This resonates with my own experience tremendously. I've blogged for ten years - opportunities have come out of it. I've worked on OSS for ten years - opportunities have come out of it. Most of the time I was doing both I felt like I was doing something inconsequential that only meant something to me. That was incorrect. Reliably putting work out there and collaborating with other humans makes things happen.
> Most of the time I was doing both I felt like I was doing something inconsequential that only meant something to me
because the world is so large, it's actually quite likely that any problem you have that you solved is applicable as a solution to a problem someone else have!
I like the framing. I've been trying to blog more and publish more personal projects over the last ~4 years than I had before that, but speaking to the proverbial empty room is a little disheartening.
I think it's because I'm pining for perspective, which is a fairly high-value thing.
I can't say "luck surface area" has changed my life, yet, but I suspect seeing it that way provides a more stable and intrinsic (if small) motivation. I've thought for a while that I'll need a less-external motivation to be able to keep it up in the long term.
Personally I use github issues / prs as documentation for future me. It's a happy side effect that it builds my portfolio (same for if someone actually finds it useful).
Or do you have a more ~personal/meta repo where you're doing this more broadly? If the latter I'd be curious to see an example (but don't feel pressured if you aren't comfortable dropping it in a busy thread).
Nah, the first option, not a central repo. That's a cool idea though, maybe I should do that for irl todo lists. With markdown, it's probably easier / better than using notepad or discord or whatever.
The projects beta will actually let you have a user project which would be easy enough to use that way. I am not sure, however, how public/searchable those are.
as an open-source developer, i can confirm this is a real phenomena
best gigs i’ve got are because of relevant contributions and from companies depending on my software
if you have a strong open-source profile, many companies will skip the screener and invite you straight to interview (i believe this is called “red carpet treatment”)
public work makes you trustworthy and you will stand out among other candidates
Edit: I meant something more more like, "What would you say makes an OSS profile strong?", but I'll preserve the original question below so that the responses still make sense. :)
---
Where would you say a strong OSS profile begins? (Feel free to give a fuzzy low-stakes answer. Haven't experienced this but curious where the ballpark is.)
The path I took was to write libraries for a large ecosystem (Laravel) to solve gnarly problems I was having. The gnarlier the better. Pick the thing that nobody else wants to do and solve it. That's what I did, no guarantees that'll work for anyone else though!
My emphasis was probably a little off. You might be answering something like "if my goal is a strong profile, where should I start?" I was a little more curious about "where do you think ~strong begins?"
In any case, "people depend on it" and "projects across multiple domains" both seem like good-enough answers to the latter question.
Not just sharing work, but sharing stories as well. I recently did a 3-peaks challenge for charity and tweeted about my accomplishments which has led to my next line of work.
I also shared about buying my first house which led to 2 news articles and 1 podcast 30 second audio clip that have all paid money, and given me more exposure. It's been great!
Could you explain more about how buying your first house led to news articles and a podcast that all generated revenue? Seems like it would not be reproducible by many people but interesting nonetheless.
I got my first paid work writing software because I got lucky on GitHub.
Back in college, I simply commented on a peer's issue made for a local hackathon. He was confused about what direction to take for a webapp, and didn't have any experience in any frameworks. I just suggested Rails, and gave a few highlights for it and pointed him towards some starter guides.
Within a couple hours a well connected student (I believe he ran the CS club) saw my comment, and forwarded it to an alumni who was doing local Rails work.
I actually didn't have any experience in Rails beyond the tutorials of the day, and I made that clear. But he liked the look of my GitHub and was happy to give me the job.
It was pretty good money for a college student. I recall not really knowing what to expect hourly wise, and when he brought up payment I wasn't able to give an answer so he immediately said 50/hr. To me, I was truly expecting like half of that. I tried to keep cool as I accepted. My pricing mindset was definitely anchored by waiting tables, where 50/hr is something you might get if you got a really lucky shift and required busting ass. So to get that much for _sitting down_? Oh boy.
After settling on the price, he stepped out of the room for a bit. This was a shared co-working space, and I recall looking over to the guy next to us (who I could tell was paying some attention to our conversation) and saying I did not expect that much money. He happened to work for Uber - and he agreed that I got a very good deal. Not sure why I remember that detail.
Anyway: yes, working in public, and even being helpful in public, certainly can pay dividends.
It really hasn't resulted in fame and fortune; but that's mainly because I am not particularly interested in fame and fortune.
