Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 4: Should I build my personal brand?

Episode Date: March 31, 2016

In episode 4, Jamison and Dave answer this question: I have heard a lot about “marketing myself” and my “personal brand”. For example, some people say I should be writing a blog post every week or creating lots of YouTube content. They talk about being a “thought leader”. I love building stuff as an engineer, and obviously I want to have a great job, so how important is this stuff?

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 4 of Soft Skills Engineering. I am Jameson Dance. And I'm Dave Smith. And this is the show where we talk about all of the non-technical stuff about software development. We answer questions and give hopefully not terrible advice. Jameson, I have a question for you. Hit me. What do soft skills and soft rock music have in common? I have no idea. Neither do I, but I was watching a TV show the other day with subtitles

and it said soft rock music and I just had to use my imagination. Just very, very quiet rock music. This could also be our ASMR episode where we talk about soft skills and shuffle these papers together. Just talk about skills softly. Anyways, on that note,

do you want to read our question we only have one question today because i think it's it's one we want to talk about for a while so yeah i will uh question reads as follows i have heard a lot about quote marketing myself and my quote personal brand for example some people say i should be writing a blog post every week or creating lots of youtube content they talk about being a quote thought leader i love building stuff as an engineer and obviously i want to have a great job so how important is this stuff i think before we talk about this well when we talk about this it's important to note that we are giant hypocrites because we are like on a podcast right now you know and um i i personally am motivated to do this podcast um not to market

myself but because i i want something like this to exist in the world and i couldn't find it but just by virtue of doing this like there is some amount of marketing that goes along with this too so so we i feel like we're kind of biased in a way you know so you're saying that we are biased because we have obviously marketed ourselves by just putting our voices out on the internet in this way yeah yeah we're doing some some amount of marketing and this does affect a an air quotes personal brand um would you say that you participate in this and other podcasts uh primarily to augment your personal brand no no i think i would not even say that not even close right i mean that's how i am it's yeah i mean it's it's a side benefit um

but i i think my philosophy on this is uh tied up to like a lot of weird things about myself i have a lot of like guilt about doing stuff to get famous um how do i explain it i don't know i i think you should do things because you want them to exist or you want to do a thing um you shouldn't be like people talk a lot about creating content and that that word content is a signal that someone is saying something that doesn't mean anything because if if it was an idea they would talk about the idea but you're just like dumping words out into the universe if you're talking about creating content instead of sharing your cool idea about how to build great teams or sharing a cool new project that you're working on so to me it's it's a fine balance between um doing useful

things and doing things that just pump yourself up okay so i'm gonna play devil's advocate a little bit um you know you it sounds like you're saying you would prefer for people to uh do things because they want to and because they're for the greater good maybe borderling on altruism that's my idealistic view of how i want the world to work yeah and yet i'm fairly confident that you would not work at a company uh unless they paid you right yes i mean at least at this point in your life i mean you'd probably love to be able to do that but you still need to get paid i do need to get paid yeah um so there's certainly a that is certainly a motivating factor right and uh that's the part of this that's really insidious to me is that it's really easy to be to strive for being a

thought leader and have no content and it's easy for people like me to say well that person is just all fluff right and yet i myself uh have a personal brand that mostly is just exists to keep me employed and keep the paycheck coming would you say that i mean does that seem reasonable um So you're saying that that you you manage. Oh, I'm throwing up like in my mouth every time I say these words like thought leader and personal brand and content. You manage your personal brand and you you like purposely purposefully write blog posts and speak at conferences and stuff in order to make sure that that you can have gainful employment. is that what you're saying uh no that's not really what i'm saying um i was really just playing devil's advocate and trying to get you to admit that you're that you're also managing your personal brand at least on some level oh no no i am for sure um i i tweet stuff and most of the time it's stupid and and i am giggling outrageously to myself at home and no one else

