[Yunk]

> I've seen this too, but it's not a new phenomenon. This has always happened behind closed doors; LinkedIn merely makes it public.

Yep, we had an engineer who spent 40 hours a week going around and building social connections.. Where did he find the time?

[wildpeaks]

Maybe do ask him: he might actually have useful tips on working smarter and freeing up time by avoiding repetitive or redondant tasks.

[Yunk]

Even the engineer who freed up his time by outsourcing had the common decency to spend his time looking at pictures of kittens..

If managers could account for the hours of utility he stole from others, I think it would be a separate reason to put him on probation. (I know he was on probation for his own output since that was the topic of many of his visits to one of my neighbors who in turn wasted my time complaining about his tedious visits just as I waste yours now. So ends my postmodern fable.)

[wildpeaks]

I was merely responding to the "Where did he find the time?" sentence because I often hear it from people misunderstanding highly organized engineers, but obviously I don't know that specific guy so I can't hazard a guess as to his specific situation, sorry if you felt misunderstood.

[Yunk]

I didn't mean to sound overly harsh or upset about it, since I do recognize there is a spectrum and you need to fall somewhere in the middle if you want to be able to learn from more than just your own actions and have opportunities if your current project gets cancelled, etc.

But I think it is an ironic part of social nature that we continue to reward those who take it too far on the social side of the spectrum (just complaining about them we seem to make them into a necessary quirk of the place or create a miscommunication that gets them a new position) while we let a lot of brilliant people go just because they look like they are on the other side of the spectrum to people who don't see their quieter exchanges.