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Publishing your work increases your luck

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Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#21
I dislike the metaphor of luck. None of this is luck. All of this work is taking common opportunities and making them great.

Does it increase your chance of being “lucky”? No, it increases your chance of being visible. Visibility is not luck. You’re not lucky, you are more visible.

You are seizing the opportunity many others do not by building in public. Many do not because people online can suck and tear you down. But if you can get over that, you are seizing the opportunity, not being lucky.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#22
post #18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: I meant something more more like, "What would you say makes an OSS profile strong ?", but I'll preserve the original question below so that the responses still make sense. :) --- Where would you say a strong OSS profile begins? (Feel free to give a fuzzy low-stakes answer. Haven't experienced this but curious where the ballpark is.)

i’d say with exposure! most of the exposure you’ll be getting is from organic search you might not realize, but people are literally searching for solutions all the time companies also search for projects they want to build/use to see who’s already building it (this is where you can get hired) so, a good idea would be to work on your README so when your prospects describe the problem to the search engine your project…

Thanks--this gives me a good sense, I think.

My emphasis was probably a little off. You might be answering something like "if my goal is a strong profile, where should I start?" I was a little more curious about "where do you think ~strong begins?"

In any case, "people depend on it" and "projects across multiple domains" both seem like good-enough answers to the latter question.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#23
post #9
post #8

I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add, or a bug to fix. I think things like: If I do a “Show HN” post, will I get too many users at the same time? Is there a better way to quietly get the first few customers and fix the issues that they uncover? I’m reading “The Mom Test” now to learn how to talk to potential users. Here’s what I’m working on: https://headlamptes…

> If I do a “Show HN” post, will I get too many users at the same time? In my experience, what's far more likely is that you won't get any users and you'll feel disheartened. Just look in https://news.ycombinator.com/shownew to see how many "Show HN"s have no votes and no comments.

New users' posts to "Show HN" seem to be marked as possible spam sometimes and appear as [dead]. I guess we shouldn't be discouraged if it happens and just try again.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#24
Public repos have brought me some great gigs. No luck involved, it just makes some people want to hire you. Ironically, the quality of the work I've produced -and had to deal with- at those gigs has not been as good as my personal projects. Literally every SaaS seems to be riddled with technical debt that takes man-decades to pay off, and moderate to extreme turnover. Publishing your work increases your chances of getting a well paid position, but not necessarily an enjoyable or stable one.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#25
post #20

Yes true, wow really really true... I should publish everything all the time... oh wait a sec.. this is a marketing campaign for CoPilot! Splat

Haha! Publishing doesn't always mean open source code. I defined tweeting a thread about building my shed as publishing too!

By the way, you should look at the thread about me building my shed. It rules: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/1333866090573811723

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#26

I love the concept of luck surface, and I believe it's a great mental model. However > FOR EVERY SNARKY COMMENT, THERE ARE 10X AS MANY PEOPLE ADMIRING YOUR WORK. This is the opposite of my modest experience. Negativity has outweighed positivity in most of my online interactions. For every encouraging or promising interaction you have, you'll receive more nasty ones that will sap the motivation out of you. I think it'…

I don't think that line disagrees with your experience. It's not saying you'll get 10x admiration comments. Just that there are 10x admiring people. It's a bit like HN comments, the discussion happens when someone disagrees, or adds more context. But if you like something you should just upvote instead of posting a trivial comment. Even the rules say so. I guess if you publish something where you can see the traffic…

Yeah, exactly this. I could've been more clear on that note, but I've often had conversations with people that have never interacted with me on Twitter and they'll say "oh I really love that [thing] you did" and I'm just like... you did? I didn't know that!

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#27
...if you get it in front of the right people.

