I have a personal rule which has worked really well for me: if I do a project, the price of doing that project is that I have to write about it.
Back when Twitter threads didn't suck (they could be viewed by people without Twitter accounts) I'd use those - tweet a description of my project with a link, then follow it with a few photos and screenshots.
A random example on Youtube "I will tidy up your garden for free". They do that based on the income they get from writing/videoing about it, mainly from big tech algos. If everyone did it, that monetary value is lost from the explaining of it.
It's taking advantage of a curve for self-advantage which you're aware of which is fine, but doesn't really provide value in productivity in the broadest sense. What if everyone blogged about their work? As in literally everyone.
"What if everyone blogged about their work? As in literally everyone."
That would be great. This isn't a zero sum game - what's important is that each individual has an opportunity to document their work, look back on it in the future and occasionally show it to interested people.
Maybe it does for your historical reference example, like a CV. If we presumed that those pages with that content would get any traction at all.
Generally the way it's working is people continually pump out content, big tech algos surface it to other people and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.
If you have a great channel where people see that link, great. But most information discovery is via the big tech algos.
If the only viewer of my blog posts is myself (and often times it is), then I'd still keep writing if only just to keep a public journal of my thought process and things that I accomplished at certain times in my life.
Also fair, but most of the time the other people are a few close friends. I'm not trying to keep it a secret like a diary but I'm also not trying to get incredibly popular like a content creator or famous blogger.
> and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.
I think you're maybe talking about publishing things for different reasons, the quoted part kind of gives me that impression.
If the point is to get as many visitors as possible then yeah, just pumping out MVPs/concepts/hacks/prototypes might not be the best idea. But if your reasons are different, the amount of visitors might not even matter.
As many visitors as possible, not really. Just a channel where you may get interested visitors.
The point isn't about pumping out content to please the algorithms, it is that the algorithms prefer that constant churn of it, and it's overwhelmingly the method of information discovery on the web.
> if I do a project, the price of doing that project is that I have to write about it.
Definitely something I need to do. I've been meaning to do a "what I did in 2024" blog post but since I didn't keep track, trying to figure it out has postponed the post for 3 months already...
I second this. Small chunks is easier than one massive thing all at once.
I also have the habit of keeping a `~/notes.md` file, which I can access at the drop of a hat with a shell shortcut (I use fish, so I have the function `nn` which calls `$EDITOR ~/notes.md`). If you use multiple computers, which I do, you can use a common git repo with a branch for each computer as a backup. I generally end up writing a few notes every day, which means if I want to publish something in the future I have good source material to use.
Apologies if this post was a bit self centered, I hope my sharing my methods might be useful :)
> I also have the habit of keeping a `~/notes.md` file
Oh, I did spin up a Honk instance to keep notes on "things-i-did". It ... does not have many posts (83 since 2022-05). Ironically it doesn't have "set up honk instance for note-taking" in there.
But the `notes.md`+`git` idea might work. Although I know the first time I get a conflict on the `pull`, it'll all fall down...
Agreed. I find for myself, for a blog post that is about something else I've done, the ideal length is about 5 paragraphs and it should take no more than an hour to write. Longer than that and it just doesn't get done, or it should be considered a project unto itself and should be managed as such with dedicated time set aside for it. Writing about everything I did in year would be a lot longer than 5 paragraphs, which means I need to break the concept down (perhaps into months, or write something per-project instead).
I like your diligency, thats pretty impressive track record. Although I need to point out a little readability issue: For me (likely ADHD) your blog is very hard to visually parse. It looks like single wall of unstructured text. It's hard to see where one post ends and where another one begins. The strongly emphasized links inside the content itself does not help. You have a lot of whitespace on left and right, but almost none in vertical direction and there is little use of font sizes. In the end every element seems the same importance. I see that you don't want to overdo with styling, which is fine, but a little more styling here and there could go a long way to help people get around.
Hi Simon, how do you decide when to blog on your personal website vs something like substack? Do you post identical articles on both? Do you prefer one or the other?
The one challenge I'm having at the moment is where to put short "thoughts" that aren't accompanied by a link. I used to use Twitter for those, but now I'm cross-posting to Bluesky and Mastodon and Twitter - but cross-posting a "thought" doesn't feel great.
I may have to invent a fourth content type for my blog (which is currently just entries, bookmarks or quotes) for this kind of very-short-form post with no link. Molly White started doing that recently so I may borrow her design: https://www.mollywhite.net/micro
No idea at all. My blog does really well on Google, so I think if either site is being penalized for duplicate content it's probably the Substack.
It looks like 8% of my newsletter signups are "from the app" according to the Substack dashboard - which I think is how they show signups that they've encouraged as opposed to signups I had myself.
I'm really just using Substack because they've solved email deliverability and they're free for me to use to send out emails.
If you have a blog with RSS and just need something that auto-emails people your updates you can run my project on a raspberry pi. No need to tie yourself into the substack ecosystem if you don't want to
I would love to do this as well, but I'm put off by the time it would take away from pushing the project itself forward. How much time does it generally take for you to make a blogpost for a project?
This gets much easier with practice. One exercise that that worked for me was to force myself to share anything (projects, til, ideas, experiments, advice) daily for 111 days. Then scale down.
Compare untested.sonnet.io and sonnet.io/projects
The latter took 10 years to have a list of projects. With the former, there’s almost no friction, although I have spikes and slower periods.
Also, people appreciate people who share and talk about their work, and that can lower the bar for things like correct grammar/vocab/clear structure.
To improve my overall fluency I made a writing tool that separates editing from writing: enso.sonnet.io.
Another thing that can work well are weekly updates/summaries. But this gets harder if you struggle with building habits and prefer shorter feedback loops.
PS. I'm not at Simon's level here although he is one of my inspirations - my main untested feed posts take 1-2 hours minimum, the smaller notes/branches can be < 20 min.
PPS. I'm working on a short list of actionable tips / places to share work. Hit me up via email and I'll send it over when it's done.
Five paragraphs, about an hour or less. Don't overthink it. Below are some examples from my woodworking, but I think they illustrate the concept. The important thing to remember is the blog post is not the project: it is a very quick overview pointing readers to the project. Built up over time, these quick overviews add up to a longer representation of your body of work, which you can use to sell yourself.
Do you have any advice for someone like me, who has about 5 long form article ideas but would like to just get stuff out there? For example, I want to blog about matrix profiles because I just learned about them and they’re super cool. But it feels like much scaffolding needs to occur for an audience to see the light.
> But it feels like much scaffolding needs to occur for an audience to see the light.
tl;dr: Don't think about others. Just write, put it out there, with a couple of stickers pointing people. They'll see and come.
I'd not care about scaffolding, actually. I have three main outlets for what I do: Blog, Digital Garden, Mastodon, and arguably here.
Blog was meant to be technical, but instead it became a "life" blog. My digital garden is where my technical notes are, and where my project write-ups will be, and Mastodon and here is what I post links to these spaces.
My secret is, I don't write these for anybody. The format is for general consumption, but I'm not sad because nobody gives feedback about it or reaches me about these things. I generally do these for my enjoyment, and blog analytics show that there's some foot traffic in my blog. Digital garden keeps no analytics.
When you put it out there, can point people to what you do, people will start to come. Not in hoards, but in small groups, and that's enough IMHO. Otherwise you need to be your blog's servant to drive the numbers up.
Thanks for the reminder. I feel the same way about not playing the game. Moreso than wanting to drive the numbers up, which is not the goal, I like sharing things and want to at least be coherent so that someone can follow along. But considering your advice I think not sweating the details of scaffolding is a good adjustment.
Hey, I'm glad that my comment helped somewhat. Expanding on the scaffolding bit, I'm using the most minimal tools I can use, since they don't let me do (very) fancy things, I can't spend time needlessly adjusting things. A single, markdown aware, automatically theme changing blog space is enough for me. No fancy things, just text, plus RSS.
People can follow and share. That's enough. Even the webpages doesn't have any JS.
It's https://datasette.io - I'm still having so much fun with it, especially since any idea I want to experiment with can be justified as a Datasette plugin!
> For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known.
"Fully" seems to be doing a helluva lot of heavy lifting in this piece. Does anyone think that they mean anything other than "making money", as they quickly segue into talking about entrepreneurship and founding businesses?
I'm happy to concede that if you don't tell anyone about the stuff you do, no one will know. But I am not willing to concede that you only "fully" benefit from your work if you sell it. Nor am I willing to concede that work only has value if sold. I'm also not entirely certain the author is pushing those views. Still, something about this piece doesn't sit well with me.
I have a web extension I made as a pet project that does something useful to me (in the spirit of selling my work, it's called Favioli ).
It's free/open-source and will always be free. But the idea was inspired by my friend's code. When I made a blog post about how I made the extension, he reposted it on his relatively popular blog + Twitter.
Because of that, the extension has had around 1000 users since the very beginning, and I've gotten some prs and improvements here and there. And it feels good to have solved an issue for some people other than myself.
I think this is what the author means by "selling". I'm generally the type of person who doesn't self-advertise, because my mindset is that I don't want to bother people. So if my friend hadn't publicized it for me, the extension would probably have 5 users. So maybe 995 other people wouldn't have benefitted from my work. I think this article is not saying that you "have" to sell your work, but that if you're proud of it, don't feel ashamed to tell people that it exists.
I'll add that "sell yourself" has (Unfortunately) negative connotations in a Western context. (Possibly in other contexts as well, but I don't know.)
We teach children modesty. We correct people who brag. We emphasize the "everyone is equal " approach. Which are are correct things to do as children. Children's work is encouraged (regardless of quality) and is discarded.
But this mindset can work against adults. Primarily because the work is expected to be fruitful, not discarded. And for work to be fruitful it must not just be fine, it must be seen.
At my company we have a saying "if it's not documented, it's not done". (I write software libraries.) If I don't write docs, build examples, publicize new features, then no one will use them. That's a waste of my output, and a waste of the money the company spent for me to make it. This is not a "modesty" thing, it's a "that's my job" thing.
Now, can you write code on your own time, stick the result on the fridge, and admire it yourself? Of course yes. You don't have to publicize it. It's perfectly OK to have a hobby. Frankly it doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It'll serve its purpose and be forgotten.
"Selling" in this context may be the wrong word. "Documenting" or "Publishing" would have served a similar purpose without the stigma. But the author wants to stress test there's a "persuasion " aspect here as well.
My library might be better, faster, more secure, and so on, but there are other libraries our there competing for users. If I won't "persuade" others to try it, who will? If I'm not prepared to stand up and advocate for it, what that does that say about my perspective of the work? If I don't believe in it, why should they?
