Oof. If you manage to crack the code of getting developers to actually blog for you, let me know. At my last job I spent two years promoting the blog internally, and I got maybe five or six drafts in that entire span. Just the other day at my new job, a coworker came up with a stunning piece of documentation, complete with diagrams he made himself, on an undocumented AWS Fargate thing. I said that it would make an excellent blog post and he should just copy/paste the thing he already wrote to something public facing, and he reacted with a mixture of embarrassment and dread.
I don't understand the reluctance to blog! Does anyone have any insight here?
Yikes, that doesn’t sound promising. My gut feel is there will be two of us doing it because we love to write but it will be a challenge getting others on board.
I wouldn't be too worried if that's the case, to be honest. There's a lot of challenges to "team" authorship, and having fewer writers makes it easier to control voice and content planning.
One strategy to raise the profile of the team members without "team" authorship (if the team members want to have high profiles) might be to publish just in the company voice, using quotes/cameos of your team members individual contributions?
One critical thing to add is that blog-writing and editing should be a high-level on-the-clock task. I've made that mistake a lot of times personally, which meant stuff doesn't get published either by myself or by other teammates, because you just don't find the time to write, and the post quality is lower because you aren't taking your time.
never met a part of the stack I didn't like. sr. engineer at clique studios in chicago, perpetual creative hobbyist, bird friend, local gay agenda promoter. she/her. tips: https://ko-fi.com/carlymho
I know at a previous job I was one of the people being reticent about posting blog entries, largely because it's kind of big and intimidating to think posting your own thoughts for public, uncontrolled consumption if you're not used to it—and sometimes even if you are. That, and I know a lot of people who don't think they have anything to talk about that hasn't been covered before.
I think it helps to approach people with the seed of something, like, "a walkthrough of that big feature you implemented to explain why it's a big deal to laypeople" or "write-up of how we made the decision to pick this technology over that technology." The way I was initially sold on doing conference talks might also help, here, too, for people who've already written stuff but can't be persuaded to post it—just because you're not the only one who can talk about a subject doesn't mean that you can't talk about it in a uniquely useful or engaging way.
My 2c; I think we experience that embarrassment/dread because we know other people are going to see and judge our work, and we worry that they will judge it much more harshly than they actually will. Maybe that's the expectation that comes from spending more time on Hacker News than on DEV ;)
But seriously, perhaps a solution is to tell people that their work IS good enough, it IS comparable to the voices already out there, and to give our friends and co-workers permission and authority to be a voice in their field.
There's a theory that we're all more reluctant to make art because of the rise in AAA+++ media and the decline of local/folk art. The antidote could be to expose people to more relatable-quality media exactly like what we have here on DEV!
Oof. If you manage to crack the code of getting developers to actually blog for you, let me know. At my last job I spent two years promoting the blog internally, and I got maybe five or six drafts in that entire span. Just the other day at my new job, a coworker came up with a stunning piece of documentation, complete with diagrams he made himself, on an undocumented AWS Fargate thing. I said that it would make an excellent blog post and he should just copy/paste the thing he already wrote to something public facing, and he reacted with a mixture of embarrassment and dread.
I don't understand the reluctance to blog! Does anyone have any insight here?
Yikes, that doesn’t sound promising. My gut feel is there will be two of us doing it because we love to write but it will be a challenge getting others on board.
I will report back!
I wouldn't be too worried if that's the case, to be honest. There's a lot of challenges to "team" authorship, and having fewer writers makes it easier to control voice and content planning.
One strategy to raise the profile of the team members without "team" authorship (if the team members want to have high profiles) might be to publish just in the company voice, using quotes/cameos of your team members individual contributions?
One critical thing to add is that blog-writing and editing should be a high-level on-the-clock task. I've made that mistake a lot of times personally, which meant stuff doesn't get published either by myself or by other teammates, because you just don't find the time to write, and the post quality is lower because you aren't taking your time.
I know at a previous job I was one of the people being reticent about posting blog entries, largely because it's kind of big and intimidating to think posting your own thoughts for public, uncontrolled consumption if you're not used to it—and sometimes even if you are. That, and I know a lot of people who don't think they have anything to talk about that hasn't been covered before.
I think it helps to approach people with the seed of something, like, "a walkthrough of that big feature you implemented to explain why it's a big deal to laypeople" or "write-up of how we made the decision to pick this technology over that technology." The way I was initially sold on doing conference talks might also help, here, too, for people who've already written stuff but can't be persuaded to post it—just because you're not the only one who can talk about a subject doesn't mean that you can't talk about it in a uniquely useful or engaging way.
Very recognisable!
My 2c; I think we experience that embarrassment/dread because we know other people are going to see and judge our work, and we worry that they will judge it much more harshly than they actually will. Maybe that's the expectation that comes from spending more time on Hacker News than on DEV ;)
But seriously, perhaps a solution is to tell people that their work IS good enough, it IS comparable to the voices already out there, and to give our friends and co-workers permission and authority to be a voice in their field.
There's a theory that we're all more reluctant to make art because of the rise in AAA+++ media and the decline of local/folk art. The antidote could be to expose people to more relatable-quality media exactly like what we have here on DEV!
I don’t mind a little criticism, it makes me really proof read my posts as I know someone will respond (kindly) pointing out what I’ve missed.
The more you publish the easier it becomes.