[HN Gopher] Sell Yourself, Sell Your Work
___________________________________________________________________
Sell Yourself, Sell Your Work
Author : ColinWright
Score : 180 points
Date : 2020-05-20 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.solipsys.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.solipsys.co.uk)
| daenz wrote:
| 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__y...
| egfx wrote:
| 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.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd volunteer to present on the QVC-for-software-demos
| livestream if such a thing existed.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| 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.
| julianeon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Any chance of going into more detail about what you see as
| sophisticated social media usage? A link would be good.
| julianeon wrote:
| 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.
| grawprog wrote:
| >>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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| 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?
| inetsee wrote:
| 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.htm...
|
| There was a comment thread from that article here:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| 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.
| ujki1 wrote:
| > 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.
| snazz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| brlewis wrote:
| 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.
| blueridge wrote:
| 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_.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I think you're conflating two things.
|
| You shouldn't need to sell yourself to find joy, contentment,
| fulfillment; those who try are doomed to be miserable.
|
| But, selling yourself is still important; even if your sense of
| self-worth and etc isn't tied into recognition, it is still
| something humans crave, and it has societal value. If you are
| doing anything of value to others, the only way it can achieve
| that value is by letting those who would value it know it
| exists. That's called "selling". Without it, what you've done
| has no value outside of yourself.
|
| That's not to say (to your point) that something done just for
| yourself is without some sort of objective value, but it
| certainly has no value to society (by definition), and we are
| social creatures; we all have a desire to have at least some of
| our work be valued by others.
| bdefore wrote:
| I felt a similar reaction to the tone of the article. Twice
| the author said 'You may as well not have bothered' if no one
| recognized the value of your output. And your response also
| frames it as 'What you've done has no value outside of
| yourself'.
|
| I think what the post you're replying to is getting at is
| that by framing things this way we overvalue things which
| others approve of, and undervalue things we enjoy doing for
| the sake of doing.
| dfabulich wrote:
| Work isn't the purpose of life, but if you do work for other
| people (and most of us do) then you need to show those people
| what you accomplished.
|
| Showing people that you care about them (and their interests)
| might be a/the purpose of life, and this is one example of
| that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Life is not all about selling yourself.
|
| Since we are social creatures, it pretty much is. Social mores
| and niceties, for example.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| That's not selling. It's odd that the only coordination you
| seem to recognise is negotiated between buyers and sellers.
| mediaman wrote:
| 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?
| WalterBright wrote:
| No friends and no spouse, either.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| I have friends and i have a spouse, i never sold myself
| to them and they never sold themselves to me. Quite
| frankly the idea of it is disgusting.
| watwut wrote:
| That works for short term relationships. Long term ones work
| differently.
| guevara wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Ironically, everyone posting in this thread is trying to sell
| their opinion on it!
| nogabebop23 wrote:
| >> 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.
| mehrdada wrote:
| > _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 :)
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Also, Kafka, Vivian Dorothy Maier and many others did
| essentially that and were posthumously discovered, so you never
| know.
|
| You shouldn't count on it, of course, if recognition is
| important to you.
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| The thing I find about this quote is, barring the existence of
| a deity or secular equivalent, all work is, in the end, lost,
| everything comes down to nothing as the universe is overcome by
| entropy and heat death or the big crunch. As the song goes: It
| all returns to nothing, it all comes tumbling down. Which, of
| course, leads right back to the foundational existential
| question: free of the perceived delusion of eternity, why do
| anything? Or why not do everything? Or why, just, why?
| pasquinelli wrote:
| Gotta do something
| pdimitar wrote:
| IMO only most of the things come to nothing.
|
| A good way to deal with existential crises in my life has
| been to ask myself this question:
|
| "If somebody were to objectively reduce my life to several
| deeds only and say that those were my most important actions,
| which ones would they be?"
|
| This question also helps me put my energy expenditures in
| perspective. Is what I'm doing really important to me?
|
| So yes, probably 99% of what we'll ever do will amount to
| nothing. Makes it all the more crucial to focus on that
| important 1%.
| warent wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mehrdada wrote:
| I see your point, but I think the framing is important:
| yes, you generally want to benefit from _some of the
| things_ you do, and most of your work is generally not
| your _marvelous work_. I indeed believe the best work is
| done when you are not constantly looking over your
| shoulder thinking about how to sell.
