Why Polywork?
Tags: career, self, networking, jobs
Published: 2021-05-20 02:38:05

You glance at my LinkedIn. You can assume I am only a web developer. I’ve worked in the front end, tinkered with the back end and I’ve painted with code for a lot of companies in my 20 year career. Former colleagues have given me a lot of endorsements on the site with my dedication and hard work. That is great, but it’s a very one dimensional view of who I am. The world changed in 2020. I couldn’t network in person anymore. I needed to stand out from the competition. To do this, they needed to find out the real me, but online.

Let’s rewind back to October 2020. Cassidy Williams, Principal Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify, runs a wonderful inclusive and diverse tech focused Discord called Rendezvous with Cassidoo. She disclosed in the chatroom she joined Polywork as an advisor and she was enthusiastic about it. It thrilled us to see her so happy. Who wouldn’t be?. A week later she revealed she was going to emcee a zoom to pick the brains of developers and if anyone wished to enter to let her know. Me being supercurious; I elected to sign up.

The zoom started. I took a deep breath. Kicked my imposter syndrome aside and introduced myself to this amazing group of people. After a few minutes of introductions, the conversations progressed, and they introduced us to Polywork, aka The UnProfessional Network. I didn’t realize I needed Polywork till they presented it to me. It’s a place for people to show off that they are more than this one thing that resumes and job sites tend to do. It’s a chance to control the narrative of my professional identity with deep cuts into who I am.

I use LinkedIn for my professional resume, Twitter to give my thoughts on everything, Facebook to keep with family and friends, Instagram to post my photography, Medium to blog on, etc. Each of these social networks focuses on one aspect of me, but there is nothing out there to tie it all together. Who is the 360 Philip John Basile? I had no place to showcase this person. Polywork that day, I learned, is the place where I can do this.

They are the Avengers of the social networks. It unites everything that is out there about you and brings it forth in a site bursting with color and personality that is timeline driven. I can show off now conferences I’ve been to, articles I’ve written, events I’ve photographed with my wife, roundtables I’ve volunteered time on, games and apps that I am developing, well received answers on stack overflow and viral liked/loved photos that did well on social media. I can put everything in a gorgeous timeline and you can see the full me outside of my resume.

Now I have a place to show my flow and get inspired by the flow of others. I can explore the multiverse and everyone on the site is available for me to check out. Thank you Polywork for creating the next generation of social networks. I love it so much that I’ve turned my Polywork Profile into my personal website https://philipjohnbasile.com/.

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