How to Become Well-Connected

From John Oliver's piece on Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner the other night:

Oliver then cited Ivanka’s 2009 book, The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life, in which she wrote: “Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn’t mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don’t go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage.”

>Networking is definitely a skill, I'll give you that, but it has the sincerity of a sales pitch.

I mostly agree but there are two different kinds of networking. The kind you are referring to is what I like to call "ball gargling". This is when someone is just trying to pitch how relevant they are to someone who doesn't really care so all kinds of lame sales tactics have to be used to keep interest.

Then there is networking with peers, which can be a pretty enjoyable experience. For example, meeting other researchers at an academic conference or meeting other developers at industry conferences. These connections might not provide an immediate return on investment, but they certainly seem to last longer and have proven to be immensely useful years down the road (at least anecdotally for me).

I wish articles like this would start with "hey, i come from a place of extreme privilege, and assuming you're in the same boat, here's what i did and it worked out ok for me given the amount of resources i had to take the risks i did."

Instead, it gets treated as a sort of recipe which further exacerbates the problem of selection bias and network bias.

A lot of this type of thinking is shielded by the immense wealth and agency that the kingmakers have. But the reality is that these types of networks are fraught with horse-traders and backchannel power exchanges.

I'm not hating though, I understand the game plays out like that. But if you're not cultivating a community of real people connected to you, you'll get chewed up.

I wanted to ask an open ended question : how important do you think it is to be well-connected? I am sure if someone spent a lot of time going to plenty of networking events and put serious effort into talking with people, then they could grow their network pretty fast. But every minute spent in networking is a minute not spent in doing something else. So how do you set your priorities?

There are many great points being made in the article, and in the comments - esp the comment about how this is a rehash of wisdom from Dale Carnegie.

I believe these kinds of posts need to have a corollary for introverts - folks that are shyer, more reluctant/reflective (thoughtful, perhaps), aren't great at small talk and find the prospect of starting a conversation intimidating. While I am naturally skeptical of any kind of 'people categorization' - I do think there are folks who find "networking" daunting. So, what should they do?

I think the first step is to acknowledge the importance of a good network of people that you can talk to - it is often a powerful source of diverse ideas (outside of your own bubble), mentorship, collaboration and even friendship. The reason I say this is because it is often easy to dismiss "networking" as something frivolous (it doesn't help sometimes when certain people hijack this word to mean lots of low-quality connections) or not-for-me or 'I am just happy doing my own thing' etc. I think a discussion about how networking helps us in various facets of life is important. I'd love to hear positive examples from others in this area.

The second step is to work towards a realization that most of the qualities that introverts likely possess - like "listening well" - are key to this "networking-thing". So you already possess a lot of the raw ingredients that are needed to have a good network of people.

The third step is to really value diversity - of ideas/opinions, knowledge and competence (e.g. "engineering" sometimes have reluctance in appreciating "sales"). Groups, companies, teams thrive when there is real diversity. This should make you want to talk to others who are doing different things in different domains (or same things as you, but differently)

And finally, realize that (and several folks points this out in the comments) it is not about "tricks" - i.e. don't lose your authentic self. But try to distil the "tricks" into more basic human tenets - e.g. if you are a curious individual genuinely interesting in learning more about technology (say), then "Convey genuine appreciation" isn't something you would need to fake.

The longer I work and observe other folks doing interesting things, the more I find that networking is a useful (even powerful) thing -- and I say this as an introvert and someone not proficient at networking (have a very small group of close friends). I often think "wouldn't it be cool to learn more about what this person is doing" or even "how did they do that!?", and lately (gradually) started acting on that impulse and wrote to some of those folks (that I wish to know and learn from). To my surprise, it was very rewarding. I met some very knowledgeable and interesting people -- even some that I learned from a lot. Just having a bunch of people that I can discuss different topics with - related to software, scaling, operations (or life in general!) has been rewarding.

Most of what I say here is obvious, but I just wanted to share this because I struggled (and continue to) with this whole "networking-thing". :)