|
| The paradoxical thing about this typical simplistic
| Western-society benefit maximization framework is if you
| actually think about it in principle, to maximize
| benefits, you are usually better off minimizing doing the
| real work altogether (almost to a halt), and singularly
| focus on the selling whatever shit you get your hands on
| and focus on coordination and leveraging other people's
| work to capture the value, which empirically works, but
| is somehow crass to rewrite the article and just say so.
| You certainly won't hit HN first page that way.
| zck wrote:
| I think you're going down a slippery slope. You say:
|
| > I indeed believe the best work is done when you are not
| constantly looking over your shoulder thinking about how
| to sell.
|
| I, too, believe this. But let's look at what Hamming
| counts as "selling", as quoted in the sidebar to the
| article:
|
| > 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.
|
| "Selling", to Hamming, includes being able to tell people
| about what you are making. Not necessarily "pay me
| $999/month for my SAS I created in a weekend", but even
| "here is how to understand my mathematical proof". It
| counts everything needed to communicate to others. That
| can be communicate why a thing you made is worth paying
| for, certainly. But it also includes knowing how to get
| your painting framed properly, so it is in a context for
| people to enjoy your art.
|
| I would get far more enjoyment out of almost anything I
| make if someone else also enjoyed it, rather than my
| creation being hidden in my apartment. And so it is
| useful to me to publicize it, to put it into the world
| for people to see, to even just be able to explain what
| it is. It is not all about the almighty dollar.
| mehrdada wrote:
| > I think you're going down a slippery slope... > let's
| look at what Hamming counts as "selling"
|
| Ironically, above is a textbook example of "slippery
| slope"; redefining selling to include any communication
| about the work. (Besides, the context Hamming seems to be
| targeting is academic/semi-academic formal research,
| which is different from purely artistic/solo efforts;
| it's another form of business with a somewhat different
| currency). One might enjoy multiplayer games more than
| single-player; is that "selling" too?
|
| Look, I am not arguing at all with the statement that if
| "impact on the world" in the external sense is your North
| Star, you have to "sell" in the broad sense of the word.
| I also am not arguing that there is pleasure in that act
| for _some people_ (I, too, in fact enjoy it, sometimes
| more than the contribution, but that 's just me). In
| fact, I stretch the argument even further that capturing
| value of the work is more in the sales aspect of it than
| the "real" contribution, as you can empirically see in
| the world.
|
| What I vehemently disagree with is the default and
| universal framing, that everyone's goal is, or ought to
| be, external projection of the work--and that otherwise
| the work is "valueless". I also disagree with the
| universal perception that all people would equally gain
| more satisfaction by the "impact" than the inherent
| pleasure associated with the work.
|
| Without that mindset, extremely long term investments and
| contributions will never be made. Okay, maybe you'll
| redefine "selling" to explaining your vision to people
| living 500 years from now, but I don't. And I doubt that
| is the intent of the article. I read it as much more
| pedestrian: "if you want to get promoted, gotta sell your
| work to your bosses."
| notahacker wrote:
| There are diminishing returns to selling whatever shit
| you can get your hands on, especially if you're actually
| good at solving problems.
|
| Conversely, your most marvellous work probably becomes
| marvellous round about the point it moves from the realm
| of being perfect inside your own head to actually helping
| someone else. Whether that happens by means of a full-
| throttle sales approach and a patent so you can extract
| every last dollar out of it or is gifted to a world not
| yet fully ready to appreciate it, it's a lot more
| marvellous if you've put the effort into sharing it, even
| if that bit sounds like work.
| aazaa wrote:
| > 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > ... 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.
| timClicks wrote:
| I took the humble approach to promoting Rust in Action for most
| of its development. It felt awkward as a writer to also be a
| marketer. But that meant many days with 0 sales. Now I'm more
| active, I regularly hit 10 sales per day and I haven't had a no
| sales day in 2020.
| symplee wrote:
| Any ideas as to a better _system_ that can be designed and
| implemented under which these brilliant, but quiet, people have
| a higher probability of getting funding, becoming recognized
| and having an overall greater impact?
| Goronmon wrote:
| _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._
|
| How do you know whether you are part of the "brilliant" versus
| "less brilliant" groups you've mentioned here?
| enriquto wrote:
| > How do you know whether you are part of the "brilliant"
| versus "less brilliant" groups you've mentioned here?
