Sell yourself, sell your work

> For the world to benefit from your work, and therefore for you to benefit fully from your work, you have to make it known.

"Fully" seems to be doing a helluva lot of heavy lifting in this piece. Does anyone think that they mean anything other than "making money", as they quickly segue into talking about entrepreneurship and founding businesses?

I'm happy to concede that if you don't tell anyone about the stuff you do, no one will know. But I am not willing to concede that you only "fully" benefit from your work if you sell it. Nor am I willing to concede that work only has value if sold. I'm also not entirely certain the author is pushing those views. Still, something about this piece doesn't sit well with me.

Human endeavors have value beyond the monetary.

I have a web extension I made as a pet project that does something useful to me (in the spirit of selling my work, it's called Favioli ).

It's free/open-source and will always be free. But the idea was inspired by my friend's code. When I made a blog post about how I made the extension, he reposted it on his relatively popular blog + Twitter.

Because of that, the extension has had around 1000 users since the very beginning, and I've gotten some prs and improvements here and there. And it feels good to have solved an issue for some people other than myself.

I think this is what the author means by "selling". I'm generally the type of person who doesn't self-advertise, because my mindset is that I don't want to bother people. So if my friend hadn't publicized it for me, the extension would probably have 5 users. So maybe 995 other people wouldn't have benefitted from my work. I think this article is not saying that you "have" to sell your work, but that if you're proud of it, don't feel ashamed to tell people that it exists.

I can see it from this perspective, thank you

I'll add that "sell yourself" has (Unfortunately) negative connotations in a Western context. (Possibly in other contexts as well, but I don't know.)

We teach children modesty. We correct people who brag. We emphasize the "everyone is equal " approach. Which are are correct things to do as children. Children's work is encouraged (regardless of quality) and is discarded.

But this mindset can work against adults. Primarily because the work is expected to be fruitful, not discarded. And for work to be fruitful it must not just be fine, it must be seen.

At my company we have a saying "if it's not documented, it's not done". (I write software libraries.) If I don't write docs, build examples, publicize new features, then no one will use them. That's a waste of my output, and a waste of the money the company spent for me to make it. This is not a "modesty" thing, it's a "that's my job" thing.

Now, can you write code on your own time, stick the result on the fridge, and admire it yourself? Of course yes. You don't have to publicize it. It's perfectly OK to have a hobby. Frankly it doesn't matter if it's good or bad. It'll serve its purpose and be forgotten.

"Selling" in this context may be the wrong word. "Documenting" or "Publishing" would have served a similar purpose without the stigma. But the author wants to stress test there's a "persuasion " aspect here as well.

My library might be better, faster, more secure, and so on, but there are other libraries our there competing for users. If I won't "persuade" others to try it, who will? If I'm not prepared to stand up and advocate for it, what that does that say about my perspective of the work? If I don't believe in it, why should they?

If you don't think your work is worth talking about, so be it. Just don't expect anyone else to talk about it either.

I do not understand the negatives. It is along the lines of what I was thinking. At least in my experience, "sell X" is often understood as "go borderline lying about how good it is". "Sell yourself" triggers kind of a negative image. What works for me is just to talk about what I have done, and do not underestimate the achievements. But selling is like a step too much. At least in my cultural/social circle.