August 6, 2024
When I was a teenager downloading videos from YouTube, I would use this little-known site called OffLiberty. Eventually I found youtube-dl, but the site's tagline remained etched in my mind.
Reading the tagline then made me feel unique, like I was a part of some hidden and rebellious scene (in true teen fashion). I've always gone back to OffLiberty over the years. Whenever I need to help a non-techie download a video or song, that's where I direct them! You can grab files from many sites, and you can also decide whether you want the video or audio right there after pasting the URL. No ads, no settings, no problem. The site looks and functions the same way today as it did back then in 2011.
Over the years "evidence of offline life" has seemingly dwindled. Stress and screen time are up, attention spans are down, and generally any service that can be Uber-ified, has been. As we now know, this digital transformation of our world would shift into maximum overdrive during the lockdown of the early 2020s. However, I was happily and remotely employed, so I didn't notice much beyond the news. Consciously avoiding social media was also something I always did, unless you count IRC/Discord.
I never thought it could happen to me.
A couple gigs and moves later, I'm officially 30! But that's not what I'd feared. With the recent economic shifts and AIAIAI (not the headphones) I was now staring down a long spreadsheet of my job applications. Diligently I persisted for months, yet out of hundreds of applications, nothing came to fruition. Finally a friend introduced me to his colleagues, and after negotiating a contract, I'd broken through... But that time has scarred me.
Like many people, I've observed a dramatic shift in hiring and job seeking practices. No doubt this has been exacerbated by new tech, but to me the problem is inherently cultural. The US economy is looking relatively good on paper, and the number of available jobs is allegedly high, but for some reason the difference between me and the people getting callbacks (seems to be) that one aspect of myself that I'd felt so proud of a decade ago. Being free of facebook, twitter, linkedIn, reddit, insta, snap, etc etc.
Ready and willing
Contrary to what some of my older coworkers have asserted over the years, there are Millennials who enjoy working in-person or hashing things out via unscheduled calls. There's nothing wrong with Slack, ticketing, and email (all essential things for any remote work) yet those methods fail to utilize our full bandwidth as humans. They're more record-keeping and less communication tools in my opinion.
I'm one of those people who genuinely wants to start prototyping and solving the problem, or at least begin theorizing our approach. This is not-so-coincidentally how I've gotten all of my jobs, except for minimum wage stuff over a decade ago. Typically, I reach out directly to the founder or hiring manager in order to express my understanding of their problems/goals, and to of course proposition them with my assistance. Recently, this strategy has flat out failed me. I think I know why.
What do they have that I don't!?
Pictures. Well, they also have videos, tweets, blogs, 600 "connections", and a lot more evidence of online life. I have... less than 15 connections on my freshman tier LinkedIn.
There's more! I just never posted it. I've moved cross-country for work three times in the last four years alone. I've spoken with Grammy award-winning engineers in world-class studios. I had my first "manager" role. I'm comfortable with public speaking events. I spoke on a blockchain panel at a university, and I was graced with audience questions afterward. Although I never thought to ask for the flyers or photos, nor did I screen cap, repost, or anything! (d'oh)
Maybe it's my fault
I chose the language on my homepage with intention. I've realized that in the current year, experiences need to be recorded. Not for me, but for others. They want proof. Credentials. Evidence.
It used to be that a college degree was enough, but in 2022 we saw 37.9% of Americans 25 years and older holding a bachelor's. That's up from 16.2% in 1980. Perhaps why your dad is always talking about printing out resumes and pounding the pavement, with a firm handshake to boot. Even MBAs from Ivy Leagues are struggling to land a job, yet they should be some of the best-networked and most hirable among us. It doesn't help that almost 20% of Americans ages 65 and older were employed in 2023. I've done higher education and I've got career experience too, but so does everyone else.
Nah it's definitely them.
Influencers.
"Alright, so what's so special about this girl?" I'd been listening to ceaseless, spirited speech for at least a few minutes while making tea in the kitchen. My sister, 19, is watching one of her favorite YouTubers go over their recent haul.
haul: a quantity of recent purchases or gifts, typically documented in short-form video content. These products could be from one or several brands, but there's (often) an understanding that these products are given to the influencer in order to better market to a consumer cohort.
"I love her videos, she models for [brand] but she's just so real. I want to get boxes of clothes mailed to me like that one day."
It's probably a great job to be fair. The more interesting thing to me though was realizing this is how my sister makes a lot of her purchasing decisions when it comes to clothes and cosmetics, and she's buying a lot. I'm not immune to time on YouTube or marketing either, but I know a paid opinion when I see it. ( i hope )
This is where the money lies.
85% of Gen Z has stated that social media sways their buying decisions. 45% cite instagram and tiktok as their top social media platform for shopping. International Council of Shopping Centers
Short-form video content, clips which are 60 seconds or less, makes the money move. I recently picked up a book from good ol' Gary Vaynerchuk called Day Trading Attention. What's been most interesting to learn from this book:
- Cohorts like this exist now... 30-34 year old upper-middle class moms in the Salt Lake City area.
- The comments section isn't a wasteland. It actually informs marketing strategy.
You think you're targeting 18-22 year old males in Missouri who are interested in gaming, but platforms might pick up on the fact that you're getting higher watch time from a different segment and serve it to them instead." - Excerpt from Day Trading Attention.
Both sellside and buyside are serving the algorithm. We haven't totally figured it out.
Attention is all you need
Not just the title of one of the breakthrough papers on LLMs, I now believe that eyeballs are all you need to make it big in 2025. We are now 100% entrenched in an "attention economy".
A term coined by economist Herbert A. Simon in the early years of the 1970s, his fear was that as systems and organizations became more complex, the ability of humans to make rational and effective decisions would be increasingly strained. Not long thereafter, Neil Postman, in his 1985 seminal work Amusing Ourselves to Death, laid out the case that we were all imminently, lazily doomed to a life of screens and soma. Political debate, education, and other darling topics of the intelligentsia were to be chopped up into 5-minute chunks, which would then compete for minds with commercials and corporations. The medium itself was inextricably bound to the whims of a profiteering few. Attention would be commodified at the cost of intellectual depth and nuance. Fast forward to today, and we see this prediction playing out in even more extreme ways.
This is going to get so many likes
Here's the big conclusion. Your resume is competing with 20-100 others and the recruiter screening them is going to spend about 6 seconds on each one. At every level of the hiring process, you will be competing for an extra second of attention. How might you get quantitatively or qualitatively more attention, and thus a higher likelihood of getting hired? By being more than a bunch of words on a page for starters.
- Have a portfolio with visually stimulating proof that you know your stuff
- Spend more time growing that network of digital connections, 600 > 12.
- Create a persisting presence across platforms. Even the CEO of Intel tweets.
- Links in bio
If you're going the self-employed route, then your work will have even more basis in modern marketing practices. Consistency is key, and you never know... Recording your morning commute could land you a free truck full of fruit juice.
