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How to write stuff no one else can

thewritetoroam.com

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Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#121

Post by enriquto »

bruce343434 wrote: post #109
enriquto wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise only those that master talking will get exposure. Or maybe we shouldn't organize our society so that "exposure" is such an overwhelmingly positive thing.

There's only so much you can do. If someone isn't advertising themselves, they can not be expected to be found in a sea of people who do. If I solve the navier stokes equations or whatever, but never talk about it... Yeah. Who would know. How could they know? Tree, woods, sound.

If you solve the Navier Stokes equations, you'll give a couple interviews at some local media and then keep working in other problems. The director of your lab will not make a career for himself talking about your achievment.

Some exposure is of course necessary, but when it becomes the main driving force it turns ridiculous.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#122

Post by danbruc »

dinkleberg wrote: post #117
danbruc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as selling something at an inflated price and hoping that no one will undercut you.

How so? If I build a simple app that does its job and does it well, I don't need to work on it for 40 hours a week for the rest of my life. After the initial effort, you can put in almost no work, just periodic maintenance, and you can keep bringing in sales. There are lots of opportunities like this. There is nothing morally or ethically questionable about this. It doesn't require you to over-inflate your prices. Th…

If the market works as intended, someone will replicate your app and sell it cheaper, the price should eventually converge to the costs. And you might not agree, but I find it morally questionable [1] to run a business that pays good money for little work.

[1] There is of course more nuance to this then expressed here.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#123

Post by dinkleberg »

danbruc wrote: post #122
dinkleberg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? If I build a simple app that does its job and does it well, I don't need to work on it for 40 hours a week for the rest of my life. After the initial effort, you can put in almost no work, just periodic maintenance, and you can keep bringing in sales. There are lots of opportunities like this. There is nothing morally or ethically questionable about this. It doesn't require you to over-inflate your prices. Th…

If the market works as intended, someone will replicate your app and sell it cheaper, the price should eventually converge to the costs. And you might not agree, but I find it morally questionable [1] to run a business that pays good money for little work. [1] There is of course more nuance to this then expressed here.

How does that make any sense? If you’ve built something that provides good value to people, more than they are paying for it, how can you believe that it is a morally questionable arrangement?

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#124

Post by ozim »

kasey_junk wrote: post #107
shakow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he means that ‶guy who knows to code″ used to be a statistically strong marker of ‶tinkering guys with a potential″, which is less true now that IT is now socially internationally perceived as a high-reward career, hence a one where people may go either because they like it, or just because they want to make stacks.

The problem with this theory is people have been saying it for 25 years. At least as long as I’ve been in the profession. And it’s not historically accurate in the past either. Programming was a clerical job for much of it’s history.

Have to agree, the 'dot com bust' was around 25 years ago, bubble started somewhere 1998-1999.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#125

Post by danbruc »

dinkleberg wrote: post #123
danbruc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the market works as intended, someone will replicate your app and sell it cheaper, the price should eventually converge to the costs. And you might not agree, but I find it morally questionable [1] to run a business that pays good money for little work. [1] There is of course more nuance to this then expressed here.

How does that make any sense? If you’ve built something that provides good value to people, more than they are paying for it, how can you believe that it is a morally questionable arrangement?

Imagine a tiny economy with two people. There is one guy that produces everything humans need and he can produce one day worth of supplies in four hours. But to keep his business running he depends on a piece of software that the other guy wrote, without it he could not produce anything. The other guy happily licenses his software for one day of supplies per day. Now the only thing he has to do besides enjoying all his supplies is to now and then spend an hour of work to maintain the software.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#126

Post by jayd16 »

intelVISA wrote: post #99
Aurornis wrote: post #39

> For example, on LinkedIn, someone may say they were CMO of a company for just three months, and if you take that data at face value, you may think something very bad must have happened for a company to hire and lose such an important role in so short a time. > But when you look closer, you see that this person was a sophomore in college at the time, that the company was just a month old, and that actually, it wasn’…

A highly curated LinkedIn is a red flag - nobody producing value has time to tend that walled garden.

How curated are we talking here? How much effort does it take? You mean stuff like weekly social posts about synergy and new paradigms?

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#127

Post by jacurtis »

ronald_raygun wrote: post #106
intelVISA wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A highly curated LinkedIn is a red flag - nobody producing value has time to tend that walled garden.

Really? Is it a walled garden when like 90%+ of recruiters are on there? Would you say “a good resume is a red flag, nobody producing value has time to tend that”. The big irony is making things look nice, be readable, be sellable is creating value. In the case of making a LinkedIn or a resume, the value your creating is in terms of your very own capability to get a job and have a high take home pay!

I have a highly optimized LinkedIn, yet I don't really spend a ton of time on there. I log in once or twice a month, answer messages, and do a few things. Maybe make a post once every 2 months or so. Nothing crazy, yet my profile is very well optimized.