If you don't think your work is worth talking about, so be it. Just don't expect anyone else to talk about it either.
I do not understand the negatives. It is along the lines of what I was thinking. At least in my experience, "sell X" is often understood as "go borderline lying about how good it is". "Sell yourself" triggers kind of a negative image.
What works for me is just to talk about what I have done, and do not underestimate the achievements. But selling is like a step too much. At least in my cultural/social circle.
When I some says "sell X to Y", I hear "explain how X will solve Y's problem or otherwise make their lives easier". Because that's fundamentally what selling is.
I can talk for days about how marvellous the new iPhone is, the beautiful technology behind it, the marvellous processor and the high resolution screen that are, in their own way, feats of engineering that equal or surpass the Pyramids at Giza.
But that's not why people buy iPhones. They buy iPhones because having a portable device with internet that can make phone calls and take pictures and video and has GPS is actually really handy.
That's what "selling your work" is about.
"Hey guys, I made this open source operating system. If you're looking for an OS than enables you to completely control your machine, maybe you'll like it more than Windows." vs "Hey guys, I made this open source operating system. I wrote it in Rust because I like Rust."
<< Children's work is encouraged (regardless of quality) and is discarded.
I hesitated a little bit, because I agree with most of the post and what I am about to post is a bit of a tangent. That said, some of work can and will be discarded for sure, but our family unit is now looking into some way of preserving my kids work to show the progress made. I think it will be a fun memento.
The author isn't saying that selling is necessary only to make money. At the end of the article he says "But the word "sell" doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means", which then leads to the aside:
"you can either do it in such a fashion that people can indeed build on what you've done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what you've done"
Indeed, and for me the real value of “selling” my work has been the opportunity to do more of it, and more on my terms, than putting my head down and striving in silence.
I work in a large FAANG company. For more than 10 years, I made the error of not publishing my personal work and ideas. I didn't like the rules about personal works, publishing opensource or social media communication... you are subject to gate-keeping by your employer if you are an employee. That's quite different from my previous experience in smaller companies in Europe. I found it very off putting: you had to give up ownership. I thought it was demeaning that even what I create in my own private time would be owned and attributed to someone else.
My choice of not publishing anything however was a very bad one. I didn't understand what power is: the continuity of the Self into the Other, where you find your-Self at ease. If you don't assert yourself, you give up not just your power but your very identity.
The truth is that power is dialectic. If you don't speak up, you have no power. Both in what you create, and in the relationship of and with power that you live, you are constantly redefining the boundaries of what you are and what you are not. If you remain silent, you loose.
> I thought it was demeaning that even what I create in my own private time would be owned and attributed to someone else.
I still feel this way. Well, I don't think I'd use the word demeaning, but I think it's a despicable abuse of the employee/employer power dynamic for my employer to claim ownership on my whole creative output outside of the work I'm actually paid to do.
Strongly disagree. You are allowed to create/do things that no one else know about. Share it if you want, keep it to yourself if you don't. Don't let other people dictate to you what you must do in order to be satisfied with yourself.
There is a certain type of tyranny to the mindset in this blog post. The constant pressure to perform for an imagine audience, the "self worth through the prism of others" trap etc. More chilling is the dismissing of others that do not "perform".
I presume the author doesn't fall for any of these and is happy. But for many it would be a dark pattern to follow.
I come from a long line of tinkerers that have sat in damp sheds playing with junk. Testing themselves, their tools and often others patience. There is an inherent beauty and calmness to this. This has value and shouldn't be dismissed.
I think the unique perspective part is something I’m understanding. It’s easy to read or see other people’s work and think you don’t have anything to add
Sure, as long as you do it with intent. The thing is that a lot of people's intentions and ambitions often don't line up with the results. Because they forget to talk about their stuff.
People put a lot of effort in stuff they do in the hope that somebody will find it useful, will give them some praise, and maybe even some money. That stuff doesn't tend to happen if you don't talk about your stuff. Build it and they'll come usually doesn't work.
> Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough.
First, "should" is a form of judgement. What the author believes is "enough" is defined by their belief system, not anyone else's.
> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous[sic] work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost.
A reasonable discussion could be had for all but the last two assertions:
... no one will benefit, and the work will be lost.
Again, this is a presumption made without merit.
First, work related to a person's profession contributes to experience and possibly ability. Second, work is only lost if it and lessons learned doing it no longer exist.
is off-putting. It makes it sound like my work should become a product to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. But not everything can become a product and not everyone wants to be creating products all day, every day. Especially since once something becomes a product, the focus is on profit and no longer the actual idea - profit begins to drive development of that idea.
But then I read the article and realised that the title has nothing to do with the message:
> "Selling" to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good."
The author, IMHO, is talking of promotion and not selling. Which is fair enough.
Without promotion, your ideas won't reach a broader audience. But that may be fine for some people and sometimes for me. I choose not to promote my half-baked ideas - fine. That's a different feeling than to think that I can't sell my ideas or that I've wasted my time because I won't be making a profit.
Of course, "selling yourself" and "promoting yourself" is the same thing in some places on this planet, for me though, there is a fine line between the two.
On a side note, whatever happened to hobbies? Whatever happens to exploring and experimenting with ideas? If everything I do has to eventually turn a profit then I need reconsider how often I go to the toilet - is that a profitable activity?
* Explain, don’t “sell”. If something is significant and you explain it well, the significance will be obvious without artificial emphasis.
* Explain, don’t “persuade”. Don’t assume agreement before or after. Make your reasoning clear. Don’t assert credibility or pressure for acceptance.
* Clarity and brevity compound each other. If you are clear, you don’t have to spell out every detail, or review important points.
If you find yourself trying to explain what you have explained, you have not been clear or concise and are now spiraling. Rethink. Rewrite.
* Finally, state your main point/purpose up front. For everything, every section, every paragraph. Gets attention. Filters readers by relevance. Assists clarity & brevity.
——
Avoid mixing multiple or deeper points, that are better communicated separately.
Find an unmissable visual way to indicate where the first point/purpose was accomplished, and additional material has a related but new purpose.
> Finally, state your main point/purpose up front. For everything, every section, every paragraph. Gets attention. Filters readers by relevance. Assists clarity & brevity.
My grad school advisor said to me that "the first N sentences should be the most import N sentences" when writing papers
Note the quotes on “sell” and “persuade”. That’s a hint. Meaning a lot of words meant to sell or persuade are actually harming those purposes.
Three word highly opinionated statements, like my paragraphs began with, are best viewed as strong (re-)prioritization. Not a prohibition on nuance once the point is understood.
Thank you. Theso are excellent. I'll be coming back to this comment often until I internalise it all. And I don't even write in public, but I want to improve, for work, and for myself.
Ps: the irony on the second paragraph of the third point wasn't lost ;)
For any young programmers: live within your means, invest the difference, become independent, and work on what you enjoy. It’s the best (work related) gift you can give yourself. Skip the self promotion politics unless you enjoy it.
Respectfully disagree. If you're maxing out your spend so at the end of the month there is no surplus you aren't living within your means. For a lot of folks this is an ugly necessity, but programmers generally aren't in this group.
I don’t hate work. But at the end of the day, it’s a means to exchange labor for money.
Out of the million of things I enjoy, helping the bottom line of a for profit company isn’t one of them. It’s a necessity.
And I actually like the company I work for. It’s one of the best companies I’ve ever worked for (10 in almost 30 years).
The self promotion politics is the only way you get ahead in large companies with a structured promotion process where you have to show “scope” and “impact”.
I actually enjoy when my work isn't just fun and good, but also contributing to a bigger picture. It's bot just that it gives meaning. It's also that the added design constraints are intriguing, and help me determine when I can stop polishing.
It's not about self promotion, but building with a clear goal set fir me I have found to be much more rewarding than when I have to think of my own goal. The worst is when a fake goal is set, it's the thing about university I liked the least. If I can't interrogate or question the 'why' for the goal, because it is just 'to test me' then it isn't a real goal, just an artificial constraint.
I'm sorry, but this advice can sometimes sound like "sell one of your kidneys so you can eat". What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger? Investing negative difference? What if on top of that you're trying to do the work you enjoy and your means - incomes - stop completely? Do you see the problem with advice?
Naturally not everyone is lucky enough to have the income to do this.
The first part though is key - living within your means. It assumes you have means, and that it's possible to live within them.
The advice is good - whether you use it or not is up to you, and of no consequence to the advice giver. Whether you are in a position to take the advice or not is up to you.
For those who can though I can agree with it. Forgoing a new car now might mean retiring a year earlier. Financial freedom (aka retirement) means doing work on your terms, not beholden to your employer. It doesn't mean "not working".
Of course the best way to a better job, more pay, and a sooner retirement is indeed to "sell yourself" making both yourself and your work more valuable.
Do this advice is a corollary to the article, not a repudiation of it.
> What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger?
Not all advice is applicable to everyone. It's up to you to decide if you can and want to follow it. The advice was for young programmers and it is solid advice, but again, not applicable to everyone. It is applicable to a majority (probably even large majority). If you are young and earning a sw engineer salary it is very rare to not be able to cover your basic needs and have something left. Most people spends what is left in luxuries, lifestyle creep, etc; which is what the advice is trying to warn people about.
I think you might modify the advice to be something like:
If you're a programmer, and you're paid well, don't assume that will last forever. Don't spend all your money (and beyond) on cars and rent. Invest as much as you can with the goal of being financially independent.
> For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known.
I don't agree with this assumption. One does not necessarily follow the other. Outside of work, I write programs that I need and that further my own personal curiosity and education. I don't have to release any of it to the world, in order for me to fully benefit from it. I plan to take all of the source code on my computer to my grave and that's totally OK.
There are many definitions of "sell" that aren't a dichotomy between building toy projects that never leave your private repo, and running a SaaS startup you're trying to grow via LinkedIn and HN.
I've found a lot of fulfillment in building tech products/services for friends and family, and making meeting their needs the complete scope of the project, with no intention to release it publicly. I present it as though it's a widely released product, including marketing materials, retail box, printed instruction manual, etc. I enjoy it thoroughly as a creative exercise, and it gives me the opportunity to integrate and combine lots of skills I'm not able to use at work.
I don't make any money doing this, but it scratches the itch I have to build things people will use, and I do enjoy showcasing and promoting my latest projects - and an audience of my (less technical) friends and family is a polite and encouraging one. Definitely less stressful than releasing things to the wider internet. This has brought improvements to my real job, where I'm finding myself more comfortable presenting and promoting my achievements.
