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Comment by silveroriole | Hacker News Reader

You joined as an engineer, not a manager. Why are you asking people how you can help with their challenges when it’s very unlikely you have the power to do so? I’d find this entire email process very bizarre, demanding and power-seeking (you want me to tell you who the bigshots are so you can meet them and what you should do to get promoted, and you’re pretending it’s for my benefit? Who are you trying to kid?). I’d certainly end up with a very negative view of you. Just so you know.

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Thanks for responding, and for the feedback. I really appreciate it (hard to get a 3rd person perspective sometimes!) Some of what you have said is hard to hear because (from my viewpoint), the emails/intros are in good faith. For example, you say "big shots" / "power seeking" - certainly, in any organization, there are just some incredibly talented & experienced people, who are always down with providing useful knowledge, if folks just asked... wouldn't you want to connect to those people as soon as you can? Wouldn't you want to accelerate or own learning, or support someone else who wants to do that?

I've always loved having "context" about/around my job, and like getting to know co-workers outside of my team bubble.

Is there a better way I could have phrased some of the questions, the structure, or even the approach (to achieve the same objective of meeting the smart/helpful people & learning a lot).

Again, thanks again for sharing the critical feedback...

Sorry for the harsh feedback. As a new starter, I’d expect you to be making it clear how you’re useful to me - not the other way around! It seems fairly clear that your motives are self-directed (how can I connect to talented people? What can I learn? What should I be doing? I want context.) and that you believe you deserve other people’s time. Following up on people who don’t answer your cold emails is really quite pushy in that regard. Yes, you ask how you can help, but you’re still putting much of the burden of figuring out what you can do on the other person rather than figuring it out yourself.

I want to work with people on a project, not help people with their grand mission of self-improvement. One of the points in How to Win Friends is to truly consider and appeal to the other person’s interest. Do you think everyone you email is interested in you and wants to spend their time answering questions about how you should conduct your learning and career, essentially having an interview with you? (You might also want to consider how some people will feel if they know you’ve only selected “awesome” people to interrogate, and they weren’t on the list...)

I don’t think you have to stop doing this if it works for you, but I’d suggest at least letting people off the hook if they don’t reply!

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