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Comment by acconrad | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Nick Zakas is an acclaimed author in the JavaScript world. He probably makes a decent amount more from speaking and conferences, but it's still surprising to me that in spite of having multiple books under his belt that was all he was making considering how much of a value add it is just to have his name for whatever company he was working for.

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> He probably makes a decent amount more from speaking and conferences

As someone who speaks at conferences regularly with a resume similar to his, I can tell you this probably not true. Tech conferences don't usually pay well if at all. Possibly for a keynote speaker but even then not much.

Most conferences I've spoken at don't even pay for you travel and hotel, never mind additional amounts on top of that. They expect your employer to pay for travel and hotel just as they would if you were a regular attendee.

I will say that 100% of conferences have had a free pass that gets you into all the talks and usually a catered lunch, snacks, and coffee in the "speaker lounge".

>> He probably makes a decent amount more from speaking and conferences

> As someone who speaks at conferences regularly with a resume similar to his, I can tell you this probably not true

My first thought was that he meant speaking at conferences was a great self promotion technique for lead generation.

For a couple years there was an author on my team. She didn't contribute anything to the team itself; she largely sat in her cubicle and wrote books. It felt as if the company had hired her so that they could trot her out at sales pitches for a 'halo effect.'

So she was basically getting paid by our employer to write books, which were her intellectual property, not our employers. Sweet gig.

I published a technical book a few years (going on a decade) ago. I put a lot of work into it, and everybody who has read it has had good things to say about it - at least, it has a couple dozen five-star reviews on Amazon. Now, to be clear - I enjoyed writing it, I'm glad I wrote it, I hope to write another one, and I learned a lot through the process. However, I can't think of anything I've ever done in my career that's been _less_ consequential, career-wise, than publishing a book, even a well-reviewed book. I've never been invited to speak anywhere (although in fairness I haven't put any effort into trying) and although it's on the first couple of lines on my resume, the only time it's ever come up in a job interview was this last year when somebody said, "you published a book about computer security a while ago? Cool, can you do anything besides computer security? Because we're not looking for that."

"considering how much of a value add, it is just to have his name for whatever company he was working for."

Unless he's working for a javascript tool builder, why does his name add any extra value to the company?

> Unless he's working for a javascript tool builder, why does his name add any extra value to the company?

For the company that I worked at, employing a published author was a method to seal deals for the sales team. Basically created the impression that we were experts at DevOps (we weren't.)

I kind of see the point. To an extent.

The name adds some cache when hiring. Some of our top talent came to our company solely to work on my team. It also gets you exposure at conferences and events. A good enough recognized name will sometimes even allow you to raise more money even if they are not in management.

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