Home cooked meals software is a nice phrasing for this kinda thing. I admire your packaging and documentation touches, going that far is cool and creative
Publicizing your work, will certainly let it be known to the masses, but aiming for the masses means that the half life of your work is in years. Work that stands the test of time, does not need publicizing. People of a high caliber will find it and proceed to further honor you for your work, your focus should be only on excellence which truly matters in standing the test of time.
Plus, am I the only one who is disgusted by the idea of Shell/Exxon/... using OSS in their operations?
Sharing technically-excellent software with parasites seems to be a net negative for the world, because many people are just takers who will ruin the world to make themselves a few more dollars.
OTOH, I love for regular people to have free quality SW to use for their lives.
> People of a high caliber will find it and proceed to further honor you for your work
This is a romantic notion, made even more appealing by the fact that it has actually happened a handful of times throughout history, and they loom large in our collective memory.
But the cold, hard, distasteful reality is that most useful work does not rise to the level of brilliance, and even that which does might never find appreciation among people of any calibre, even after death. Disdaining self-promotion is a conceit available to a select talented few.
The article wasn't saying to aim for the masses. It was saying, do at least some documentation, and make it pleasant to read for your peers. That way, they can find your work, understand it, and build uppon it.
Van Goughs work is only popular now because after his death his sister in law. [1]. She spent her life promoting and selling his work. And it took decades to do. Without her, his work would average simply disappeared.
Van Gough of course didn't sell his work. He lived in poverty (by choice I guess) and got whatever satisfaction he needed simply by painting them. (Now There's a rabbit hole to go down, given the nature of his death, which I'll avoid.)
So if you're hoping your work will be discovered by "the world " while you live in obscurity, then I'm not sure Van Gogh is an example you should emulate.
That's like saying all human's lives are wasted because no other species will know of them.
The ultimate experience is doing as many interesting things for yourself and not stressing about them "living on". It's 99% a closed system inside your head anyway
I like writing, but I always have a hard time getting started. In that regards ChatGPT has been a real game changer. I can just lay down some ideas, ask it to write an article, hate it, then write it myself.
I've generally been best served by NAVY: never again volunteer yourself.
Others will advertise for you... or simply pay attention when you do well. Being reliable is outstanding, a true rarity.
Plenty of folks will want to take advantage. Assuming you weren't actually hired to work alone in a closet, there will be opportunities to shine/get put on speed dial... if you really want that.
Working Corporate for 20+ years... still waiting on the PIP the 'dead' (hidden) peer comment mentions. Replying to myself since I can't with them. It's been a pretty good run, if I say so myself. Heh.
Based on the fear put into people I'd guess I'm overdue! Well, a break sounds nice. Can we skip to the quarterly layoff... or does this not count? I know those decently. Would love to spare a more fair soul.
If you get a PIP while doing objectively good work for not acknowledging the secret handshake: "move on." Save your efforts for a time and place that's worth it. Being played, IMO.
Plenty of people are in situations where they don't appreciate someone's value until they're removed, or want to exploit the person and conceal that the person, and not themself, is providing the value.
The flip side is, as the management abstractions go up, they have less visibility into who's providing the value, so people who sell themselves better will be perceived better than people who just assume their work will speak for them. If your manager is also an engineer, it's obvious how you provide value to them, probably, but what about their manager, or theirs?
And? The world and our experiences are incomplete; this will never be addressed. Non-optimal performance is both normal and expected.
This advice, like all before and after, is not some atomic function to keep mindlessly smashing.
It works well enough; I was born dirt poor and now struggle to have free time to enjoy my pile of gold. Despite doing zero self-promotion through my career, I'm exceedingly well-known. The work and others spoke for me. Too much, I'd say.
Have an environment where you need to regularly over-extend yourself? Find a new one, you're clearly desirable. Layoffs/life happens, whatever.
There are plenty of downsides from subscribing to the rat race, some upside too. Debasing nonetheless. Guess who has to control that ratio. You. Others will take everything being offered... and then some more.
If anything, I'm championing discretion. Filtering is important! Truly no judgement to those who choose to be more involved, just speaking on my experience. YMMV of course.
Stolen quotes to close: "it sucks to suck" or "that's life". Promotion is like terrorism, only have to be lucky once.
Thank you for coming to my crash TEDhn talk on Game Theory :)
I have started doing this more,, the problem is however that I suck at marketing, I hate being too direct, so posting the odd interesting project or nugget of information on my website to maybe get a few more of my books sold or get some nice gig work in areas I like is the way I go.
As my paid work runs out and I get more towards retirement I guess I will start moving on to documenting some hobby projects, I don't see any down-side to it except running out of interesting things to talk about.
Of course nobody will visit your site unless you post it around, kind of a catch 22.
I started blogging weekly recently. I’ve been surprised at the efficacy of simply asking readers to subscribe. At the end of each post I make the request and provide an email box.
After only three articles, 28 people have signed up. It’s not a lot compared to some folks, but it validates two important things. First, being direct can work. Second, people care and want to hear more.
Everyone sucks at something they don't do so much of. Try it, learn from others and pick what you personally like.
The thing about marketing is that it's not a x->y kind of thing, so people can literally try something which they think is fun/interesting and trial it out.
I am already selling enough of my time, energy, skills, knowledge etc. I also have enough to not sell, things that provide me personal satisfaction and value, that is more important than what I sell to others. I got to look after my health first and finances second.
It also depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. Do it too much, and you’ll incur the wrath of the mob—or worse, be ignored into oblivion.
In the software world, salespeople are almost universally hated because of how obnoxious they can be. I recently attended a Couchbase talk, and now the salespeople are all over my inbox and LinkedIn DMs. You don’t want to sell your work like that.
While not all work needs to be published, monetized, and advertised, this piece only focuses on the kind that needs to be done but isn’t.
I absolutely agree on writing about software. I don’t write to advertise my thoughts. Writing is the process that helps me think deeply about a topic I’m interested in.
While I write for myself, and my blog[1] usually focuses on the things I’m currently tinkering with, it has garnered a solid number of readers. I even got hired at two places because someone higher up read my writing at some point. So I believe the author is encouraging everyone to publish and advertise these kinds of work.
This is what I was thinking too when I was a child. But now that I got to see how adults actually act I feel like a lot of these concerns related to selling are irrational.
If you have a new product and you want to market it to a wide audience then you have nothing to worry about because you have nothing to lose. Being "ignored into oblivion" doesn't mean that you can't try again, and nobody knows you so you won't attract a mob. The world is so vast that no matter what you do and how hard you try to sell something, your actions will affect very few people and leave only a barely noticeable footprint.
Maybe this is exactly what the problem is -- we now have means to connect with the whole world through the internet, but we tend to treat these connections quite conservatively as if it's our close circle. It's not acceptable to make yourself hated by a friend, but I think it's absolutely fine if it's thousands of strangers instead as long as it's done for what feels like a good cause.
I heard from multiple people working at Stripe that selling yourself is a huge reason why they think it's a very bad place to work. You apparently have to make full-on folders to showcase what you have done.
All of the places I've worked at that have come close to this style of self-promotion have been dominated by kingdom builders and professional bullshitters.
Ugh, sounds horrible. This is what happens when extroverted bullshitters get to decide the rules around career advancement. Your ability to write self-promotional marketing slop counts for as much as or more than the actual work you were hired to do. I say this as someone who is right now grudgingly writing self-promotional marketing slop instead of doing my job.
Maybe each developer / creator / maker needs someone around them to "sell" them (and their creations). To push it on the vine/rumour/vibe. Yes, an advertiser/ salesperson - herald - on a fractional basis :) , one per village.
To create and to sell are very different skills and things , even somewhat contradictory - and they rarely appear in same person.
The Organisational patterns book [0] have a role of Matron - a person who knows everyone and what they're up to (without need of deep understanding) - but that's not the same, and it's organisational.
i think that such people are needed in everyday, personally, too. To knit and entangle the threads of society.
Always wished more scientists read and understand Richard Hamming. I read and listened to some lectures right out of college and it always struck me as not just catchy advice for young scientists and engineers, but as self-evident principles and values to live by.
As someone, who create for living, I don't have passion for advertising myself. I rather find selfadverising blogs with huge amount of texts as desperation for attention.
It's anecdotal, but I don't like consuming blogs that much, so I don't see point to do it myself.
It seems like Hacker News now has an algorithm that reads my web searches.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on this. I’ve worked in several interesting sectors and developed amazing projects, but I haven’t documented anything. And in today’s job market, having a portfolio is almost essential.
I’m not a prodigy programmer, but in the industrial sector, programming is a key skill. This post motivates me to start structuring and sharing my work because it perfectly aligns with the idea that if you complete a project but don’t share it, it’s as if it never existed.
Nowadays, showcasing your work has become essential, not just for the community, but also for recruiters looking for talent.
It’s interesting that no one ever takes the other logical side of this: to really benefit from the work of others you have to look through the marketing bullshit and find the gems that aren’t aggressively sold.
I write _extensively_: on my own personal blog [1], on my companies blog, on various substacks, on medium, and on dev.to... idk, what this author seems to suggest might happen with good writing and sharing hasnt really panned out for me... but who knows? Maybe I just suck at writing!
Number of times I've heard this advice, agreed with it intellectually and yet haven't applied it concretely: 7956 and counting.
Every new thing I build, everything I learn, seems to me to open a multitude of new possibilities, of new exploratory venues that I am eager to follow, instead of stopping to sell what I've just done.
I think it's hard because documenting something is a completely different skill than exploring and/or building something. For a lot of us, the act of documenting doesn't scratch the same itch.
Also because documenting it is admitting failure. It's 15+ years since I'm trying to build a trading system that beats the market and successes so far: zero.
I do work in finance and the domain knowledge kinda secures a place here but ... imposter syndrome. I sell tools to the miners who find gold. Wanna find the damn gold myself.
I did build a strategy research simulator though, started some 15 years ago with a bunch of scripts which evolved into a more maintainable and coherent C++ software which got ported to Java and never looked back after I got fed up of fixing C++ problems instead of focusing on the business. Lately I also started documenting it, did a few chapters then enthusiasm fizzled, to the point I didn't even renew the website certificate. If you wanna read it just press proceed in spite of the scary warnings, one puny unsecure HTTP connection is not gonna kill your computer: https://www.aquarianz.com/
I come to HN to read interesting news, but every other day there is another article about necessity of writing blogs and again, and again I am feeling bad about me not writing...
I'm shocked... almost 100 comments and no one has complained that the design is not "modern" grey on grey with one paragraph at 24 points per screen and pointless stock photos sprinkled in.
