16 ms·

Sell Yourself, Sell Your Work

452 points by ColinWright 6y ago

antonzabirko 6y ago
I've seen this pushed before. Unfortunately, the more you focus on advertising the less you focus on technical knowledge. Let the two be separate, because the world has enough 'leaders'/'advertisers'. What it needs now is technical knowledge.
- snazz 6y ago
  Everyone who has the deep technical knowledge also needs to be able to communicate with others who don't have it. There's a difference between being an Internet personality who can code and being a programmer who can write English. Even if locking yourself in a room for months is a requirement to coming up with new science (which I highly doubt), solving problems for the intellectual gratification is useless on its own unless the new knowledge is shared. Writing is simply the highest-bandwidth medium for distributing technical knowledge to a wide group of people, so even the most in-the-trenches technical people need to be good at it.
  - antonzabirko 6y ago
    It's really not as you say in practice. Semantically yes it never becomes released, but eventually excellent work spreads naturally. In the current internet setup it is hard to grow organically, but that's a result of this same mentality. It reinforces politics and showmanship, which is why those skills dictate the market and coincidentally the internet.
    - servercobra 6y ago
      But how does excellent work spread naturally? If I publish some truly wonderful language or package on GitHub, would anyone notice without me promoting it? Or if I find some surprising result from an experiment, write it up, put it on my blog that I don't promote, will anyone see it? And if so, how?
- joshz404 6y ago
  > Let the two be separate, because the world has enough 'leaders'/'advertisers'. What it needs now is technical knowledge. I think that without those with the technical knowledge leading in their own right, then other self-proclaimed leaders will do their best bet at understanding, and will often get critical parts wrong.
  - antonzabirko 6y ago
    It's more likely that the technical crowd won't follow the leaders who get technical implementations wrong. Instead you will see natural leadership like in the early days of the internet.
- ujki1 6y ago
  > Unfortunately, the more you focus on advertising the less you focus on technical knowledge. If the law of diminishing returns applies, it's better to spend time on improving multiple skills or knowledge instead of focusing on just one. I don't think you need to be an expert in advertising for it to be useful to you.
rubatuga 6y ago
This is an unfortunate truth. People aren't waiting to cheer you on as soon as you release a work.
- yamoriyamori 6y ago
  Something about academia too, which doesn't really prepare us for the 'selling' part of life/coding. Every term/semester is nice and discrete, with a culminating project/exam, and then the next one is suddenly ... complete. The only required external attention was either the prof who did the grades (who's paid to view your work) or your parents who want to see your accomplishments.
mehrdada 6y ago
> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. That's a questionable premise and an entitled perspective from "the world" in my opinion. If one decides that they don't really give a fuck about the "impact" of the work on the world and doing it for its own sake, the "world" has no right to push them to release/advertise for their benefit. The premise also implies all entertainment is completely useless. Devil's advocate might argue it's quite the opposite: everything else in the world exists for you to focus on joy and entertainment and not be bothered with the bullshit the world brings on to you :)
- warent 6y ago
  You're mixing up terms and inferring "entertainment" when that's not what's being talked about. The operative word is "work" which is used in contrast to "play"
  - mehrdada 6y ago
    Well, I see that as a false dichotomy, and an important one at that. The most marvelous work the world has seen is a product of love, not a desire to maximize money or exposure. If you were doing number theory in 1500s, you were not thinking of how I would apply it to make the world a better place with secure communications. You do it for its own sake. ffs, I'm writing this comment on a website titled "Hacker News" after all, which I hope implies some audience care about the spirit of "doing something for its own inherent pleasure".
    - zck 6y ago
      If you invented number theory in the 1500s, then burned your manuscripts, the world will be no different from if you wrote ten thousand pages saying only "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". If you are doing something entirely for your benefit, that's fine. But people generally want someone to see the things they make, even if those things are not intended to be a billion-dollar startup.
dvt 6y ago
> ... it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. "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. Took me very long to get this, and, if I'm being completely honest, I still struggle with it. Being smart and humble is a pretty terrible combination. I met so many brilliant people at UCLA and in my professional career that had this twinge of impostor syndrome. What ended up happening is their less-brilliant but much-louder colleagues always got the promotions and always got the funding.
- paulpauper 6y ago
  Sorta agree with this but look at the success of Facebook. Zuck didn't have to sell Facebook. He put the idea out there and it was an instant success. if you find yourself having to sell too hard, maybe your idea is not that good.
  - dvt 6y ago
    Even if this were true, Facebook is an extreme (as in, 0.000001%) outlier. It's difficult to draw conclusions.
  - antonzabirko 6y ago
    This is the truth. The way our market defines success doesn't mean that thats what success is. Sure, you can abuse it and sell your product even if it's bad, but look where that has taken the world.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Zuck didn't have to sell Facebook. I feel like that's only kind of true, and only at first.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    Didn't he have marketing partners who later sued him?
  - tobyjsullivan 6y ago
paulpauper 6y ago
>Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough. If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known. no kidding. but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares,which is likely the most probable outcome. Look at all >But you still have to sell! You now have to sell your company's product or service, you now have to get known so that people will start to use your product or service, or people will constantly visit your website, which then attracts advertising. Whatever, you need to sell! A company lives and dies by what it sells. >Some people say that the sole purpose of a company is to make money. Others are more idealistic and say that it's to make the world better, or to make their employees' lives better, or some other goal. But without making money, everything else is moot. Some of the biggest acquisitions and valuations have been in companies that make little to no money or lose money.
- open-source-ux 6y ago
