Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

Ugh. Another one of these blog posts. Engineer is a good communicator. Has a blog. Gives talks. Then starts navel gazing: "Hey, other engineers should focus more on what I'm good at." I'll get downvoted for this last one: The blog has a link at top of page <<Get a FREE coaching session with me.>> Cringe. This whole thing reads like an advert for his services.

Financial advisers are exactly the same with their "weekly newsletters" that seem to do nothing more than make you anxious about your financial portfolio and think: "Hey, I need some coaching!"

View on HN

The author of the article is right when he says that writing code is often the easy part of the job for many people. The people who hand out promotions don't read your code, but they do read your writing and hear you speak.

I write documentation, do presentations and demos, do code reviews, and even primarily communicate with colleagues through text. The truth is that people who are better writers have an easier time doing this sort of thing. If the author had emphasized the practical benefits to the average non-influencer-wannabe dev, this article would have been a lot more useful.

I think public speaking classes (or at least practice) and even speech/accent coaching would be beneficial for many developers for the same reasons. Your ideas are only as good as your ability to get people to listen to you, and if you go up the ranks as a developer or transition to management, this only becomes more important.

    If the author had emphasized the practical benefits to the average non-influencer-wannabe dev, this article would have been a lot more useful.

This! Or how about some humility: Tell a story about where your communication style didn't work, and what you learned and how you changed. Or tell a story about the worst talk that you ever gave. I like listening to those stories from comedians -- their bigest failure -- and what they learned. With 100% certainty, I have learned more from my failures, than my successes. And too many of my successes were luck. To quote Mike Bloomberg (again on HN!), "Work hard, and you might get lucky."

Hey, author here.

I get your point. The internet is filled with pseudo-gurus that try to sell you stuff by writing shit-posts.

I’ve been writing for over 10 years. Many posts were scrapped and thrown away. I’m an autodidact, so I learned from blogs like mine. I try to write quality content only, it’s not always possible, but I try.

The coaching session you mentioned, is indeed free. The newsletter, is free. And you are not obligated to sign to any of them, you can just enjoy the content if it helps you. I tried to design the blog to be as clean as possible, and that posts will be its center.

I also believe that people should be compensated for their efforts. It feels like software engineering is the only industry where people don’t want pay. If I write - I should do it for free, without cringy banners. If I make a software - I should give it away for free with source code attached. If I mentor - I should do it for free. But that’s not how the world works. It’s perfectly ok to give away content for free, which will help to promote other services. And if this makes you anxious, then you should avoid that type of content.

> seem to do nothing more than make you anxious about…

Sums up every self-improvement, health and wellness article too. Heck pretty much all of social media.

> Sums up 94.7% of the internet.

Fixed.

"Everyone should focus on being an influencer"

Good points, but it does not invalidate the content. I particularly like the structure of this blog post: each title is direct and the paragraph below gives its substance. Structure is paramount for technical writing.

Hahaha I love this community. Every time I read a title like this I am looking for a comment like this ;)

Trite and rehashed groupthink—marketing garbage at its finest. But you should still write. As should every other human being, vocational identity notwithstanding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com