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Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

nytimes.com

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Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#71

Post by gertef »

zzzcpan wrote: post #67
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #26

The article gives example of Justin Bieber and Adele. For those two examples, there are hundreds who got where they are just because they knew someone important. Miley Cyrus, Jaden Smith, Charlie Sheen, Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton. Actors/singers make very poor examples for this given that most of them mostly get to where they are by networking more than anything else. Lets say there was an absolute mas…

Networking is one the most expensive forms of advertising. If a better paying job is what you are after, spending 90% of your time on networking doesn't sound like an efficient or even a good idea. Instead focus on building your brand, doing PR, writing articles, speaking at various events, etc., basically focus on becoming a rockstar and wait for offers to come to you.

How do you get invited to events, get people to read your articles, connect to the upblic, and build your brand, without networking?

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#72

Post by davidgerard »

I've just written a book. (It's about social implications of a technology.) Pretty much all the sales I'm making are networking, one way or another. It's a good book! People who read it love it! But it's self-published, and I haven't worked out how the heck to get people to write about it, and so my sales are all word of mouth from happy readers. It's just become a college textbook (!!) so I'm doing at least something right ...

Writing it was the same. I posted the whole draft to my Facebook in chunks, and this improved it amazingly, because my friends, like yours, are querulous nerds, and my goodness a querulous nerd given permission to be as querulous as they like, well. But I'm 50, and I've spent a few decades accumulating hundreds of contacts who are smart people who are experts in things that I'm not. And I totally relied on them to make this not suck.

I'm a huge nerd. But even my beep-boop sysadmin day job is, frankly, 50% public relations and getting people to do stuff because they feel they should because I asked nicely. Networking.

When I started, I too was bereft of network. But my first IT job was courtesy ... networking! And my second. And my third.

tl;dr Do your damnedest to be a social supernode. Make sure you know everyone, such that if you don't then you'll know someone who does. And keep in touch with them. It'll pay off big down the line.

(I went through Facebook last week and visited the pages of every one of the 1000+ people I have friended, to say hi and see what they were up to. Don't trust The Algorithm to maintain your relationships.)

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#73

Post by gertef »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

From the article: "It's true that networking can help you accomplish great things. But this obscures the opposite truth: Accomplishing great things help you develop a network." This is something that I wished I had understood way earlier in my career. Basically that cause and effect are often inverted when people talk about the network effect. People who do some thing well, or are passionate about, often will accumul…

"I'm a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#74

Post by grzm »

davidgerard wrote: post #72

I've just written a book. (It's about social implications of a technology.) Pretty much all the sales I'm making are networking, one way or another. It's a good book! People who read it love it! But it's self-published, and I haven't worked out how the heck to get people to write about it, and so my sales are all word of mouth from happy readers. It's just become a college textbook (!!) so I'm doing at least somethin…

"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#75

Post by bitL »

gaius wrote: post #55
bitL wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...unless you are in Europe, where it's an almost required gate to upper management.

Only in Germany, certainly not in the UK - here Eton trumps PhD every day of the week.

I probably should have written in German-speaking countries.

I never understood the "reputation" component in the UK education that also made it to QS rankings where Oxbridge are propelled by near perfect reputation while lacking in other, more-academic categories.

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#76

Post by intopieces »

anotherbrownguy wrote: post #26

The article gives example of Justin Bieber and Adele. For those two examples, there are hundreds who got where they are just because they knew someone important. Miley Cyrus, Jaden Smith, Charlie Sheen, Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton. Actors/singers make very poor examples for this given that most of them mostly get to where they are by networking more than anything else. Lets say there was an absolute mas…

Can being related to someone already famous really be considered networking, though? I always think of networking as actively going out and making new contacts. Being born with a contact to an industry is just luck.

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#77

Post by davidgerard »

jknoepfler wrote: post #40

The author conflates networking with shameless self-shilling. This makes for a pretty thin strawman. Networking, in the sense of maintaining strong professional relationships and having a presence at professional events, creates a strong passive upwards pressure for someone who is talented. If you "spring to mind" as someone I can trust to "do X," or if you spring into the mind of the person I task with finding someo…

> The author conflates networking with shameless self-shilling. This makes for a pretty thin strawman.

Yeah, to build a lifelong network you need to get people to like you. This means you have to have something likable about you.

(I mean, I can be a huge arse and I've managed it, per other comment. If I can anyone can.)

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#78

Post by j45 »

Networking, when defined as a competition of who can speak the most about themselves has little value.

Networking, when defined as a practice of always adding value first, and seeking other similar givers to build your network around is invaluable. Takers are everywhere and learning to recognize and filter them as needed is a critical skill.

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#79

Post by davidgerard »

bitL wrote: post #11

Technology used to be a bit more immune to cronyism in the past, now it's epidemic for anything above grunt positions - for grunts grueling interviews are in place, for higher ups it's now totally who knows whom and who does something for whom. I want to throw up every time my organization posts a new job position at a higher level and I get bombarded by managers inquiring if their friend or two can't get in there, b…

> Technology used to be a bit more immune to cronyism in the past

No, I think this isn't the case. It certainly hasn't in the past couple of decades, unless you're thinking ridiculously further back. Even then, have you ever asked your mates "hey, do you know X, are they any good?"

Re: Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

#80

Post by davidgerard »

grzm wrote: post #74
davidgerard wrote: post #72

I've just written a book. (It's about social implications of a technology.) Pretty much all the sales I'm making are networking, one way or another. It's a good book! People who read it love it! But it's self-published, and I haven't worked out how the heck to get people to write about it, and so my sales are all word of mouth from happy readers. It's just become a college textbook (!!) so I'm doing at least somethin…

"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Well, I was meaning to shout that ;-) But thank you. Changed to italics.
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