Should Developers Share What They're Learning on Social Media?

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Hey folks, I am just leaving CrossFit. We're going to go to another question that was submitted. If I can back out of this spot without dying. Let's try again. We did it. Um, let me get my windows up, too. Got a question that was submitted. This is a followup to the last one. Um, I mean, that's what they wrote. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know if it actually I think it stands on its own. But um this person was asking about um kind of getting into the mode of trying to create and share information for their software developers. And this is something that like obviously I do this. That's what you're watching right now. Um and I encourage like as long as people are comfortable with it, I encourage anyone and and everyone to do it. Um, I think that like for my conversations with people, I find a lot of people have in their mind that they're like, I don't have anything valuable to say.

I don't mean me, sorry. I mean like people people that uh that have this idea that they'd like to start creating content kind of get in their own minds like oh well you know I'm not I don't know like not a celebrity or I'm not like you know I don't have 30 years of experience or I'm not I don't own my own company or whatever like I'm not I don't work at Google so like why why should I ever make content? Who would ever listen to me? And um I don't know. I think that's kind of the wrong framing. Like um I'm I'm none of those things that I just said, right? And um I think it's all about the the framing. So, the way that I look at creating content personally and kind of what I I mean there's there's a handful of different things, but like for me at this point in my kind of career journey, um I'm just like I I have some experiences.

Some of them will be relevant to people, others won't. And I think uh the perspective I try and share might be a little bit unique than uh perhaps what some people are used to. Right. And this was even more so the case when I was a like a technical manager when I when I started trying to create content was really around like I am going through a transition where I write code and now I'm managing teams and so I wanted to share like make all of my content around what that looks like. So I figured not that my experience is better or anything like that. It's like I'm going through something that I feel like might be interesting for other people and if they want to kind of come along for the journey then that's great. If not that's fine too. There's lots of content out there to consume.

So for me at this point it's a little bit different. Like it's not everything I'm doing is talking about um being a manager where I'm still uh committing to the code base. But I do as much as I can. I try to share stuff that I take I look at both sides, right? Like I understand what it's like to write software because I don't at my day job, but I still build stuff. Um, still over 50% of my career up to this point has been a technical manager where I'm committing to the codebase building features with my team. So still 50% of my career has been that over. Sorry. So, I feel like I have experiences to still share where I can talk about that, but um I try I just try to to kind of give people maybe a little bit of a different uh perspective on the things they're looking at in their software engineering careers.

And I'm not here to say like that makes me, you know, I'm the only person doing that or my stuff is better. Not at all. It's just like I am one person sharing their experiences. So I think that that's a lens that you can also take if you're interested, right? Like you have unique lived experiences. Doesn't make them better or worse than other people's, but they're experiences. And if you're comfortable sharing them, then that might be something that other people can learn from. At a minimum, here's the interesting part. At a minimum, cuz like this is the other thing to consider. You might put some stuff online because you're like, "Hey, I think that would be good to help other people." You might start doing it and like no one watches your stuff or no one reads your articles. By the way, this is me in 2013.

Like, no one was reading anything I wrote and I gave up on it, right? But the the reason that I I feel like kind of dumb for just like stopping is like there was still a lot of benefit to me putting content together to help me learn. So, at a minimum, I think that when you share some of your experiences and talk through stuff like this, like even what I'm doing right now, the fact that I'm talking to a camera about this kind of stuff is like this is a personal reflection for me, right? I am solidifying some thoughts as I try and explain them to whoever is listening. And if no one if zero people watch this video, right, that means I helped no other people because it reached zero people. But at a minimum, I'm helping myself kind of think through my my different experiences and thoughts on this.

So that's like already no one watches your stuff. You're still uh potentially improving yourself. So I think that's already a good reason to do it. There's this other thing though that um maybe two more points. Uh I I'll talk more about this last one cuz I said um kind of minimally you're at least helping yourself. And um I think that the other thing to consider about that is that uh like what I'm talking about right now is not a technical concept. So this might I think this kind of stuff is a little bit easier to reflect on. It's like it's my personal experiences. Like I don't think that, you know, if someone wanted to like debate me on this, I'm like, "Well, I don't know, man." Like this is kind of my lived experience. You might not um agree with the reasons, but like it's really hard to like try and say, "Well, you're wrong.

