What's one thing that you believe in that goes against conventional wisdom?
Tapsi
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Share something that has surprised you or a lesson you have learned that goes against conventional wisdom during your work or personal experience.
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Sarah Jordi@sarahxjo
Angle Audio
The feeling of human connection and intimacy are stronger in audio only calls. (Compared to video calls). Hence, even companies should go back to more audio only calls and not always force everyone to turn on video.
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I don't think big tech is very innovative.
@matthias_strodtkoetter I respect this perspective and I do not think you're wrong with your assessment of big tech. Thanks for sharing!
@matthias_strodtkoetter Interesting take! What makes you think that?
@boutsalis Being innovative, to me, means putting real money behind real bets/risks and being right more often than others. My impression is that big tech companies manage their risks actually extremely strictly. Running data-driven experiments isn't being innovative in my book, almost the opposite.
As a result, I find barely any examples of really new/different things that big tech companies came up with themselves (once they are big).
@tapsi
The myth of professionalism—hear me out.
We have a long history [at least in America] of pigeonholing professionalism as one key façade; we all know how it looks. It's suits, ties, it's the MBA, et al. It's being a 'yes' man.
It historically does not look like average humans being human; devs and their nerd hoodies, designers and their messy desks, marketers with tattoos, and CTOs with Natural Hair.
It seems like America—specifically—wants all Professionals to be fit into one mode. That's not reality. In fact, I've found that the most professional, the most competent, the most dedicated and hardworking people do not bother with the artifice.
Sure, they send those spectacularly worded emails, their contracts are butter-smooth and water-tight, and actually wear pants to Zoom meetings, but the actual rockstars of the startup-tech-design-marketing ecosystem don't worry about if they swore all of one time in a meeting because they dropped their sandwich.
They're not concerned—at all—about acting like the idea of something. They're concerned about producing quality, professional work.
As a freelancer, I have found the only way to actually stand out and get gigs is not to buy into this myth. Because real professionals?
They don't either.
Early-on in my career, I wrote an article about the hiring process. I was told on all sides not to post it. Not only that, but I was told my headshot [an anime avatar, I kid you not] wouldn't attract any job offers.
I wasn't looking for offers. I was looking for something else, professionally.
My findings were solid, I knew a content marketing opportunity when I saw one, and I had Reddit's blessing (being an authentic human pays off when courting niche communities).
I knew that if I dropped the article, despite it being a hot mess, it'd go somewhere. That's how my freelance career started. "Unprofessionally."
With an inbox full of cantankerous recruiters, upset at an actual Startup unicorn calling bull on their stacks of "5+ years of experience in 1 year old technology" job postings.
It rolled out, and the rest as they say, is history. I've taken a break to focus on my sci-fi trilogy (link in profile, I'm being annoying) in recent months, but I'm a successful freelancer. I work as much as I want, when I want, how I want, and with who I want.
That is how I made a real career. Not by being like every other suit in the biz.
Professionalism is doing the work, it's not a façade. Obviously don't go around crapping in peoples' cereal for a living if you can't forge a brand out of it...
But at the end of the day, what matters most is that you do quality work, and it shows. There's no better way to impress upon people content marketing chops like going viral, for example.
The other thing that matters is standing out in a sea of same.
Not everyone here may agree with me, but that's what I've found to be true.
(sorry for the textwall, writer problems)
@kiraieigh Great approach! Thanks for sharing.
We will not live for ever!.
Most people I know think that the next 5 years will be more or less similar to the last 5 years in terms of the amount of innovation. I believe that in the next 5 years the amount of progress in tech will be much greater compared to years 2016-2020.
@slava_bobrov I agree!