A Social Developer

There’s something that’s been interesting to me - a rise of the “social developer”, i.e. a Software Developer for whom their professional social presence is front and center. In certain circles, it is believed that serious social media presence is mandatory for success in this career.

Looking at it, there’s almost a standard approach at this point: create a shiny LinkedIn profile, connect left and right, post in groups, create content. The content is usually the same - basics of the language, basic tips, hints on how to improve your code (of questionable accuracy). Programming books (usually the top 10 from any generic “best programming books” list) recommendations. A website with mostly more of the same. A blog on Medium that nobody reads (yes, I know that nobody reads this blog either, the irony is not lost).

Then, a more advanced step is making a course or a free ebook to funnel people in. Actively seeking Open Source contributions (no matter how much sense they make) or hackathons or conferences, or anything that gives you a badge.

I wonder how meaningful this canned approach is - how many people got a good job because of all these bells and whistles? Has any recruiter looked at it and said “yes, this is our candidate”? Especially for the Junior developers - for them finding a job is the hardest, and I see a lot of people going into this full-social mode, thinking that chit-chat with bots on LinkedIn is “networking”.

I was approached several times by people on LinkedIn with offers of gigs, which I guess counts as “networking”, but that happened after fairly random and relatively involved interactions, not just filling every form with generic input.

I think at the bottom of it is the desire to emulate more successful people, for whom all of this came organically, who were already interested in these aspects and who create authentic, mostly good-quality content.

The difference is that, a random Junior is not Linus Torvalds or DHH, for whom shooting a comment or writing a blog post is a tiny part of what they do. Maybe a better use of your effort would be working on your skills that would allow you to produce more valuable content, and getting the actual experience that all those people got before the social attention.

Or maybe not, what do I know.