“Do Things, Let People Know.” is a well-known piece of advice highlighting the importance of communicating your work. In many cases, your work is only as good as how other people know about it. One may argue that work satisfaction and fulfilment should be the ultimate rewards and pursuits. That is true in some circumstances, too. However, for the majority of us, we sit someone in between the two ends of the spectrum.
This article from the GitHub ReadME Project [@francisPublishingYourWork2024] argues that as an engineer, one should publish one’s work as much as possible to increase the chances of being noticed, in other words, to allow luck to find you. The author also suggests that one must do the work before having anything to publish, but not to be too stressed over being perfect.
Even though it’s all common sense, this article greatly resonated with my experience. Over the years, much of my ‘luck’ has been due to my reputation for being a ‘great’ engineer, and communication unquestionably played a crucial part in building that reputation. On the other hand, I also struggled to find the balance between publishing for myself and for others and I regretted wasting too much time worrying about things that did not matter at all in the end. As I grew older, I learned how to let things go and the truth that learning to be a better self requires actually doing it, experiencing it and learning from mistakes and successes - simply knowing the wisdom is often not enough.
References
- Francis, A. (2024) Publishing your work increases your luck. GitHub. https://github.com/readme/guides/publishing-your-work.