[HN Gopher] Publishing your work increases your luck
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Publishing your work increases your luck
Author : aarondf
Score : 139 points
Date : 2022-07-12 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| angarg12 wrote:
| I love the concept of luck surface, and I believe it's a great
| mental model. However
|
| > FOR EVERY SNARKY COMMENT, THERE ARE 10X AS MANY PEOPLE ADMIRING
| YOUR WORK.
|
| This is the opposite of my modest experience. Negativity has
| outweighed positivity in most of my online interactions. For
| every encouraging or promising interaction you have, you'll
| receive more nasty ones that will sap the motivation out of you.
|
| I think it's still worth it, but not for the faint of hearth.
| Putting up with online toxicity to find those diamonds requires a
| thick skin and mental fortitude I haven't achieved quite yet. Or
| maybe it gets easier down the line.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Most admiration is silent, whereas criticism is loud.
|
| When people see something disagreeable online, they tend to
| interact (leave snarky comments).
|
| When people see something neat? They go "neat" to themselves,
| and often _don 't_ comment.
|
| Hence the somewhat common engagement hack where people post
| semi controversial takes to generate engagement.
| viraptor wrote:
| I don't think that line disagrees with your experience. It's
| not saying you'll get 10x admiration comments. Just that there
| are 10x admiring people.
|
| It's a bit like HN comments, the discussion happens when
| someone disagrees, or adds more context. But if you like
| something you should just upvote instead of posting a trivial
| comment. Even the rules say so.
|
| I guess if you publish something where you can see the traffic
| stats, it may be easier to see. So you get 5 comments how your
| content is dumb - check traffic stats - ah, it's 5 out of
| 500,000 visitors.
| angarg12 wrote:
| That's a good point. I guess most readers are like dark
| matter. It's a pity the minority who does interact tend to
| give a (presumably) biased perception.
| aarondf wrote:
| Yeah, exactly this. I could've been more clear on that note,
| but I've often had conversations with people that have
| _never_ interacted with me on Twitter and they 'll say "oh I
| really love that [thing] you did" and I'm just like... you
| did? I didn't know that!
| NeoLudditeKlutz wrote:
| WalterBright wrote:
| Of course. Luck will never find you if you stay at home doing
| nothing.
|
| The individual events in one's life are luck, but the overall
| arch of positioning yourself where luck can find you is a choice
| one makes.
| ge96 wrote:
| Legacy too, something I think about. Granted code hosted on a
| server probably has less lifespan than a book.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I dislike the metaphor of luck. None of this is luck. All of this
| work is taking common opportunities and making them great.
|
| Does it increase your chance of being "lucky"? No, it increases
| your chance of being visible. Visibility is not luck. You're not
| lucky, you are more visible.
|
| You are seizing the opportunity many others do not by building in
| public. Many do not because people online can suck and tear you
| down. But if you can get over that, you are seizing the
| opportunity, not being lucky.
| aarondf wrote:
| Author here.
|
| I agree with you that visibility is not luck, but I do think
| being visibility increases luck!
|
| When someone _comes to me_ with an opportunity, of course I
| want to seize it. But I can't control them _coming to me._ I
| can control how visible I am, which increases the odds that
| people will know about me, know what I'm good at, think about
| me for an opportunity, etc.
|
| Perceived from the outside, I am lucky! "Wow, I can't believe
| [XYZ] contacted you about writing that library for them, you're
| so lucky." And in a way, that is luck. Something unexpected and
| good (definition from the article) landed in my lap. Of course
| looking back I can tie it all together: I published Thing A and
| Person B saw it who forwarded it on to Company C. See, no luck
| involved, strictly causal. So maybe it's a matter of
| perspective or semantics, but I think using the word "luck" is
| a helpful way to communicate the idea!
|
| > Many do not because people online can suck and tear you down.
|
| Agreed.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I don't agree, sorry to say:
|
| 1. If your work sucks, the criticism and reputational damage may
| make it worse than having not published at all.
|
| 2. Even if it's good, its unlikely that you will get enough
| traction for it to matter
|
| 3. the 'right people' are inundated with pitches, the odds they
| care what you have to say are tiny, and trying more times will
| not help of you're on the wrong track to begin with.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| I agree with this for sure. The concept of luck surface area is
| incredibly powerful and can significantly impact how you interact
| with the world in a ~professional context.
|
| Great article.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've been publishing my work for decades.
|
| It really hasn't resulted in fame and fortune; but that's mainly
| because I am not particularly interested in fame and fortune.
|
| I generally think that it has been "successful." I mainly do what
| I do, to learn, and to develop the _habit_ of excellence. I write
| the code that _I_ want to use, and I write the prose that _I_
| want to read.
|
| There was another posting, about "Giving A Shit As A Service,"
| and that dovetails rather well, here (in my case).