I generally think that it has been "successful." I mainly do what I do, to learn, and to develop the habit of excellence. I write the code that I want to use, and I write the prose that I want to read.
There was another posting, about "Giving A Shit As A Service," and that dovetails rather well, here (in my case).
I love the concept of luck surface, and I believe it's a great mental model. However
> FOR EVERY SNARKY COMMENT, THERE ARE 10X AS MANY PEOPLE ADMIRING YOUR WORK.
This is the opposite of my modest experience. Negativity has outweighed positivity in most of my online interactions. For every encouraging or promising interaction you have, you'll receive more nasty ones that will sap the motivation out of you.
I think it's still worth it, but not for the faint of hearth. Putting up with online toxicity to find those diamonds requires a thick skin and mental fortitude I haven't achieved quite yet. Or maybe it gets easier down the line.
I don't think that line disagrees with your experience. It's not saying you'll get 10x admiration comments. Just that there are 10x admiring people.
It's a bit like HN comments, the discussion happens when someone disagrees, or adds more context. But if you like something you should just upvote instead of posting a trivial comment. Even the rules say so.
I guess if you publish something where you can see the traffic stats, it may be easier to see. So you get 5 comments how your content is dumb - check traffic stats - ah, it's 5 out of 500,000 visitors.
That's a good point. I guess most readers are like dark matter. It's a pity the minority who does interact tend to give a (presumably) biased perception.
Yeah, exactly this. I could've been more clear on that note, but I've often had conversations with people that have never interacted with me on Twitter and they'll say "oh I really love that [thing] you did" and I'm just like... you did? I didn't know that!
You not only have to to stuff, and publish stuff, you have to tell everyone about it.
From my own experience, I've been streaming myself coding a lot recently, but the only time I get even low single digits tuning in is when I post a link somewhere.
So I guess just be prepared that you can write blogs, stream, post videos, publish software... and people don't take notice. There's a whole self-promotion aspect to it as well.
I was careful not to say that this is a surefire path to success. My whole point is that publishing increases your odds. If you're writing blogs, streaming, posting videos, and publishing software my position is that you have a better chance of being noticed than if you didn't do those things. "Publishing" has gradations as well, which range from hitting the "post" button to "self promotion," as you say.
> If you're writing blogs, streaming, posting videos, and publishing software my position is that you have a better chance of being noticed than if you didn't do those things
If that doesn't bear fruit then you have wasted your time though. I don't think that framing this as "increasing your odds" or "having a better chance" is helpful for most people.
If you're starting from zero you're looking for a moonshot, because even if you increase your odds by 1000% the chance of a tangible positive result is still probably ~0.
I dislike the metaphor of luck. None of this is luck. All of this work is taking common opportunities and making them great.
Does it increase your chance of being “lucky”? No, it increases your chance of being visible. Visibility is not luck. You’re not lucky, you are more visible.
You are seizing the opportunity many others do not by building in public. Many do not because people online can suck and tear you down. But if you can get over that, you are seizing the opportunity, not being lucky.
I agree with you that visibility is not luck, but I do think being visibility increases luck!
When someone _comes to me_ with an opportunity, of course I want to seize it. But I can't control them _coming to me._ I can control how visible I am, which increases the odds that people will know about me, know what I'm good at, think about me for an opportunity, etc.
Perceived from the outside, I am lucky! "Wow, I can't believe [XYZ] contacted you about writing that library for them, you're so lucky." And in a way, that is luck. Something unexpected and good (definition from the article) landed in my lap. Of course looking back I can tie it all together: I published Thing A and Person B saw it who forwarded it on to Company C. See, no luck involved, strictly causal. So maybe it's a matter of perspective or semantics, but I think using the word "luck" is a helpful way to communicate the idea!
> Many do not because people online can suck and tear you down.
I don't think the opportunities come reliably. Also the people online might suck or they might not. All of this has its own reasons of happening or not happening, and from an individual's own perspective, luck works well as a device to make sense of these events. Luck itslef doesn't need to really exist for this to work, like how dark matter also probably doesn't exist as such, but it works as a concept.
While his advice might sound obvious, so many people don’t do the work of self-promotion. A good article!
I am convinced that I have very much over performed in my life and career by writing and also not passing up opportunities of helping people.
While I have had a good career, I have worked with so many people who I think are much better than I am as far as technical skills. Sadly many of these super performers don’t do the extra work of self promotion.