thinks any of this stuff i tweet is funny but sometimes it's like oh people might want to hear this. And then there's a little part of me that's like, and they'll like you for telling me about it. It's impossible to completely separate the ego, right? It is. But I think it comes down to your core motivation. And for me, the motivation is I enjoy sharing things with people. And I also want people to have good sources of information um i'm not really a creator uh i don't have like a famous open source project that i've built um i think some of the value i contribute is more of like telling people about other cool stuff and that i don't know that seems like a valuable thing to exist in the world but it's it's not telling them so that they will think that i'm

awesome i feel like that's not my primary motivation yeah me too and so you can well you can tell because i don't have like an ebook series or a screencast series that i'm selling like yeah i i people make money off of that and it's not bad like you're not saying that's a bad thing i'm not saying it's a bad thing and this is why it's such a touchy sound right but i don't want that life where every word i say is a sales pitch for my content yeah yeah or even even if it's not if you're if you don't even want to carry around that incentive i think is what you're saying yeah to where it also it's really hard to do that stuff well and i am lazy and bad so i'm not like oh i could totally do an awesome job but i just choose not to because it's morally wrong

it's it's like it doesn't fit my uh the way i allocate my time and also i don't i don't like having to okay sell sell myself that much okay yeah we so i think let's let's just stop skirting around the issue a little bit and i think the cat's out of the bag jameson and i have a pretty strong bias against uh building your personal brand for the sake of building your personal brand i think that's fair to say and i think some people will find this to be a little bristly because they're like well this is like really good you should build your personal brand so it's a little bit of a but the people telling you to do that are often building their own personal brand by selling you services about building a brand like they're creating an

audience for themselves so there are all kinds of weird incentives when you get into this really deep now like when i come across people who do this as like their primary means of employment do i think they're a bad person no no and james and i'm sure you agree right i agree um but like jameson said i personally would rather have a life focused on uh building things of value for other people and doing cool stuff that helps out you know period and when i think about the idea of marketing myself i i don't like it and i think most engineers probably don't like it even though a certain degree of that is required for you to uh have a decent income and to be successful and you know i mean even if you have the best ideas and build the coolest stuff in

the world if you fail to market them you will fail to have any impact i i remember when i figured that out that you can't it's not just the field of dreams approach you can't just like build a product and then people magically show up it's kind of a big big realization for me yeah like all those other people who aren't engineers are actually they actually have something super valuable to contribute yeah yeah i wonder if that's a common arc that people follow where oh i think they're just so arrogant because they can build stuff and do the real work because this was totally me like i used to say the dumbest things about non non-engineering people sales and marketing and stuff yeah what do those people do it turns out they are the reason you

have a job and have money yeah yeah um although some people really cling to that and i've heard this i've actually seen it on the naive side where you know people like you and i used to be years ago and say well we don't need sales and marketing and then i've also heard it from people who are really experienced technologists or engineers themselves say you don't need those business people like straight up and it's like this attitude is pervasive and i think most people most engineers actually do need that um i think most engineers are not really that great at marketing and sales yeah it's probably a pretty rare combination of skills so anyway if someone is telling you to write content for the sake of writing content i am leery um yeah so well why

why don't we talk about the things that having a good personal brand can get you? Okay. Um, it seems like it can be helpful in getting a job. Uh, it probably depends on how well known you are, but at least if,

if, if you're known at all, you can be pretty sure that people, someone will somewhere offer you a job and the, the more well known you are, probably the wider pool of companies, uh, exists.

So definitely, definitely like a security thing. Um, If you ever go into your own business or have some entrepreneurial aspirations, then that's a huge deal because you have a bigger network of people to talk to about funding or hiring or just how to solve problems you have. So it can be super beneficial. And then it's also great for the good old ego. also if you are responsible for hiring people at your company uh having a so-called personal brand that's well known will cause people to know about your job opening which can lead you to find