  "but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares, which is likely the most probable outcome." There's some truth to this. To take Hacker News as an example, there are many excellent projects posted in the 'Show HN' section that get no traction at all. And then there a few lucky ones that suddenly take-off. There's no "wisdom of the crowds" moment that propels one project to success over another because it's more worthy or excellent - it really is random in so many cases. We think success = product excellence: how else could a product rise to a leading position in the market or to such pre-eminence unless it was better than the alternatives? But the mountain of successful products that range from mediocre to terrible shows that product excellence isn't always the key ingredient to a product's success. Lest this all sounds too negative, I agree with the original article that documenting and pursuing your idea is absolutely worthwhile.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  >no kidding. but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares,which is likely the most probable outcome. Well, there are 3 components to it: A) Find a relevant problem to solve. I.e. market research. B) Solve the problem. I.e. engineering. C) Convince your audience to try your solution. I.e. marketing/sales. A successful business requires all 3. >Some of the biggest acquisitions and valuations have been in companies that make little to no money or lose money. Because their actual product is the expectation of future profits, and their customers are the investors. Ethics aside, it's the same pipeline, really.
julianeon 6y ago
The missing piece here is: How do you sell it? How do people find out about your work? These days (especially in a quarantine world) that means SEO, writing to the search engine, and to an extent, social media. So while I don't love it, either, I'm increasingly learning to see sophisticated social media usage & SEO as part of my work.
- collyw 6y ago
  Any chance of going into more detail about what you see as sophisticated social media usage? A link would be good.
  - julianeon 6y ago
    I'm still early in the learning process, and I wouldn't feel confident going beyond the most basic google search results, right now. But clearly, having an audience on Twitter, and possibly a good relationship with online publications or reporters who can help get your message out, where you can guest blog or become known as an expert, is good for business. And if there's some way that your work can become a product that translates into sales that can be reached through Instagram, Pinterest, etc., then it helps to know that too. Sounds weird, but I worked at a tooling startup that advertised on Instagram and apparently got good results from it.
blueridge 6y ago
This article doesn't resonate with me. We live our lives as if they were a business enterprise with a balance sheet, always selling, always advertising, always figuring out how to put our personality on display, always judging our human worth by our successes or failures, always weighing the benefits of everything we do. This is the root of many of our modern sociological problems. We attempt to "justify our existence" by our relationship with work. Part of exploring the life of the mind is keeping some ideas, maybe even your most fulfilling work, close to the chest. Life is not all about selling yourself.
- guevara 6y ago
  We're in a constant state of signalling. Think some book mentions that most of our actions are driven by our need to signal or convey something to parties. So, I'd argue we are always "selling" ourselves in one way or another, both unconsciously and consciously.
  - randomthought0 6y ago
    This is so interesting that the two sides to this don’t seem to be able to engage very much. For me, too, the reflex is “Who cares? Why be so prescriptive and pushy about needing to sell (as if it’s humanity’s natural state)?” because that isn’t how I experience my life. But to others it seems to be just instinct.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > Life is not all about selling yourself. Since we are social creatures, it pretty much is. Social mores and niceties, for example.
  - mediaman 6y ago
    Yep. People may not want life to be about selling yourself, but that's the way it is. Anyone is free to reject it. And that person is likely to live their life without their work being recognized, their ideas being appreciated, or their ingenuity to find the hands of those whom it would benefit. I wonder how fulfilling that feels?
daenz 6y ago
There are very few channels to "sell" your work or yourself. We need more of those channels and more "connected" people willing to browse those channels and trampoline things that are interesting. Nobody cares about your work, they care about what other people care about. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. It can only be bootstrapped by some clever social hack, money, or with someone more connected putting in the work to help connect people. Someone who is producing high quality work 150% of the time cannot be expected to spend another 150% effort to required to rise above the cacophony of other people doing the same thing. That said, I have done some thinking on this subject, and I'm curious: would there be any interest in a QVC-for-software-demos livestream? It would be somewhere where anyone could go on, on a schedule, and show a demo of something they've made or like to use. It could be for paid software or for fun projects, and it would be live, warts and all. Does this sound interesting to anyone? EDIT>> If you're interested, as either a presenter or a viewer, add your name and email to this google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VX1H8wsW-Do2NflC3__y71lNkreq7Z_xzMA1YECZgF8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VX1H8wsW-Do2NflC3__y...
- willcipriano 6y ago
  I'd volunteer to present on the QVC-for-software-demos livestream if such a thing existed.
- egfx 6y ago
  I built something like this for Shopify. Than Facebook sorta copied my idea with this storefront news. Anyway, I think this niche is very small and your better going for lower hanging fruit then starting with a live stream for software products. There have been businesses like this that were great like criticue.com but surprisingly they went under due to lack of interest and adoption. I personally really liked the service. It was better then a livestream, it was a group of software reviewers giving you feedback.
grawprog 6y ago
>>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. Half of what I did as 'public engagement' was basically selling people the idea that they should take time and care about these animals we were researching and in fact money should be spent protecting them. Most of grant proposal writing is very much selling the idea of your study or project to the government or organization that's willing to give you money.
inetsee 6y ago
After reading this article I scrolled down the list of other blog posts by Colin Wright and I found one at the very bottom, from 2011, entitled "Withdrawing from Hacker News": https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.html https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.htm... There was a comment thread from that article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402730 I wonder if Colin has decided to re-join Hacker News, and if so, would he care to comment on the changes to Hacker News since 2011 that prompted him to change his mind.
- ColinWright 6y ago
