
Ask HN: Social skills for hackers - MichaelAza
Coming a bit late to the party, but I&#x27;m coming to understand that just being a highly skilled professional won&#x27;t get you far without networking skills.<p>Since it doesn&#x27;t seem to come easy to a lot of us - how did you learn to network, have people like you, keep a conversation going etc.<p>Any recommended books? Videos? Courses?
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xhedley
Practice with colleagues. I find networking events impossible if I go by
myself but fun if I go with someone from work. As far as specific books go -
find something that fits your culture. Lots of people from the USA rate Dale
Carnegie highly, but as a British person that approach doesn’t feel quite
right. General interest psychology can be readable and enlightening. Thinking
Fast and Slow. Emotional Intelligence. Maybe something on Mindfulness if you
aren’t familiar with focussing on your own feelings and emotions.

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pryelluw
You make a very important, and often overlooked point: Social skills vary from
culture to culture. Make sure to research this from the context of your
culture and location.

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pryelluw
Networking, having people like you, and keeping a conversation going are three
different skills. You should divide and conquer them.

I started with conversational skills because I found practice to be easy to do
(you can practice with your family).

Networking is more complex but boils down to finding common interests with
strangers. On Twitter, I seek out people with whom I seem to have something in
common (python for example). Then I just follow them and join in their tweets
in a friendly way. This approach helped me get a job after hurricane Maria
destroyed my home country and I had to relocate.

Getting people to like you, well, that's the hard one. What has worked for me
is tons of empathy, actively looking for ways to help people, and checking up
on their progress. I'm neither good looking, charming, nor an extrovert. It's
a lot of work but it's worth it.

Go read Dale Carnegie's How to make friends and influence people. It's a good
solid start. You can also email me and I'll gladly help you on your journey.

PS. I'm soon doing a conference talk on this subject titled Networking for
nerds: for people who are bad at people. It will appear on the developer on
fire conf this coming January. I assume it will later be available on YouTube
for free.

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matt_the_bass
Go to a trade show and find an invite to one of the trade show parties. There
will be lots of sales people there with "sales person" personalities. Talk
with them. They're usually good at talking so you should not need to feel
stress to keep the conversation going. You might pick up some techniques.

PS it's usually easy to score a trade show party invite. Just ask at any
friendly booths where the best party is that evening.

