Nov 2, 2022
Tech journalists are more interesting than software engineers
Don't take this title as an offense meaning that software engineers and developers are boring people because they are all interesting people above all if one is armed with a bit of technical background to understand the jargon and tools they talk about but what I am trying to express here is for those who seek to serve others with theirs skills and time but don't know who, people like entrepreneurs and creators trying to scale themselves and their entities by creating something that helps others do more of the things that they are proud to do, things like works. this is about positioning a product or service and/or about picking an audience to serve with products, services, or any other creative ideas.
journalists are people of communication who often love conversing with others that’s what makes them a set of people worth empathizing with and servicing because they are more likely to raise their voices and tell what they want and need and how they see the world around them what is a very precious source of insights that could help the entrepreneur or creator better adapt her/his creation to fit their worldviews and to better understand what they are trying to achieve. For journalists, I am assuming that these goals are providing reliable and priceless news when it is needed, helping people have the best picture of the world’s actual state, and other goals that I don't know yet.
As an example of what I was trying to explain with the paragraph above you could take this tweet
in this tweet, Dominic Madori a journalist at TechCrunch is asking for ideas about a story to write surely not because she is pointless about ideas but because of what I have tried to express that is that journalists are among those professionals who like asking and getting feedback from others. They rarely do something without discussing it with others and like I have already said that’s what makes them form a very worth addressable set of people because getting feedback from them is way easier than getting feedback from professionals of other sectors whose jobs and profiles are less prone to communicating with the external world.
if you are an entrepreneur or creator, I think your job is easier with talky people and forgive me for saying talky people because it may embed some bad connotations but by talky people I mean people who are more prone to communicate easily with others regardless of affinity, culture, and worldview. From this kind of people building a product feedback loop is easier because they will tell what they feel and like directly to you whoever you are or indirectly on other channels of communication. if you are an entrepreneur or a creator creating something for these communicating persons is more beneficial because you are sure that they will tell you and I hope that you will also be listening carefully for getting the insights that will help you pivot the thing that you are trying to build for them.
I have used the example of journalists but there many profiles like that like story writers. For example, using the same terms used by Dominic Madori you could see that with google you could find 3000+ references of journalists and writers asking the same thing
with these 3000+ references, you could have ideas about what kind of stories are suggested to these journalists and writers. more these 3000+ may also be a signal that if you build a platform that helps journalists and writers ask people for story ideas this may be something helpful to them that may work. but I don’t know if this idea of a platform for requesting story ideas is not still offered on the marketplace, it was just about highlighting a process of discovering the needs of a particular kind of segment of people that you may call fans, users, customers, friends … in my case these writers and journalist are leaders and “prescriptors” because they are very often heading me to ideas that matter but in your case, it could happen that you want to build the most useful software for them then in such they would be your users. but again for me, tech journalists like these at TechCrunch and writers like Seth Godin are like a compass telling me where the north of the tech space is so I could orient myself accordingly that’s also a kind of a customer feedback loop.
then for you creators and entrepreneurs, the good practice I see would like you to try to serve those who are more open to talking or trying hard to make those you forced yourself to serve to talk using any kind of means but if you do it without interrupting their meaningful work and life the better it will be because the time for hard hustling and interrupting people for selling them things is, I think, almost over. People now have the filtering power and it’s as simple as clicking on a button that blocks you, mutes you, or simply sends your email to the spam folder. One is open to communication doesn't mean one is perturbable. You have to have natural ways of communicating with them and you have to serve them with your skills and time not selling them things first and foremost and better and more you have to be empathic. Empathy is the most important skill for an entrepreneur and creator and I think for a journalist also. A software engineer and developer always in front of screening coding and crafting systems may not need to be empathic but with these ever-growing and competitive customer-facing tech solutions empathy is useful to them mostly if they are involved in product design and UX/UI.
Then “pick your audience and pick your future” is a reality and more than that I strongly believe that the entrepreneur or creator should first pick his or her audience before deciding about what meaningful thing to do for them. That’s what I was trying to express with this tweet because listening to Marc Andreessen talk about timeless books reminded me of Theodore Levitt
PS: again this article is not telling that software engineers aren't interesting. by the way, I have written dozens of articles about female software engineers.