  I went away for quite some time. In response to the HN discussion you quote, quite a lot of people got in touch, and as a result I ended up making a few quite good friends, and many more contacts. After a while I submitted a few things, and commented on a few things I was pointed at, but I didn't ever come back and read in the same way that I had been doing. And it remains thus. I submit things I think the community might be interested in, and I dip in occasionally. But my participation is not as it once was. During "lock down" I've been commenting about once a day, I look at the "Front Page" most days, and "newest" most days, but I don't comment much. Looking at the trends and what the community usually finds interesting, and especially looking at the responses to some of the comments I make, I don't feel that I have a lot to contribute.
  - rhythmofrest 6y ago
    Hi Colin, you gave your juggling talk at my high school sometime before 2009. I already considered myself both a juggler and a programmer, but your talk inspired me on both counts, and taught me something about being cross-disciplinary in the things we enjoy and pursue. I've been a professional software dev for 8 years but I still think about your talk, your software, and your website. Thanks for encouraging young people like me.
    - ColinWright 6y ago
      Hi there ... That's a lovely comment ... thank you. Feel free to email me and we could perhaps arrange to meet and have a coffee sometime. Contact details in my profile. But equally, feel free to stay anonymous if you prefer!
WalterBright 6y ago
Ironically, everyone posting in this thread is trying to sell their opinion on it!
nogabebop23 6y ago
>> then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. This runs counter to a lot of great works. They were completed, known by and benefited first and foremost their creator. The fact that the rest of us know about them is just a nice side effect, not necessary.
aazaa 6y ago
> It seems crazy to require that technically talented people should be forced to spend time doing something - report writing - at which they're not gifted, but how else can the world benefit from their brilliance? Without communicating their ideas, their work is lost and might never have been. Peter Thiel has an interesting take on sales in his book Zero to One. He makes the case that good selling and good teaching are pretty much the same thing. The best teachers know how to sell the topic they teach. K-12 teachers in particular know in their bones how crucial a sales perspective is to getting an important message across. The best salespeople sell in a way that doesn't seem like selling. Thiel gives the example Steve Jobs. It almost seems strange to call what he did sales, but that's essentially what he did when he got on stage. Another example, is Elon Musk, who gets his message across without seeming very much like a salesperson. It's probably no coincidence that both figured out good ways to inspire their audiences. So if the word "sell" makes you want to run for the door, consider the more or less equivalent form: communicate. Or, maybe "educate." If you think salespeople are all liars, focus your "sales" efforts on conveying facts in the most compelling way possible - without lying. I find that from this perspective, the idea doesn't seem nearly as bad. It also presents a much more actionable path forward.
- bistrodopler 6y ago
  The element people are ignoring is money. You can communicate, teach, etc. without money coming into the picture. Sales is about money. You can claim you're "selling" an idea, but the implication is that you're still doing it for your own benefit or advantage. That doesn't mean it has to be a one-sided transaction. You may really believe that what you're doing is beneficial for the other party. But your own interest is an inextricable element of sales. If your own advantage isn't a factor, there are a hundred words with more relevant connotations to describe what you're doing.
- mikekchar 6y ago
  I've got to say that I don't agree at all with the teacher analogy. People get so caught up in thinking that teaching is about the subject that they are teaching. It's not. It's 100% about the student. If you are a teacher that is astounding at presenting the material, you will provide an incredibly enjoyable experience for the students who would have already have learned the material on their own. They others will similarly be entertained, but will struggle and just assume they are stupid because they have failed to learn from such an incredible teacher. However, I learned from a very good sales person that sales is all about understanding the other person and making sure that you present an interface that they can relate to. In that respect, I agree that teaching is just like that. You need to get into the mind of each student and understand how they think and what they are feeling. You need to be understanding and compassionate and to open the doors that they didn't know existed. Very, very good sales people do the same thing. I've come to the conclusion that sales, at its very best, is one of the most wholesome and wonderful jobs you can have. What is better than connecting people who need something to the thing they need? What is better than making them feel good about taking action to making their life better by fulfilling their needs? The problem is that most sales people aren't actually that good at sales. ;-)
MattGaiser 6y ago
It is accurate but disappointing. Just before university admissions, I learned to be a self-promotional person, so I am guilty of this. Firstly, you spend a ton of time doing that selling. It takes away from actually doing work. It is also just distasteful. I hate constantly fiddling with my bio. Second, you end up altering the work you are willing to do simply because some work is easier to sell than other work. I completely get why people do this as I do it as well, but what is all this costing society?
- Applejinx 6y ago
  Absolutely true, absolutely a valid criticism, but it's sort of a 'first level selling'. If you look into people who are REALLY good at what they do, things start to look real different and the value system you're concerned about goes out the window. Read some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff. That guy is stupidly good at selling, had much to do with introducing the Macintosh back in the day, but it is anything but a burden to him, and if he found he was grinding away selling junk because it was easier, he'd jump out the window. There is NO substitute for being able to try and convey your excitement about something you're REALLY good at and REALLY care about, and when you are able to bring that to bear, everything is different. I make my living on Patreon 'selling' open source audio stuff I make, and one of my PRIMARY arguments there is, 'this is amazing! Because it is completely liberating! Getting paid this way I get to make weird stuff that maybe only one person will like better than anything, because I NEVER have to hold back and alter things to fit in with what I think the market will bear!" And it's true… but there is also a market for people who want stuff off the beaten path. I never spend anything on advertising or marketing, and it costs me quite a lot in discoverability, but there is also a market for people who want someone that will not SELL to them in the normal sense, who seems to be out there just doing, and never comes knocking expecting to make 'a sale' or hyping their latest nonsense. It's not as big a market as the mainstream. But the mainstream simply does not serve everybody. The bottom line is, if you expect to sell stuff, the most enduring way to do that is to be yourself and then hope like hell there's a market for YOU… because you can