Recent searches
Search options
I really hate that engineers have made "marketing" such a dirty word because honestly this last year I realized I'm actually a damn good "marketer" and somehow by saying that I fear I lose all my technical credibility.
Engineering can build all the cool things they want, but if you can't market it, you are mostly shit out of luck.
At the end of the day, most of us just want respect and a seat at the table. I've stuck to "developer advocacy" as a way to attempt to get some of that respect with a somewhat technical title while not existing entirely in engineering. Years ago I played around the "community engineer" title, but it just didn't really improve on anything.
Anyone who tells you titles don't matter are probably on the upper end of the power structure. Ignore them. They struggle to look beyond their power.
I need to turn this into a blog post.
@taylor_atx yes
There’s a terrible sickness you allude to here I call “engineering supremacy”
And what’s really sad is that in the terminal phase of it, you’ve got extraordinary engineering talent getting paid in stock that isn’t worth SHIT
all the other functions have atrophied, and no one understands the unique value of the company
@taylor_atx I once had a CEO tell me that. 
@taylor_atx yup, had the CEO of a small startup I worked at tell me this. He also thought it weird I didn't want to go out and buy a Tesla to save on gas. It's like he was a multi millionaire ex-Microsoft exec or something and very out of touch.
@taylor_atx I agree 100%, and unfortunately this also means you will never find an ally with power to fix problems related to this. Everyone with a better title is there because they earned it, obviously.
@taylor_atx Please do.
@taylor_atx You are absolutely correct. The most important factor behind why a given piece of technology or product succeeds or not comes down to marketing. That’s why open source consistently fail in competition with commercial products. The former abhors marketing while the latter excels in it.
@taylor_atx I wrote about this many years ago in the context of Drupal. https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/on-drupals-leadership
"soft power" is necessary but insufficient for effective leadership. Those that say otherwise have more hard power than they realize. Or are just lying manipulative bastards.