Electrical – Installed 555 timer socket backwards – can I reverse the chip in the socket

R1 should not be less than about 1K. Shorting it will do bad things, the discharge transistor internal to the 555 will be trying to short the power supply. The 555 may be damaged, and it will not work properly.

So what are some things that adding a socket for a TTH DIP part actually does, circuit wise?

• It adds a bit of wire length to your traces (all equally)
• It adds a bit of resistance (mΩ at most, unless corroded), which depending on the socket quality changes more or less over time
• It adds a tiny bit of inductance and capacitance to your traces
• It adds more space where dirt can accumulate and form GΩish resistance paths

Mechanically it does

• add the possibility of your ICs falling out due to extreme vibration or temperature cycling or PCB flexing
• reduce the possibility of damaging the IC due to PCB flexing

So what you have to do is to think if these are a problem for your design, which we can not really do, since we have no idea about your design. But since you are using TTH parts and with a bit of guessing, what we can tell already is:

• Your bandwidth requirements are far below the case where length and inductance makes a difference
• The tiny changes in resistance will likely be much lower than the tolerances of the parts you are using already

The mechanical parts are up to your liking, and then whats only left is the dirt that can accumulate, which is also preventable in other ways.

So all in all, we can say that its pretty safe. Actually if you look at quite some older good multimeter teardowns on youtube et. al. you will see that there are quite some ICs that are socket by people who know how to design even 6-7 digit multimeters.

TL;DR

You should be fine with socketing.