fake it, but you can't really get away from who you are. But, if you're prepared to just go full tilt and be consistently who you are, the connections you build are not disposable and don't require trickery to maintain. When everybody got hit with coronavirus lockdown and were facing great financial risk and the loss of their livelihoods, I worked out an arrangement where I declared that I cut the price of everything more than half, and told all my people on patreon that they should cut back or cancel what they were giving. And I braced myself, certain that I could withstand it: I'd run the numbers and I'd be able to tough it out. And of course they all did the opposite and gave more, and I got upset and had to be told to allow people to be generous when they wanted to. Because I'd really meant it, it wasn't a 'bit'. And because that was who I really was… yeah. So I got the opposite of hurt, and had the opposite of being out of work. And now I'm trying not to overwork like a madman, knowing that people cared, but also that they wanted me to be well. If you can be yourself as hard as you can, and it's a self worth being, the idea of 'selling yourself' seems pretty ridiculous ;)
brlewis 6y ago
This Hamming quote is gold. I like the way it tells how to put "know your audience" into practice: ... ask why you read some articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is published ... as the readers are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.
WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
Einstein is the ultimate example of selling yourself. Yes, he was brilliant but brilliant is not enough. He was constantly open to interviews and made sure the media knew what he was doing. He was so successful that even after his death most of us know about him even if we don't really understand what he was famous for. BTW, he did not earn his Nobel Price for his work on relativity but for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. I bet if he was alive today, he would be all over social media -similar to Musk.
- onemoresoop 6y ago
  That implies some form of narcissism in the equation. Is this the trait one of the special sauces?
  - tiborsaas 6y ago
    No, I think I show forms of narcissism, but I'm nowhere near successful as I would imagine. It gives you the drive, but it doesn't give you a vehicle. What I've observed is that the special trait is being a "people's person", great conversationalist, communicator and likeable.
    - WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
      There are people that can turn all those qualities on and off. I worked with a manager that was extremely good at it in public and people could not get enough of her but in private she was plain nasty. She was hired to layoff staff that were not making the mark and bring in new talent. She was very good at it.
  - prawn 6y ago
    Can it be thought of as 'sharing'?
alexashka 6y ago
If you replace 'sell' with communicate and 'advertise' with inform, I think everybody's going to agree. Clear, concise communication is important in any human relationship - it doesn't matter what line of work you're in, unless you're living in isolation somewhere :) These mythical creatures who create incredible work but fail to communicate it - really? I wouldn't call Linus Torvalds a communication genius and yet when you create something other people want, word gets around and your software gets used. We could all use a reality check - most of these mythical undiscovered gems are doing above average work that wouldn't benefit that much from better communication, hence it doesn't happen. The cost of re-learning your communication patterns to better match others' expectations is high and yet the reward is often that others will find you a little less stand-offish.
GoodJokes 6y ago
There is a think called a non-hierarchical workplace that eliminates the toxic competition this stems from. It is not necessary.
teknopaul 6y ago
Dont sell yourself. Be honest. Be modest. Work hard for your own satisfaction. If you make a modest living doing something you enjoy, consider yourself lucky. Unless you want to be rich and famous. In which case, kiss arse and big yourself up all the time.
- cambalache 6y ago
  Yeah son, but doing it that way wont get you accepted in YCombinator with all the cool kids here. Dont tell me you dont want to be the next Lizzie Holmes.
  - teknopaul 6y ago
    I think there are a few grey beards lurking :)
Apaec 6y ago
One other thing is that if you don't sell your work, someone else might take it, rebrand it, and sell it for his own profit.
- viraj_shah 6y ago
  Sadly I agree. I've seen this a few times in Silicon Valley. You take an open source project from here, take another one from there, take some code from someone's Github, forget about the licenses (because who is going to figure it out?), and you put it all together overlaid with some nice graphics and you've got the start of a business/startup. Take that, show it to investors, and go raise a bunch of money.
  - bhargav 6y ago
    Does that really happen often in Silicon Valley? Any offenders that you know of or just a hunch?
    - lain_ 6y ago
      Don't think anyone would "turn someone in" in particular to answer you but it happens all the time. Commercial software businesses thrive on open source, and even of the successful ones only _very_ few concern themselves with giving back to the individuals whose work they used or the open-source world in any way. (edit) I'm not against it per se, but it's sad how it's only take, take, and take.
      - bhargav 6y ago
        Yeah I feel you, but think about it from the other perspective. We use PostgreSQL but may not have the expertise or budget (since man hours = cost) to contribute to the project. Open Source is and can only thrive by the amazing volunteers that contribute to them, it can never been an obligation; specially for appearances sake.
charleskinbote 6y ago
> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. Maybe this article should be called "I sell, therefore I am". The quote from the article, to me, sounds ridiculous. I don't lock myself in a room and do marvelous work for other people, so that they know it exists, or so that it will last longer than I do -- and I suspect many other creators feel similarly.
jonnypotty 6y ago
If you don't advertise your work there is no point in even having done it. Perfect way to sum up our pr/advertising world. Not the way I value things, or my own work. There is more value to things than people 'perception' imo.
hoseja 6y ago
>then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. The same is true if you expand your perspective into timescales just slightly larger than the usual human one.
liudoutang 6y ago
"... 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 ..." I like these words
xueyongg 6y ago
I totally agree with this article. Many developers or techies often stay silent about the good work they have done. Either to complete a task or to fix a bug, they just keep that 'achievement' to themselves! haha. I believe "Sales" is important too! Personally I've written a post about sales and tech as well. https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-as-a-sales-rep https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-... Hope to get readers' feedback on the post on how do you all think I can improve as well - be it the accuracy of content, depth of content, punctuations or grammar errors. Would appreciate your feedback with some examples! Looking forward! God bless (:

452 points by ColinWright 6y ago

I've seen this pushed before. Unfortunately, the more you focus on advertising the less you focus on technical knowledge. Let the two be separate, because the world has enough 'leaders'/'advertisers'. What it needs now is technical knowledge.

snazz 6y ago
Everyone who has the deep technical knowledge also needs to be able to communicate with others who don't have it. There's a difference between being an Internet personality who can code and being a programmer who can write English. Even if locking yourself in a room for months is a requirement to coming up with new science (which I highly doubt), solving problems for the intellectual gratification is useless on its own unless the new knowledge is shared. Writing is simply the highest-bandwidth medium for distributing technical knowledge to a wide group of people, so even the most in-the-trenches technical people need to be good at it.
- antonzabirko 6y ago
  It's really not as you say in practice. Semantically yes it never becomes released, but eventually excellent work spreads naturally. In the current internet setup it is hard to grow organically, but that's a result of this same mentality. It reinforces politics and showmanship, which is why those skills dictate the market and coincidentally the internet.
  - servercobra 6y ago
    But how does excellent work spread naturally? If I publish some truly wonderful language or package on GitHub, would anyone notice without me promoting it? Or if I find some surprising result from an experiment, write it up, put it on my blog that I don't promote, will anyone see it? And if so, how?
joshz404 6y ago
> Let the two be separate, because the world has enough 'leaders'/'advertisers'. What it needs now is technical knowledge. I think that without those with the technical knowledge leading in their own right, then other self-proclaimed leaders will do their best bet at understanding, and will often get critical parts wrong.
- antonzabirko 6y ago
  It's more likely that the technical crowd won't follow the leaders who get technical implementations wrong. Instead you will see natural leadership like in the early days of the internet.
ujki1 6y ago
> Unfortunately, the more you focus on advertising the less you focus on technical knowledge. If the law of diminishing returns applies, it's better to spend time on improving multiple skills or knowledge instead of focusing on just one. I don't think you need to be an expert in advertising for it to be useful to you.

rubatuga 6y ago

This is an unfortunate truth. People aren't waiting to cheer you on as soon as you release a work.

yamoriyamori 6y ago
Something about academia too, which doesn't really prepare us for the 'selling' part of life/coding. Every term/semester is nice and discrete, with a culminating project/exam, and then the next one is suddenly ... complete. The only required external attention was either the prof who did the grades (who's paid to view your work) or your parents who want to see your accomplishments.

mehrdada 6y ago

> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. That's a questionable premise and an entitled perspective from "the world" in my opinion. If one decides that they don't really give a fuck about the "impact" of the work on the world and doing it for its own sake, the "world" has no right to push them to release/advertise for their benefit. The premise also implies all entertainment is completely useless. Devil's advocate might argue it's quite the opposite: everything else in the world exists for you to focus on joy and entertainment and not be bothered with the bullshit the world brings on to you :)

warent 6y ago
You're mixing up terms and inferring "entertainment" when that's not what's being talked about. The operative word is "work" which is used in contrast to "play"
- mehrdada 6y ago
  Well, I see that as a false dichotomy, and an important one at that. The most marvelous work the world has seen is a product of love, not a desire to maximize money or exposure. If you were doing number theory in 1500s, you were not thinking of how I would apply it to make the world a better place with secure communications. You do it for its own sake. ffs, I'm writing this comment on a website titled "Hacker News" after all, which I hope implies some audience care about the spirit of "doing something for its own inherent pleasure".
  - zck 6y ago
    If you invented number theory in the 1500s, then burned your manuscripts, the world will be no different from if you wrote ten thousand pages saying only "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". If you are doing something entirely for your benefit, that's fine. But people generally want someone to see the things they make, even if those things are not intended to be a billion-dollar startup.

dvt 6y ago

> ... it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. "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. Took me very long to get this, and, if I'm being completely honest, I still struggle with it. Being smart and humble is a pretty terrible combination. I met so many brilliant people at UCLA and in my professional career that had this twinge of impostor syndrome. What ended up happening is their less-brilliant but much-louder colleagues always got the promotions and always got the funding.

paulpauper 6y ago
Sorta agree with this but look at the success of Facebook. Zuck didn't have to sell Facebook. He put the idea out there and it was an instant success. if you find yourself having to sell too hard, maybe your idea is not that good.
- dvt 6y ago
  Even if this were true, Facebook is an extreme (as in, 0.000001%) outlier. It's difficult to draw conclusions.
- antonzabirko 6y ago
  This is the truth. The way our market defines success doesn't mean that thats what success is. Sure, you can abuse it and sell your product even if it's bad, but look where that has taken the world.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Zuck didn't have to sell Facebook. I feel like that's only kind of true, and only at first.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  Didn't he have marketing partners who later sued him?
- tobyjsullivan 6y ago

paulpauper 6y ago

>Doing technically brilliant work may be enough for your personal gratification, but you should never think it's enough. If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known. no kidding. but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares,which is likely the most probable outcome. Look at all >But you still have to sell! You now have to sell your company's product or service, you now have to get known so that people will start to use your product or service, or people will constantly visit your website, which then attracts advertising. Whatever, you need to sell! A company lives and dies by what it sells. >Some people say that the sole purpose of a company is to make money. Others are more idealistic and say that it's to make the world better, or to make their employees' lives better, or some other goal. But without making money, everything else is moot. Some of the biggest acquisitions and valuations have been in companies that make little to no money or lose money.