I don't agree with what appears to be the core premise of this article. Sure, if you want recognition or career benefit from your work, you have to advertise it. But this assumes that the purpose of work is getting recognition or money.
What if I want to do work for making the world a bit better? Submit a fix for an open source project anonymously? This article feels like the career drivel I so often see on LinkedIn.
Also, I might not want the world to benefit at all from my work. I could spend a year building a better alarm clock for my own personal use. Was my time wasted? I think that people should try to help others, but there is value in developing things for fully personal use. Not every program needs to be a product, startup or open source project. Not every solution needs to be a blog post.
"Selling" is usually associated with overstating of the qualities of the thing you want to exchange, in order to increase its perceived value. This is considered, for some reason, a good thing, an achievement or desirable skill or a social norm. When everyone strives to master this desirable quality, each exchange of a thing artificially bloats its value, while the things probably remained unchanged since the first exchange. That doesn't make sense.
You don't need to "sell" anything. Having to sell yourself, whatever that means, is pathetic. If you have something of value that you want to exchange with some other thing of value from someone, just communicate the facts/specs about the thing you want to exchange.
Build a network. Some place like Mastodon ... it's a social network, so you join a server, watch the feed, see things you like, follow the people who said it, see who they follow, and follow them as well.
Then say things that you think the community will find interesting. Boost other people's posts, interact. People will start to follow you back, so make sure you say things you think your followers and your community will find interesting.
All this will build a network, and people will see what you write. They might not interact with it much, but they will see it.
Consistency and persistence is key. Start, continue, and keep going.
> if you've done great work, if you've produced superb software or fixed a fault with an aeroplane or investigated a problem ... without telling anyone, your work is wasted
Completely disagree though. That work hasn't been wasted if that software is used, if that aeorplane can fly safely as a result.
Knowing how to advertise oneself can be useful but some people can also take pride and sense of accomplishment in doing things silently and knowing they did something useful.
And there's a difference between communicating, and advertising. There's an overlap, but it's not the same thing. Communicating is crucial. Advertising... not as much and wildly dependent on the situation (like trying to land a job).
I think you have to set your expectations low. Even if you have a great idea and/or product, the chance of it standing out in the crowd of other great inventions, are slim.
Start by telling your closest friends and colleagues. Seek feedback. Mention it in a few forums or other technical sites. Do a demo (a short one) and video record it for anyone to view at their leisure.
You will probably be disappointed if you expect some kind of viral response. It does happen, but like being struck by lightning, it doesn't happen often.
Going through this today. I put a video online of my product and... no one cares. I knew it would probably be nothing but seeing nothing is something else
Similar. I spent the weekend writing my first technical blog post. I was finally proud enough of something I'd gone through to write about and share.
Submitted it to this place and not a single upvote or comment.
I'm okay with that, I wrote the piece for myself. I'm aware that the modal upvotes, possibly even the median upvotes, are zero.
Yet without even a single comment, it's hard to know if it was the wrong audience or bad writing. Or perhaps Monday lunchtime (GMT) was just a bad time to submit it, falling off /new before most people were even awake.
even if no one cares if you put it on your personal website a future employeer might care. Having a blog with technical posts can make you stand out from the crowd
If however you're only having an idea of a product, even half-implemented, you still need to sell the idea to get money for the full implementation - enough for it to be sellable as a product. Catch 22 indeed...
I worked as a Technical Sales Engineer and have been a Software Engineer for three years. I’ve realized many technical professionals overlook the importance of selling and writing.
With LLMs advancing and may take over coding tasks, software engineers should focus on skills like selling, writing, and problem-solving.
I hear you, and I agree that coding is still core to being a software engineer. However, with tools like GitHub Copilot already automating parts of coding, it’s clear that the role of software engineers is evolving.
While coding remains important, skills like problem-solving, communication, and selling ideas are becoming just as essential. LLMs can assist with tasks, but they can’t replace the creativity and critical thinking that only humans bring. Focusing on these skills ensures we stay ahead as the industry changes.
Coding per se was never the crux of most seasoned software engineers.
The name engineering hints at it.
> skills like problem-solving, communication, and selling ideas are becoming just as essential
They always were. Coding was the easy part and you definitely were coding the wrong thing if you were not "problem solving".
Your conclusion of giving value to those things is right regardless of how you get there so I'll stop being an asshole but just remember that it was never specifically about coding but about automated systems with simplicity, maintainability and evolvability as characteristics.
You must have heard the phrase about spending more time reading than writing (code). Or thinking.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "the work speaks for itself," but the reality is - it doesn't. If no one knows about it, it might as well not exist. Sharing your work isn't bragging; it's part of the process
I can think of at least one person this applies to for a seven figure company. Some people are not looking for the accoloades, the prestige - they get a problem and provide a solution and don't care much for personally communicating the 'how'- they expect others to be intelligent enough to know the 'why' to be mutually understood and don't care too much for explaining the how.
An unfortunate situation where people are able to solve problems but are burdened with having to pimp it to others. In the minds of these people, it is pimping. People on the scale I guess. And they have extreme value, 10x people.
Unfortunately society capitalises on people being able to 'sell' rather than the value. Maybe AI can cut through that bullshit.
Eh. I make my own software all the time just for myself.
I don't publish a lot of my software since the amount of time it takes to make something production ready is 2x or more the amount of time it takes to make a "good enough for me" piece of software I can use every day.
My RSS reader for example uses hardcoded feeds as a config file in the code, mostly because I don't feel like setting up a database or something to save a configuration for a user. And why would I spend lots of time implementing things like that when I can just, you know, enjoy my RSS reader right now and work on other projects?
Despite the title of the article this is about building your personal brand, so people know you and the good work you do.
Most of us don't do that, those that do are sometimes eventually considered "influencers" and "thought leaders" (urgh), because they have focused on the visibility of what they do.
I have a personal rule which has worked really well for me: if I do a project, the price of doing that project is that I have to write about it.
Back when Twitter threads didn't suck (they could be viewed by people without Twitter accounts) I'd use those - tweet a description of my project with a link, then follow it with a few photos and screenshots.
These days I use my blog, with my "projects" tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/projects/
I blog all sorts of other stuff, but if I was ever to trim back the one thing I'd keep doing is projects. If you make a thing, write about that thing. I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/#pro...
Projects with a GitHub repository make this even easier: describe the project in the README and drop in a few screenshots - that's all you need.
(Screenshots are important though, they're the ultimate defense against bitrot.)
I have many projects from earlier in my career that I never documented or captured in screenshot form and I deeply regret it.
I get it, but I have reservations.
A random example on Youtube "I will tidy up your garden for free". They do that based on the income they get from writing/videoing about it, mainly from big tech algos. If everyone did it, that monetary value is lost from the explaining of it.
It's taking advantage of a curve for self-advantage which you're aware of which is fine, but doesn't really provide value in productivity in the broadest sense. What if everyone blogged about their work? As in literally everyone.
"What if everyone blogged about their work? As in literally everyone."
That would be great. This isn't a zero sum game - what's important is that each individual has an opportunity to document their work, look back on it in the future and occasionally show it to interested people.
Does the web really work that way though?
Maybe it does for your historical reference example, like a CV. If we presumed that those pages with that content would get any traction at all.
Generally the way it's working is people continually pump out content, big tech algos surface it to other people and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.
If you have a great channel where people see that link, great. But most information discovery is via the big tech algos.
If the only viewer of my blog posts is myself (and often times it is), then I'd still keep writing if only just to keep a public journal of my thought process and things that I accomplished at certain times in my life.
to be fair, that could be called a diary. I would guess the average person thinking about publishing in public thinks about other people seeing it.
Also fair, but most of the time the other people are a few close friends. I'm not trying to keep it a secret like a diary but I'm also not trying to get incredibly popular like a content creator or famous blogger.
Same here.
> and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.
I think you're maybe talking about publishing things for different reasons, the quoted part kind of gives me that impression.
If the point is to get as many visitors as possible then yeah, just pumping out MVPs/concepts/hacks/prototypes might not be the best idea. But if your reasons are different, the amount of visitors might not even matter.
As many visitors as possible, not really. Just a channel where you may get interested visitors.
The point isn't about pumping out content to please the algorithms, it is that the algorithms prefer that constant churn of it, and it's overwhelmingly the method of information discovery on the web.
I'm not the type to write a blog. I just don't want to invest that much.
What I do though is documenting for myself, everything.
It has helped me greatly in the last few years
Do you have examples of how it helped?
I'm regularly kicking myself for not doing that, so I see the value, but some concrete examples might help my motivation.
If you're regularly kicking yourself, don't you have your own examples to draw from? Only half-joking.
> if I do a project, the price of doing that project is that I have to write about it.
Definitely something I need to do. I've been meaning to do a "what I did in 2024" blog post but since I didn't keep track, trying to figure it out has postponed the post for 3 months already...
I'd suggest a smaller scope, as writing for a whole year can be a bit of a daunting task.
I second this. Small chunks is easier than one massive thing all at once.
I also have the habit of keeping a `~/notes.md` file, which I can access at the drop of a hat with a shell shortcut (I use fish, so I have the function `nn` which calls `$EDITOR ~/notes.md`). If you use multiple computers, which I do, you can use a common git repo with a branch for each computer as a backup. I generally end up writing a few notes every day, which means if I want to publish something in the future I have good source material to use.
Apologies if this post was a bit self centered, I hope my sharing my methods might be useful :)
> I also have the habit of keeping a `~/notes.md` file
Oh, I did spin up a Honk instance to keep notes on "things-i-did". It ... does not have many posts (83 since 2022-05). Ironically it doesn't have "set up honk instance for note-taking" in there.
But the `notes.md`+`git` idea might work. Although I know the first time I get a conflict on the `pull`, it'll all fall down...
Agreed. I find for myself, for a blog post that is about something else I've done, the ideal length is about 5 paragraphs and it should take no more than an hour to write. Longer than that and it just doesn't get done, or it should be considered a project unto itself and should be managed as such with dedicated time set aside for it. Writing about everything I did in year would be a lot longer than 5 paragraphs, which means I need to break the concept down (perhaps into months, or write something per-project instead).
I like your diligency, thats pretty impressive track record. Although I need to point out a little readability issue: For me (likely ADHD) your blog is very hard to visually parse. It looks like single wall of unstructured text. It's hard to see where one post ends and where another one begins. The strongly emphasized links inside the content itself does not help. You have a lot of whitespace on left and right, but almost none in vertical direction and there is little use of font sizes. In the end every element seems the same importance. I see that you don't want to overdo with styling, which is fine, but a little more styling here and there could go a long way to help people get around.
