 hours, it’s kind of like, for some places, for some organizations, or companies, like, go fucking sleep under the table and shit. And just negative stuff.
Geoff 28:18
Yeah.
Georgie 28:19
And this was about my more positive experience that I had last year at my, at my company. So we had a lot of new people join our company in the past, like couple of years, and I pitched this idea, which everyone has seen everywhere. And I’m just gonna say it, I don’t think I need to explain it to no normie or shit. It’s called dark mode. It’s everywhere. So our product didn’t have a dark mode. And I made this pitch. And I honestly thought that nobody was going to be interested in this, nobody was going to join me and I just be a team of one. But surprisingly, like six other people joined me. And a lot of those people were new, I think like five out of six of them had joined the company within the past like six months. And because I guess it was my idea. I had this responsibility to kind of get things a bit organised. And I thought it would be nice, since no one’s really possibly talked about or known each other, I thought, on the on the on the day it starts, I’ll set up a meeting and we can have a chat and everyone can just introduce themselves and it’s nice, right. So that was yeah, it’s a good idea, I think, especially for for new newcomers. And especially when you might not ever meet these people in person or not for a long time anyway, and you will be working together on stuff so nice to kind of break the ice. I hate that—do you hate that phrase?
Geoff 29:44
Oh, my god, icebreakers. Yeah, yeah. Um, I did one pre—like recently for like a guild that we were starting up... Was it a guild? Or it was one of our first kind of presentations at a guild. And we did two truths and a lie type thing.
Georgie 30:03
Oh my god I love those. I am obsessed with these stupid party... I like them.
Geoff 30:10
Yeah. So we did the two truths and a lie. Actually, I think we did two lies and a truth and it tripped loads of people up because gener—generally it’s two truths and a lie, not two lies and a truth. So people were guessing the lie. They’re trying to guess a lie. But actually there were two lies. So yeah, we kind of, we kind of messed around with that kind of concept. And you have to kind of tell a story about the, about the the, two, two lies—
Georgie 30:42
Yeah.
Geoff 30:42
...about the truth, right. And we got everyone in the video chat to vote, which one? And then we kind of revealed it on the next slide. But yeah,
Georgie 30:56
That’s fun. I like that one.
Geoff 30:58
As far as icebreakers, pretty good.
Georgie 31:01
Yeah, the thing I do with that for fun is I make one of like, full of one that’s supposed to be a lie actually make it like half true.
Geoff 31:11
Yeah.
Georgie 31:11
Yeah.
Geoff 31:12
Yeah you troll like that?
Georgie 31:12
Like, yeah, it’s like...
Geoff 31:16
“I broke my bones five times. Oh, no. It’s actually six.”
Georgie 31:21
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s quite funny. I’ve done that on several occasions.
Geoff 31:25
You are such a troll.
Georgie 31:28
But it’s funny because like, I like to write really ridiculous ones. Like, I think once I wrote... so it’s two trut—yeah, we did two truths and one lie. And one one of the truths was when I was younger, I wanted to be a dentist and I did work experience at the Westmead Oral Health Center. That’s and he was very detailed, right? And then I think I did, I’m trying to remember another one.
Geoff 31:57
But that is pretty strange.
Georgie 31:58
Like, it might have been that I used to be a ballerina, and I ended up doing all my grades and like, almost became a teacher or whatever, very specific. And then I think I made the lie something like I was playing with silly putty. When I was five years old, or something, and I got stuck on the ceiling. And I got an allergic reaction, and I haven’t touched it ever since. But I just made them so detailed. And then like, a couple of people guessed it, right, because they like the silly putty one sounds so odd. People were just like, I don’t know, this is so detailed. Anyway, giant troll.
Geoff 32:42
So you’re just, yeah, you’re just a giant troll with the icebreakers.
Georgie 32:46
Yeah.
Geoff 32:47
We did one for... we were trying to do one for each person of the team. But I but our team is like, three people or whatever, four people.