open-source-ux 6y ago
"but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares, which is likely the most probable outcome." There's some truth to this. To take Hacker News as an example, there are many excellent projects posted in the 'Show HN' section that get no traction at all. And then there a few lucky ones that suddenly take-off. There's no "wisdom of the crowds" moment that propels one project to success over another because it's more worthy or excellent - it really is random in so many cases. We think success = product excellence: how else could a product rise to a leading position in the market or to such pre-eminence unless it was better than the alternatives? But the mountain of successful products that range from mediocre to terrible shows that product excellence isn't always the key ingredient to a product's success. Lest this all sounds too negative, I agree with the original article that documenting and pursuing your idea is absolutely worthwhile.
john_moscow 6y ago
>no kidding. but the other possibility is that you tell the world but no one cares,which is likely the most probable outcome. Well, there are 3 components to it: A) Find a relevant problem to solve. I.e. market research. B) Solve the problem. I.e. engineering. C) Convince your audience to try your solution. I.e. marketing/sales. A successful business requires all 3. >Some of the biggest acquisitions and valuations have been in companies that make little to no money or lose money. Because their actual product is the expectation of future profits, and their customers are the investors. Ethics aside, it's the same pipeline, really.

julianeon 6y ago

The missing piece here is: How do you sell it? How do people find out about your work? These days (especially in a quarantine world) that means SEO, writing to the search engine, and to an extent, social media. So while I don't love it, either, I'm increasingly learning to see sophisticated social media usage & SEO as part of my work.

collyw 6y ago
Any chance of going into more detail about what you see as sophisticated social media usage? A link would be good.
- julianeon 6y ago
  I'm still early in the learning process, and I wouldn't feel confident going beyond the most basic google search results, right now. But clearly, having an audience on Twitter, and possibly a good relationship with online publications or reporters who can help get your message out, where you can guest blog or become known as an expert, is good for business. And if there's some way that your work can become a product that translates into sales that can be reached through Instagram, Pinterest, etc., then it helps to know that too. Sounds weird, but I worked at a tooling startup that advertised on Instagram and apparently got good results from it.

blueridge 6y ago

This article doesn't resonate with me. We live our lives as if they were a business enterprise with a balance sheet, always selling, always advertising, always figuring out how to put our personality on display, always judging our human worth by our successes or failures, always weighing the benefits of everything we do. This is the root of many of our modern sociological problems. We attempt to "justify our existence" by our relationship with work. Part of exploring the life of the mind is keeping some ideas, maybe even your most fulfilling work, close to the chest. Life is not all about selling yourself.

guevara 6y ago
We're in a constant state of signalling. Think some book mentions that most of our actions are driven by our need to signal or convey something to parties. So, I'd argue we are always "selling" ourselves in one way or another, both unconsciously and consciously.
- randomthought0 6y ago
  This is so interesting that the two sides to this don’t seem to be able to engage very much. For me, too, the reflex is “Who cares? Why be so prescriptive and pushy about needing to sell (as if it’s humanity’s natural state)?” because that isn’t how I experience my life. But to others it seems to be just instinct.
WalterBright 6y ago
> Life is not all about selling yourself. Since we are social creatures, it pretty much is. Social mores and niceties, for example.
- mediaman 6y ago
  Yep. People may not want life to be about selling yourself, but that's the way it is. Anyone is free to reject it. And that person is likely to live their life without their work being recognized, their ideas being appreciated, or their ingenuity to find the hands of those whom it would benefit. I wonder how fulfilling that feels?

daenz 6y ago

There are very few channels to "sell" your work or yourself. We need more of those channels and more "connected" people willing to browse those channels and trampoline things that are interesting. Nobody cares about your work, they care about what other people care about. It's a chicken-and-egg problem. It can only be bootstrapped by some clever social hack, money, or with someone more connected putting in the work to help connect people. Someone who is producing high quality work 150% of the time cannot be expected to spend another 150% effort to required to rise above the cacophony of other people doing the same thing. That said, I have done some thinking on this subject, and I'm curious: would there be any interest in a QVC-for-software-demos livestream? It would be somewhere where anyone could go on, on a schedule, and show a demo of something they've made or like to use. It could be for paid software or for fun projects, and it would be live, warts and all. Does this sound interesting to anyone? EDIT>> If you're interested, as either a presenter or a viewer, add your name and email to this google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VX1H8wsW-Do2NflC3__y71lNkreq7Z_xzMA1YECZgF8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VX1H8wsW-Do2NflC3__y...

willcipriano 6y ago
I'd volunteer to present on the QVC-for-software-demos livestream if such a thing existed.
egfx 6y ago
I built something like this for Shopify. Than Facebook sorta copied my idea with this storefront news. Anyway, I think this niche is very small and your better going for lower hanging fruit then starting with a live stream for software products. There have been businesses like this that were great like criticue.com but surprisingly they went under due to lack of interest and adoption. I personally really liked the service. It was better then a livestream, it was a group of software reviewers giving you feedback.

grawprog 6y ago

>>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. Half of what I did as 'public engagement' was basically selling people the idea that they should take time and care about these animals we were researching and in fact money should be spent protecting them. Most of grant proposal writing is very much selling the idea of your study or project to the government or organization that's willing to give you money.

inetsee 6y ago

After reading this article I scrolled down the list of other blog posts by Colin Wright and I found one at the very bottom, from 2011, entitled "Withdrawing from Hacker News": https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.html https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/WithdrawingFromHackerNews.htm... There was a comment thread from that article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402730 I wonder if Colin has decided to re-join Hacker News, and if so, would he care to comment on the changes to Hacker News since 2011 that prompted him to change his mind.

