How to Become Well-Connected

Even if it's presumptuous, what's the worst that could happen? I think you should email and see what happens.

As a consultant and employee, I would be a bit surprised by such an email because I'm not in a position to hire people. But my manager is always looking for people and we have a referral bonus system, so I would get some money for introducing someone to my manager who gets hired. Both me and my manager would have selfish reasons for seeing you, apart from just being nice people that want to help others out.

If you suggest a coffee close to their office, I don't see a problem. They'll either ignore your email, tell you they're busy, or meet up. I would definitely suggest that you make your intentions clear that you're looking for a job, but also that you're interested in learning more about the job or the industry. I would also suggest that you say how you found the person, otherwise they may be more suspicious or confused. Just say if you found them on LinkedIn, on the company website, or wherever, so that they know where you're coming from.

Good luck!

Grade A bellendery. There are so many holes in this I don't even know where to start.

I don't know if you're a techie or a businessman but my feedback is almost the same either way. The people you describe are usually quiet / shy -- or simply don't throw themselves at people's faces, which is something very different.

I am the latter type; if you hit me with an interesting topic, I can talk with you for hours and will very rarely repeat myself (how valuable what I am saying for you is of course strongly dependent on your interests). But I won't come to you trying to catch a conversation about what I find interesting. I'd be much more likely approaching you with a generic opener and try and find what you do find worth talking about. Anyway, here's what I believe is a good approach to the people who do things in private but [almost] don't network (like myself):

- Don't assume quiet people are not interesting. EVER. My wife is easily the most intelligent human being I've ever met and I've had to work a lot during our first year in the relationship until she started openly sharing what she thinks about this or that. And then I found myself having my mind blown by very different perspectives, many times, consistently, to this day (we're about to have a third anniversary very soon). Some people are not amazing at striking a conversation but if you manage to engage them, you might discover a treasure.

- Show genuine interest in what the person is doing at the event you both find yourself meeting at. I'd be very honest with you and one good example of that honesty would be: "I believe I spent so much time perfecting my engineering skills, and now I simply want to listen what people need from technology; how do they want their lives improved by it". That would probably open a plethora of possible follow-up topics.

- Many of the people of my type find networking and investing in a portfolio / GitHub profile / LinkedIn profile / general reputation a low priority activity. That's of course horribly misguided since millions of years of social instincts can't be overriden but there you go; I am 37 and only now I started actually understanding the value of these, and started slowly working on them. That's the thing: I've been busy with far too many other things to even consider networking for so long. Food for thought IMO; strike a conversation accentuating what the person is thinking and doing now, not what he/she was doing all their life up to this point. The past can wait for a later convo.

- Finally, as the article suggested, do offer some value to the conversation even if you find yourself getting a lot of important information for free. I am a bad salesman of information and I'd tell you a lot of things we the programmers do without telling our bosses (one random example; another one would be some trade secrets) but if 15 minutes later I realize that you haven't offered a single interesting piece of info or a compelling question, I'll politely excuse myself and will go look for another person to chat with.

Hope that helps a bit.

Thanks for the summary. I haven't read the book yet, but I'll have to sometime. It's interesting that on one side you have Carnegie's "make them feel important to make them interested in you" and on the other side you have the pick-up artists' (I'm not defending them) "neg them to make them interested in you". In one variant you lift the other person up and in the other you push them down, both with the idea of wanting them to talk to you more.

I've heard that men that tease each other (in one sense making them feel less important) in groups do it as a bonding experience, because the fact that you can tease the other person without them punching you is a sign that you're members of the same group. On the other hand, gently teasing someone in a group can make them feel more important as well, since you're suggesting that they're important enough to deserve being teased.

With Carnegie on one side and the pick-up artists on the other, I'll obviously side with Carnegie's more positive view of human interactions. It also fits well with a tenet in improvisational theater that you should always make the other actor look good. You both benefit from that, especially if they do the same to you. If you make them look good, the audience thinks you're both good, and the other actor will want to play more scenes with you. It seems like an obvious suggestion, but what it does is it shifts your focus from what you can do to look good yourself to what you can do to make the other person look good, which is often a lot easier anyway. It takes you out of your own head and makes you more attentive and focused on the other person, so that you can respond to and amplify the good thing they do.

I am interested in working on an application focused on personal use that can be self-hosted. Using Airtable in the meantime.

Agreed that most apps in this space are huge and focused on business and sales. I am more interested in software that helps cultivate personal, offline relationships -- as opposed to ScaleMail and such.