Before I was a Domosapien, I was a freelance developer that coded alone in dark rooms for 8-10 hour stretches per day. Needless to say, “social” is not a word that described this phase of my life. Although working alone forced me to expand my skill-set to cover all aspects of my business, my professional network — the part they always tell you is WAY more important than “what” you know — was going nowhere.

One of the things that excited me about coming to Domo was the opportunity to start making professional contacts in a company that was rapidly branching out in a fast-moving industry. The #domosocial experiment has helped those relationships to develop faster and more organically.

It has become common cultural knowledge that adding your co-workers on Facebook is a bad career move. By now most of us have become indoctrinated with horror stories of people thoughtlessly venting about their boss after a bad day only to receive a comment from him/her 5 minutes later informing them they no longer have a job. So when the friend requests started rolling in from my coworkers, many of whom I’d never even interacted with, my entire social life flashed before my eyes as I clicked accept. Thankfully, at Domo, there are no bad days. 🙂

My boldness was rewarded instantly: many of my coworkers shared common friends with me. The next day at work, I told Thamina Christensen we had a common friend in Arizona. While we were marveling at this, we realized we used to go to church together. A connection that normally would have taken 10-15 awkward passes in a hallway to develop was forged in a matter of minutes thanks to the #domosocial experiment. And better yet, now I can check out what kinds of things Thamina is into on Facebook and talk about them with her at work so this connection stays strong over time.

This kind of social experiment isn’t for everyone, but for companies that can keep their employees happy enough to feel comfortable with this level of transparency, it can work wonders. When I have experiences like these, I feel more comfortable walking over and collaborating with my coworkers — even those I haven’t connected with yet. I look around and I see my professional network growing even better than I hoped it would, and it’s great to be out of the dark.