ColinWright 6y ago
I went away for quite some time. In response to the HN discussion you quote, quite a lot of people got in touch, and as a result I ended up making a few quite good friends, and many more contacts. After a while I submitted a few things, and commented on a few things I was pointed at, but I didn't ever come back and read in the same way that I had been doing. And it remains thus. I submit things I think the community might be interested in, and I dip in occasionally. But my participation is not as it once was. During "lock down" I've been commenting about once a day, I look at the "Front Page" most days, and "newest" most days, but I don't comment much. Looking at the trends and what the community usually finds interesting, and especially looking at the responses to some of the comments I make, I don't feel that I have a lot to contribute.
- rhythmofrest 6y ago
  Hi Colin, you gave your juggling talk at my high school sometime before 2009. I already considered myself both a juggler and a programmer, but your talk inspired me on both counts, and taught me something about being cross-disciplinary in the things we enjoy and pursue. I've been a professional software dev for 8 years but I still think about your talk, your software, and your website. Thanks for encouraging young people like me.
  - ColinWright 6y ago
    Hi there ... That's a lovely comment ... thank you. Feel free to email me and we could perhaps arrange to meet and have a coffee sometime. Contact details in my profile. But equally, feel free to stay anonymous if you prefer!

WalterBright 6y ago

Ironically, everyone posting in this thread is trying to sell their opinion on it!

nogabebop23 6y ago

>> then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. This runs counter to a lot of great works. They were completed, known by and benefited first and foremost their creator. The fact that the rest of us know about them is just a nice side effect, not necessary.

aazaa 6y ago

> It seems crazy to require that technically talented people should be forced to spend time doing something - report writing - at which they're not gifted, but how else can the world benefit from their brilliance? Without communicating their ideas, their work is lost and might never have been. Peter Thiel has an interesting take on sales in his book Zero to One. He makes the case that good selling and good teaching are pretty much the same thing. The best teachers know how to sell the topic they teach. K-12 teachers in particular know in their bones how crucial a sales perspective is to getting an important message across. The best salespeople sell in a way that doesn't seem like selling. Thiel gives the example Steve Jobs. It almost seems strange to call what he did sales, but that's essentially what he did when he got on stage. Another example, is Elon Musk, who gets his message across without seeming very much like a salesperson. It's probably no coincidence that both figured out good ways to inspire their audiences. So if the word "sell" makes you want to run for the door, consider the more or less equivalent form: communicate. Or, maybe "educate." If you think salespeople are all liars, focus your "sales" efforts on conveying facts in the most compelling way possible - without lying. I find that from this perspective, the idea doesn't seem nearly as bad. It also presents a much more actionable path forward.

bistrodopler 6y ago
The element people are ignoring is money. You can communicate, teach, etc. without money coming into the picture. Sales is about money. You can claim you're "selling" an idea, but the implication is that you're still doing it for your own benefit or advantage. That doesn't mean it has to be a one-sided transaction. You may really believe that what you're doing is beneficial for the other party. But your own interest is an inextricable element of sales. If your own advantage isn't a factor, there are a hundred words with more relevant connotations to describe what you're doing.
mikekchar 6y ago
I've got to say that I don't agree at all with the teacher analogy. People get so caught up in thinking that teaching is about the subject that they are teaching. It's not. It's 100% about the student. If you are a teacher that is astounding at presenting the material, you will provide an incredibly enjoyable experience for the students who would have already have learned the material on their own. They others will similarly be entertained, but will struggle and just assume they are stupid because they have failed to learn from such an incredible teacher. However, I learned from a very good sales person that sales is all about understanding the other person and making sure that you present an interface that they can relate to. In that respect, I agree that teaching is just like that. You need to get into the mind of each student and understand how they think and what they are feeling. You need to be understanding and compassionate and to open the doors that they didn't know existed. Very, very good sales people do the same thing. I've come to the conclusion that sales, at its very best, is one of the most wholesome and wonderful jobs you can have. What is better than connecting people who need something to the thing they need? What is better than making them feel good about taking action to making their life better by fulfilling their needs? The problem is that most sales people aren't actually that good at sales. ;-)

MattGaiser 6y ago

It is accurate but disappointing. Just before university admissions, I learned to be a self-promotional person, so I am guilty of this. Firstly, you spend a ton of time doing that selling. It takes away from actually doing work. It is also just distasteful. I hate constantly fiddling with my bio. Second, you end up altering the work you are willing to do simply because some work is easier to sell than other work. I completely get why people do this as I do it as well, but what is all this costing society?

Applejinx 6y ago
Absolutely true, absolutely a valid criticism, but it's sort of a 'first level selling'. If you look into people who are REALLY good at what they do, things start to look real different and the value system you're concerned about goes out the window. Read some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff. That guy is stupidly good at selling, had much to do with introducing the Macintosh back in the day, but it is anything but a burden to him, and if he found he was grinding away selling junk because it was easier, he'd jump out the window. There is NO substitute for being able to try and convey your excitement about something you're REALLY good at and REALLY care about, and when you are able to bring that to bear, everything is different. I make my living on Patreon 'selling' open source audio stuff I make, and one of my PRIMARY arguments there is, 'this is amazing! Because it is completely liberating! Getting paid this way I get to make weird stuff that maybe only one person will like better than anything, because I NEVER have to hold back and alter things to fit in with what I think the market will bear!" And it's true… but there is also a market for people who want stuff off the beaten path. I never spend anything on advertising or marketing, and it costs me quite a lot in discoverability, but there is also a market for people who want someone that will not SELL to them in the normal sense, who seems to be out there just doing, and never comes knocking expecting to make 'a sale' or hyping their latest nonsense. It's not as big a market as the mainstream. But the mainstream simply does not serve everybody. The bottom line is, if you expect to sell stuff, the most enduring way to do that is to be yourself and then hope like hell there's a market for YOU… because you can fake it, but you can't really get away from who you are. But, if you're prepared to just go full tilt and be consistently who you are, the connections you build are not disposable and don't require trickery to maintain. When everybody got hit with coronavirus lockdown and were facing great financial risk and the loss of their livelihoods, I worked out an arrangement where I declared that I cut the price of everything more than half, and told all my people on patreon that they should cut back or cancel what they were giving. And I braced myself, certain that I could withstand it: I'd run the numbers and I'd be able to tough it out. And of course they all did the opposite and gave more, and I got upset and had to be told to allow people to be generous when they wanted to. Because I'd really meant it, it wasn't a 'bit'. And because that was who I really was… yeah. So I got the opposite of hurt, and had the opposite of being out of work. And now I'm trying not to overwork like a madman, knowing that people cared, but also that they wanted me to be well. If you can be yourself as hard as you can, and it's a self worth being, the idea of 'selling yourself' seems pretty ridiculous ;)