Georgie 32:57
Oh, my god, it’s so funny when you have like only a few people and like, it’s just too easy.
Geoff 33:03
Yeah.
Georgie 33:03
To guess.
Geoff 33:05
So. That so that was yeah, that’s, that’s my experience, icebreakers. I don’t think... I’m doing a talk soon. And I don’t know, I don’t think we have an icebreaker. And that because I mean, there’s supposed to be like over 100 people. But one of the reasons why people are coming to this meetup is to maybe like, do some networking. So we’re going to utilise the breakout rooms. Which are a pretty interesting concept. My previous company did something along the lines with breakout rooms. And I was like, no, I don’t, I don’t think I really want to, like socialise or be forced to socialise with random people. But it worked. It worked out okay. Every—everybody had like a talking point or purpose. And you go okay, like, Yeah, think about this x and y. So it’s not too bad breakout rooms. But yeah, that’s pretty much my... Oh. Side note. Have you heard of Polywork, while we’re on the topic of work and work related things?
Georgie 34:14
I literally only heard about it today, I think because one of my friends said she got verified on it. So what is it? I don’t actually know.
Geoff 34:24
So it’s a professional social network.
Georgie 34:29
It’s LinkedIn. Oh my god, no I’m done. I’m leaving.
Geoff 34:32
It’s not LinkedIn. Not LinkedIn. As you can see, I’ve got here June 27 2021, started a non tech related chat and chill type podcast with Georgie called Toast & Roast. So it’s, it’s, it’s, I guess what you would call it a show showcase. It’s basically a show a live showcase feed. So you follow people that you know are doing cool stuff and they will just post essentially, yeah, post highlights and, and showcases from things they’ve done like talks, side projects, personal milestones and stuff like that. So it’s more, I guess, focused on, like, seeing what professional things are have like are happening in other professionals lives rather than the shit show that LinkedIn, which is, I don’t know, success stories and “I went to my daughter’s ballet recital the other day, and she, she couldn’t get one of the steps, right and she fell over. And then she got back up. And that is why you should always get back up. If my five year old daughter can get back up in the middle of frickin recital, you can too”. Like it’s such bullshit on LinkedIn. That was overly detailed. I’m pretty sure I saw something similar like that on LinkedIn. But have you seen like people posting videos or sat—basically, meme satire stuff on like, how to become LinkedIn famous? Yeah, there’s a formula.
Georgie 36:17
I haven’t. But I actually didn’t log into LinkedIn for like, at least a year. Until like, recently, I wanted to, I think I wanted to read someone’s post on there. She was an intern who recently finished an internship with us. And she was she was super cool. And so I had for some reason I, I had to log in to read her story. I don’t know, whatever. But I had like, hundreds of like messages and notifications and stuff. But you’re right, it is a shit show. And I don’t really care to be famous on there. What does that even mean?
Geoff 36:56
Yeah, what what does it mean to be famous on LinkedIn? Do you think you’ll get more jobs? I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone increases credibility based on based on how many likes one of your LinkedIn posts get. But yeah, it’s kind of like you follow, you follow some people—I know, this is very tech related, so apologies for people who aren’t particularly tech inclined—but the, they’re growing in size. And it’s kind of like, yeah, you follow some people, you see what they’re working on what they have released, and it’s a little bit more focused on es—essentially people’s achievements. So it’s kind of nice, “published a video”, “emceed at a conference”, “spoke at a conference”, “featured in an interview”, stuff like that.
Georgie 37:47
So it’s like a portfolio kind of, but yeah, it’s gonna be a social stuff, I guess, if you if you emcee at a conference, and it’s like, yeah, I was here.
Geoff 37:55
Yeah, yeah. So it’s not... it is kind of portfolio and kind of not, which is nice. I was gonna try and post on this on this every single time we posted a new episode of Toast & Roast, but I legit forgot. Um, so.
