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Comment by ghc | Hacker News Reader

If that was the only thing that mattered, how do some consultants make 3x others, with exactly the same performance or worse?

While the people who pay the bills think that's the only thing that matters, your ability to confidently market yourself as providing perceived value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations, regardless of the actual value you provide.

Unfortunately I, like many others in our field, suck at this. Strangely, I've always found it easier to to market the work I do than to learn to market my own value. I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line.

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In my talks with programmers, a lot of the disconnect is the perception that there's "legitimate work" on one hand and "marketing" on the other. While one may understand the importance of marketing at an intellectual level, the technical mind may still have an aversion to actually doing it.

My suggestion: replace the word "market" with "communicate" in your thinking. So:

"your ability to confidently communicate your value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations"

So it's not marketing, it's kind of like writing docs for end users. Still not coding, but a little further from "marketing". A small change, but it may give some mileage.

Exactly.

I feel like the term "marketing" is often used by not-so-great communicators to fill a gap of understanding of how value is communicated by those who are doing good business as a result.

I think the same goes for companies. E.g. a user friendly phone, tablet, computer or maybe just a very usable website, is not more expensive because of 'marketing', but because it does a better job communicating with the end user and thus creating a better perception of value to the customer.

What you are talking about?

> I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line.

150% agree. I had to write a bio when I judged a hackathon last month. It took 2 hours two write, what ultimately became one sentence.

The biggest personal shift for me came when I realised that marketing is not about me, my experience and the marketing copy on my website. It's about giving things of value to other people. Maximise the value you give to others and the number of people you give it to, and the "marketing" takes care of itself.

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