> I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. `Selling' to a scientist is an awkward thing

> I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; 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. 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.'' I suggest that when you open a journal, as you turn the pages, you ask why you read some articles and not others. You had better write your report so when it is published in the Physical Review, or wherever else you want it, 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. > There are three things you have to do in selling. You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks. We had a lot of so-called `back room scientists.' In a conference, they would keep quiet. Three weeks later after a decision was made they filed a report saying why you should do so and so. Well, it was too late. They would not stand up right in the middle of a hot conference, in the middle of activity, and say, ``We should do this for these reasons.'' You need to master that form of communication as well as prepared speeches. I ran across this speech about 5 years into my software development career. These two paragraphs were a MAJOR game changer. Until then I could not believe that more than a minimum of soft skills were necessary being a developer and that my code would speak for itself. After reading Hamming's words I started putting much more effort into things like presentations and status emails. The results were not immediate and I am not exactly "next VP" but I am definitely in a stable and comfortable position in my current company. More importantly I am not frustrated when I write some cool-new-tool and nobody takes an interest. It almost certainly means there's nothing wrong with cool-new-tool and I need to better communicate what it is and why its useful. (Related: Hammings point about working on an important problem...your cool-new-tool may not actually be solving anything important).