Ask HN: Learning How to Market Yourself | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Learning How to Market Yourself

17 pointsnewsieyc6 comments

Hey all - longtime lurker. In my first gig at a big co, I realized that marketing your own work is about 100 times more important than actually doing the work. I grew up an introvert and from the culture I grew up in, it feels disingenuous to market yourself. How have you done this in the past and what is the best way to market yourself to your org and your peers?

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Julia Evans' article on writing a brag document (listing your accomplishments) might be helpful.

https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/

Discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665225

Hey was kind of in the same position. Started at a smaller startup in my city and then changed to Klarna (bigger corp) and now just started at Stripe. But in the 3 years at Klarna I incrementally did market myself more and more.

So when I first started the documentation was really bad, new services where created out of nowhere and nothing was documented. Why we did things and what not. So the first thing I did was creating/participating in technical design documents, or product decision docs, to actually validate data. If you contribute there, your team will recognize you more and more. Its kind of "passive" marketing within the team with few touchpoints to other teams when integrating APIs. Other engineers will see you on the docs and discussion which will make them remember you.

In most big corporations, promotion processes or people who drive the company will be in other teams. The managers and or tech leads of the whole domain or subgroup. To impress them you have to build and achieve things they will recognize. For me, in Klarna, the platform to do this was a monorepo where improvements had to be made to developer experience, build systems and so on. Most bigger corps have separate teams dedicated to that but improving documentation here and there always helps already.

I also got into blogging and driving open source at the company. Organized a hackathon and did many other mundane admin stuff, but coolest thing was that i got into an all hands regarding the hackathon, so actually everyone was seeing me. Reach out for these opportunities because i am sure your company will have these as well and the people are happy to get a helping hand, for sure.

Otherwise as other people mentioned I also kept a brag document, that helped me to collect all achievements and present them to my manager in case of questions about work progress or promotions: https://getworkrecognized.com/blog/junior-to-senior-software...

But overall lesson: Share your achievements like in newsletters of the team/blogs/hackathons/all-hands/group meetings/office hours and be involved in many groups so you can network and get to know people.

"To Sell is Human" - Daniel Pink

"Selling" is a part of almost every aspect of our lives when you generalize the term and concept away from purely monetary transactions.

Go out of your way to show your work and progress regularly, just don't stay heads down all the time. Keep in constant communication with whoever would be interested in seeing it... bosses... users... etc

Instead of marketing your work look for opportunities where your work or its extensions can create value and then share your work to create that value.

Recycling some replies. More context on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26182988:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19924100 (understanding codebases, etc.)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26591067 (testing pipelines, scaffolding, issue templates)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22873103 (making the most out of meetings, leveraging your presence)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22827841 (product development)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20356222 (giving a damn)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25008223 (If I disappear, what will happen)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24972611 (about consulting and clients, but you can abstract that as "stakeholders", and understanding the problem your "client", who can be your manager, has.)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24209518 (on taking notes. When you're told something, or receive a remark, make sure to make a note and learn from it whether it's a mistake, or a colleague showing you something useful, or a task you must accomplish.. don't be told things twice or worse. Be on the ball and reliable).

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24503365 (product, architecture, and impact on the team)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22860716 (onboarding new hires to a codebase, what if it were you, improve code)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710623 (being efficient learning from video, hacks. Subsequent reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22723586)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21598632 (communication with the team, and subsequent reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21614372)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21427886 (template for taking minutes of meetings to dispatch to the team. Notes are in GitHub/GitLab so the team can access them, especially if they haven't attended).

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24177646 (communication, alignment)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808439 (useful things for the team and product that add leverage)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20323660 (more meeting notes. Reply to a person who had trouble talking in corporate meetings)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22715971 (management involvement as a spectrum)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922120 (researching topics)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26147502 (keeping up with a firehose of information)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26123017 (fractal communication: communication that can penetrate several layers of management and be relevant to people with different profiles and skillsets)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26179539 (remote work, use existing tooling and build our own. Jitsi videos, record everything, give access to everyone so they can reference them and go back to them, meetings once a week or two weeks to align)

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