|
| If you spend more than 10% of your time dealing with emails
| instead of doing science, then you are probably on the "less"
| side.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I struggle with how much of life is shallow seduction. I cannot
| deny reality but I still hate it.
|
| I don't want to sell, I want honest look. It makes me happy and
| motivated to do better. I should go into boxing at least
| there's some truth in survival.
| paulpauper wrote:
| 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.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Is this really true? Like at all? Is it likely that he built
| Facebook v1 and registered thefacebook.com and sat back
| waiting for organic traffic?
|
| I mean, my entire knowledge of the launch of Facebook comes
| from watching The Social Network so take it with a grain of
| salt. But wasn't he a prolific LiveJournaler (writing about
| his projects amongst everything else)? I'd think that fits
| this article rather exactly.
| flir wrote:
| Nah, the magic sauce (IMO) was the progressive roll-out.
| When only .edu addresses were allowed in, it was exclusive
| and regular joes were desperate to get in. Google
| successfully pulled the same stunt with gmail, but failed
| dismally with google plus.
| dvt wrote:
| Even if this were true, Facebook is an extreme (as in,
| 0.000001%) outlier. It's difficult to draw conclusions.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| 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.
| brlewis wrote:
| Zuck was talking to Harvard's newspaper about Facebook
| shortly after he started coding it, and as soon as it was
| finished he sent it to a 300-member email list:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook#Facebook
|
| I have a side project where you rate statements 1-5 for their
| truthfulness. "Zuck didn't have to sell Facebook" makes me
| feel like I need to add even lower numbers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is extremely false; lots of people had similar ideas at
| the same time. They all had to be sold to their audiences,
| and their investors. Zuckerberg had an advantage in starting
| from a very prestigious university.
|
| He wasn't even the first person to come up with the idea at
| Harvard. Heck, there were two similar projects at Cambridge
| when I was graduating in 2000. And a dating site.
| kgin wrote:
| I guess the larger point is: he didn't spend much time
| telling people how great facebook was. He created something
| with utility and rolled it out in a way that would provide
| maximum utility to each additional person signing up.
| (Replicating existing networks in order of diminishing
| prestige)
| nerdponx wrote:
| _Zuck didn 't have to sell Facebook._
|
| I feel like that's only kind of true, and only at first.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Didn't he have marketing partners who later sued him?
| atoav wrote:
| Most people have a fixed image of what _selling yourself_ looks
| like: overly confident suit wearing people with nothing behind
| it yelling empty slogans at evetybody and their mother
| unsolicited just to see what sticks etc.
|
| That is false. You can very easily sell yourself without ever
| lying or overstating anything. If all you have is a small CLI
| tool on github, selling yourself could be as simple as posting
| the link to the right people. Selling yourself could mean going
| to some event and talk to likeminded people, it could mean
| explaining some person what you are doing etc.
|
| It is not about overly praising your own stuff -- it is about
| not underpraising it.
| groby_b wrote:
| It helps to reframe the issue. "Selling" yourself is
| distasteful for many, because it smacks not only of loudness &
| brashness, but of straight up lying.
|
| Look at this instead as a problem of knowledge distribution. In
| the extreme case, you do absolutely brilliant work, but tell
| nobody - how would people in charge of promotions/funding
| _know_ you did that work?
|
| That's the first step. You need to let people know your work
| exists, otherwise they really can't reward/recognize it. (Or
| really, in the extreme, you need to let them know _you_ exist
| as the very first precondition).
|
| The next step is the fact that you are the person who has
| likely spent by far the most time on the problem. You
| intuitively understand why this is an incredibly important
| problem, and why the solution is really, really good. I
| guarantee you that the people around you don't. How would they?
| They've spent much less time on it than you have.
|
| And so part 2 becomes educating others on the problem and on
| the solution.
|
| So, no, you don't "sell" yourself. You publicize and educate.
| It's still incredibly hard, but it captures the core of what's
| actually necessary much better. There's no need to be loud &
| brash, to paint everything in the brightest possible colors,
| but there's a need to communicate.
|
| If Einstein hadn't written a paper on special relativity, he
| would (obviously) not have been recognized for it. And if he
| hand't communicated his insights very clearly and crisply, he
| wouldn't have been recognized, either - several people before
| him spelled out some of the insights, but in a much less clear
| manner.
|
| So, don't "sell", just let people clearly know what you do,and
| why you do it. Looking at it from that angle has helped me
| tremendously getting over the "selling is gauche" issue.
