You Are a Product

http://nathanmarz.com/blog/you-are-a-product.html

by nathanmarz • 16 years ago

48 20 16 years ago

Aloisius• 16 years ago

This is an idea that Reid Hoffman has advocated for a while now and that I fully support. It is also the reason why I think sites like Facebook and LinkedIn can never meet - your professional brand is something you want to control completely.

I think that you should do product development on yourself and constantly reevaluate if you're headed in the right direction as a product that people want.

It sounds odd to objectify yourself, but a lot of the same techniques related to iterative development can be readily applied to personal development.

contextfree• 16 years ago

I am not a product, I am a free man.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

If you prefer to see it that way, we can pretend anybody cares.

dools• 16 years ago

More accurately, your time is the product.

mikegreenberg• 16 years ago

I mentioned this in your post, but will reiterate it there to initiate some conversation around this idea.

I've been working on a solution which helps users manage their online identity similar to how we handle this while offline. Every social network has their own point of view on what consists of your identity. This serves only the providers end goal of providing you a specific value.

As a (hopefully) more intuitive approach, my solution helps users organize their identity data into a unified (and standard) model around which they can define "roles". To the user, this feels like any other typical social network URL aggregation service (bookmarks?) which users seem to be adopting quite well. The added value from my solution is that they can use this new foundation to promote specific aspects of themselves within a targeted context both online and offline. Additionally, users will be able to receive metrics and feedback on individual relationships to improve future interaction with your audience.

My overall objective is to improve personal branding and advertising and see this as a growing niche. Not sure if you all agree about the market, but (assuming you aren't developing a custom solution specific for your use) would you agree that identity online seems to be unnecessarily restrictive to what is and is not representative of "you"?

TotlolRon• 16 years ago

Maybe you are. I'm not.

mark_l_watson• 16 years ago

Good article Nathan but I take just a slightly different view: real joy in life is how much you help others, how many people you love, etc. (and not the reverse of how much help you get, how many people love you, etc.) I am in my 50s, and I wish I had figured this out earlier. I have also been very fortunate in bosses and employers treating me fairly and it has worked out well in that I tend to work for the same people multiple times.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

I take just a slightly different view: real joy in life is how much you help others, how many people you love, etc. (and not the reverse of how much help you get, how many people love you, etc.)

To be fair to Nathan his list of things to do were all about doing things for other people (even if it ultimately benefits you too): blogging, speaking, working on open source projects. He even said: I think the best personal branding activities are rooted in the actual value you can provide to others.

nathanmarz3• 16 years ago

Precisely. Like any form of marketing, there are ways to go about it that are sleazy and there are ways to go about it that are honest. The ones that are based on providing value to others benefit everyone the most.

CrypticSwarm• 16 years ago

This is a very interesting perspective. Initally I felt the title was slightly degrading. After reading the article however I feel the title is fitting and less degrading. I like the idea of cultivating your own personal image as a way to increase your demand. I for one have a bad tendency to put off releasing code or writing about what I am working on. I've been meaning to change this. I plan on using this article as a kick to start working on this type or "personal branding". I created a HN account and posted this comment to jump start this inititive. Thanks.

nathanmarz3• 16 years ago

I'm glad I was able to influence you in some small, positive way. It's comments like this that give me real satisfaction as a blogger.

catshirt• 16 years ago

i don't disagree with the article, but i believe that anyone who is capable of marketing themselves has likely drawn these conclusions already.

rorymarinich3• 16 years ago

Foul, foul, foul way to approach your own life and existence. Which isn't to say it doesn't work.

A "problem", you could say, with a lot of employed people is that they insist on seeing themselves as human beings rather than shallow, flat marketing entities. So they are not ready to believe that people are viewing them as two-dimensional plusses-and-minuses. They are wrong, of course, because we are lazy people who are much more comfortable dismissing people than we are accepting them. But I wish they weren't so wrong.

I know firsthand how easy it is to market yourself. Most people are awful at it, or unwilling to do it, or both. Treat life as a video game and high scores become easy to attain. Indeed, all of advertising is based on this system; we realized a century ago that if selling's the goal, you can sacrifice nearly everything else and make a killing.

