yowayb

I would love to see a remake of The Network (1976) about modern marketing with this quote in it.

haha I didn't realize he was a consultant. I found myself nodding the whole time!

This made me laugh! I'd say it's a good indication to steer clear :)

>What people say they like and what they respond to in ways that marketers want are not always the same thing. Also, people almost invariably underestimate the impact that marketing has on them. They think they can’t be swayed by it, but they can (why else would GEICO spend $2b a year on it?). More broadly, there has been a major shift towards using B2C-style, informal marketing for B2B campaigns. Even in long, complex B2B sales cycles, attention spans are shorter and audiences are engaging with more consumer-style content like short explainer videos, and not just the traditional 5,000 word whitepapers and such.

Agree, but would argue this is not marketing to engineers, this is marketing to the business which is interested in things like size and certifications.

Am an expert, and I think this speaks to the crux of how bad software sells: you can hide the shortcomings by leaving out details, and a lot of customers are fine (and sometimes happy!) with that. On the other hand, a truly excellent product lets you keep the marketing simple too; so simple in fact, I would argue that the most popular software products out there don't require much marketing at all since they're fully word of mouth now, or even de facto mandated like git and various shells.

I felt like the article itself was a good example of speaking to engineers! I also think, at least in the software world, the websites of popular software like VS Code and Docker are great examples of marketing to engineers.

As a former Sales Engineer in enterprise software, I agree. "Engineering audience" includes less skilled and more gullible individuals, the degree steadily increasing up the hierarchy. (And since decisions are made higher up, you can see how valuable this article would be to a sales rep...). A common "individual performance metric" is "single pane of glass", which is aggregating multiple systems, often with a dashboard. It often takes more work than they're willing to put in to get it to make a difference.

LLMs are just aggressive auto-complete. Yes, overhyped naturally. But also still saving me keystrokes!

When I’m stuck on a problem, I find that re-reading some relevant documentation slowly is relaxing, and often I’m happy to get something I didn’t get the first time, and might need soon!

Yes! I went to a professional meetup with 80 people. Every single person I met was interesting, but they keep moving, so I had to pull aside the person I was talking to at the moment just to continue a conversation.

Although I have questions about certain points, I appreciate the perspective. I wanted to give 5 bucks. There were options for 10, 20 and “any” which goes to a select box that starts at 25. Now I can’t give anything.

Imitation’s apotheosis is AI

When?

Isn't this just "managing up"?

Convenience is the mother of invention

Can you discern when copy is becoming click-baity? As content on the web becomes more click-baity, I've naturally developed mental filters. For example, when I see "<Well-known person> just...", I automatically stop reading. Becoming click-baity certainly works for particular audiences. Are you just not interested in audiences that have built up similar mental filters?

Great thank you! I'll check these out.

Oh dear. I forgot about that.

Other than rage comments of political and corporate incompetence, is there a sounder explanation of inadequate preparation and response in Türkiye? The vast majority of Turks I meet/see don’t seem to care about fully understanding their problems and putting in appropriate work. But I don’t understand why this is.

I forget where I read this, but it was saying that the job of a leader was first and foremost to gain and hold power. Although I wish we lived in a better world, this actually makes sense, because constant power shifts and struggles seem far more costly. Isn't this the real reason that executive compensation (in general, not just pharma) is so high?

> for whatever reason

I worked at a predominantly male engineering company a long time ago. They hired a girl to improve morale. This took me like 2 decades to understand.

Reminds me of this monument in Medellin I just learned about: https://youtu.be/5ZoYy2ZtCCU?t=475

I think we've been spoiled and lulled into trusting too much. While I agree it leads to nihilistic behavior, I think enough people will simply be more careful and companies will have to get better, including the technical part that the top comment mentions. Similarly, I think we've been too willing to believe anything the media or advertisers say. I'm in my 40s now and I look back and feel embarrassed at all the things media and ads told me that I believed.

No speed issues in Turkiye for me

I’ve had a couple friends this happened with. One of them however would laugh SO hard he couldn’t breathe!

One of the finest engineers I’ve worked with has macular degeneration. His entire setup was designed to allow him to focus on the same part of his laptop screen (with a very large font), which is basically eye-level screen.

I have only ever used a monitor the first day I got to my desk because it happened to be there.

These setups strike me a bit like AWS/GCP. Just another place for devs to spend money.

And yet another excellent engineer I know uses VIM without syntax highlighting.

The power/problem of cannabis is that it’s not as addictive/strong as opium. Make no mistake, this is a business problem. Just like disposable razors, the (stock) market always rewards the high that doesn’t last, or leaves you wanting more.

The one thing that both of these drugs get right is an ingredient that Katt Williams called “f* it”.

It is the idea that maybe you’re sweating the small stuff a bit too much and maybe you should just let the power bill go and light those candles that have been sitting around forever.

But the market won’t let a good-enough solution alone. The market will always demand something a little better, a little stronger, and before you know it, you’re hooked.