Recently I've seen many experienced developers asking their network for valuable content. It made me wonder why is it so hard for them to find such content? Why there is much more content for code newbies and not much for experienced devs?
Several reasons IMO
- Easier to give value
- Requires less effort to write
- Larger audience
What do you think?
Top comments (21)
True because if it's not for beginners, it has to be unique. And it's hard. It gets debatable. It doesn't get as much attention as beginner posts.
If one adds these beginners' posts in a portfolio which has got more attention, it gets value.
And people are likely to respond positively to the concepts that they are already aware of partly.
Also, many experienced ones rarely have time to browse.
In between all these, some of us do put efforts to write what we feel is relevant. But it's not easy..
That thought came to my mind as well... In many cases, once we put something online that people might criticize, it reduces the motivation for making such an effort. I believe it is a barrier that many experience devs have. The point is that there are probably endless insights that are not being shared due to that reason. A bit sad, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
I agree with all your points. One thing I'd add is that since there are always way more beginners than experts (in any discpline, and in particular in programming, as it keeps gaining popularity) naturally there are fewer people that can produce more advanced content.
On top of that, advanced content is more fragmented - once people become experts they start specializing and producing content in some niche. So not only there are fewer experts in general, but even fewer experts in some particular niche that might interest you
It makes perfect sense. In that case, the demand might be much lower for each niche so I would imagine having niche-based communities (or learning groups). That way once you specialized in a certain field you can collaborate with others who are on the same level (give or take). It might work on Reddit...
Thanks for sharing your angle :)
This resonates with my experience. If I post a less mainstream article like say on F# or CQRS, even though I try to target newer devs, it doesn't get much attention here. It starts getting a few views once I mention it where that community normally hangs out. Like in F# Slack or DDD/CQRS forum. (I don't like to do that every time, only when I feel it could contribute something especially helpful. Using that too much feels scummy, like advertising.)
Snapping on to other comments stating that there are more new developers. t
Because there are so many newer developers, the old theory goes that the number of developers doubles every 5 years, there are many more people to consume content aimed at newer developers.
The metric that use to measure the value of blogs, videos, and other content is views and likes. To get more of these it is better to appeal to the largest consumer base. That consumer base is new developers. It's Goodhearts Law in action.
Thanks, Klee. That's a valuable input. Speaking of metrics, when it comes to content marketing optimization, metrics like views or clicks often create a bias. One time you can invest three days to write a well-crafted post which gets near zero views, and the other day you spend less than an hour on a post that goes viral. From an objective standpoint, the first one "deserves" much more attention, which it doesn't get.
Do you have in mind any idea on what could be a useful metric to know the content quality? Perhaps time-on-page? If we had a helpful metric, it could empower the discovery of better content. I believe it is especially vital for experienced devs, but not only.
I'm sorry but I don't think I have a good answer for that. My first thought is that the author would need to know what they wanted to achieve from the article and then build a metric around that, the issue there is that the metric could be different for every article.
Wow! I love this law. Thanks for sharing this
Almost all of the content is low value for almost everyone almost all the time, but newbies are unable to judge this competently and are likely to make poor investments, like spending money on things they don't really need.
So they are a profitable market to milk.
It's hard to disagree on that ^-^
However, I wonder what a beginner would say about it lol
I think that "senior-level" blogs requires a lot of context to get into the writer's standpoint and can be very specific. This can push away those who don't want to dedicate 2-3 days for writing a single blog post that you don't know if anyone will read.
I wish the situation was different, I'm looking for architecture blog posts and more advanced concepts of databases and caching but it's super hard to find.
It just makes me wonder what can either make the process easier or faster for senior developers to share their insights. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
A lot of us are probably tired of other senior developers valuing their own opinionated ways of doing things more than common decency and politeness, making rude comments with little more to offer than "I can't believe you're so stupid!"
That all-to-common tendency in mid-senior devs to be rudely dismissive and inflexible plays a large part in why I tend to prefer to work with junior devs as well.
Hi Mike, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I wish this kind of behavior wouldn’t exist. Instead of this, mentoring beginners can actually benefit both sides. Everyone can learn something from others so long they are open to sincerely listen.
I meant more as to why there's more motivation to share things useful to junior devs. They're more likely to appreciate what you offer them, rather than try to tear it apart.
Though I did call out one user here - a CTO at that (as am I, so it especially pisses me off knowing how much being able to talk to people and build them up is a critical part of my job) - for insinuating that a younger dev posting about a web app he created to solve a problem was stupid for creating it, and offering nothing more than his negative opinion of web apps in return.
We need more people like you. ✌🏼
I dunno, man. I'm pretty outspoken myself. I'd like to think for the right reasons, but my IDGAF definitely is not for everyone. En masse, I'm not sure the world could handle it, or that I'd even get along with the other me's.
😂😂😂
That's a very good point as well. Didn't think about that. It's a bit strange that still in 2020 language can be a barrier.