1. If your work sucks, the criticism and reputational damage may make it worse than having not published at all.
2. Even if it's good, its unlikely that you will get enough traction for it to matter
3. the 'right people' are inundated with pitches, the odds they care what you have to say are tiny, and trying more times will not help of you're on the wrong track to begin with.
If somebody considers any sort of creative expression (despite it sucking or not) as a pitfall for your job or any other prospects, I don't understand why would you even entertain a discussion with them?
You always have to start somewhere, so if everyone would adhere to what you are saying - we would have 0 content in this world.
Also the answers in this entire post directly dispute #2 #3
Strong agree with point 1. As for points 2 and 3, you need to consider the cumulative effect of many works rather than just a single one. It is a very heavy-tailed distribution, with a few works getting all the attention and all others having no impact.
Devil's advocate: everyone preaching about increasing your luck stumbled into a bit of luck initially, which forever changed their path. If you don't get that initial lucky break you're wasting your time.
doing things * telling people = 0 if you have no people to tell, and is still practically 0 unless you happen to tell the right people.
It's very likely that "doing things and telling people" will never produce any results unless you're well positioned, either by circumstance, happenstance or on purpose.
The people who are obviously the "right" people are generally the hardest to attract attention from, because they're busy and likely bombarded with similarly requests.
I have tried to do this twice over the past ten years. The first time was in equity research. It was actually easier for me to start a business myself than get people hiring to just look at my work casually. And when it came up, almost always suspicion: why are you doing this? Is this legal? Actually showing interest was almost regarded as negative (in one of my last interviews, I remember turning up with a deck that I had deliberately made look amateurish..."best research I have seen"...but we don't hire grads...I had a subsequent interview with the same guy in which I pitched a stock that doubled in the next six months to give him the hard sell, I knew the idea was good, I knew it would double, he said he didn't invest in the industry because he lost money in that sector once in the 90s...I stopped looking for jobs in finance after that).
Largely the same experience in tech (but worse, in tech you find that people are more prone to invent reasons to say no, in finance people said no but told you...in tech, they will say "you don't have experience in X"...as if the tech is going to exist in five years, like what is going to happen when no-one uses X anymore, lol).
So you have to work outside interviews, once people get into that scenario they are looking to say no (and you will need to hard sell). Things that you think would be important aren't. Spending your time doing something useful is less important that more visible, arbitrary factors (get a degree from X, look like a Y, be friends with Z). It is actually easier to do your own thing than get hired this way (and btw, for some people this road to nowhere will suck the joy out of it...I loved investing, I researched stocks when I had no money to invest but the experience of putting years into it with the hope of work and getting nothing...it felt like being suffocated by a parent).
Btw, my experience is based on doing this for ten years across tech and finance. It was a very hard lesson for me because I believe heavily in presenting people with choices/information...this isn't how most people work. You have to bring the horse to water, and then force its head in the trough, the horse won't drink itself.
...I will offer positive advice too: use your personal identity. I didn't because of a family issue, and it really hurt down the line. I got a job, had to shut down what I was doing before, came back...had to start from zero. People should have a name and a face to put on you (unf, this will hurt some people who don't look the right way...it isn't fair).
Yeah I think the advice works for academia or the more research or open source areas of tech but for large classic institutions it can definitely arouse suspicion, simply because you’ll be the only one they know of that does these things
I'm experiencing a version of this. I'm burned out at my job, but my life circumstances and personality keep me from looking for another one.
What I have done is strictly confining my job to have a minimal impact on the rest of my day and concentrate all my real effort in a particular hobby. I have gotten decently good at it in about a year, and made myself known in a few communities where the top practitioners hang around by sharing my results or giving feedback for others.
The result is that now I'm continuously rejecting commissions and offers that would turn it into a second job. I don't want that, but just getting asked feels so validating that the effort is completely worth it.
My business has a GitHub Actions workflow that collects statistics from the GitHub Users and Repositories APIs. 1% of the platform is doing anything at all. In essence, yes, publishing your work does increase your luck.[1]
It puts you in the other half of the distribution pool, those that do--versus the 99%+ who do not.
This completely resonates with me.
Around 12 years back, when I was in my final year of college, I started a blog where I interviewed people who were doing interesting things (mostly online, like influential bloggers, startup founders, etc). Surprisingly [1], most people responded positively to the interview request.
After a few months of consistently publishing interviews, I started to get a lot of nice things come my way. The most memorable one is when one of the interviews led to a short term paid project and eventually a job offer (I didn't take it but wish I had).