Hi Simon, how do you decide when to blog on your personal website vs something like substack? Do you post identical articles on both? Do you prefer one or the other?
My Substack newsletter is literally a copy and paste from my blog - I built a custom tool for it: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/4/substack-observable/
Everything substantial I write goes on my blog.
The one challenge I'm having at the moment is where to put short "thoughts" that aren't accompanied by a link. I used to use Twitter for those, but now I'm cross-posting to Bluesky and Mastodon and Twitter - but cross-posting a "thought" doesn't feel great.
Things like this: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3lko5bg3c4s2...
I may have to invent a fourth content type for my blog (which is currently just entries, bookmarks or quotes) for this kind of very-short-form post with no link. Molly White started doing that recently so I may borrow her design: https://www.mollywhite.net/micro
... with the help of Gemini 2.5 I added that new content type to my blog. I've called them "notes": https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/26/notes/
Do you have any idea whether Substack drives traffic to, or sucks traffic from, your blog?
No idea at all. My blog does really well on Google, so I think if either site is being penalized for duplicate content it's probably the Substack.
It looks like 8% of my newsletter signups are "from the app" according to the Substack dashboard - which I think is how they show signups that they've encouraged as opposed to signups I had myself.
I'm really just using Substack because they've solved email deliverability and they're free for me to use to send out emails.
If you have a blog with RSS and just need something that auto-emails people your updates you can run my project on a raspberry pi. No need to tie yourself into the substack ecosystem if you don't want to
[0] https://github.com/MattSayar/rsspberry2email
I would love to do this as well, but I'm put off by the time it would take away from pushing the project itself forward. How much time does it generally take for you to make a blogpost for a project?
This gets much easier with practice. One exercise that that worked for me was to force myself to share anything (projects, til, ideas, experiments, advice) daily for 111 days. Then scale down.
Compare untested.sonnet.io and sonnet.io/projects
The latter took 10 years to have a list of projects. With the former, there’s almost no friction, although I have spikes and slower periods.
Also, people appreciate people who share and talk about their work, and that can lower the bar for things like correct grammar/vocab/clear structure.
To improve my overall fluency I made a writing tool that separates editing from writing: enso.sonnet.io.
Another thing that can work well are weekly updates/summaries. But this gets harder if you struggle with building habits and prefer shorter feedback loops.
PS. I'm not at Simon's level here although he is one of my inspirations - my main untested feed posts take 1-2 hours minimum, the smaller notes/branches can be < 20 min.
PPS. I'm working on a short list of actionable tips / places to share work. Hit me up via email and I'll send it over when it's done.
It can be as little as 10 minutes for smaller projects, partly because I have so much practice writing them up now.
Here are two recent examples where I mostly just quoted my release notes and added a tiny bit of extra flavor:
- https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/28/strip-tags/
- https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/19/files-to-prompt/
Five paragraphs, about an hour or less. Don't overthink it. Below are some examples from my woodworking, but I think they illustrate the concept. The important thing to remember is the blog post is not the project: it is a very quick overview pointing readers to the project. Built up over time, these quick overviews add up to a longer representation of your body of work, which you can use to sell yourself.
https://www.aechairs.com/2025/01/15/black-side-chair/
https://www.aechairs.com/2024/10/15/painting-chairs-with-mil...
These are fantastic, I've been contemplating getting into woodworking and I love these as examples of project writeups.
My rabbit hole started here 7 years ago and I'm still digging: https://lostartpress.com/collections/design/products/the-ana... You've been warned ;)
Beautiful pieces of furniture. Thank You!
Do you have any advice for someone like me, who has about 5 long form article ideas but would like to just get stuff out there? For example, I want to blog about matrix profiles because I just learned about them and they’re super cool. But it feels like much scaffolding needs to occur for an audience to see the light.
As an example of the type of length my blogposts have: https://aneksteind.github.io/posts2022-03-04/index.html
> But it feels like much scaffolding needs to occur for an audience to see the light.
tl;dr: Don't think about others. Just write, put it out there, with a couple of stickers pointing people. They'll see and come.
I'd not care about scaffolding, actually. I have three main outlets for what I do: Blog, Digital Garden, Mastodon, and arguably here.
Blog was meant to be technical, but instead it became a "life" blog. My digital garden is where my technical notes are, and where my project write-ups will be, and Mastodon and here is what I post links to these spaces.
My secret is, I don't write these for anybody. The format is for general consumption, but I'm not sad because nobody gives feedback about it or reaches me about these things. I generally do these for my enjoyment, and blog analytics show that there's some foot traffic in my blog. Digital garden keeps no analytics.
When you put it out there, can point people to what you do, people will start to come. Not in hoards, but in small groups, and that's enough IMHO. Otherwise you need to be your blog's servant to drive the numbers up.
I'm not playing that game.
Thanks for the reminder. I feel the same way about not playing the game. Moreso than wanting to drive the numbers up, which is not the goal, I like sharing things and want to at least be coherent so that someone can follow along. But considering your advice I think not sweating the details of scaffolding is a good adjustment.
Hey, I'm glad that my comment helped somewhat. Expanding on the scaffolding bit, I'm using the most minimal tools I can use, since they don't let me do (very) fancy things, I can't spend time needlessly adjusting things. A single, markdown aware, automatically theme changing blog space is enough for me. No fancy things, just text, plus RSS.
People can follow and share. That's enough. Even the webpages doesn't have any JS.
Thanks! I’m in a very similar situation as far as simplicity goes. This conversation has helped me in finishing my latest article: https://aneksteind.github.io/posts/2025-03-26
"My secret is, I don't write these for anybody. [...] When you put it out there, can point people to what you do, people will start to come."
That's absolutely the way to do this. Believe it or not that's still the way I think about my online writing.
I've lost track of how many old projects I can barely remember because I didn't capture how they looked or worked
Hey Simon, love your work. I also appreciate the fact that you've been so approachable to ask questions of. (I've talked to you on one of the socials)
Just a random question for you. Of all of the projects you've created, which is your favorite?
It's https://datasette.io - I'm still having so much fun with it, especially since any idea I want to experiment with can be justified as a Datasette plugin!
> For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known.
"Fully" seems to be doing a helluva lot of heavy lifting in this piece. Does anyone think that they mean anything other than "making money", as they quickly segue into talking about entrepreneurship and founding businesses?
I'm happy to concede that if you don't tell anyone about the stuff you do, no one will know. But I am not willing to concede that you only "fully" benefit from your work if you sell it. Nor am I willing to concede that work only has value if sold. I'm also not entirely certain the author is pushing those views. Still, something about this piece doesn't sit well with me.
Human endeavors have value beyond the monetary.
I have a web extension I made as a pet project that does something useful to me (in the spirit of selling my work, it's called Favioli ).
It's free/open-source and will always be free. But the idea was inspired by my friend's code. When I made a blog post about how I made the extension, he reposted it on his relatively popular blog + Twitter.
Because of that, the extension has had around 1000 users since the very beginning, and I've gotten some prs and improvements here and there. And it feels good to have solved an issue for some people other than myself.
I think this is what the author means by "selling". I'm generally the type of person who doesn't self-advertise, because my mindset is that I don't want to bother people. So if my friend hadn't publicized it for me, the extension would probably have 5 users. So maybe 995 other people wouldn't have benefitted from my work. I think this article is not saying that you "have" to sell your work, but that if you're proud of it, don't feel ashamed to tell people that it exists.
I can see it from this perspective, thank you
I'll add that "sell yourself" has (Unfortunately) negative connotations in a Western context. (Possibly in other contexts as well, but I don't know.)
We teach children modesty. We correct people who brag. We emphasize the "everyone is equal " approach. Which are are correct things to do as children. Children's work is encouraged (regardless of quality) and is discarded.
But this mindset can work against adults. Primarily because the work is expected to be fruitful, not discarded. And for work to be fruitful it must not just be fine, it must be seen.
At my company we have a saying "if it's not documented, it's not done". (I write software libraries.) If I don't write docs, build examples, publicize new features, then no one will use them. That's a waste of my output, and a waste of the money the company spent for me to make it. This is not a "modesty" thing, it's a "that's my job" thing.
Now, can you write code on your own time, stick the result on the fridge, and admire it yourself? Of course yes. You don't have to publicize it. It's perfectly OK to have a hobby. Frankly it doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It'll serve its purpose and be forgotten.
"Selling" in this context may be the wrong word. "Documenting" or "Publishing" would have served a similar purpose without the stigma. But the author wants to stress test there's a "persuasion " aspect here as well.
My library might be better, faster, more secure, and so on, but there are other libraries our there competing for users. If I won't "persuade" others to try it, who will? If I'm not prepared to stand up and advocate for it, what that does that say about my perspective of the work? If I don't believe in it, why should they?
If you don't think your work is worth talking about, so be it. Just don't expect anyone else to talk about it either.
I do not understand the negatives. It is along the lines of what I was thinking. At least in my experience, "sell X" is often understood as "go borderline lying about how good it is". "Sell yourself" triggers kind of a negative image. What works for me is just to talk about what I have done, and do not underestimate the achievements. But selling is like a step too much. At least in my cultural/social circle.
When I some says "sell X to Y", I hear "explain how X will solve Y's problem or otherwise make their lives easier". Because that's fundamentally what selling is.
I can talk for days about how marvellous the new iPhone is, the beautiful technology behind it, the marvellous processor and the high resolution screen that are, in their own way, feats of engineering that equal or surpass the Pyramids at Giza.
But that's not why people buy iPhones. They buy iPhones because having a portable device with internet that can make phone calls and take pictures and video and has GPS is actually really handy.
That's what "selling your work" is about.
"Hey guys, I made this open source operating system. If you're looking for an OS than enables you to completely control your machine, maybe you'll like it more than Windows." vs "Hey guys, I made this open source operating system. I wrote it in Rust because I like Rust."
tangentially related, Ryan Dahl's I hate almost all software: https://tinyclouds.org/rant
> The only software that I like is one that I can easily understand and solves my problems.
selling is talking about your work with the end user in mind, rather than going on about the details of what you learned/how you did it.
That said, the latter approach is also interesting and useful, in that it helps others learn from your process.
<< Children's work is encouraged (regardless of quality) and is discarded.
I hesitated a little bit, because I agree with most of the post and what I am about to post is a bit of a tangent. That said, some of work can and will be discarded for sure, but our family unit is now looking into some way of preserving my kids work to show the progress made. I think it will be a fun memento.
I'm a parent and sure we posted the children's art on the fridge etc. We even kept some of it as momentos.
But of course it has no value beyond the sentimental- the nostalgia and so on.