Your your lived experience is wrong." It's like, I don't know, man. This is this is my lived experience. But when it comes to technical things, I think this is where it can get kind of interesting. And um I think that you can solidify your understanding of topics better by trying to help teach people. And your framing for this can change cuz you can take the lens of like I'm going to try and take material like concepts and my goal is to teach people. You could take the framing. I'm just going to try and um I don't know like summarize the things I'm learning. Like if you the different lens here is I'm just going to help myself, right? Write write the information down. Make the video for you. For future you or past you. If you wanted to help yourself learn this topic, what would you teach yourself?

Might sound kind of funny, right? But I think what's interesting about that I got to get out of this lane, man. This is terrible. Um, what's interesting about that is that you quickly learn how well you uh know or do not know things. Because when you try teaching other people, if you're like, I can't explain things and I can't explain them in simple ways, you probably don't understand them as well as you think you do. which is not to like make you feel bad. It's actually a great opportunity for you to go cool, like maybe I should try to understand this better. So again, I think at a minimum trying to put together content is a great way for you to learn about yourself, learn uh what maybe you need to spend more time understanding. And on that note, there's another bit of a segue here.

I think one of the the missteps that people take is that um you know they'll they'll read about like creating content online like you need to be you need to demonstrate that you're an expert in the domain or else like people people won't trust what you have to say and um that means you need to show the experience. You need to show your authority in the space. But it's um it's that advice is not meant for you if you're just starting out because you don't have those things and that's okay. It's okay that you don't have those things but that means that you don't have those things. You should not use those things. So, for example, if you're like, I want to teach people about C sharp, picking C# because that's what I like to talk about. Um, if you're like, I'm just learning C.

I want to also teach people about C because that's what I'm focused on, but you know, all of these uh sites and experts are saying like I need to be an authority in the space. I need to show my experience. like, "Okay, I guess I better act like an authority." Um, you're not an authority, so don't do that. It's actually incredibly misleading. And that's where people get a lot of push back. That's where you'll post things and people will be like, "Hey, man, like you actually don't know what you're talking about. This is embarrassing." You could post the same type of content and the sort of authority that you are is a learner. identify as a learner who's going through this stuff and trying to learn about it because that's what you are and that's totally cool and totally okay. You are a different category of person and there's nothing wrong with that.

But where people make a big mistake is that they try to masquerade as being an expert on something and they're not. People can see through this pretty quick. And unfortunately, the internet is filled with a lot of like real and they will let you know what they think about. And unfortunately, it's usually not very polite. So, don't masquerade as something that you're not. You don't need to. The the thing that I really want to drive home though, aside from like this is something that you know if you spend some time doing it, you can help yourself is that I think people misunder like they underestimate the um sort of the the value or the significance of being like one or two steps ahead of someone else. And I don't mean this like a race or like a competition, but what I do mean is if you're like, I'm I'm learning about C, okay?

You spend a little bit of time doing some C stuff, okay? You're trying to you're, you know, posting about it. Here's the things I'm learning. You'll get to a point where someone who is you might I'm just making this up. You might be 2 months in, 6 months in, one year into learning C. And you'll have some people that come across your content who are going, "hm, I think I would like to pick up C." You know who's going to feel very, very, very relevant to them? The person who just started learning C, made some progress with it, and stuck with it. You know who's going to seem less relevant, less relatable? Me. I've been programming in C for like 18 years. I'm going to feel a lot less relatable, right? I put a lot of content out now that's like helping people navigate their engineering careers.

I am not someone posting about here's the thing I'm learning in C. Oh my god. All right, people going well below the speed limit. Um, so there's a lot of power in that and being relatable. Now, you're not always going to be the person who is just learning C. That's fine. But you'll find yourself, no matter what you're focused and sharing information about, you will be likely be a person who is a couple of steps ahead of the next person on their journey for learning. And that relatable factor is very very important. This is again if we go back to one of the reasons I started Dev Leader was to be like hey look I'm going to start sharing with people my journey going from being a software developer into an engineering manager and trying to juggle both these things.

In the beginning I literally have no idea what I'm doing but hopefully if I make a little bit of progress you know someone who is also doing a similar thing will go hey like this guy survived it. what what did he go through? And then they could read about some experiences I have and they might go I totally disagree with that but okay you know interesting experience to learn from or something I write about or make a video about and they go hey that is very relevant right but this relatable factor I think is incredibly valuable so to this person's question about getting started I would say like start small don't uh please don't like make it an initial goal of like cuz I and you can do whatever you want. I just feel like it's a recipe for burnout. If you're like, I'm going to do this because I want to be like a Tik Tok celebrity.