I have tried to do this twice over the past ten years. The first time was in equity research. It was actually easier for me to start a business myself than get people hiring to just look at my work casually. And when it came up, almost always suspicion: why are you doing this? Is this legal? Actually showing interest was almost regarded as negative (in one of my last interviews, I remember turning up with a deck that I had deliberately made look amateurish..."best research I have seen"...but we don't hire grads...I had a subsequent interview with the same guy in which I pitched a stock that doubled in the next six months to give him the hard sell, I knew the idea was good, I knew it would double, he said he didn't invest in the industry because he lost money in that sector once in the 90s...I stopped looking for jobs in finance after that).

Largely the same experience in tech (but worse, in tech you find that people are more prone to invent reasons to say no, in finance people said no but told you...in tech, they will say "you don't have experience in X"...as if the tech is going to exist in five years, like what is going to happen when no-one uses X anymore, lol).

So you have to work outside interviews, once people get into that scenario they are looking to say no (and you will need to hard sell). Things that you think would be important aren't. Spending your time doing something useful is less important that more visible, arbitrary factors (get a degree from X, look like a Y, be friends with Z). It is actually easier to do your own thing than get hired this way (and btw, for some people this road to nowhere will suck the joy out of it...I loved investing, I researched stocks when I had no money to invest but the experience of putting years into it with the hope of work and getting nothing...it felt like being suffocated by a parent).

Btw, my experience is based on doing this for ten years across tech and finance. It was a very hard lesson for me because I believe heavily in presenting people with choices/information...this isn't how most people work. You have to bring the horse to water, and then force its head in the trough, the horse won't drink itself.

...I will offer positive advice too: use your personal identity. I didn't because of a family issue, and it really hurt down the line. I got a job, had to shut down what I was doing before, came back...had to start from zero. People should have a name and a face to put on you (unf, this will hurt some people who don't look the right way...it isn't fair).

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#28
post #24

Public repos have brought me some great gigs. No luck involved, it just makes some people want to hire you. Ironically, the quality of the work I've produced -and had to deal with- at those gigs has not been as good as my personal projects. Literally every SaaS seems to be riddled with technical debt that takes man-decades to pay off, and moderate to extreme turnover. Publishing your work increases your chances of ge…

The last two jobs I've got have been where they contacted me after seeing some code/writing/work I published or spoke about in public.

I've been careful about contracts to ensure that I can continue publishing my own stuff (even if there's overlap with work related stuff) on my own time - publishing semi regularly is a pretty solid hedge against future long term unemployment.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#29
post #15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an open-source developer, i can confirm this is a real phenomena best gigs i’ve got are because of relevant contributions and from companies depending on my software if you have a strong open-source profile, many companies will skip the screener and invite you straight to interview (i believe this is called “red carpet treatment”) public work makes you trustworthy and you will stand out among other candidates

Edit: I meant something more more like, "What would you say makes an OSS profile strong ?", but I'll preserve the original question below so that the responses still make sense. :) --- Where would you say a strong OSS profile begins? (Feel free to give a fuzzy low-stakes answer. Haven't experienced this but curious where the ballpark is.)

Finding and reporting bugs in software you use is a good start.

Better yet is fixing those bugs and opening pull requests.

Or just mining the bugtracker to fix bugs other users encountered.

Its a solid place to start - getting known as a useful contributor to a handful of projects can work wonders.

Re: Publishing your work increases your luck

#30

I love the concept of luck surface, and I believe it's a great mental model. However > FOR EVERY SNARKY COMMENT, THERE ARE 10X AS MANY PEOPLE ADMIRING YOUR WORK. This is the opposite of my modest experience. Negativity has outweighed positivity in most of my online interactions. For every encouraging or promising interaction you have, you'll receive more nasty ones that will sap the motivation out of you. I think it'…

Most admiration is silent, whereas criticism is loud.

When people see something disagreeable online, they tend to interact (leave snarky comments).

When people see something neat? They go "neat" to themselves, and often don't comment.

Hence the somewhat common engagement hack where people post semi controversial takes to generate engagement.

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