I have had similar experiences in the past 12 years whenever I published something or built a side project and posted a Show HN.
[1] I say surprisingly because I didn't have a following at that point or a popular blog
Well, if that's the case, I'll gladly publish my work :)
Me and couple of my friends made a marketing tool called Market Roadie. It's meant to help startups and new businesses to spread the word about their businesses. I don't want to get all "markety", you can just check it out over here, and give us some feedback :). https://marketroadie.com/
And yeah, there is a free version, and you don't need to put info about your credit card.
Good luck with our businesses (yeah, I'm wishing myself some luck :)
Public repos have brought me some great gigs. No luck involved, it just makes some people want to hire you. Ironically, the quality of the work I've produced -and had to deal with- at those gigs has not been as good as my personal projects. Literally every SaaS seems to be riddled with technical debt that takes man-decades to pay off, and moderate to extreme turnover. Publishing your work increases your chances of getting a well paid position, but not necessarily an enjoyable or stable one.
The last two jobs I've got have been where they contacted me after seeing some code/writing/work I published or spoke about in public.
I've been careful about contracts to ensure that I can continue publishing my own stuff (even if there's overlap with work related stuff) on my own time - publishing semi regularly is a pretty solid hedge against future long term unemployment.
I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add, or a bug to fix. I think things like: If I do a “Show HN” post, will I get too many users at the same time? Is there a better way to quietly get the first few customers and fix the issues that they uncover?
I’m reading “The Mom Test” now to learn how to talk to potential users.
New users' posts to "Show HN" seem to be marked as possible spam sometimes and appear as [dead]. I guess we shouldn't be discouraged if it happens and just try again.
Doing a Show HN and getting too many users would be a great problem to have! In most cases it takes a lot of work to get any users, so I wouldn't be trying to limit it at all if I were you. Good luck!
Maybe if you’re trying to run a business and need more DAU’s, not so much if you’re trying to donate software to open source and don’t want to see twenty shallow dismissals about how it’s wrong/could be better (but god forbid anyone actually submit a pull request or issue!)
Your contribution process can be too cumbersome/hostile for this to be worthwhile. Almost everything calling itself a "wiki" nowadays falls in this category, for example—because they're modelled on GitHub's wikis, i.e., they're not really wikis. Other stuff hosted on GitHub is like this, generally, for that matter. GitHub is like Facebook: perceived to be extremely convenient for everyone who already lives their lives there—so it's hard for them to see the costs—but actually revealed to be incredibly operationally inefficient to anyone willing to measure it. I've stopped filing bugs on GitHub entirely because of a combination of these factors (velocity) along with GitHub's worse-than-Facebook stance on privacy and the general low quality of interactions that occur there. For anyone not primarily concerned with collecting green squares and its adjacent activities, it's not worth the time.
main reason many Show HN posts are not getting upvotes is because they are either: boring, bad fit for this community or most people can’t understand what problem they’re solving (eg. lack documentation, too technical)
Probably noone will look at it. HN is imo not the best for sharing your own content as the rules and moderation are fairly heavily skewed against it. Having said that, if it gets traction on HN and ends up on the front page it will do very well.
Also, don't worry too much about perfection. It's actually better to launch something before it is perfect, since the hard part is not actually doing the project, but getting anyone to care. Better to get That step out of the way as fast as possible.
"I’ve been hesitating to publicize my project because there’s always something more I can add"
This is why I only spend a week max on projects i put on HN. Once I hit the main page, but most of the time I am flagged or ignored. I would be devastated if I spent 3 years on something and it failed. I work on something for a week, post it, laugh, move on.
I agree with this for sure. The concept of luck surface area is incredibly powerful and can significantly impact how you interact with the world in a ~professional context.
Great point. Find a niche (or a few) that really interests you and is underserved.
I used the word ‘underserved’ for another reason. About 30 years ago I realized that I only was competing with myself and that everything I did should be in the service of other people or whatever company was paying me for my time. Framing everything as service to others takes away anxiety and fear of failure. Anyway that is how I see it.
I can attest. I'd never have imagined writing and getting my tiny projects out there could bring so much prospect and joy. I think writing (think: marketing) has a huge role to play here.
You're correct, no one wants to be dependent on luck. That's not what this article is saying. It's merely saying that putting yourself "out there", potentially gives you many more opportunities, which consequently can turn into producing even more great stuff. I'm sure Einstein was happy his ideas got exposure, and I'm sure that exposure led to collaborations and leverage that he wouldn't have had otherwise.