I just think that you'll probably be disappointed and I don't want that to like um detract. Okay. So, like I am, you know, by no means am I someone who makes content and I've been like wildly successful at it, right? I I don't have viral videos. I haven't put something out and had like a million views. Had a couple recent tweets that have that have done well. Um, but the, you know, my secret, if I can call it that, even for like my mediocre like social media success, if I can call it that, is just consistency, right? Like I I post stuff every day for almost three years straight. And like when I say I post stuff every day for almost three years straight, I mean literally every single day to every social media platform. Every single day for 3 years almost. As soon as December is done, it'll be three years.

So, it's not like, oh, I had something interesting to talk about today and like maybe next month I'll share something. It's the for me at least, this has been every single day across every platform for almost 3 years. That's tweets, that's LinkedIn posts that are longer, that's short form videos, that's long form videos, that's a newsletter. It's it's across everything. But the difference here is like I said, I gave up originally on Dev Leader over a decade ago. So I already have the experience of like knowing what it was like to sort of like fail at it. And I told myself I'm just going to be consistent. For me, it's not about having viral videos. I'm not that's like too much effort for me personally. I I don't I don't enjoy I don't enjoy social media. That might sound kind of ridiculous. Like I don't like going on TikTok and like researching what a trendy thing is going to be and then making a video about it.

And I'm sure if I spent more time doing that and tried to make like catchy short reels and stuff, then sure, maybe I'd be more successful at this kind of stuff according to to social media standards. But that's not me at all. So I think that if you're going to do this, you kind of have to find what you enjoy and stay consistent with it. And you might not know in the beginning, right? That's totally cool. So maybe you do explore what it's like to make videos on TikTok and maybe you watch some like skits and stuff for like software developers, you know, making fun of like things in software engineering and you're like, "This is fun. I do enjoy this. Hell yeah, do that. Right? If you enjoy that, great. Um, if you're like, I can't stand the thought of being on a camera, but I love to write like details about things I'm learning, maybe blogging's perfect for you, right?

Maybe do that. Maybe make a newsletter out of it. I don't know. It could be the opposite. Like for me, I don't love writing. That's what Dev Leader was in the beginning. It was all blog articles. I find blog articles take me too long. I write a newsletter every week, but at one point I was writing a blog post every day. And I I found out that does not work for me. It absolutely doesn't. What I've traded that for over time is almost every day I make these videos. And this is way more natural for me. It's less time. It's less effort. I'm not editing them. I don't need to proofread them. I say and sometimes I'm like, "Whatever, I messed up." But that's fine. Um, and we keep going. I just make more of them. So, this is out of all of the content I make across every platform like short posts, newsletters, these videos on Code Commute are my my sort of most convenient form of content.

And this has taken me a couple of years to figure out, right? I enjoy making code commute videos. They're easy for me. I find that uh I have the best engagement on them because people are like, "Wait a second. I can ask questions and get them answered, right?" Like, I think I think this format works really well for people that are interested in this type of content. So, I think for you, if you want to get started, you might have to explore a little bit. That's totally fine. Find out what works for you. find out the things that don't, you know, and it's okay to to get it wrong in the beginning. No one's like, it's impossible to get this stuff or expect to get it perfect. You never done it before. That's fine. Um, try it. But I I encourage you go into it like with an open mind.

Go into it go into it as a learner. Do not try to pretend that you're an expert because people see through it. share your experiences, share what you're learning about and test the waters a little bit. But I encourage everyone who is comfortable sharing stuff like do it. But that's my that's been like my experience. So um I think it's a great opportunity to try and learn in public. So that's my advice. Start small. Um, you know, don't uh don't overwhelm yourself because if you try to set these really ambitious goals of like, you know, I got to get a viral video, like my first five videos and every week I need a viral video. like that might be an ambitious goal, but I would hope that if that, you know, if you don't achieve that, that you're not like, well, I should give up on content creation cuz like I said, I think I'm just under 3 years in and I don't think I've ever had a viral video and that's okay.

So, anyway, hope that helps. Uh, great question. Just a reminder, if you want questions answered, leave below in the comments. Otherwise, send them into codemute.com. There's a check box there you can pick for anonymous and I'm happy to try and help. Thanks so much.