Co-workers and Facebook

I work in a field where background checks and security clearances are the norm. I need to keep my personal life, friends, and family separated from work. I've played with Facebook several times and never found security settings that I could live with.

I also work in IT. "Facebook security sucks ass" has always been been accepted as "in touch" and security conscious for me.

Linkedin works better for work.

 

Being a public figure, I accept friend requests (from locals) pretty promiscuously, and now have more than a thousand.

I have been friended by co-workers and subordinates. No big deal. I never seek them out, however.

But then, I use Facebook as a platform to make announcements and pronouncements, so the bigger the audience, the better.

Putting something on Facebook is the equivalent of issuing a press release.

And, come to think of it, some of my Facebook friends are indeed reporters.

 

I've resisted friending subordinates. The exception is a friend that worked in a different department, then came under my jurisdiction later.

I have a few other store managers on my friend list. I cringe when I see them expressing emotions about the job. My posts are few and rarely about work. Hell, if I even make a joke about being "grumpy" my facebook world goes apeshit. If I shared even the little bit of frustration that I've shared here, the world would literally end.

 

This sums it up pretty well, I think. I don't have to worry about it much now, although I won't friend any of our interns. When I worked as a waitress, though, I'd accept requests from any of my coworkers...which is a bit different from say, office coworkers.

 

I don't "friend" my family on Facebook, much less my coworkers, while they're coworkers.
"Friend"-ing sets the tone for a relationship that might not be the actual case.
I am "friends" with a lot of former coworkers, and only a few of my classmates from university.
"Why?" they always ask when I say no. Because "friend" implies something.
Facebook is for my friends. Duh. I don't post things that could get me in trouble, or break HIPPA,
but I do sometimes anonymize things that clients or stupid coworkers or people in general say or do
that I find completely hilarious, but don't want to share with my family or anyone who might know
who that is/was that did/said that Funny Thing.
I have one former classmate who feels the need to cheerlead EVERYTHING I say or do on FB
and I've unfriended her four times, but she sends me messages like crazy until I redo it.
It's not worth the hassle.

 

I have a limited number of current co-workers on my friends list, and several former co-workers. I don't usually post anything that I'm worried about people seeing, and I try to be very selective with regard to the people I add to my list.

 

Army life is different than than a typical supervisor/subordinate relationship. I'm supposed to be concerned about the personal well-being and professional conduct of my soldiers off and on duty. As such, I usually give a blank disclaimer to my soldiers that I won't seek them out to monitor or send requests to them because I respect their privacy. I will, however, accept friend requests from them if they choose to send them to me, as long as they're willing to not post things that will get them in trouble. I'm usually pretty conscious of what I post.

 

I have a very small Facebook friends list because they are 1. people that are friends/TFPers or ex-TFPers that I'm friendly with, 2. my brother & sil & their niece & my spouse, his adult niece and sil--all of from whom I have nothing to hide, 3. a B-grade celebrity--'Anya' from Buffy, 4. three former neighbors from Connecticut and, 5. this chick from Brasil who is really sweet and was a good source for a TV show I was writing about but I now hate (the TV show, not her). I skip most of her posts because they are in Spanish. I would unfriend her but that would seem mean.

I have no-coworkers but if I did I would only friend real friends. I use the filters frequently.
Like @B_G, I think of Facebook as the Town Square. Just hangin' out. Like @grumpy, I wouldn't go all batshit and reveal my deepest frustrations because, I suppose, I've see it done in other places and I'm kind embarrassed for people that overshare in a place like Facebook. My definition of overshare really depends on who is doing it and how. Very subjective. (My brother 'yelled' at me for commenting on his FB like I always did, only now he is a fancy-pants doctor so only he can sound like an ass on his FB. I send him private msgs. instead. He has sent me no less than 3 emails in the past day. Whatevs.)

I wouldn't put anything on there that I wouldn't be OK with anyone knowing about which is why I suppose that neither of my children use it whatsoever.

Facebook's importance or relevance depends greatly on what career you are in and what stage in that career you are in.

 

I don't have a Facebook account; if I did, I wouldn't 'friend' any co-workers.

I might be tempted to friend co-workers that I actually liked and trusted (I'm very slow to open up to people that I don't know very well). But I wouldn't because that could cause hard feelings--and potentially give ammunition to--the people I didn't friend. I've know too people who take social media entirely too seriously, some of them can be quite vindictive.

 

I have some clients and some co-workers as friends on Facebook. I have set up a filter so that my clients only see certain things in my posts. I have put my friends into different groups and then created filters based in those groups. It works pretty well.

There some that I won't friend but that is under the same criteria on which I wouldn't friend somebody I don't work with... I don't want to be friends with them.

That said, I don't always care what people see on Facebook. Like others here, it's the public square. It isn't like I wave my dick around the square.

 

I'm firmly of the mind of "don't post anything on Facebook (or other social media, or hell even the Internet) that you wouldn't want getting around to everyone you know forever". I've been practicing this for a little while; I used to be really bad at it.

To that end, I have no problems friending any co-workers that I may have, provided I would actually be friends with them in real life. That's the motto I take with friending people on Facebook; if I'd interact with them in real life, I friend them, and they tend to stay as friends during my every-other-month "oh god i have too many friends must purge" impulses.

For some reason the phrase "Nope. Fuck that. Don't shit where you work." came to my mind. I thought of @Plan9. For multiple reasons.

 

It's really no different than every day interpersonal relationships.

Lots of people know me, but they don't all know the same amount and they don't all know everything about me.

I'm very selective about what I share about myself and with whom. I've always been that way.

FB is an extension of that. When I'm sharing there, it's for a general audience. I'm not inclined to open myself up any further than that because that's my nature.

 

I have two people from work friended. One was a friend long before he was a coworker, the other is one of those people I know well enough that we can vent and complain to each other without fear that it's going to cause problems. My employer is pretty much prohibited by law from giving a fuck about anything as long as I don't maliciously defame them, so I'm not worried about it anyway. Nothing I post would particularly shock anyone anyway, if you know me you know it's going to be mostly space stuff and far-left politics.

 

Same here.