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I don't particularly love the branding of growth hacker but let's take it as given that it usefully describes a set of skills. Practical experience outweighs "

by patio11 13y ago

I don't particularly love the branding of growth hacker but let's take it as given that it usefully describes a set of skills. Practical experience outweighs "credentials" by literally infinity. Portfolio pieces are extremely helpful. People who are incapable of doing any useful work abound in this and related fields, and employers suck at hiring, so case studies and testimonials are virtually the only sorting mechanisms with any value. A bright engineer can learn to be dangerous with marketing in between 2 weeks and 6 months depending on the engineer and circumstances. (Some of the overlap of those two fields is commonly called growth hacking, but that isn't coextensive with the field. I am, personally, skeptical of the value-add of growth hackers who cannot, in fact, ship software when required to. My skepticism is not shared by at least some influential people who write about growth hacking frequently.) If you can reproducibly print money on command with your skills, be they marketing/engineering or growth hacking, you should probably never work for free (working for "just shares" is working for free) and will probably find your specialty in absolutely stratospheric demand at the moment. Chargeout rates in the 5 figures per week are totally reasonable in the current environment.

biznerd 13y ago
I'm not an engineer/programmer. Is that okay?
- patio11 13y ago
  That's not an impediment if you can actually generate results. Candidly, it has not been my experience that many non-programmer growth hackers actually produce meaningful results.
mhoad 13y ago
I will largely back all of this. There is a fairly substantial world of difference between those who are excellent at marketing and those who are excellent at engineering and in my experience the two don't overlap currently anywhere near as much as they should. I have experience doing online marketing for a fairly substantial portfolio for large multi-nationals with budgets that would make your head spin. However, after coming across guys like Patrick here a while back I noticed a huge hole in what I was doing that was already starting to nag at me and that was a constant dependency on getting my clients developers onside (which is not an easy task for 20 different reasons). So I started to spend some time learning to code and am currently in the middle of building my first SaaS application of which I plan on providing a lot of very detailed behind the scenes marketing info out about it to help show others that it really isn't as hard or as magical as it is many times made out to be.
mc_hammer 13y ago
Practical experience outweights credientials by literally infinity, but if your goal is to get hired ( his step 4 ) credentials is more important than skill. Source: I'm a senior dev who's worked ~15 jobs and this was my experience. I will agree that a case study and/or metrics/numbers might outweigh credentials. My current theory is employer name recognition>culture fit>skill>credientials in the interview process. Maybe an unrelated topic, sorry If I'm off topic. tl;dr: thanks for the idea of using a case study in an interview... /me steals the idea

by patio11 13y ago

biznerd 13y ago

I'm not an engineer/programmer. Is that okay?

patio11 13y ago
That's not an impediment if you can actually generate results. Candidly, it has not been my experience that many non-programmer growth hackers actually produce meaningful results.

mhoad 13y ago

I will largely back all of this. There is a fairly substantial world of difference between those who are excellent at marketing and those who are excellent at engineering and in my experience the two don't overlap currently anywhere near as much as they should. I have experience doing online marketing for a fairly substantial portfolio for large multi-nationals with budgets that would make your head spin. However, after coming across guys like Patrick here a while back I noticed a huge hole in what I was doing that was already starting to nag at me and that was a constant dependency on getting my clients developers onside (which is not an easy task for 20 different reasons). So I started to spend some time learning to code and am currently in the middle of building my first SaaS application of which I plan on providing a lot of very detailed behind the scenes marketing info out about it to help show others that it really isn't as hard or as magical as it is many times made out to be.

mc_hammer 13y ago

Practical experience outweights credientials by literally infinity, but if your goal is to get hired ( his step 4 ) credentials is more important than skill. Source: I'm a senior dev who's worked ~15 jobs and this was my experience. I will agree that a case study and/or metrics/numbers might outweigh credentials. My current theory is employer name recognition>culture fit>skill>credientials in the interview process. Maybe an unrelated topic, sorry If I'm off topic. tl;dr: thanks for the idea of using a case study in an interview... /me steals the idea