| nullandvoid wrote:
| The saying "luck favours the prepared" comes to mind here. Do the
| work, and if you're lucky the rewards will come.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Public repos have brought me some great gigs. No luck involved,
| it just makes some people want to hire you. Ironically, the
| quality of the work I've produced -and had to deal with- at those
| gigs has not been as good as my personal projects. Literally
| every SaaS seems to be riddled with technical debt that takes
| man-decades to pay off, and moderate to extreme turnover.
| Publishing your work increases your chances of getting a well
| paid position, but not necessarily an enjoyable or stable one.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| The last two jobs I've got have been where they contacted me
| after seeing some code/writing/work I published or spoke about
| in public.
|
| I've been careful about contracts to ensure that I can continue
| publishing my own stuff (even if there's overlap with work
| related stuff) on my own time - publishing semi regularly is a
| pretty solid hedge against future long term unemployment.
| xor99 wrote:
| Yes true, wow really really true... I should publish everything
| all the time... oh wait a sec.. this is a marketing campaign for
| CoPilot! Splat
| aarondf wrote:
| Haha! Publishing doesn't always mean open source code. I
| defined tweeting a thread about building my shed as publishing
| too!
|
| By the way, you should look at the thread about me building my
| shed. It rules:
| https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1333866090573811723
| xor99 wrote:
| Lol, I agree with you 100% I just think github has a a few
| drawbacks versus self hosted blogs (etc,etc).
|
| Excellent shed! V happy for you :)
| aarondf wrote:
| Haha np I read your original comment in a lighthearted way!
|
| And thank you, I love working in here :D
| mijustin wrote:
| Great post!
|
| I often say that most of my career advancements came from knowing
| the right people (or having the right people know me).
|
| Many of the people that helped me advance found me through
| something I made (blog post, tutorial, podcast, project, etc).
|
| Creating stuff (and telling people about it) is a great way to
| connect with more people.
| fideloper wrote:
| It's true, I can attest! The idea of "increasing your luck
| surface area" is real.
|
| You can create a lot of opportunities for yourself by being
| public about what you're up to.
|
| It got me a job working with Taylor Otwell, before his businesses
| took off, and now working at Fly to help with Laravel adoption.
|
| My side projects have made helped people learn, given me an
| audience, and earn extra income.
| ushakov wrote:
| as an open-source developer, i can confirm this is a real
| phenomena
|
| best gigs i've got are because of relevant contributions and
| from companies depending on my software
|
| if you have a strong open-source profile, many companies will
| skip the screener and invite you straight to interview (i
| believe this is called "red carpet treatment")
|
| public work makes you trustworthy and you will stand out among
| other candidates
| abathur wrote:
| Edit: I meant something more more like, "What would you say
| makes an OSS profile _strong_? ", but I'll preserve the
| original question below so that the responses still make
| sense. :)
|
| ---
|
| Where would you say a strong OSS profile begins? (Feel free
| to give a fuzzy low-stakes answer. Haven't experienced this
| but curious where the ballpark is.)
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Finding and reporting bugs in software you use is a good
| start.
|
| Better yet is fixing those bugs and opening pull requests.
|
| Or just mining the bugtracker to fix bugs other users
| encountered.
|
| Its a solid place to start - getting known as a useful
| contributor to a handful of projects can work wonders.
| aarondf wrote:
| (Author here)
|
| The path I took was to write libraries for a large
| ecosystem (Laravel) to solve gnarly problems I was having.
| The gnarlier the better. Pick the thing that nobody else
| wants to do and solve it. That's what I did, no guarantees
| that'll work for anyone else though!
| ushakov wrote:
| i'd say with exposure!
|
| most of the exposure you'll be getting is from organic
| search
|
| you might not realize, but people are literally searching
| for solutions all the time
|
| companies also search for projects they want to build/use
| to see who's already building it (this is where you can get
| hired)
|
| so, a good idea would be to work on your README so when
| your prospects describe the problem to the search engine
| your project comes up as a solution
|
| then make sure the technical side and the documentation are
| _solid_ , so that people can _depend_ on it
|
| a plus for you would be to have projects across multiple
| domains, this increases your exposure
|
| if you want to go a step beyond that, try to post your
| projects to relevant communities (note: this should come
| secondary after search)
| abathur wrote:
| Thanks--this gives me a good sense, I think.
|
| My emphasis was probably a little off. You might be
| answering something like "if my goal is a strong profile,
| where should I start?" I was a little more curious about
| "where do you think ~strong begins?"
|
| In any case, "people depend on it" and "projects across
| multiple domains" both seem like good-enough answers to
| the latter question.
| aarondf wrote:
| The concept of "luck surface area" changed my life, no joke.
| It's the best framing I've ever heard for it.
| abathur wrote:
| I like the framing. I've been trying to blog more and publish
| more personal projects over the last ~4 years than I had
| before that, but speaking to the proverbial empty room is a
| little disheartening.
|
| I think it's because I'm pining for perspective, which is a
| fairly high-value thing.
