Thoughts on Passionate Programmer (part 3 of 3)

This is the final instalment of my learnings from Passionate Programmer. It covers the part on 'Marketing'. The first part of this series can be found here.

In the book, Fowler stresses the importance of marketing in building a successful career. He said "the best saxophonist does not always get the job", and that "who you played with is at least as important as how well you play". Hence the first part of marketing chapter is about building relationships.

Kinds of relationships

Chad talks about the importance of several kinds of relationships: relationship with management, clients, mentors and peers. He suggests to list the parties in your current project, and or your current employer, list expectations that each party may have of you, and make sure that you are meeting (or exceeding if you like) the expectations of the key stakeholders. Its significant because, as Zig Ziglar, says, and I believe in this: "To get what you want, you just have to help enough people get what they want". Chad also highlights the importance of having regular face time with the key parties.

Outside of relationships, Chad describes another side to marketing, which is making yourself remarkable: by writing books, or contributing to open source, giving talks at user groups or conferences. In this post however, I would like to focus on two types of relationships mentioned in the book.

Relationships with management

Key areas are: make suggestions, don't just execute; don't make unreasonable commitments, it doesn't help credibility; remember, your managers success is your success.

Another area that I like is having a mission, and an elevator pitch, so that during occasional encounters with management you have a good answer to their question on what your contribution is to their business. It's important because you are to them what you can explain.

Cool by association

Speaking about "cool by association" phenomena, Chad encourages developers to make effort and approach those tech luminaries giving talks at conferences, or user groups, and have a conversation with them. Overcoming personal fears and making efforts to know them personally increases the potential to work with them in the future.

These are my key highlights of Passionate Programmer, which I enjoyed greatly. If you found the areas covered interesting, the full book can be purchased here.