Of course your child's work means something to you, but the work itself isn't the value. It's the reminder of what they were.
The author isn't saying that selling is necessary only to make money. At the end of the article he says "But the word "sell" doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means", which then leads to the aside:
"you can either do it in such a fashion that people can indeed build on what you've done, or you can do it in such a fashion that the next person has to essentially duplicate again what you've done"
> Human endeavors have value beyond the monetary.
Indeed, and for me the real value of “selling” my work has been the opportunity to do more of it, and more on my terms, than putting my head down and striving in silence.
There is a lot of truth in this article.
I work in a large FAANG company. For more than 10 years, I made the error of not publishing my personal work and ideas. I didn't like the rules about personal works, publishing opensource or social media communication... you are subject to gate-keeping by your employer if you are an employee. That's quite different from my previous experience in smaller companies in Europe. I found it very off putting: you had to give up ownership. I thought it was demeaning that even what I create in my own private time would be owned and attributed to someone else.
My choice of not publishing anything however was a very bad one. I didn't understand what power is: the continuity of the Self into the Other, where you find your-Self at ease. If you don't assert yourself, you give up not just your power but your very identity.
The truth is that power is dialectic. If you don't speak up, you have no power. Both in what you create, and in the relationship of and with power that you live, you are constantly redefining the boundaries of what you are and what you are not. If you remain silent, you loose.
I came to similar conclusion after pouring 95% of brain power for 8 years as an employee at a startup.
Make yourself visible in professional and social life.
That line about "the continuity of the Self into the Other" is going to stick with me
I took it from Byun-Chul Han's "What is Power?". It's quite a heavy philosophy book, but worth reading if you are into this stuff.
Writing that answer in this thread, made me think that I should publish too. So, I did: https://rlupi.com/speak-up-publish-seize-your-power
Thanks for the reference! I haven't read Byun-Chul Han yet, but I've seen his name come up more and more lately
> I thought it was demeaning that even what I create in my own private time would be owned and attributed to someone else.
I still feel this way. Well, I don't think I'd use the word demeaning, but I think it's a despicable abuse of the employee/employer power dynamic for my employer to claim ownership on my whole creative output outside of the work I'm actually paid to do.
enter hackernews,
read a random post
find fucking poetry
leave, enlighted
Strongly disagree. You are allowed to create/do things that no one else know about. Share it if you want, keep it to yourself if you don't. Don't let other people dictate to you what you must do in order to be satisfied with yourself.
There is a certain type of tyranny to the mindset in this blog post. The constant pressure to perform for an imagine audience, the "self worth through the prism of others" trap etc. More chilling is the dismissing of others that do not "perform".
I presume the author doesn't fall for any of these and is happy. But for many it would be a dark pattern to follow.
I come from a long line of tinkerers that have sat in damp sheds playing with junk. Testing themselves, their tools and often others patience. There is an inherent beauty and calmness to this. This has value and shouldn't be dismissed.
The last part was beautifully put; it'll definitely stick with me awhile.
I agree, it’s your choice. But, if you want to help others, you also have permission to share your work.
You probably don’t think your work is valuable but someone is waiting for your unique perspective. It doesn’t need to be perfect; nothing is.
You can also write publicly but for your future self, which drops the barrier to entry.
Of course you’re allowed not to write or not to share. It’s not for everyone. But don’t let fear or self-doubt stand in your way either.
I think the unique perspective part is something I’m understanding. It’s easy to read or see other people’s work and think you don’t have anything to add
Sure, as long as you do it with intent. The thing is that a lot of people's intentions and ambitions often don't line up with the results. Because they forget to talk about their stuff.
People put a lot of effort in stuff they do in the hope that somebody will find it useful, will give them some praise, and maybe even some money. That stuff doesn't tend to happen if you don't talk about your stuff. Build it and they'll come usually doesn't work.
The article isn’t disallowing you…
It definitely heavily implies that creators are - or should be - trying to benefit the wider world.
Also teaching people has a broad potential impact that will never fully be appreciated.
> Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough.
First, "should" is a form of judgement. What the author believes is "enough" is defined by their belief system, not anyone else's.
> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous[sic] work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost.
A reasonable discussion could be had for all but the last two assertions:
Again, this is a presumption made without merit.First, work related to a person's profession contributes to experience and possibly ability. Second, work is only lost if it and lessons learned doing it no longer exist.
I think the author's message is more about missed opportunities than casting judgment
For me the title
> Sell yourself, sell your work
is off-putting. It makes it sound like my work should become a product to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. But not everything can become a product and not everyone wants to be creating products all day, every day. Especially since once something becomes a product, the focus is on profit and no longer the actual idea - profit begins to drive development of that idea.
But then I read the article and realised that the title has nothing to do with the message:
> "Selling" to a scientist is an awkward thing to do. It's very ugly; you shouldn't have to do it. The world is supposed to be waiting, and when you do something great, they should rush out and welcome it. But the fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good."
The author, IMHO, is talking of promotion and not selling. Which is fair enough.
Without promotion, your ideas won't reach a broader audience. But that may be fine for some people and sometimes for me. I choose not to promote my half-baked ideas - fine. That's a different feeling than to think that I can't sell my ideas or that I've wasted my time because I won't be making a profit.
Of course, "selling yourself" and "promoting yourself" is the same thing in some places on this planet, for me though, there is a fine line between the two.
On a side note, whatever happened to hobbies? Whatever happens to exploring and experimenting with ideas? If everything I do has to eventually turn a profit then I need reconsider how often I go to the toilet - is that a profitable activity?
My writing rules are:
* Explain, don’t “sell”. If something is significant and you explain it well, the significance will be obvious without artificial emphasis.
* Explain, don’t “persuade”. Don’t assume agreement before or after. Make your reasoning clear. Don’t assert credibility or pressure for acceptance.
* Clarity and brevity compound each other. If you are clear, you don’t have to spell out every detail, or review important points.
If you find yourself trying to explain what you have explained, you have not been clear or concise and are now spiraling. Rethink. Rewrite.
* Finally, state your main point/purpose up front. For everything, every section, every paragraph. Gets attention. Filters readers by relevance. Assists clarity & brevity.
——
Avoid mixing multiple or deeper points, that are better communicated separately.
Find an unmissable visual way to indicate where the first point/purpose was accomplished, and additional material has a related but new purpose.
> Finally, state your main point/purpose up front. For everything, every section, every paragraph. Gets attention. Filters readers by relevance. Assists clarity & brevity.
My grad school advisor said to me that "the first N sentences should be the most import N sentences" when writing papers
> Explain, don’t “sell”
> Explain, don’t “persuade”
Know your audience. A library on github targeted towards developers does both selling and persuading via a good explanataion.
> via a good explanataion.
That is the point I was making.
Note the quotes on “sell” and “persuade”. That’s a hint. Meaning a lot of words meant to sell or persuade are actually harming those purposes.
Three word highly opinionated statements, like my paragraphs began with, are best viewed as strong (re-)prioritization. Not a prohibition on nuance once the point is understood.
So, I appreciate and agree with your nuances.
Thank you. Theso are excellent. I'll be coming back to this comment often until I internalise it all. And I don't even write in public, but I want to improve, for work, and for myself.
Ps: the irony on the second paragraph of the third point wasn't lost ;)
My standard advice:
For any young programmers: live within your means, invest the difference, become independent, and work on what you enjoy. It’s the best (work related) gift you can give yourself. Skip the self promotion politics unless you enjoy it.
I get what you (intended to) mean, but living within your means doesn’t leave anything to invest - you just don’t have a growing mountain of debt.
Respectfully disagree. If you're maxing out your spend so at the end of the month there is no surplus you aren't living within your means. For a lot of folks this is an ugly necessity, but programmers generally aren't in this group.
“Passion is bullshit”.
I don’t hate work. But at the end of the day, it’s a means to exchange labor for money.
Out of the million of things I enjoy, helping the bottom line of a for profit company isn’t one of them. It’s a necessity.
And I actually like the company I work for. It’s one of the best companies I’ve ever worked for (10 in almost 30 years).
The self promotion politics is the only way you get ahead in large companies with a structured promotion process where you have to show “scope” and “impact”.
I actually enjoy when my work isn't just fun and good, but also contributing to a bigger picture. It's bot just that it gives meaning. It's also that the added design constraints are intriguing, and help me determine when I can stop polishing.
It's not about self promotion, but building with a clear goal set fir me I have found to be much more rewarding than when I have to think of my own goal. The worst is when a fake goal is set, it's the thing about university I liked the least. If I can't interrogate or question the 'why' for the goal, because it is just 'to test me' then it isn't a real goal, just an artificial constraint.
I'm sorry, but this advice can sometimes sound like "sell one of your kidneys so you can eat". What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger? Investing negative difference? What if on top of that you're trying to do the work you enjoy and your means - incomes - stop completely? Do you see the problem with advice?
Naturally not everyone is lucky enough to have the income to do this.
The first part though is key - living within your means. It assumes you have means, and that it's possible to live within them.
The advice is good - whether you use it or not is up to you, and of no consequence to the advice giver. Whether you are in a position to take the advice or not is up to you.
For those who can though I can agree with it. Forgoing a new car now might mean retiring a year earlier. Financial freedom (aka retirement) means doing work on your terms, not beholden to your employer. It doesn't mean "not working".
Of course the best way to a better job, more pay, and a sooner retirement is indeed to "sell yourself" making both yourself and your work more valuable.
Do this advice is a corollary to the article, not a repudiation of it.
> What if your means are not sufficient to avoid hunger?
Not all advice is applicable to everyone. It's up to you to decide if you can and want to follow it. The advice was for young programmers and it is solid advice, but again, not applicable to everyone. It is applicable to a majority (probably even large majority). If you are young and earning a sw engineer salary it is very rare to not be able to cover your basic needs and have something left. Most people spends what is left in luxuries, lifestyle creep, etc; which is what the advice is trying to warn people about.
I think you might modify the advice to be something like:
If you're a programmer, and you're paid well, don't assume that will last forever. Don't spend all your money (and beyond) on cars and rent. Invest as much as you can with the goal of being financially independent.
Programmers tend to be paid well?
> For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known.
I don't agree with this assumption. One does not necessarily follow the other. Outside of work, I write programs that I need and that further my own personal curiosity and education. I don't have to release any of it to the world, in order for me to fully benefit from it. I plan to take all of the source code on my computer to my grave and that's totally OK.
I think some of the most meaningful projects I've done were never sold or promoted widely
There are many definitions of "sell" that aren't a dichotomy between building toy projects that never leave your private repo, and running a SaaS startup you're trying to grow via LinkedIn and HN.