brlewis 6y ago

This Hamming quote is gold. I like the way it tells how to put "know your audience" into practice: ... ask why you read some articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is published ... as the readers are turning the pages they won't just turn your pages but they will stop and read yours. If they don't stop and read it, you won't get credit.

WheelsAtLarge 6y ago

Einstein is the ultimate example of selling yourself. Yes, he was brilliant but brilliant is not enough. He was constantly open to interviews and made sure the media knew what he was doing. He was so successful that even after his death most of us know about him even if we don't really understand what he was famous for. BTW, he did not earn his Nobel Price for his work on relativity but for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. I bet if he was alive today, he would be all over social media -similar to Musk.

onemoresoop 6y ago
That implies some form of narcissism in the equation. Is this the trait one of the special sauces?
- tiborsaas 6y ago
  No, I think I show forms of narcissism, but I'm nowhere near successful as I would imagine. It gives you the drive, but it doesn't give you a vehicle. What I've observed is that the special trait is being a "people's person", great conversationalist, communicator and likeable.
  - WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
    There are people that can turn all those qualities on and off. I worked with a manager that was extremely good at it in public and people could not get enough of her but in private she was plain nasty. She was hired to layoff staff that were not making the mark and bring in new talent. She was very good at it.
- prawn 6y ago
  Can it be thought of as 'sharing'?

alexashka 6y ago

If you replace 'sell' with communicate and 'advertise' with inform, I think everybody's going to agree. Clear, concise communication is important in any human relationship - it doesn't matter what line of work you're in, unless you're living in isolation somewhere :) These mythical creatures who create incredible work but fail to communicate it - really? I wouldn't call Linus Torvalds a communication genius and yet when you create something other people want, word gets around and your software gets used. We could all use a reality check - most of these mythical undiscovered gems are doing above average work that wouldn't benefit that much from better communication, hence it doesn't happen. The cost of re-learning your communication patterns to better match others' expectations is high and yet the reward is often that others will find you a little less stand-offish.

GoodJokes 6y ago

There is a think called a non-hierarchical workplace that eliminates the toxic competition this stems from. It is not necessary.

teknopaul 6y ago

Dont sell yourself. Be honest. Be modest. Work hard for your own satisfaction. If you make a modest living doing something you enjoy, consider yourself lucky. Unless you want to be rich and famous. In which case, kiss arse and big yourself up all the time.

cambalache 6y ago
Yeah son, but doing it that way wont get you accepted in YCombinator with all the cool kids here. Dont tell me you dont want to be the next Lizzie Holmes.
- teknopaul 6y ago
  I think there are a few grey beards lurking :)

Apaec 6y ago

One other thing is that if you don't sell your work, someone else might take it, rebrand it, and sell it for his own profit.

viraj_shah 6y ago
Sadly I agree. I've seen this a few times in Silicon Valley. You take an open source project from here, take another one from there, take some code from someone's Github, forget about the licenses (because who is going to figure it out?), and you put it all together overlaid with some nice graphics and you've got the start of a business/startup. Take that, show it to investors, and go raise a bunch of money.
- bhargav 6y ago
  Does that really happen often in Silicon Valley? Any offenders that you know of or just a hunch?
  - lain_ 6y ago
    Don't think anyone would "turn someone in" in particular to answer you but it happens all the time. Commercial software businesses thrive on open source, and even of the successful ones only _very_ few concern themselves with giving back to the individuals whose work they used or the open-source world in any way. (edit) I'm not against it per se, but it's sad how it's only take, take, and take.
    - bhargav 6y ago
      Yeah I feel you, but think about it from the other perspective. We use PostgreSQL but may not have the expertise or budget (since man hours = cost) to contribute to the project. Open Source is and can only thrive by the amazing volunteers that contribute to them, it can never been an obligation; specially for appearances sake.

charleskinbote 6y ago

> If you lock yourself in a room and do the most marvellous work but don't tell anyone, then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. Maybe this article should be called "I sell, therefore I am". The quote from the article, to me, sounds ridiculous. I don't lock myself in a room and do marvelous work for other people, so that they know it exists, or so that it will last longer than I do -- and I suspect many other creators feel similarly.

jonnypotty 6y ago

If you don't advertise your work there is no point in even having done it. Perfect way to sum up our pr/advertising world. Not the way I value things, or my own work. There is more value to things than people 'perception' imo.

hoseja 6y ago

>then no one will know, no one will benefit, and the work will be lost. You may as well not have bothered. The same is true if you expand your perspective into timescales just slightly larger than the usual human one.

liudoutang 6y ago

"... 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 ..." I like these words

xueyongg 6y ago

I totally agree with this article. Many developers or techies often stay silent about the good work they have done. Either to complete a task or to fix a bug, they just keep that 'achievement' to themselves! haha. I believe "Sales" is important too! Personally I've written a post about sales and tech as well. https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-as-a-sales-rep https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-... Hope to get readers' feedback on the post on how do you all think I can improve as well - be it the accuracy of content, depth of content, punctuations or grammar errors. Would appreciate your feedback with some examples! Looking forward! God bless (: