Developer Public Relations

We must expose reality and recognize the power of perception.

Perception

As a young programmer, I had a seasoned coworker tell me that perception equals reality. True enough.

He had seen things. He had been through perception working against him. He knew its power. His warning was now passed on to this fair youth.

Marketing is blah

After this long time in the industry, I would say that perception paints reality. Results can speak for themselves. But they are not the only things speaking.

But all those other things speaking... they're just marketing. Noise in the air. Triumphant speeches. Launch parties. Presentations with all those callouts.

With so much marketing fluff having taken my time and senses, most of the time now it feels vain. It crowds out time and energy for innovation, real connection and creation. In an effort to not crowd those things out, I have eschewed marketing myself, especially in recent years.

It feels empty. It feels like a show. It is. It's bean counting and billboards.

Solid is not enough

One might think, "I can get hired, do a solid job, and I'll be rewarded." Maybe in finances, respect, recognition or some other privilege.

But being solid is not enough. It's not enough for many reasons. Leave marketplace competition out of the equation for now. Let's focus on another point:

At some point, someone's gonna write us a performance review. Our reviewer needs to know what we did. He doesn't like bean counting either. That would take his own time and energy through the year. What he writes is gonna come from a picture in his head of what he views our performance to be.

Public relations required

So where does the picture in his head come from? There is a minimum need for personal marketing. To get past the gag reflex, we need to adjust something. Let's call it public relations. Marketing marketing. Irony.

Public relations feels more palatable. It is. It's still real people. It hints at the long term. It's a more respectable sort. Honest. Less of selling and more of communicating.

If we can do a good job in public relations with our performance reviewers, the next time the review comes up, we will have not just done the work, but we'll have helped paint the picture that determines our scores on that sheet of paper.

Those scores don't count for much -- except for money! (And we wouldn't do the job without that, especially the marketing.)

Some minimum amount of good PR is required to help perception better match reality. Not selling, just telling.