Georgie 38:15
I wonder how much I care about this, though. If you know what I mean. Like, I feel like... I’m shitting on this already. It’s just like, who’s to say it’s not just another social media feed, but like, specialised, you know?
Geoff 38:32
Exactly. Exactly.
Georgie 38:34
Because we need to change our outro. Find our updates on Polywork, y’all.
Geoff 38:38
Yeah, you can you can follow us on Polywork. Um, I don’t think they’re doing company stuff. So it’s very much individuals, so you can’t have a ToastRoastPod account. But yeah, you can, a lot of people of course, I started off with doing my, my work history.
Georgie 38:59
Yeah.
Geoff 38:59
Yeah. And then you get these tags, which are really, really, really broad. And really, I told them, I’m like, This is really weird. Like, this is like a tag that’s “seen some shit”.
Georgie 39:10
Seen some shit.
Geoff 39:12
Yeah, yeah. I’m a systems thinker, a software architect. And I’ve seen some shit. Like, why, like, “Neopets alumnus”. Like.
Georgie 39:23
Hey where did we get this data from? Did you put like?
Geoff 39:27
They have all of these as an option? I didn’t write any of these.
Georgie 39:30
And you ticked them?
Geoff 39:31
I just ticked them.
Georgie 39:32
You just ticked them. Early adopter? Fuck.
Geoff 39:36
Yeah. I gotta take photographer off because I had, I’ve sold my camera. So I’m no longer called a photographer.
Georgie 39:43
These tags. Yeah, yeah. Same. Um, this tag stuff reminds me of LinkedIn still, though, because they had a whole bunch of tags. And I remember not quite understanding it when I was selecting them. Because when it came to adding my work history, I was adding stuff like my concert photography that I used to do and like other, non, like, things that aren’t related to my current career.
Geoff 40:07
Yeah.
Georgie 40:08
And I even I even added like playing guitar. And I think someone actually contacted me asked me if I wanted to play guitar at something. I was like, fuck, I’m using this wrong.
Geoff 40:20
Yeah, I’ve learned very early that if you put any keywords that you don’t necessarily want them to contact you about, then then you’re in for a really fun ride. Like I put like Angular, and one of one of my job descriptions. Like, that’s a huge mistake. Then people started asking me for Angular stuff. But yeah, I think LinkedIn is just super fucking weird. If anyone uses it, or anyone asks you to join it, like, be warned. Don’t look at it. It’s literally like, anytime you need a job. Go to go to the... gosh, this.
Georgie 41:00
You have a message.
Geoff 41:03
Yeah, I’ve tons of messages. Like... oh, yeah. No, I’m not going to expand that. But yeah. Oh, it’s really slow. But yeah, so—social media, as social media goes. I’m like, I was talking to a friend about this actually, like I am... I have an account on every social media. But I never feel the need to actually post anything. Twitter’s probably the most I’ve ever posted in, in, in my lifetime on any social media. What’s that, three... I think I like 100 tweets a year, something like that.
Georgie 41:47
Yeah.
Geoff 41:48
But then, like, some friend of mine asked me why. “Why don’t you like to post on social media?” And I think I said something along the lines of: because I’m part of tech, and I kind of understand what social medias like for, and why they why the tech company wants me to use social media, I’m a bit less susceptible to its like, its mechanics, you know, showing you things that you may want to comment on and interact with. I’m, like, hyper aware. And I just feel like I don’t want to engage in that specific aspect. But then on the flip side, you’re like, well, you kind of should use it to keep in contact with people who only use Facebook. I’m like, oh god.
Georgie 42:44
No you should not.
Geoff 42:46
Some people are only on Facebook and—but I don’t actually keep in contact anyone, anyone on my Facebook anyways. So yeah, I gave them to this vague, like pretty hoity toity, I’m, I’m, I’m too good to, to contribute to, to Facebook and stuff like that. I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in what I want to post on Facebook anyways.