I've found a lot of fulfillment in building tech products/services for friends and family, and making meeting their needs the complete scope of the project, with no intention to release it publicly. I present it as though it's a widely released product, including marketing materials, retail box, printed instruction manual, etc. I enjoy it thoroughly as a creative exercise, and it gives me the opportunity to integrate and combine lots of skills I'm not able to use at work.
I don't make any money doing this, but it scratches the itch I have to build things people will use, and I do enjoy showcasing and promoting my latest projects - and an audience of my (less technical) friends and family is a polite and encouraging one. Definitely less stressful than releasing things to the wider internet. This has brought improvements to my real job, where I'm finding myself more comfortable presenting and promoting my achievements.
Home cooked meals software is a nice phrasing for this kinda thing. I admire your packaging and documentation touches, going that far is cool and creative
I supposed it’s ironic given the topic but this sounds so cool that I’d love to see a writeup or some pictures.
I’m always reminded of the essay: Isiah’s job by Albert Jay Nock. https://mises.org/mises-daily/isaiahs-job
Publicizing your work, will certainly let it be known to the masses, but aiming for the masses means that the half life of your work is in years. Work that stands the test of time, does not need publicizing. People of a high caliber will find it and proceed to further honor you for your work, your focus should be only on excellence which truly matters in standing the test of time.
> People of a high caliber will find it and proceed to further honor you for your work
That's a fantasy which is just not true.
Plus, am I the only one who is disgusted by the idea of Shell/Exxon/... using OSS in their operations?
Sharing technically-excellent software with parasites seems to be a net negative for the world, because many people are just takers who will ruin the world to make themselves a few more dollars.
OTOH, I love for regular people to have free quality SW to use for their lives.
How to strike the balance?
Make it GPL then.
That will not prevent them using it for free.
Yeah but it often prevents them from being able to actually use it (unless they open source everything it touches).
> People of a high caliber will find it and proceed to further honor you for your work
This is a romantic notion, made even more appealing by the fact that it has actually happened a handful of times throughout history, and they loom large in our collective memory.
But the cold, hard, distasteful reality is that most useful work does not rise to the level of brilliance, and even that which does might never find appreciation among people of any calibre, even after death. Disdaining self-promotion is a conceit available to a select talented few.
Survivorship bias at its finest. For as many people have been lived before ourselves there’s only a handful that get remembered on any scale.
The article wasn't saying to aim for the masses. It was saying, do at least some documentation, and make it pleasant to read for your peers. That way, they can find your work, understand it, and build uppon it.
This type of inaccessibility often has the opposite result. Your work will be seen as elitist, esoteric or cultish.
That is called "doing a Van Gogh", right?
Van Goughs work is only popular now because after his death his sister in law. [1]. She spent her life promoting and selling his work. And it took decades to do. Without her, his work would average simply disappeared.
Van Gough of course didn't sell his work. He lived in poverty (by choice I guess) and got whatever satisfaction he needed simply by painting them. (Now There's a rabbit hole to go down, given the nature of his death, which I'll avoid.)
So if you're hoping your work will be discovered by "the world " while you live in obscurity, then I'm not sure Van Gogh is an example you should emulate.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johanna_van_Gogh-Bonger
That's like saying all human's lives are wasted because no other species will know of them.
The ultimate experience is doing as many interesting things for yourself and not stressing about them "living on". It's 99% a closed system inside your head anyway
I like writing, but I always have a hard time getting started. In that regards ChatGPT has been a real game changer. I can just lay down some ideas, ask it to write an article, hate it, then write it myself.
I've generally been best served by NAVY: never again volunteer yourself.
Others will advertise for you... or simply pay attention when you do well. Being reliable is outstanding, a true rarity.
Plenty of folks will want to take advantage. Assuming you weren't actually hired to work alone in a closet, there will be opportunities to shine/get put on speed dial... if you really want that.
Working Corporate for 20+ years... still waiting on the PIP the 'dead' (hidden) peer comment mentions. Replying to myself since I can't with them. It's been a pretty good run, if I say so myself. Heh.
Based on the fear put into people I'd guess I'm overdue! Well, a break sounds nice. Can we skip to the quarterly layoff... or does this not count? I know those decently. Would love to spare a more fair soul.
If you get a PIP while doing objectively good work for not acknowledging the secret handshake: "move on." Save your efforts for a time and place that's worth it. Being played, IMO.
This is, at best, incomplete.
Plenty of people are in situations where they don't appreciate someone's value until they're removed, or want to exploit the person and conceal that the person, and not themself, is providing the value.
The flip side is, as the management abstractions go up, they have less visibility into who's providing the value, so people who sell themselves better will be perceived better than people who just assume their work will speak for them. If your manager is also an engineer, it's obvious how you provide value to them, probably, but what about their manager, or theirs?
And? The world and our experiences are incomplete; this will never be addressed. Non-optimal performance is both normal and expected.
This advice, like all before and after, is not some atomic function to keep mindlessly smashing.
It works well enough; I was born dirt poor and now struggle to have free time to enjoy my pile of gold. Despite doing zero self-promotion through my career, I'm exceedingly well-known. The work and others spoke for me. Too much, I'd say.
Have an environment where you need to regularly over-extend yourself? Find a new one, you're clearly desirable. Layoffs/life happens, whatever.
There are plenty of downsides from subscribing to the rat race, some upside too. Debasing nonetheless. Guess who has to control that ratio. You. Others will take everything being offered... and then some more.
If anything, I'm championing discretion. Filtering is important! Truly no judgement to those who choose to be more involved, just speaking on my experience. YMMV of course.
Stolen quotes to close: "it sucks to suck" or "that's life". Promotion is like terrorism, only have to be lucky once.
Thank you for coming to my crash TEDhn talk on Game Theory :)
I have started doing this more,, the problem is however that I suck at marketing, I hate being too direct, so posting the odd interesting project or nugget of information on my website to maybe get a few more of my books sold or get some nice gig work in areas I like is the way I go.
As my paid work runs out and I get more towards retirement I guess I will start moving on to documenting some hobby projects, I don't see any down-side to it except running out of interesting things to talk about.
Of course nobody will visit your site unless you post it around, kind of a catch 22.
I started blogging weekly recently. I’ve been surprised at the efficacy of simply asking readers to subscribe. At the end of each post I make the request and provide an email box.
After only three articles, 28 people have signed up. It’s not a lot compared to some folks, but it validates two important things. First, being direct can work. Second, people care and want to hear more.
Everyone sucks at something they don't do so much of. Try it, learn from others and pick what you personally like.
The thing about marketing is that it's not a x->y kind of thing, so people can literally try something which they think is fun/interesting and trial it out.
I am already selling enough of my time, energy, skills, knowledge etc. I also have enough to not sell, things that provide me personal satisfaction and value, that is more important than what I sell to others. I got to look after my health first and finances second.
For the opposing view, see "Rise of the Brogrammer."[1] That's what happens when maximizing visibility becomes a value.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/07/tech/web/brogrammers/index.ht...
It also depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. Do it too much, and you’ll incur the wrath of the mob—or worse, be ignored into oblivion.
In the software world, salespeople are almost universally hated because of how obnoxious they can be. I recently attended a Couchbase talk, and now the salespeople are all over my inbox and LinkedIn DMs. You don’t want to sell your work like that.
While not all work needs to be published, monetized, and advertised, this piece only focuses on the kind that needs to be done but isn’t.
I absolutely agree on writing about software. I don’t write to advertise my thoughts. Writing is the process that helps me think deeply about a topic I’m interested in.
While I write for myself, and my blog[1] usually focuses on the things I’m currently tinkering with, it has garnered a solid number of readers. I even got hired at two places because someone higher up read my writing at some point. So I believe the author is encouraging everyone to publish and advertise these kinds of work.
[1]: https://rednafi.com
This is what I was thinking too when I was a child. But now that I got to see how adults actually act I feel like a lot of these concerns related to selling are irrational.
If you have a new product and you want to market it to a wide audience then you have nothing to worry about because you have nothing to lose. Being "ignored into oblivion" doesn't mean that you can't try again, and nobody knows you so you won't attract a mob. The world is so vast that no matter what you do and how hard you try to sell something, your actions will affect very few people and leave only a barely noticeable footprint.
Maybe this is exactly what the problem is -- we now have means to connect with the whole world through the internet, but we tend to treat these connections quite conservatively as if it's our close circle. It's not acceptable to make yourself hated by a friend, but I think it's absolutely fine if it's thousands of strangers instead as long as it's done for what feels like a good cause.
I heard from multiple people working at Stripe that selling yourself is a huge reason why they think it's a very bad place to work. You apparently have to make full-on folders to showcase what you have done.
All of the places I've worked at that have come close to this style of self-promotion have been dominated by kingdom builders and professional bullshitters.
Is this why Stripe's one of the most hated products (that people have to use anyway)?
Stripe is surprising in that it feels like the assembler of payment systems. Powerful but boy do you have to roll a lot of your own stuff.
Like why can't I call an API and ask "what subscriptions is Joe on?". Why can't Joe unsubscribe via Stripe without me building something out.
Ugh, sounds horrible. This is what happens when extroverted bullshitters get to decide the rules around career advancement. Your ability to write self-promotional marketing slop counts for as much as or more than the actual work you were hired to do. I say this as someone who is right now grudgingly writing self-promotional marketing slop instead of doing my job.
This is an aside, and straight up stolen from a comedian whose name escapes me.
Why is it that we always see articles extolling the virtues of extroversion to introverts? Be more outgoing! Be more obnoxious!
But we never see articles suggesting that extroverts shut the fuck up and let the world be livable for the rest of us.
Sounds like George Carlin to me?
Maybe each developer / creator / maker needs someone around them to "sell" them (and their creations). To push it on the vine/rumour/vibe. Yes, an advertiser/ salesperson - herald - on a fractional basis :) , one per village.
To create and to sell are very different skills and things , even somewhat contradictory - and they rarely appear in same person.
The Organisational patterns book [0] have a role of Matron - a person who knows everyone and what they're up to (without need of deep understanding) - but that's not the same, and it's organisational.
i think that such people are needed in everyday, personally, too. To knit and entangle the threads of society.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131467409/
[1] https://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/orgpat/OrgPatterns-patle...
Always wished more scientists read and understand Richard Hamming. I read and listened to some lectures right out of college and it always struck me as not just catchy advice for young scientists and engineers, but as self-evident principles and values to live by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw
What was his general idea?
Is this what makes it to the HN main page nowadays? This article is extremely shallow and contains close to no useful information.
