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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

> " Developed a dislike for great networkers being Machiavellian shits."

I'm a bad networker, as a software engineer you rarely have the incentive to improve. I've never had to look for a job... I just say yes when a good email comes in. Recently though I realized that I can only go so far the way I've been going. I've become noncontent with waiting for the right email to come in. So I started working on changing myself.

I think the first part of networking is to start before you need the benefits from it. The second is to be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get (it's just like Christmas!) and finally... and this sounds really basic. You actually have to go out and do things, and you actually have to talk to people (very hard to do if you're an introvert like myself).

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1. Learn to appreciate yourself, because self confidence (when not coming out as arrogant) is attractive

2. Make sure you have a list of hobbies/interests you can relate through

3. Most importantly, be actually curious about the person (a smile helps). Everyone has amazing things to talk about, just get the person you're with to get there and do not keep the conversation focused on yourself

4. Before you ask for coffee, make sure you've had a nice enough and mutually engaging conversation. It naturally yields a better approval rate.

5. Whatever happens next is just fun and it is whatever is meant to happen. (It follows that this New Yorker article is funny in the way it's not relevant to improve one's coffee invitations success) so just loosen up and enjoy. Meeting new people is great fuel for a balanced life. It won't always be perfect, but it will often be fun.

Note I'm a developer too, but I personally find a good balance between nice people and coding necessary to feel content and happy.

Reading Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" taught me a lot about networking, building relationships, and social interactions. I highly recommend reading it to anyone who feels like there's something other people have that they don't, because a lot of the time I find it's some quality found in the book.

> " I've never had to look for a job... I just say yes when a good email comes in."

This, is what gets me. It's stuff like this that makes me feel like the longer I stay in software the further detached from the general reality I will become. I love software, but I hate how much it drives me away from the rest of society.

Does that make it harder for you to connect with people? I found it to be the case for me when I was a developer. It would sort of make me unable to identify with the majority of people, which would tend to make me not care to interact with them as deeply as I wanted to.

Having to leave my job let me spend more time with a variety of people (lots of baristas, many of them are super interesting) helped me significantly.

>> " I've never had to look for a job... I just say yes when a good email comes in."

>This, is what gets me. It's stuff like this that makes me feel like the longer I stay in software [...]

I can assure you that this is not the general job hunting scenario for software people. This may be the case for a particular engineer, or small class of highly-sought-after engineers, in a couple of very short-lived time periods of frothy hiring. The vast majority of us still have to get out there and pound the pavement like everyone else, and it's not overnight.

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