Georgie 43:13
That’s so interesting, because you’re like, I am almost precisely the opposite. But I also work in tech. And I think because I came from a different sort of background of having a blog online, and having like, essentially, my life and personal details and things on the internet. And of course, I am fully aware of the repercussions of putting too much information online, and you know, having any kind of reputation or image. And of course, recently, there’s been issues with like, privacy and surveillance and, you know, shit, like being targeted ad—getting targeted ads and a company, big, big tech cops, watching what you’re doing, so that they can market things at you and get your money. And I don’t know, it’s like, the reason I still post... So I mainly use Twitter and Instagram. I’ve never had Facebook, I know Instagram is technically owned by Facebook, blah, blah. Anyway, that’s not that’s not the point.
Geoff 44:23
Not the same.
Georgie 44:23
I know. There’s I know there’s a shadow profile of me. Anyway, I’m not on Facebook now at Facebook, and I am almost like against it purely... I wouldn’t say purely, but I feel like I continued to be against it to spite those people who only want to keep in touch on Facebook. Because I had a blog, like, well, before Facebook was even a thing. And you know, I obviously had a phone number, email and things. And I was like, what is the point in me joining this social network site, and posting stuff there, when I do that on my blog, which I really enjoy. So that was, that was why I never joined Facebook in the first place. And I just remember going through this thing of people would ask if I had Facebook, and if I didn’t have Facebook, then they would not keep in touch with me. And I’m like, if I need to join a social network to be your friend, you can just fuck off. But um, I posted on Twitter because I joined Twitter in like 2008, which I think was maybe when it was like a couple years old, a few years old. I initially joined, because I was entering some competition to win some domain, domain names from NameCheap.
Geoff 45:37
The classic reason, it’s how you get Georgie to join anything, you got to give her some free NameCheap domain names.
Georgie 45:43
Hahaha fuck off. I kept posting on Twitter, because I think I just liked the format of like this micro blogging kind of thing. And then just seeing what people are up to. I don’t know, I kind of liked it before it turned into the shit show it is today. And I somehow gained some following on Twitter. And then when I started, you know, working professionally in tech, it became a pretty good platform to keep in—not really keep in—I guess I’ll use the word keep in touch, like with people in the industry, see what people are up to, also share some of the things I was learning. And I was how I connected with people. It’s like a super quick way of connecting with people, which didn’t feel very committal compared to Facebook. And then Instagram, I joined in like 2012, just wanted to—Geoff and I’ve talked about this before, but I just wanted to post some pretty pictures with shitty filters. And then it’s—
Geoff 46:43
Got too serious.
Georgie 46:43
Like, it got fucking serious. And then I started shitposting, like late last year, because I was like, fuck everyone. And I don’t know, I don’t mind the Story feature, because I just post mostly outfits I’ve worn and like, and I post some updates about my fitness.
Geoff 46:59
The... feed. Yeah, I don’t want to pollute the feed.
Georgie 47:05
It is, it is essentially what I want to use it for. And it is I have maybe fallen into a bit of a trap of “I should be using this for this because everybody else is”. And sometimes I do. And then it’s just like, nah, I always revert back to what I want to use it for. And yeah.
Geoff 47:28
These are, these are tools.
Georgie 47:32
Mhmm.
Geoff 47:32
I had a Facebook account. And I was quite I was quite active on Facebook when I first opened it up and made it. But I guess what I found eventually—and I get, and probably contrary to my hoity toity, I’m too tech to use it—I just found out that like you, the friends that I actually wanted to keep up to date, I kept up to date in, in different platforms. And just if you wanted to know something, but required me to use this platform, then tough luck. So I think yeah, over over the years, I have just collected a group of friends and those group of friends are on a messaging platform. And they are the ones I know actually care about what I’m what I’m saying and will respond most of the time... Taiyo. And, and so I felt less and less need, I guess to actually update Facebook to a bunch of nobodies. I have I had like maybe a significant amount of connections. And I used to use it as a kind of a, like a contact list. Like everyone I ever knew. I will connect with on LinkedIn. And that is a source of truth with like all the people I know. I also used to freelance so every now and then I’d have jobs come through that. So I kept, I kept it like going, I kept it open. But yeah, it slowly but surely it kind of just waned away. I was mm, I don’t really care about having a connect—like a huge list of connections. That’s what LinkedIn is for. Like, people I know, I’ll, I’ll connect with on LinkedIn. Although I became a LinkedIn snob. I remember when I met one of our mutual friends. I literally said sorry, I’m not gonna connect with you on LinkedIn, because I have never worked with you.