great people yep so it has some some pretty big benefits so now i i hate to change the subject again a little bit but rather than the word personal brand i really like the word reputation oh that's so good let's never say the word personal brand again okay i thought you were about to have a really negative reaction no like i just threw up in my mouth again dave well no i did every time i said the the p word pb yeah i'm not gonna say it again um you know like i want to be known as someone who's reliable and helpful and kind and also who's really good at my job like that's something i want to be that's what i want my reputation to be i think saying reputation captures the the non because because there are a lot of marketing hacks you can do to become more

famous and some of them don't actually correlate with being uh like effective or successful yeah it's just it's just you can it turns out you can buy twitter followers for pretty cheap and if you have a lot of twitter followers then other people will follow you because they look at you and they're like oh that person has twitter followers um but that doesn't create or reflect true value i think but reputation seems like it's about who you are not what sneaky seo tricks you've learned yes that's a really good way to put it so this will probably make some people upset i think some people who sell personal brand ideas will probably not be on board with this very much but maybe maybe we're just shockingly naive as well

well i will say that pretty much everybody i know who talks about building your personal brand makes a lot of money so i'm definitely not even that way they they do um how do i say this they often make a lot of money off of uh selling the dream of building your personal brand to other people though it's kind of like the gold rush thing where the people that made money in the gold rush sold shovels they weren't the people that went out and dug gold so they're all these like consultants and trainers and and and marketer people that can help you with stuff um but they're helping you do the thing it gets into this weird recursive yeah that's what i was just thinking it's turtles all the way down yeah they're they they have a strong personal

brand which they benefit from by selling tools to help other people build their brand which by selling that they can show success to other people and i don't know so if everybody already had a personal a perfect personal oh i said it again and i made you say it again what are we doing uh so this episode has a chance to turn into a rant session i think yeah but i think i have ranted too much already we have a little bit on task that's fine um i would say that i think some developers read things like you should be putting out a blog post every week and they feel guilty because they're not um and i think that if every developer in the world put out a blog post every week they would just they would only have one reader and it would be themselves right because

you just couldn't possibly keep up with that. I say, if you have something great to say and you haven't already seen someone else say it, then you should put out a blog post about it. That's awesome. But if you're just putting out a blog post because someone said you need to do it, I think you're probably missing the point. It's also, I think there are some people that have the ability to produce good and useful ideas at that rate where they can write something every week and it'll be worth reading. Probably most people don't have that ability. I know I for sure don't have the time um it takes me a long time to write a blog post because i'm not super fast at it and i work hard to try and make it a polished idea that i feel like is worth sharing

and if i'm not doing that i'm creating content which is for the pb not the reputation um i do think there's some benefit to writing every week because it'll help you improve your writing skills and i think having good writing skills is really its own reward and will be really rewarding in many other ways. Uh, but if, you know, if you're just writing to get more content, to get your search results up there, to make sure that you get more click throughs and better readership, you know, then, uh, I would say you're probably missing the point. And I think your, your content is a little hollow. Um, yeah. How much of that, we talk so much in, in, uh, like the startup world about how you have to kind of try a lot

of things and iterate and and ship early and stuff right and then the thing i just said is like produce perfect blog posts and polish them and stuff what if the way you write good blog posts is by writing a lot of terrible ones though that's true and then every once in a while you just have you have a good one yeah a gem like maybe one out of every 20 blog posts is awesome and you'll never get the the 20th blog post if you don't write the first 19 yeah it's certainly true i think it comes down to a matter of motivation like are you writing these blog posts so that you can get more followers on twitter or more readers or are you really trying to like explore ideas with people and um share and you know basically add value i'll put that in air quotes but you're trying

to add value to your community yeah that makes sense i think that for me is the distinguishing factor uh another maybe um different like layer of nuances we talked a lot about the benefit of having a a strong pb um i think a lot of that same benefit could come from just having cool friends if you have cool friends then you'll have people that you want to work with and that want to work with you and as you you and your cool friends kind of progress in your careers there'll be entrepreneurship opportunities and business partnership opportunities those are important to you or just like collaborating on cool art code stuff so uh and that that to me captures the idea of it can be really helpful to have people that that you know and respect and that

know and respect to you but without the kind of salesmanship side of it yeah uh that goes to uh the networking idea too which is a word i also don't really like networking you know uh it's like i would rather have relationships with people who i love and love me or maybe even just like and who like me and who we have a productive relationship together as opposed to just saying i know 1 000 people you know like i have contacts with 1 000 people yeah um i think that's i think those two things are like they're that they may look the same on paper but under the hood your motivation makes a big difference so i feel like a lot of this advice or or things we've talked about has depended on um

kind of a personality or or an attitude of someone that likes to get out and talk to people either online or in person. And not everyone is like that, right? If you don't enjoy large groups of people, you're not probably going to be very comfortable at meetups or conferences, which is where you meet a lot of cool people. And if you do not like writing, then you're not going to be writing blog posts or you won't do these activities that introduce you to people and help build your reputation. So what do you do if you feel like you are a talented software developer, but you maybe aren't um you aren't great at those things that other people look at to see is this person a talented software developer like if they google your name you won't have anything there but you're

still awesome yeah good question well i think you may have stumbled upon a point of discrimination in our industry, which is that gregarious extroverted social people tend to get the spotlight. And maybe this is true in all industries, but that is definitely the case. I will say this, some of the people that I want to work with the most and who I respect the most on my team as authority figures and as experts, they are not in the public spotlight and they're not extroverts. They're just really good at their jobs and they have a fabulous reputation and they're the kind of person that i will recruit at any company i'm at um so i think so if you focus on your sphere of influence it's a great way to start like focus on the people around you and

being helpful to them and making sure you have a good relationship with them and that's something that i think most people can do even if you're not really extroverted okay so you're talking about more of the in-person close personal relationships yeah one-on-one you're never going to write a blog post you're never going to go give some famous conference talk yeah but you do work face to face with people and and those people know other people and just that kind of organic doesn't that describe tiny talking to people yeah yeah um i mean i think that describes the vast majority of software developers um i think i don't have data behind this but i think most software developers actually don't even attend conferences or participate in meetups

i just think they don't and so even if you do have a so-called big personal brand in that space you're only really reaching a very small subset of the population sure and yeah you kind of said this already but just to underscore it i feel like someone's ability to do good work and be a person i'd want to work with is pretty much in no way correlated with how how well known they are online oh yeah um absolutely yeah which is it's it's good and bad because a lot of the things that we look to to decide if someone's ideas are worth following are how well known is this person online but it's a celebrity mindset to do that i mean yep you know you're way way sub-sampling the population when you select people that way yep we've okay we've wandered a little bit of field

again okay um so if i could sum up what we said it said it to me it seems like um we've said there's value in having a reputation and you can have a good reputation without kind of needing to um be an extrovert or be out in the in the like tech scene or whatever um you can still do those things and if you go about it with the right attitude then uh it maybe won't come across as as how do i say it i don't know kind of mercenary uh yeah or maybe shallow yeah yep yeah does that kind of sum up what we've talked about so far i think so do you think it's time we talk about the word thought leader now this is another term from the question that was asked yeah so uh i have a quick thought on the word thought leader um i think most developers

myself definitely included don't really love this term to put it mildly um and i've been a thought leader well i've been thinking about that like what is it i don't like about it and what really is a thought leader. And I think the whole notion of a thought leader makes me think of a ruling class of elite and that the rest of us are just thought havers and that we must follow the thought leaders. And it's like, how did they become a thought leader in the first place? And some people will say, well, it's because they had really good thoughts and the good thought people joined the thought leadership clan and the rest of us just follow along. I think we can kind of debunk that in the age of virality the the thing that most people look at is not necessarily the best thing

right someone writes some really really controversial blog post and it's not a good blog post it just is controversial and then everyone looks at it so eyeballs don't don't really equal agreed and the other thing that takes off is uh cynicism like when i stumble across youtube videos and i like from software developers i'll often see cynical thought and those tend to take off a lot and you might equate that with thought leadership as well everything is broken and then let me show you how to fix it it's kind of a pitch that happens a lot if even that last part yeah or subscribe to my free webinar series um but i really don't like the culture of thought leadership i like i like the idea of um everybody's thoughts have the potential for really great value

and and offering and contributing something cool yeah and to say that there's a thought leader class will i think create a mindset at least in my mind that i'm not a member of that class and so i'll just do what they say yep i'm not on board with that yeah i i agree with that i think i i heard the phrase thought i have her from matt zabriskie and i love it i actually made a chrome extension that changes the phrase thought leader to thought ever that's so great yep i love it It makes my life better. Yeah, so we don't like that phrase, problem solved. I mean, so what?

Well, I think what I would say the big takeaway in this episode is that if you're a developer feeling guilty about not marketing yourself very well, or because you don't put out enough content, I would say, don't worry about that. Focus on your reputation, focus on your co-workers and friends, and just try to be a good person there and personal brand may or may not follow you know and it's okay either way but personal brand is very different from like secure and stable and reliable reputation i guess yeah definitely what you're saying okay that makes sense uh question answered then what would you say to uh if you were standing here today talking to someone who has clearly made a career

out of just basically creating content? Like they don't work on a team, they don't produce a product other than selling this service. What would you say to them right now? That is a great question. I don't know what I would say to them because you mentioned earlier in the episode

that you really want to produce something of value and to you producing something of value is working with a team to build a software product is my assumption, right? yeah totally true um but to someone else it could be writing an ebook that they sell and that is producing their that is producing value like it's a thing that they've created that you're it's absolutely true people follow their ideas they believe that that people will be better off so uh i i have i have a personal preference but i also feel bad making value judgments about it i

I do think, um, selling is a very different skillset from solving the problem that the thing that you're selling is trying to solve. And that can be tricky sometimes if you are really good at selling content and you're creating content about, um, like building good software teams, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at building good software teams. True. um so so i'm always a little wary of people who are kind of professional teachers because it means they're really good at teaching uh it doesn't necessarily mean that they are experts on the

thing that they're teaching does that distinction make sense yeah like a professional speaker versus yeah a professional developer yeah it's it's kind of like the consult the management consultant idea like if you are an expert at management why are you not a manager somewhere and in some cases maybe they were you know yeah well i had a 20-year career in development and management and now i'm talking to you about what i learned yeah i think that's totally legit yeah but some cases it's not some cases it's like well i i'm actually a good consultant and i'm good i'm good at closing consulting contracts yeah yeah and that's a different skill set so i i guess i i worry a about um following people who are persuasive but not correct that kind of stresses me out sometimes

so i don't have a good answer i kind of just danced around what you said i really appreciate your perspective because i think you are you are honoring the nuance of this situation because i think it would be really bad to come down on one side and say anyone who produces youtube content every week and makes money off of it is doing the world a disservice that would be bad but i think it would also be bad to say everyone should do that and it's really important to your personal brand you know so there's and there's a thousand points in between i think yep so in conclusion everything depends on the context and there's nuance everywhere and it's not bad or good except us we are good and we are awesome

also my personal brand could beat up your personal brand well i think that was enough thought leadering for one episode uh yeah i i had some thoughts thoughts were had all right uh where can people find out more about our podcast jameson they can follow us on twitter we are soft skills eng that's where we announce stuff and we'll we'll But if we ever do anything cool besides a podcast, like if we start producing YouTube content or daily blog posts, then it'll all show up on there. If you disagree with something we said or agree, we would love to hear from you and hear your perspective. And we promise to share it on the show if it's not offensive. Or even if it is a little offensive, we'll still share it probably.

We'll just cut out the names that you call us. We would love to hear from you. if you have a question that you would like to hear jameson's wisdom and my wisecracks about we'd love to hear that too feel free to tweet us at soft skills eng as jameson mentioned or send a direct message we our twitter account will receive direct messages whether or not you are our follower bring on the randos all right all right thanks very much see you next week