Personal branding guide: Software engineer edition | Hacker News Reader

Personal branding guide: Software engineer edition

blog.polywork.com

44 pointscebert8 comments

Thanks, I hate it.

I got into computer science, and then tech/programming because I was good at it, and it seemed to promise to minimize the amount of social/political bullshit to deal with. Now, like the rest of the internet, it's been corrupted by attention-seeking look-at-me extroverts.

I don't want a brand. I don't want to _think_ about a brand.

Pretty much.

I like hacking away. Writing code, configuring stuff, figuring out obscure bugs. I reached a point as a fullstack dev where I could build a complete app, deploy it and maintain it.

But now I feel like I need to market myself. I also hate it.

I worked with someone who was a lot less technical than me. Would get stuck for days on bugs I would fix in 15 minutes by just doing a few googles searches. What he was better at is marketing. He paid someone to write his resume. Paid someone to "reimagine" his linked in.

He landed a 50% increase by moving companies.

I guess paying someone to improve your resume and linkedin is a good idea. Starting a blog, having social accounts, etc. also seems like something one should to do to maximize their earning potential.

To be fair, personal branding appears to be Polywork's whole deal. I tried it out for a bit but in the end, it just wasn't useful for me.

I have a goal to start blogging this year for personal branding. I don't even care if people follow it or find it interesting. I see it as a great way of improving writing skills and highlighting skills you have publicly.

Nice blogging has seriously helped my career, even without the fact that other people find the posts useful, so look forward to the impact it has over the years for you

> for personal branding. I don't even care if people follow it or find it interesting.

That seems like a contradiction.

Use ChatGPT and join the worst era in history for the written word, where people feel like they "must blog" but actually adding up to the enormous content dumpster that's out there.

I hate everything about this. This is like a marketing first, substance later approach.

Yes, it is important to be discoverable and your work accessible, but those are things that follow from quality work.

Moreover, you should do side projects because they’re interesting to you—picking a project because you think it will boost your social clout is a gross inversion of priorities.

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