

The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career  - pchristensen
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/04/single-most-important-thing-you-must-do.html

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menloparkbum
I disagree with this advice in the general sense. There is a trend right now
in Silicon Valley to have all manner of meetups and presentations. I've worked
with tons of these guys and the majority of them are not going anywhere. You
still need something worthwhile to present. A top-notch presentation about
another new Ruby DSL for migrating data from MySQL to PostgreSQL is not going
to help your career as much as writing Anywhere.FM in 3 months. If your work
is good enough, you can always get someone better than you to do the talking.
Improving your communication skills can't hurt but it isn't the single most
important thing you can do.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I think you misread the article.

The article was about improving your programming career, not creating
solutions, forming a startup, becoming a great programmer, etc. To improve a
career, you need to communicate better. It didn't say that it was the single
most important thing to do overall. It was specifically about career
advancement.

Even in the startup arena, there are lots of capable coders who have created
awesome solutions who just don't know how to connect and communicate to the
right people. After all, it's not the idea -- heck, it's not even the code,
it's the ability to communicate effectively to people that makes a startup
run. You can have the next best thing to sliced bread and if you're not able
to communicate (market, sell, persuade) it doesn't really amount to much,
right?

~~~
menloparkbum
I didn't misread the article. I disagree with it. While he mentions improving
communication skills in the general sense, specifically the article seems to
be about presentations and public speaking. I don't think this is the most
important thing you can do to improve your career.

In fact, within the spectrum of interpersonal communications, you are probably
better off learning how to schmooze on a personal level before you hone your
presentation skills.

------
sanswork
I often say that starting to smoke was my lucky break career wise.

When I got my first IT job it was a very low level help desk job with a big 3
consultancy. I smoked though so I was often in the smoking lounge/smoking area
with the other smokers and we would naturally chat. This chatting/familiarity
got my name around enough that I was able to get extra chances to move ahead
and was out of the call centre and into a development job in no time at all.

I did finally quit though. Now I got for the smoke breaks I just leave the
smokes out of it. I get the same benefit with only having to risk second hand
smoke a couple times a day.

~~~
xlnt
there is no evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous, so don't worry about
it.

~~~
rms
>there is no evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous, so don't worry
about it.

regardless of what studies may have said or not said, it seems obvious that it
is not good.

~~~
mynameishere
_regardless of what studies may have said or not said,_

Good one. I like that honest approach to inquiry: Fuck science.

~~~
Herring
re: parent - it's called sarcasm, people.

~~~
xlnt
but the parent of the sarcastic post wasn't actually anti-science at all.

------
jrockway
> The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming
> career

... stop reading social news sites and start writing some _( &#@!_ing code?

------
SwellJoe
Wow. The Jobs Reality Distortion field existed even in 1984. The crowd was
going apeshit over a pitiful demo--the Amiga was already being shown to press
in '84 and was released less than a year later...I certainly knew that the Mac
wasn't all that impressive at the time. My Commodore 64 even had 16 colors and
could talk using SAM, and the C64 scene demos blew away everything that Mac
slideshow was doing. But the crowd is simply orgasmic.

How does he do it? What is it that Apple people are seeing that makes them so
excited by everything Jobs demos? Really, it's something I've never
understood...I see overpriced underpowered machines, and yet, for fans, every
Apple product is a little piece of heaven.

So, obviously, I'm managing to miss the point of the article pretty
resoundingly, but oh, well.

------
spydez
Anyone know what a "presentation deck" is?

He says it's the most important thing it the world to have for a talk you
give, but it's the first I've heard of it...

~~~
raganwald
That would be a "deck of slides." Nowadays it's a keynote, open office, or
that-other-thing file, but once upon a time it was a set of 35mm
transparencies you would load into a carousel.

Stacked up, they looked a little like a deck of cards, thus the nickname
"deck." You can probably find one (and someone old enough to remember when
they were called decks) in a museum somewhere.

~~~
wanorris
I'm old enough to have presented from transparencies on an overhead projector,
though I've never had occasion to present using an actual slide carousel.

BTW, I'm not sure I understand why you think it's so important to present with
a Powerpoint (or similar). I tend to think Powerpoints get overused, and I
often like to present working just from notes (3x5 cards, since I'm bad at
memorizing) or from a demo when appropriate.

What's the win of working with a deck, in your view?

~~~
raganwald
There are two questions: what's the best presentation for a given subject and
audience, and what's the best way to improve your skills.

IMO, a good presentation with whatever-you-call-the-visuals is more difficult
to do well, therefore that's what I think you should practice.

Speeches and demos are always easier to give. They may be more appropriate for
certain subjects, no doubt.

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morbidkk
the more you grow as a programmer your power to abstract things improves; with
little more effort you can convey the same thing vividly to fellow
programmers/managers and that is what this article talks about.

you cant communicate effectively if you dont hold the authority over the
subject or havent done significant handson on the same topic.

------
redorb
The article is the basics of presentations, to bad all it is presenting is the
opportunity to buy a book through amazon

~~~
raganwald
IMO the article is worse than "the basics of presentations," actually doesn't
say anything about _how_ to present, it merely explains that it is a skill
worth improving.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide whether an article that
spends half of its time explaining why presentations and the other half
explaining how to present is better or worse than an article that tries to
make one point succinctly and stops.