This sounds nightmarish in a corporate way but good advice for solo introverts, doubly so if you work in the arts.
As someone, who create for living, I don't have passion for advertising myself. I rather find selfadverising blogs with huge amount of texts as desperation for attention.
It's anecdotal, but I don't like consuming blogs that much, so I don't see point to do it myself.
It seems like Hacker News now has an algorithm that reads my web searches.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on this. I’ve worked in several interesting sectors and developed amazing projects, but I haven’t documented anything. And in today’s job market, having a portfolio is almost essential.
I’m not a prodigy programmer, but in the industrial sector, programming is a key skill. This post motivates me to start structuring and sharing my work because it perfectly aligns with the idea that if you complete a project but don’t share it, it’s as if it never existed.
Nowadays, showcasing your work has become essential, not just for the community, but also for recruiters looking for talent.
It’s interesting that no one ever takes the other logical side of this: to really benefit from the work of others you have to look through the marketing bullshit and find the gems that aren’t aggressively sold.
All jobs converge to sales at some point.
So mind control (sales) trumps all work and all products of work. Which makes sense.
All you need is mind control. I think the Beatles said that.
Beatles or Google researchers.
I write _extensively_: on my own personal blog [1], on my companies blog, on various substacks, on medium, and on dev.to... idk, what this author seems to suggest might happen with good writing and sharing hasnt really panned out for me... but who knows? Maybe I just suck at writing!
[1] https://chrisfrew.in shameless plug
Number of times I've heard this advice, agreed with it intellectually and yet haven't applied it concretely: 7956 and counting.
Every new thing I build, everything I learn, seems to me to open a multitude of new possibilities, of new exploratory venues that I am eager to follow, instead of stopping to sell what I've just done.
Why is this so hard?
I think it's hard because documenting something is a completely different skill than exploring and/or building something. For a lot of us, the act of documenting doesn't scratch the same itch.
Also because documenting it is admitting failure. It's 15+ years since I'm trying to build a trading system that beats the market and successes so far: zero.
I do work in finance and the domain knowledge kinda secures a place here but ... imposter syndrome. I sell tools to the miners who find gold. Wanna find the damn gold myself.
I did build a strategy research simulator though, started some 15 years ago with a bunch of scripts which evolved into a more maintainable and coherent C++ software which got ported to Java and never looked back after I got fed up of fixing C++ problems instead of focusing on the business. Lately I also started documenting it, did a few chapters then enthusiasm fizzled, to the point I didn't even renew the website certificate. If you wanna read it just press proceed in spite of the scary warnings, one puny unsecure HTTP connection is not gonna kill your computer: https://www.aquarianz.com/
Or you can bypass the website and go directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx9-4eRnBAn4oRnpSrnkz...
Counterpoint: https://allpoetry.com/Fragment-Of-An-Ode-To-Maia.-Written-On...
I’ve been expecting the article to be along the lines of “DON’T sell yourself, sell the WORK instead.”
But, no. It’s the good old “20 content, 80 delivery” advice.
> “But you still have to sell!”
No, We don’t.
Can we stop putting everything “on sale,” please? — Especially selling your … “self?”
an important question is why indeed do people that do cool work dont write or talk about it or worse (to them) sell it and advertise it.
i also motivate myself to browse deeper (or visit obscure second hand dusty (book)shops) to find such unspoken of things.
Why don't marathon runners go to a local toastmasters to talk about their run? Probably because if you are doing one you ain't doing the other!
I come to HN to read interesting news, but every other day there is another article about necessity of writing blogs and again, and again I am feeling bad about me not writing...
Why HN? Why?!
I'm shocked... almost 100 comments and no one has complained that the design is not "modern" grey on grey with one paragraph at 24 points per screen and pointless stock photos sprinkled in.
Someone did say it's hard to read on mobile:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43479272
Previous discussion (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250289
I don't agree with what appears to be the core premise of this article. Sure, if you want recognition or career benefit from your work, you have to advertise it. But this assumes that the purpose of work is getting recognition or money.
What if I want to do work for making the world a bit better? Submit a fix for an open source project anonymously? This article feels like the career drivel I so often see on LinkedIn.
Also, I might not want the world to benefit at all from my work. I could spend a year building a better alarm clock for my own personal use. Was my time wasted? I think that people should try to help others, but there is value in developing things for fully personal use. Not every program needs to be a product, startup or open source project. Not every solution needs to be a blog post.
"Selling" is usually associated with overstating of the qualities of the thing you want to exchange, in order to increase its perceived value. This is considered, for some reason, a good thing, an achievement or desirable skill or a social norm. When everyone strives to master this desirable quality, each exchange of a thing artificially bloats its value, while the things probably remained unchanged since the first exchange. That doesn't make sense.
You don't need to "sell" anything. Having to sell yourself, whatever that means, is pathetic. If you have something of value that you want to exchange with some other thing of value from someone, just communicate the facts/specs about the thing you want to exchange.
>You have to write, you have to tell people
Given that I'm not already famous, how do I get people to know that I wrote something?
Taking this at face value ...
Build a network. Some place like Mastodon ... it's a social network, so you join a server, watch the feed, see things you like, follow the people who said it, see who they follow, and follow them as well.
Then say things that you think the community will find interesting. Boost other people's posts, interact. People will start to follow you back, so make sure you say things you think your followers and your community will find interesting.
All this will build a network, and people will see what you write. They might not interact with it much, but they will see it.
Consistency and persistence is key. Start, continue, and keep going.
> if you've done great work, if you've produced superb software or fixed a fault with an aeroplane or investigated a problem ... without telling anyone, your work is wasted
Completely disagree though. That work hasn't been wasted if that software is used, if that aeorplane can fly safely as a result.
Knowing how to advertise oneself can be useful but some people can also take pride and sense of accomplishment in doing things silently and knowing they did something useful.
And there's a difference between communicating, and advertising. There's an overlap, but it's not the same thing. Communicating is crucial. Advertising... not as much and wildly dependent on the situation (like trying to land a job).
Some people use mobile phones to browse the web. It was quite hard to read the article.
I think you have to set your expectations low. Even if you have a great idea and/or product, the chance of it standing out in the crowd of other great inventions, are slim.
Start by telling your closest friends and colleagues. Seek feedback. Mention it in a few forums or other technical sites. Do a demo (a short one) and video record it for anyone to view at their leisure.
You will probably be disappointed if you expect some kind of viral response. It does happen, but like being struck by lightning, it doesn't happen often.
Going through this today. I put a video online of my product and... no one cares. I knew it would probably be nothing but seeing nothing is something else
Similar. I spent the weekend writing my first technical blog post. I was finally proud enough of something I'd gone through to write about and share.
Submitted it to this place and not a single upvote or comment.
I'm okay with that, I wrote the piece for myself. I'm aware that the modal upvotes, possibly even the median upvotes, are zero.
Yet without even a single comment, it's hard to know if it was the wrong audience or bad writing. Or perhaps Monday lunchtime (GMT) was just a bad time to submit it, falling off /new before most people were even awake.
even if no one cares if you put it on your personal website a future employeer might care. Having a blog with technical posts can make you stand out from the crowd
in the spirit of this thread: What's the product?
Customer support app for small business :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX-67I9D3Lo
If however you're only having an idea of a product, even half-implemented, you still need to sell the idea to get money for the full implementation - enough for it to be sellable as a product. Catch 22 indeed...
I worked as a Technical Sales Engineer and have been a Software Engineer for three years. I’ve realized many technical professionals overlook the importance of selling and writing.
With LLMs advancing and may take over coding tasks, software engineers should focus on skills like selling, writing, and problem-solving.
> With LLMs advancing and may take over coding tasks, software engineers should focus on skills like selling, writing, and problem-solving.
You need to be a software engineer for longer if you think LLMs will take over more "coding" than writing.
But yes, communicating well and selling is crucial to maximize situations.
I hear you, and I agree that coding is still core to being a software engineer. However, with tools like GitHub Copilot already automating parts of coding, it’s clear that the role of software engineers is evolving.
While coding remains important, skills like problem-solving, communication, and selling ideas are becoming just as essential. LLMs can assist with tasks, but they can’t replace the creativity and critical thinking that only humans bring. Focusing on these skills ensures we stay ahead as the industry changes.
Coding per se was never the crux of most seasoned software engineers.
The name engineering hints at it.
> skills like problem-solving, communication, and selling ideas are becoming just as essential
They always were. Coding was the easy part and you definitely were coding the wrong thing if you were not "problem solving".
Your conclusion of giving value to those things is right regardless of how you get there so I'll stop being an asshole but just remember that it was never specifically about coding but about automated systems with simplicity, maintainability and evolvability as characteristics.
You must have heard the phrase about spending more time reading than writing (code). Or thinking.
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking "the work speaks for itself," but the reality is - it doesn't. If no one knows about it, it might as well not exist. Sharing your work isn't bragging; it's part of the process
"If you build it, they will come" is unfortunately a mantra that far too many artisans adhere to.
Marketing can feel dirty. It can feel cheap and nagging.
I learned early on that if you can't do marketing yourself, find someone else that can do it for you.
I can think of at least one person this applies to for a seven figure company. Some people are not looking for the accoloades, the prestige - they get a problem and provide a solution and don't care much for personally communicating the 'how'- they expect others to be intelligent enough to know the 'why' to be mutually understood and don't care too much for explaining the how.
An unfortunate situation where people are able to solve problems but are burdened with having to pimp it to others. In the minds of these people, it is pimping. People on the scale I guess. And they have extreme value, 10x people.
Unfortunately society capitalises on people being able to 'sell' rather than the value. Maybe AI can cut through that bullshit.
Eh. I make my own software all the time just for myself.
I don't publish a lot of my software since the amount of time it takes to make something production ready is 2x or more the amount of time it takes to make a "good enough for me" piece of software I can use every day.
My RSS reader for example uses hardcoded feeds as a config file in the code, mostly because I don't feel like setting up a database or something to save a configuration for a user. And why would I spend lots of time implementing things like that when I can just, you know, enjoy my RSS reader right now and work on other projects?
Sharing in this world? No thanks.
The social reality is the only real reality. The social value is the only real value.
I heard that called a definition of fascism once.
Well totally agree with you. But there are a lot of people who are introvert.
[flagged]
Idiotic article. You always benefit yourself from your own work, and you are not obligated to share your work with others.
Despite the title of the article this is about building your personal brand, so people know you and the good work you do.
Most of us don't do that, those that do are sometimes eventually considered "influencers" and "thought leaders" (urgh), because they have focused on the visibility of what they do.
Yes!
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