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I felt similarly, earlier in my career. Until a manager explained it this way: "Suppose you make the greatest thing in the world, but nobody knows about it. W

I felt similarly, earlier in my career. Until a manager explained it this way: "Suppose you make the greatest thing in the world, but nobody knows about it. Wouldn't it be better to have spent 95% of the effort on making a slightly inferior product, and 5% to actually get people to use it? Isn't it more impactful to make something people use? Well, in order to get people to use anything, you have to talk about it."

giantg2 6y ago
Thats a cop out by a lazy or self-centered manager. The difference is that it's the manager's job to evaluate you vs marketing a product to an unknown buyer. A good manager would actively work with their employees to know what is going on. Most managers I've seen care about their own performance and hitting target metrica. If you're not good a marketing a product, you should still spend 100% of your effort on making it great, and hire a marketing person to do the other part.
- Uhhrrr 6y ago
  It depends. Over time, I've seen a lot of cases where other teams were duplicating effort, or product owners or project managers were making bad guesses about what was difficult, or impossible, or already done - and the reason was that they either didn't know what was being worked on or didn't understand the impact. When your head is down in an interesting, thorny problem, it is easy to forget how those other folks are affected by your work, and it's easy to lose appreciation for the fact that their head is filled with a completely different information set. So it can be very useful to spend 5% of your time on this. Or heck, just try 2.5% - one hour out of a standard work week. Personal anecdote: I wrote up a little thing about why customers would pick one video encoder over another, and marketing just did backflips and started asking my manager if I could write more things.
- mynameisvlad 6y ago
  This only works for external products. People make internal tools all the time that can be used by many teams. You're not going to get a marketing person to market the tool internally, that's wasted money. At that point, it's really your and your manager's (and so forth) responsibility to ensure your product or tool is in the right hands and helps people. My manager was great at taking on some of the burdens and shielding me from above, while still giving me the flexibility and incentive to work with other teams and people to make sure I was the one everyone recognized for the work done, as opposed to the team or him.
- fbanon9876 6y ago
  I think you jumped to assume that it's an external product. You have no idea whether the person in question is lazy or self-centered. The person who taught me this was neither. In either case, at some point you have to convince someone else that it's worth investing their time. External, this can be dollars (although is that really the best way?). Internally (and optimally), you still need to self-market your product to marketers. Either way, it's better to spend at least a little time doing marketing. Boiled down from all the hype and jargon, marketing is highlighting the benefits to another person. If an IC is working on a project where they don't know the benefits, there is a larger issue.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > If you're not good a marketing a product, you should still spend 100% of your effort on making it great, and hire a marketing person to do the other part You can't hire a marketing person for yourself. Marketing yourself and your work is important because things don't magically get discovered or recognized.
- darkerside 6y ago
  This strategy is contrary to everything I know about how great teams work. Great teams are allergic to "not my problem" thinking, and teammates have empathy for each other's roles, meaning they learn about what makes each other tick. Focusing on your own silo and blaming others for the team's failure results in dysfunction, not success. Instead, take ownership of your job and (shared) ownership of the other jobs that interact with it.

giantg2 6y ago

Thats a cop out by a lazy or self-centered manager. The difference is that it's the manager's job to evaluate you vs marketing a product to an unknown buyer. A good manager would actively work with their employees to know what is going on. Most managers I've seen care about their own performance and hitting target metrica. If you're not good a marketing a product, you should still spend 100% of your effort on making it great, and hire a marketing person to do the other part.

Uhhrrr 6y ago
It depends. Over time, I've seen a lot of cases where other teams were duplicating effort, or product owners or project managers were making bad guesses about what was difficult, or impossible, or already done - and the reason was that they either didn't know what was being worked on or didn't understand the impact. When your head is down in an interesting, thorny problem, it is easy to forget how those other folks are affected by your work, and it's easy to lose appreciation for the fact that their head is filled with a completely different information set. So it can be very useful to spend 5% of your time on this. Or heck, just try 2.5% - one hour out of a standard work week. Personal anecdote: I wrote up a little thing about why customers would pick one video encoder over another, and marketing just did backflips and started asking my manager if I could write more things.
mynameisvlad 6y ago
This only works for external products. People make internal tools all the time that can be used by many teams. You're not going to get a marketing person to market the tool internally, that's wasted money. At that point, it's really your and your manager's (and so forth) responsibility to ensure your product or tool is in the right hands and helps people. My manager was great at taking on some of the burdens and shielding me from above, while still giving me the flexibility and incentive to work with other teams and people to make sure I was the one everyone recognized for the work done, as opposed to the team or him.
fbanon9876 6y ago
I think you jumped to assume that it's an external product. You have no idea whether the person in question is lazy or self-centered. The person who taught me this was neither. In either case, at some point you have to convince someone else that it's worth investing their time. External, this can be dollars (although is that really the best way?). Internally (and optimally), you still need to self-market your product to marketers. Either way, it's better to spend at least a little time doing marketing. Boiled down from all the hype and jargon, marketing is highlighting the benefits to another person. If an IC is working on a project where they don't know the benefits, there is a larger issue.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> If you're not good a marketing a product, you should still spend 100% of your effort on making it great, and hire a marketing person to do the other part You can't hire a marketing person for yourself. Marketing yourself and your work is important because things don't magically get discovered or recognized.
darkerside 6y ago
This strategy is contrary to everything I know about how great teams work. Great teams are allergic to "not my problem" thinking, and teammates have empathy for each other's roles, meaning they learn about what makes each other tick. Focusing on your own silo and blaming others for the team's failure results in dysfunction, not success. Instead, take ownership of your job and (shared) ownership of the other jobs that interact with it.