

Ask HN: When did self-promotion become important? - bjclark

I have noticed, in the last year, that almost everyone in my programing circle of friends and acquaintances (mostly ruby people) have become very focused and aware of self-promotion, to the point that numerous times I hear people say "[That guy] is just really good at self promotion" (usually as a thinly veiled put down).<p>I used to believe that most programming and open source communities were meritocracies, but it sounds like the people I'm around don't believe that anymore.<p>When did this start? Where did it come from? Is this unique to the Ruby community or are others saying that?
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gaustin
Sounds like the people you're talking about are jealous, and covering it up
with insults.

Self-promotion has always been important. The degree of importance depends on
your goals.

If you want fame, you have to self-promote. If you want high rates and the
choicest jobs, you have to self-promote. If you want to work on interesting
problems and make a living doing it, you have to self-promote.

If you just want to hack on stuff that turns you on in your spare time, then
self-promotion is optional. But who doesn't like a _little_ recognition? I
don't think the open source community would exist without that drive.

I think self-promotion should be grounded in merit. I would hope the people I
respect that might dismissed as "just really good at self promotion" are
actually good at what they do.

Sorry for the rambly answer.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I agree with your sentiment but I'm not sure I agree with your point.

The problem with taking the attitude of "its all about recognition" is it
ignores the fact that (a) other people are willing to take credit for stuff
you do and (b) others might take the stuff you did in a direction you don't
like.

On the first point it shouldn't be news to anyone that there are people who
will take credit for things they didn't do. The way those people succeed is by
finding things that were done by people who "just want to hack stuff" and then
claiming they did it instead.

On my second point people who have a claim to helping with your work can
hijack it if you don't take your proper credit. Many problems with RSS came
from the fact that Dave Winer claimed ownership of it and took it in a
completely different direction from its RDF roots. I don't want to rehash that
technical argument but that fact remains most of the people who followed Winer
did so because they thought he "invented RSS" (or "was the Father of..."). The
reason people thought that is because Ramanathan Guha didn't self promote like
Winer did.

So there are consequences to self-promotion that extend beyond one's personal
recognition. If you don't take the credit and leadership role due to you
someone else often times will.

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trotsky
A lot of people naturally want to promote themselves, whether or not it does
any good. You can see this behavior at work when people are excited to be on
TV even if it's a 5 second sound bite about a car wreck, or 15 years ago when
everyone* posted endless streams of pictures of their cats on their home pages
(see facebook).

In some cases people may look down on this behavior (see your friends), this
may lead those who participate in it to justify the behavior as necessary (see
actors).

In other cases it may be quite necessary for their source of income (see
motivational speakers, underemployed consultants).

I suppose you'd have to decide for yourself which category these folks might
belong in.

Seeing an uptick there might be the result of the heat currently in the
sector. The behavior certainly did seem to peak in 99/00 with the last market
bubble. Anecdotally, self promoters often seem to flock to over heated sectors
- people that aren't johnny come latelies may just be getting caught up by
seeing others do it.

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ajsharp
I think your depiction of the ruby community is accurate. We definitely like
to promote what we're doing, be it on our blogs, at conferences, on twitter,
at meetups, etc.

Last year at LaRubyConf, Sarah Allen called the ruby community "the
programming community for extroverts". I couldn't agree more.

I think your analysis of the community is more a result of that than any level
of pomposity, vainness, or even simple hand-waving. Sure, those things will
always occur to some extent. But I think it's really a result of positive
attributes, and maybe a dash of success ;)

I also think people's attitudes towards engineers have changed markedly in
more recent years. Gone are the days of nerdy dudes updating bank software in
"Office Space". Who is everyone's favorite CEO these days? Steve Jobs. What
was one of the biggest blockbuster hits of the year? A movie about a nerdy
dude at Harvard building a web app (I know, that's not what the movie is
_really_ about). In other words, it's fucking cool to be an engineer these
days, _especially_ a software engineer.

I think ruby programmers, being extroverts (generally), have embraced this
cultural shift, and dare I say capitalized on it.

I can't deny that people in the ruby community have ample opportunity to
become "rockstars" in the community simply by way of self-promotion, but there
are just as many of those who are popular for their prolific open source
contributions, which is by no means hurt by their self-promotion prowess.

Good observation bj, and great conversation starter.

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kirubakaran
Don't hang out with people who put others down. Whether they are right or
wrong is immaterial. Most of them just want to feel superior and their
negativity can do you absolutely no good. If you do hang out with them, you'll
become one of them before you know it.

~~~
bjclark
Totally agree and I plan on focusing on this in the coming year.

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sosuke
I thought self promotion has always been important. If no one knows who you
are then no one will promote you regardless of your merit. Most any company
will promote themselves through self promotion before anyone notices them.

------
pg
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico>

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zb
Around the time humans invented agriculture.

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kenjackson
I do think the Ruby community takes it to the next level. I've commented
several times about how I find the Ruby community to be the most irritating.

Is it unique to the Ruby community? Certainly not, but if you find yourself
around a better class of people, you may notice that they're not Ruby
developers ;-)

~~~
jamesbritt
" if you find yourself around a better class of people, you may notice that
they're not Ruby developers."

Comments like that say more about you than about Ruby developers, winking
punctuation or not.

~~~
kenjackson
It may. But it doesn't mean its not true. I can be a jerk, and the Ruby
community can be irritating. :-)

~~~
petercooper
"The Ruby community" is as poorly defined a term as the "white community" or
the "American community."

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jamesbritt
"I used to believe that most programming and open source communities were
meritocracies ..."

People cannot judge you on your merits unless they know you exist and what
you've done. Stand up and be counted.

Now, there is the case that some people assign special value to other people
by virtue of their being known, and don't bother to find out _why_ someone is
known. TV is filled with people who are famous for being famous. Maybe some
tech circles are like that, too.

I've had people look to hire me who mention that they were Googling for
something or other and my name kept coming up, so they figured I was the
person to contact. Far be it from me to to discourage such people :).

But I also know that the bottom line is you have to live up to these people's
expectations.

~~~
bjclark
I think you hit the nail on the head of what I'm getting at: "Famous for being
famous." I guess I'm wondering if this is starting to happen in OSS and
Programming in general?

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alanh
Nice question, have an upvote. ;)