| tomek_zemla wrote:
| Austin Kleon wrote a great book "Show Your Work!" discussing
| this approach of sharing, communicating and exchanging
| creative ideas. He frames the problem in a similar fashion
| and brings all kinds of nuanced aspects of the issue into the
| discussion.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| THIS.
|
| Wish I had more upvotes to give.
| timClicks wrote:
| The other part of the framing problem is pushing through your
| internal critic. Impostor syndrome is very real and very
| difficult to overcome.
|
| We're exposed to brilliance from others all around us, but we
| only see our own repeated failures. But that's a very biased
| sample. Others also stumble. But those stumbles are
| invisible. Likewise, your own past success is likely to be
| drowned out by the noise.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| > It helps to reframe the issue. "Selling" yourself is
| distasteful for many, because it smacks not only of loudness
| & brashness, but of straight up lying.
|
| But a lot of people who get the promotions and funding are
| straight up lying. Selling yourself is distasteful because
| you can't compete with the dishonest, you don't want to play
| that game.
| inopinatus wrote:
| Counterpoint: smart, interested, thoughtful people want to
| hear your ideas. Judging their judgment in advance,
| assuming they'll all be swayed by brashness and
| unsupportable claims, is really to discount _their_
| intelligence. A failure to reach them, to inform your
| peers, to share and collaborate on ideas due to misplaced
| humility, to expect someone to entirely bear the
| responsibility of seeking us out, is almost equally
| arrogant as the brash salesman.
|
| You can compete with the dishonest. Just because many liars
| are sellers, doesn't mean all marketing is lying.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I rarely see lying, but you can get pretty much the same
| result with selective word choice and hand waving.
|
| Going from 500 words to 30 means a loss of resolution. Just
| make more of the words positive and you can greatly
| mislead.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| Greatly misleading or lying by omission isn't much better
| than lying directly.
| steve76 wrote:
| > But the word "sell" doesn't necessarily mean what you think
| it means.
|
| > ask why you read some articles and not others.
|
| Walk up to someone, hold out your hand like you are about to
| give them something, and then just go limp. Wait forever if
| you have to until they take it. I bet that's really how they
| got Socrates to drink the hemlock. This works everywhere
| every time. Put a pen in someone's hand, have the contract on
| a clipboard, and just start moving their hand for a
| signature.
|
| Instead of running an ad like "Click here!", run an ad that
| says your are scheduled for an appointment tomorrow morning
| and we're coming over.
| bg24 wrote:
| Thank you all, in this thread. It is a difficult skill, but a
| necessity as well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > "Selling" yourself is distasteful for many, because it
| smacks not only of loudness & brashness, but of straight up
| lying.
|
| Selling is often conflated with trying to trick people into
| doing something they don't want to do. This is ultimately
| counterproductive. Selling is helping others get what they
| want, and in return you get what you want.
| WJW wrote:
| Some types of selling are like that, but it would be
| incorrect to say that all types of selling are like that or
| that some salesmen don't consistently rely on straight up
| lying. Some bad apples spoil the basket.
| watwut wrote:
| Most of sales are like that. The very very small minority
| is about actually helping people. Then, a lot of people
| are about manipulating and stretching truth just slightly
| beyond breaking point. The rest straight lies.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Think about the businesses you repeatedly buy from. Are
| they cheating you?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > it would be incorrect to say that all types of selling
| are like that
|
| I didn't say that.
|
| I did say it was counterproductive. Making a career out
| of selling means you're going to need repeat customers,
| and customers don't return when they realize they were
| hoodwinked.
|
| People who sell me what I want make a lot of money off of
| me because I keep coming back for more.
| rubatuga wrote:
| This is an unfortunate truth. People aren't waiting to cheer you
| on as soon as you release a work.
| yamoriyamori wrote:
| 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.
| alexashka wrote:
| 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.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| _" 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 wrote:
| >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.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Some of the biggest acquisitions and valuations have been in
| companies that make little to no money or lose money.
|
| They've also been exceptionally good at raising money by
| selling their potential to generate revenue (or threaten the
| revenue stream of potential acquirers) even when they're
| unprofitable or even generating any non-trivial revenue stream.
|
| The businesses that get acquired purely for quietly generating
| useful IP don't figure in the biggest acquisitions or
| valuations, and without exception could [have] do[ne] better if
| and when they communicate[d] that value effectively.
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