Is success down to the quality of your work? (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Is success down to the quality of your work? (2017)

smashingmagazine.com

I absolutely loathe the state of the world where you have to be loud and attract attention to yourself in order to succeed. I know it's true, I know why it's true, but something inside me just wants to die when I think about less-skilled people getting better positions/wages than me, just because they self-promote.

Maybe that's egoistical of me. Maybe my work simply isn't good enough to speak for itself - or maybe I am not good judge of other people's skills. Maybe others are better than me, and I'm just not paying attention. But then, articles like this come up, where people explicitly admit to being loud and attracting attention for the sake of being loud and attracting attention...

I simply hate promoting myself. It's an irrational hate, and I don't think I'll ever get over it.

Self-promotion is not far removed from salary negotiation, and salary negotiation ends up too confrontational for my taste.

Related: Unnecessary competitiveness is a blight on the professional landscape. (IMHO; YMMV)

My line of thinking goes: Competitiveness is for people who crave validation by their peers. In other words, winning is for losers.

Quick summary: One of the biggest fallacies of our industry is that good work speaks for itself. It is a self-delusional lie that those with a good reputation tell themselves to explain their success. I will let you in on a secret; I am not that amazing at my job. Don’t get me wrong; I am good. But I am not a leading mind in our industry or anything. But, people often talk as if I am.

Good article. To add to your summary: I liked the part about "Overcoming Your Excuses"

>I’m sick of people making excuses about why they can never build the reputation I have been talking about in this article.

These are the points he addresses:

- Never give up, never surrender

- Know who you are targeting

- Overcoming Your Excuses

-- People keep rejecting me

-- I don’t have enough time

-- I don’t know enough

-- I hate writing and speaking

Looking at people who are most successful, I'd say there's actually an inverse relationship between success and quality of work.

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