A Problem with Developers!
Developers are intelligent people who love to write code in isolation. Being a developer, I also love to work in a separate room fighting with bugs but there's a problem.
Yes. The problem with developers like me and most of the others as well.
Problem is that I and you and others - all are equally good developers. All solve complex problems daily, shipping new products, integrating new features, and fighting with bugs. We all nearly have the same set of responsibilities.
Did you get it? Right?
We are good but we aren't showing that we are good enough as others. This is where most developers lag behind. Due to that in my opinion, developers are killing their careers. They miss a lot of opportunities due to lack of networking habits, good communication skills, and other related things.
The Cure
Since we just identified the problem. Let us find a cure.
So, to address this problem a developer should network, network, and network.
When you network you are exposing yourself to a vast world of opportunities. You get a lot of traction. You make yourself a personal brand. And many more benefits come out of this.
How to network?
Ahhh. I don't know anyone in my community. Know one knows me. Why on earth someone will talk to me?
These all are the thoughts that start popping up in our minds when we think of networking.
Believe me. It's hard to fight these thoughts but just start. Search nearby meetups in your locality. Pick one which interests you or is relevant to your work or tech stack you work on and just show up there.
If you are a good speaker, go and speak to people there. Once you show your presence people will start noticing you and will definitely talk to you. It will take time but soon you will be heard.
My Story :
So, my story is the same. I used to be a lonely developer sometimes ago. I thought working in open source was just a waste of time. Networking was not my thing. and Speaking is related to some academicians not a programmer like me.
Life passed on!
It was August 2019. I was given an assignment in my workplace to make some sort of research on storing data as we were starting a project. I tried to search for the topic. But I found that people were talking about EDA, complex models, Naive Byes, SVMs, ANNs, and everything but there wasn't a guide on how to store data (I wasn't able to get information from a single source). I researched a bit on the topic. Some thoughts came in my own mind. I collected all these things and wrote on Medium to remember the points.
A few days later when I revisited the draft, I thought why not publish it so that everyone can benefit from this?
I published it. You can read it here :
Medium
I thought it will get a lot of views since the topic was unique. But it didn't. I waited but still, it didn't.
DEV comes to save me!
I was disheartened. As you know, it's all about views and claps (on Medium), which matters to a writer. I didn't get them at all.
Days of life kept on passing.
One day, I was searching for some topic. I stumbled upon the DEV!
Loved the UI. It was simple and elegant. After I read the tutorial, I signed up. Curious to know about this, I came to know that DEV is a 'free' Medium. You can read as many articles as you can here without any paywall.
I thought to give it a try. So, copy-pasted my whole Medium article here. Although, it was Data Science related still audience on DEV was responsive and loving. There were more views as compared to Medium. I got around 10 reactions in 2 days.
That was big for me at that time and enough to boost my morale.
I started writing on DEV. The response here was quick. People were loving my posts.
In those days, Jack Ma and Elon Musk had a debate about the future of AI. I planned to write an article on it. You can read it here :
It was my first article which got 1K+ views on DEV. I was so happy that I was getting traction.
That gave me a boost. Since then I have been writing every week and discussing things which developers in particular and community in general love.
On one of my posts, Quincy Larson commented to thank me for promoting freeCodeCamp tutorials.
What Next?
So, so far so good.
Till now, I have written a lot of posts and articles. One of them has got around 100K+ views. Collectively, my articles have got 218K+ views. I have around 12K+ followers here.
I have interacted with a lot of people here. Learned a lot from them. They have become friends for me. Many have reached out to me for help. They have been asking about refactoring CV, general career advice, and other things. I have felt extremely good to help them and they have also taught me many things.
Thank you so much to all of you.
Thank you so much DEV.
Thank you so much The DEV Community.
You have been helpful to me and amazing...
Top comments (12)
DEV is amazing! I have had a similar experience. It is so motivating. I write for myself. It helps me learn, gives me something to share when colleagues ask questions, and something to refer back to later. But when no one reads or comments it's a bit demotivating, and you question if it's worth it.
I also have found that I used to browse Twitter for news and articles on tech... I find myself on Twitter much less these days.
Thanks for your comment. Yeah it is. But I think as you write more and make your identity here, then people start noticing you.
Hi, Saeed.
You've been writing a lot of amazing content on DEV, and as you mentioned getting views is the only thing that will motivate you to write more.
My Story is a little different from you, as I started posting on DEV because twitter's word limit was too short to talk. I posted my first article and then it got me 165 reactions and on the same day I got a call from a Startup to work with them, and now I have 12000+ followers in the last 5 months and.
Different Perspective of the story
I'm from Pakistan myself but I'm from a much smaller city "Sukkur", and It's almost impossible to network there and I'm 15 yrs old so people thinks that I'm just a kid. DEV is amazing for me, cause I want to talk to new people and listen to them and put my thoughts somewhere.
BTW, You're a champion.
Thank you so much Aashir. I am much humbled and appreciation from you means a lot to me.
I have been following you since a while and you have been a Champ! You have also been advocating the tech for good, which is amazing.
🙂🙏
I have been reading your posts here since day 1. Even though I am an old member of DEV, I am certainly not an interactive one. I rarely comment on posts and I rarely write anything.
DEV has been the most comfortable community for me as a developer and I am sure everybody else here on DEV feels the same.
Wishing you huge success in the future as well.
Thank you so much for appreciation Arslan Bhai. I read the chapter written by you in the book 'Your First Year in Code'. That was perfectly written.
Same is from my side. DEV has been an amazing platform which has brought recognition to me not only as a developer but also as a writer.
Thank you again. If I have a chance to come to Lahore in future, I will be happy to meet you.
Thanks for the appreciation, Saeed. I'd be happy to meet you when you're here. 😊
Yo! ma boy :p
Great Write Saeed Ahmad. I am a silent reader. But, your post motivates me to change my attitude and inspires me to write.
Thank you so much for your comment Muhammed. Followers like you also motivate me to write more and inspire me to remain active in the community.
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