And this is why: Everyone looks at it. Far more people then you would expect.

I can't tell you how many meetings I have gone into where I walk in and see that everyone at the conference table has my LinkedIn profile up on their laptops. They knew they were meeting with me, had no idea who I was, so they looked me up on LinkedIn right before. Its my introduction and sets the tone for a meeting or presentation. This experience is not only in the professional world either. I recently (in my mid-30s) decided to go back to academia to get a PhD and now I am encountering people in academics who use my LinkedIn to learn about me when I reach out for academic or research assistance. When applying for stuff, presenting at conferences, all of it uses LinkedIn as the central way to communicate your identity. Having a nice profile helps me set a positive first impression that helps me gain more responses.

Also, I can't fail to mention that recruiters use LinkedIn as a search tool. Not every recruiter is worth your time, but the right ones certainly are worth it and LinkedIn helps connect you with more of them. THey also use your LinkedIn when communicating with their clients. Almost every job interview you do, you can assume the hiring manager and interviewers have looked at your LinkedIn profile before meeting you. Most have probably looked more closely at your LinkedIn profile than your resume.

Curating a LinkedIn profile is not that much work. Maybe 30-60 mins per month is all it takes if you have a lot happening and maybe 1 hour per quarter for everyone else. Its not a huge commitment, and yet the gains in my opinion are far greater than the small amount of time spent on it.

I don't care if people want to hate on LinkedIn and say its stupid. If anything that benefits me, because it helps optimized profiles stand out. Maybe theres a few people (like the parent comment) who have an aversion to LinkedIn for some reason and will look down on someone with an optimized profile. But I truly believe it offers far more value than it detracts. The people that look down on it are usually people that are not in any position of power anyway or they are a micro-minority.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#128

Post by dataflow »

Aurornis wrote: post #39

> For example, on LinkedIn, someone may say they were CMO of a company for just three months, and if you take that data at face value, you may think something very bad must have happened for a company to hire and lose such an important role in so short a time. > But when you look closer, you see that this person was a sophomore in college at the time, that the company was just a month old, and that actually, it wasn’…

What about that example do people find to be high-potential? I'm a bit confused because to me 3-month "CMO" of 1-month-old company as a college sophomore sounds at best like a slightly positive signal, and at worst a strongly negative signal, since it could mean anything from "they had enough ambition to work and study at the same time for 3 months and learn stuff on the job" to "they couldn't focus on classes and/or wanted to do something that quickly would put a big-sounding title on their resume".

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#129

Post by BeFlatXIII »

ephemeral-life wrote: post #101
austin-cheney wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cowardice is when you avoid something, because of fear. GP is talking about avoiding people who will annoy you. That sounds like autism. Avoidance for what ever imaginary reason your creative mind can conjure is still cowardice. The excuses only fool yourself. Other people will see it as they choose.

ah yes. the internet autism diagnoses.

I wonder if you’re chatting with an LLM.

Re: How to write stuff no one else can

#130

Post by pc86 »

dataflow wrote: post #128
Aurornis wrote: post #39

> For example, on LinkedIn, someone may say they were CMO of a company for just three months, and if you take that data at face value, you may think something very bad must have happened for a company to hire and lose such an important role in so short a time. > But when you look closer, you see that this person was a sophomore in college at the time, that the company was just a month old, and that actually, it wasn’…

What about that example do people find to be high-potential? I'm a bit confused because to me 3-month "CMO" of 1-month-old company as a college sophomore sounds at best like a slightly positive signal, and at worst a strongly negative signal, since it could mean anything from "they had enough ambition to work and study at the same time for 3 months and learn stuff on the job" to "they couldn't focus on classes and/or…

Honestly any "big-sounding title" within 3-5 years after undergrad is a big red flag and takes a lot to overcome that resume going in the trash. I think best case scenario it means they have connections and got a legitimate job somewhere using those connections, in which case it's extremely unlikely I'm reviewing their resume since I barely graduated with a social science degree from a college nobody's ever heard of. The more likely case is that they aren't actually doing the job of a "Chief Technology Officer" but are instead just a programmer. Which, at 22 years old, is good and what they should be doing. At 22 it's very unlikely you have the technical chops to lead large teams doing big projects, and even less likely you have the emotional maturity to do so.

It shows immaturity to try to shoehorn a C-level job into your resume where it doesn't make sense and where 99% of people will rightfully raise an eyebrow at it. I say this as someone who had "Assistant Director" on my resume as my second job out of college, and I was assisting in the direction of a department of two people. Myself, and my boss. In my actual day-to-day I wrote bad PHP and read HN. It was a joke, and looking back I'm sure there are some jobs I applied to that tossed my resume after seeing that, and rightfully so.

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