Weak ties and the power of tech communities
Forget about exchanging business cards. The new hype is joining a community's Slack workspace.
Hello, tech adventurers!
Among all subjects I'm interested in, philosophy and psychology are probably the most intriguing. Recently I've finished reading the world's best seller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and it gave me a lot to think about why we live in communities.
I don't want to give you spoilers in case you haven't read the book yet, so I'll limit myself to say that I agree with this line of thinking that 'community matters'. And this is not new, actually. Back in the 4th century BC, Aristotle said:
“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god. ”
Let's give Aristotle his poetic license to exaggerate a little bit and focus on the first sentence: "Man is by nature a social animal". Communities bring the sense of belonging and it is a fundamental factor helping manage stress. Not surprisingly we are always trying to be part of a group, even when they are so small that they consist of just one more person.
And this need of belonging is not limited to personal life. Professionally speaking, we very often join conferences where people from our area share their experience, or become members of societies related to our field of work. Artists have their companies, professional athletes have a team. We rely on each other so we can grow together.
Technology has also transformed the way we collaborate at work. In fact, we are more collaborative than ever, most due to the Millennials. Some authors even call Gen Y as the "Collaboration Generation", bringing the open office concept and collaborative brainstorms to the workday dynamics.
In this context, it's not hard to understand why the tech communities that have been formed over the past 20 years are so powerful. If you’re already working in technology, you’ve probably sought help from somewhere. We have discussed that before: technology is broad and it’s impossible to know everything. If you have ever googled an unexpected error you had found in you code, you very likely were directed to Stack Overflow, for example.
We as workforce started to see our colleagues as allies, no more as competitors. Great examples of that move are the hundreds of communities that have a Slack Workspace just to share content, events, jobs, courses, or discuss about a specific subject. How many events have you attended because some connection shared on social media? I hope you have at least one example regarding this.
Let's talk about jobs a little bit. We all know that receiving a referral is the most efficient way to get a job so it's logical to believe the best referrals you can receive come from people that are close to you, right? Well, not exactly. In 1973, Mark Granovetter published a landmark study called The Strength of Weak Ties in which he states that weak ties (relationships with people that are not very close to you) are more likely to introduce you to opportunities. The explanation is simple: in strong ties, the likelihood of both individuals know the same people is enormous.
This argument is somehow validated by the tech communities. Back to our Slack example, every community workplace has a channel for job postings and/or networking. Some of you may have got your current job or have enrolled on a course because of a post on social media from someone you barely know. Probably technology has also reinvented the way we network.
If you ever doubt the power of communities and collaboration, remember that those were our way out of the cave. Our society is only what we know today because we have collaborated for millions of years. Our ancestors knew the recipe to survival so we better trust their wisdom.
