Writing Affects Your Personal Brand More Than You Care To Admit
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
— Louis L’Amour
To any professional, personal brand is (or should be,) important. For software engineers, however, it hasn’t always been obvious what building a brand looks like.
The rest of the article is written from a software engineer’s perspective, but I believe that the general principles apply regardless.
Kent Beck, Dan Abramov and Robert Martin (who’s better known as Uncle Bob) are some notable Software Engineers of our time. But, why do most of us agree that they are notable though, I wonder? I’m willing to bet that most of us here haven’t worked with them on the same team, let alone the same product. So why do we hold them in such high regard yet we have little to no contact with them to speak of?
I thought about this question long and hard, and I think I have a pretty good attempt at an answer, and it’s simple — they have done a great job of documenting their knowledge and/or pursuit of it! Now that statement has two key pieces: documenting their knowledge. We can all agree then that the first step is to, either acquire knowledge or create it.
In my experience, software engineers do not struggle too much with learning things or figuring out new and better ways to do things; it’s the next step of documenting this knowledge that has not been done well. For the longest time, software engineers were of the view that if you wrote enough lines of code, eventually, the world would have no choice but to notice. And maybe that was true, at some point in the past, maybe. It certainly is not true anymore!
Today, to truly stand out as a Software Engineer, one must transcend the stereotypical view of the engineer. One must be more deliberate about sharing their learnings with the world, adding to the body of work that they too, have benefitted from for so long.
There are several ways to share one’s knowledge. For today, however, I’m choosing to focus on writing.
I have always liked to write! From short stories to the odd movie review, and as of 4years ago, technical pieces. The really cool thing about writing a technical piece (like most other writing I’d imagine,) is that doing so challenges you, and what you thought you knew. I have dozens of unfinished drafts on medium — some because I got lazy midway or lost my inspiration. But there’s a good number of them that I started and a few words in, realized that I didn’t have nearly as much to say about the subject as I’d initially thought I did — no proverbial legs to stand on. In these scenarios, I know with clarity what my next steps are…go back and consolidate my body of knowledge until it is substantial and worth sharing.
But Edmond, I’m NOT a writer. That’s a statement that I’ve heard from most people that I have nudged to start writing and I’ll be honest, for the longest time, I thought that this was a real thing. Some people were born with the gift but most were, sadly, not. My perception changed when I nudged my good friend John Kagga to start writing a few years ago. The start was rough, but we were both at a place where we [now] truly understood the power of documentation and so we powered through. Fast-forward to the present day and I have had the good fortune of co-authoring a book, an entire book with him. The moral of this story (and not-so-subtle plug for my book) is that each and every one of you can write. Now, there will be differences in degrees of flair, but it’s mostly a matter of willpower!
As I wrap this up, allow me to paint you a picture…imagine if Einstein (or his wife, depending on whom you ask) had not written the theory on relativity, imagine if Shakespeare had decided to only do spoken word, never writing a single play or book, imagine if Beethoven had decided that writing his sheet music wasn’t important and instead decided that his music would only be performed from memory by himself, to live audiences. Imagine what the world would be like today…it’s a pretty glum picture, isn’t it?
The major difference between you and a celebrated artist is that they are bold enough to try and capture their imagination on canvas, while you are perfectly content having beautiful images fill your head.
– Edmond Atto
I say to you, there’s no lasting satisfaction or recognition you will gain from simply acquiring knowledge. Only sharing your knowledge with the world can truly do that. I promise you that there is always someone out there who needs to learn what you have to share.
Immortalize yourself! Put down your words so that they may always speak for you. Long after you’re gone, they will always be here, speaking, in your voice to the world.