Georgie 49:43
I did that as well. Like, I don’t add people I don’t know. And so I ignored a lot of, literally just, if they, if I didn’t know them, I just wouldn’t add them.
Geoff 49:52
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s also probably, you know, subconsciously, the internet’s gotten a little bit more dangerous. So adding random people it has a has a bit of an effect. When you add somebody, they can obviously see all your friends and then, you know, some social engineering can happen. So, I think the combination of security and bots and I started like deleting more information about myself off the internet. Not that it’s too hard to find. But I took my, one thing I did, I took my birthday off Facebook, because I was tired of getting happy birthdays from people that literally do this because they’re just scrolling through Facebook.
Georgie 50:42
Saw the notification.
Geoff 50:43
Yeah, they’re like... you, you literally just saw this notification. And because you feel, I don’t know, I’m a bit cynical. Maybe you feel like you need to interact with someone who’s having a birthday. No shade on anyone who goes around saying happy birthday to their friend.
Georgie 50:59
But you know, this thing happens on Instagram and Twitter as well, but to a different extent. So like, literally today is my friend in the US’s birthday. And she posted a picture and said, “this is what”, my age, puts the number in—I just won’t say it. I mean, I know it’s public. But she goes, “this is what blah looks like”, like what my age looks like. And everyone’s like, “Happy Birthday”. And like it’s done in a different way. Because you see a similar thing on Instagram, blah, blah, blah. It was my birthday, with cake, and then everybody, everybody that comments, like, even I feel compelled to do this, to say, just like, “Happy Birthday” to a stranger. And so I think, yeah, the notification is just another version of a more obvious “Hey, it’s my birthday today”.
Geoff 51:44
Yeah, yeah, it goes back to the tool thing, right? It’s like, if you, if it’s truly a tool for you to use anything that kind of tries to grab you and pull you back into interact with it for something as nonsensical as saying happy birthday to a random person. But yeah, it’s like, I only really appreciate happy birthdays from like, people who actually know and remember that it’s my birthday, not like a bunch of random people I don’t particularly know anymore. And, but on the same on another level, it’s polite. Maybe it’s a polite thing, right? I’ve never known it as a polite thing.
Georgie 52:23
But let—let’s say somebody who is your friend on Facebook sees that and doesn’t say happy birthday.
Geoff 52:32
Oh, they’re dead to me. I’m disconnecting. Like [laugh], unfriend.
Georgie 52:39
Unfriended.
Geoff 52:41
Yeah.
Georgie 52:46
Yeah, but yeah, you wouldn’t know.
Geoff 52:49
Yeah.
Georgie 52:49
You don’t even care.
Geoff 52:50
Exactly, exactly. But you know what I, what else I don’t care about? Ending this podcast.
Georgie 53:00
You do care about it otherwise you wouldn’t fucking do it.
Geoff 53:03
The thing I really care about is ending this podcast. So thanks for listening. You can follow us on @toastroastpod on Instagram and Twitter. Mostly Instagram. I mean, mostly Twitter.
Georgie 53:22
Mostly Facebook.
Geoff 53:23
Mostly Facebook. Please don’t try find us on Facebook.
Georgie 53:28
Yeah, and you can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and maybe Facebook but not really.
Geoff 53:38
Facebook Lives coming soon.
Georgie 53:42
Nope.
Geoff 53:42
And new episodes on every Monday. See you next week. Bye.
Georgie 53:47
Bye.