|
| I can't say "luck surface area" has changed my life, yet, but
| I suspect seeing it that way provides a more stable and
| intrinsic (if small) motivation. I've thought for a while
| that I'll need a less-external motivation to be able to keep
| it up in the long term.
| Frotag wrote:
| Personally I use github issues / prs as documentation for
| future me. It's a happy side effect that it builds my
| portfolio (same for if someone actually finds it useful).
| abathur wrote:
| Within a project context?
|
| Or do you have a more ~personal/meta repo where you're
| doing this more broadly? If the latter I'd be curious to
| see an example (but don't feel pressured if you aren't
| comfortable dropping it in a busy thread).
| Frotag wrote:
| Nah, the first option, not a central repo. That's a cool
| idea though, maybe I should do that for irl todo lists.
| With markdown, it's probably easier / better than using
| notepad or discord or whatever.
| abathur wrote:
| The new projects beta will actually let you have a user
| project which would be easy enough to use that way. I am
| not sure, however, how public/searchable those are.
| johnny_reilly wrote:
| This resonates with my own experience tremendously. I've blogged
| for ten years - opportunities have come out of it. I've worked on
| OSS for ten years - opportunities have come out of it. Most of
| the time I was doing both I felt like I was doing something
| inconsequential that only meant something to me. That was
| incorrect. Reliably putting work out there and collaborating with
| other humans makes things happen.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| ...if you get it in front of the right people.
|
| I have tried to do this twice over the past ten years. The first
| time was in equity research. It was actually easier for me to
| start a business myself than get people hiring to just look at my
| work casually. And when it came up, almost always suspicion: why
| are you doing this? Is this legal? Actually showing interest was
| almost regarded as negative (in one of my last interviews, I
| remember turning up with a deck that I had deliberately made look
| amateurish..."best research I have seen"...but we don't hire
| grads...I had a subsequent interview with the same guy in which I
| pitched a stock that doubled in the next six months to give him
| the hard sell, I knew the idea was good, I knew it would double,
| he said he didn't invest in the industry because he lost money in
| that sector once in the 90s...I stopped looking for jobs in
| finance after that).
|
| Largely the same experience in tech (but worse, in tech you find
| that people are more prone to invent reasons to say no, in
| finance people said no but told you...in tech, they will say "you
| don't have experience in X"...as if the tech is going to exist in
| five years, like what is going to happen when no-one uses X
| anymore, lol).
|
| So you have to work outside interviews, once people get into that
| scenario they are looking to say no (and you will need to hard
| sell). Things that you think would be important aren't. Spending
| your time doing something useful is less important that more
| visible, arbitrary factors (get a degree from X, look like a Y,
| be friends with Z). It is actually easier to do your own thing
| than get hired this way (and btw, for some people this road to
| nowhere will suck the joy out of it...I loved investing, I
| researched stocks when I had no money to invest but the
| experience of putting years into it with the hope of work and
| getting nothing...it felt like being suffocated by a parent).
|
| Btw, my experience is based on doing this for ten years across
| tech and finance. It was a very hard lesson for me because I
| believe heavily in presenting people with
| choices/information...this isn't how most people work. You have
| to bring the horse to water, and then force its head in the
| trough, the horse won't drink itself.
|
| ...I will offer positive advice too: use your personal identity.
| I didn't because of a family issue, and it really hurt down the
| line. I got a job, had to shut down what I was doing before, came
| back...had to start from zero. People should have a name and a
| face to put on you (unf, this will hurt some people who don't
| look the right way...it isn't fair).
| vax425 wrote:
| I've been hesitating to publicize my project because there's
| always something more I can add, or a bug to fix. I think things
| like: If I do a "Show HN" post, will I get too many users at the
| same time? Is there a better way to quietly get the first few
| customers and fix the issues that they uncover?
|
| I'm reading "The Mom Test" now to learn how to talk to potential
| users.
|
| Here's what I'm working on: https://headlamptest.com
| jstanley wrote:
| > If I do a "Show HN" post, will I get too many users at the
| same time?
|
| In my experience, what's far more likely is that you won't get
| any users and you'll feel disheartened.
|
| Just look in https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew to see how
| many "Show HN"s have no votes and no comments.
| ushakov wrote:
| disagree
|
| if it doesn't work out the first time, you can give another
| try later
|
| you can check my posting history, a handful of projects i
| posted got responses from the community
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
| mstrahov wrote:
| New users' posts to "Show HN" seem to be marked as possible
| spam sometimes and appear as [dead]. I guess we shouldn't be
| discouraged if it happens and just try again.
| aarondf wrote:
| Doing a Show HN and getting too many users would be a great
| problem to have! In most cases it takes a lot of work to get
| any users, so I wouldn't be trying to limit it at all if I were
| you. Good luck!
| ushakov wrote:
| HN is not the only place to post
|
| main reason many Show HN posts are not getting upvotes is
| because they are either: boring, bad fit for this community
| or most people can't understand what problem they're solving
| (eg. lack documentation, too technical)
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