The cost is merely your soul. It's giving up that view of yourself as an autonomous human being with unique hopes and dreams, wants and needs. It's deciding that you value a certain society-accepted sort of "success" more than you value yourself. And if you really don't believe in yourself, then you find that everything is easy. You can get a job if you're a branded huckster. You can get laid if you're a pick-up artist. Maybe it won't mean anything but you can have it anyway.

The real struggle, which this article doesn't mention, is this: What happens when you find the parts of yourself that you're unwilling to sell? When your own wants and needs contradict that optimal path? How do you manage the difficult dilemmas that come from your conscience?

It's a question I feel some here don't value much. But I think it's the important one. And it's the one that provokes the really genius ideas. Curiously, focusing too much on the optimal path denies you a lot of opportunities to be ugly and unbranded and staggeringly brilliant. The real difference between the good and the great is that greatness almost invariably requires a sacrifice.

As far as informing the uninformed goes, good article. The more self-aware people are, the harder this branding bullshit is to pull off. But I dislike that you present this without any warnings of the sacrifice you make when you start looking at yourself as a brand. I think it's irresponsible and potentially harmful.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

I think you're presenting a false dichotomy. Self promotion as a directed activity is not always so cynical or an attempt to get more than you deserve. It does not always involve dashing your "unique hopes and dreams." Branding is not any more "bullshit" than, say, economics or art are.

There are people doing good, honest work who've found that by adopting some of the principles of branding and responsible marketing to boost their public perception, they can actually turn their work into a profitable long term enterprise where otherwise they could not. I haven't sold my soul or done things I didn't want to do, yet without self promotion there's no way I'd have 38k feed subscribers and a 6K strong mailing list. These things help me realize my ambitions in an honest way.

There's a school of thought that "if you build it, they will come." Now, more than ever, this is not true. You can toil away and do excellent work but without getting out there, spreading the news, and working on your persona, you'll struggle to get by. This is why, I feel, a lot of people do settle for regular, full-time jobs when they don't want to - rather than go out on a limb and share themselves honestly with the world, they'd rather do it on a case by case basis in their résumé.

rorymarinich3• 16 years ago

I agree. That's why I also dislike people who say things like "You are an artist" or "You are an [economic term thingy]" too. (This last one is theoretical but I would dislike this being said.) When you tell people that THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE without including a counterhypothetical HERE'S WHY YOU MIGHT NOT CARE ABOUT THIS, you're doing an injustice to yourself as a writer. It's dishonest to write about a good thing without also carefully demarcating the limits of that goodness.

"If you build it, they will come" is a terrible line that promotes antisocial behavior and irrationality. It works well for the outsider artist who truly does go off and build a monument, but if you're writing a "how-to" article you're not targeting outsider artists. The real line to teach is "Friends are the best thing ever, in business too!", and then to suggest that marketing techniques are the best ways to make yourself visible to future friends. God knows that's the only fame I've found worthwhile.

nathanmarz3• 16 years ago

I appreciate your perspective. I think you have an assumption that there's something innately "sleazy" about marketing, which is where I disagree. I also want to note that I advocate marketing, which is a different concept than selling. Selling is a transactional concept while marketing is about increasing your value in the mind of others.

There are sleazy ways to market yourself. However, the methods I advocate -- blogging, open source, speaking, etc. -- are about finding ways to provide value to people.

rorymarinich3• 16 years ago

No, not at all! I'm actually studying advertising right now, and am a big proponent of learning to use marketing. The difference between my perspective and yours (in my opinion, of course — feel free to contradict!) is that you see marketing as a wholly advantageous thing, whereas I'm more wary — I see it as an easily abused drug which provides a shallow relief to a deeper problem.

Here's how I'd put it. When I recommend a blog to somebody, or to myself, it's never because of the factors that make a blog bloggy: RSS feeds, archives, pagination, etc. The really important thing about a person's blog is the person, and the traits that person embodies. The blog is simply the way that person delivers herself to me. Ditto Twitter: The medium doesn't make the man, the man defines the medium. Bad Twitters are atrocious. Ditto bad blogs.

You see "value" in these various marketing positions, as if the problem is "does not market well". I think the problem is somewhat more multifaceted than that. Part of the problem is that people use tools they cannot competently handle; while I suspect that your post won't be popular enough to, say, motivate a man to suddenly try and get speaking roles, I imagine that a man who sucks at writing and at speaking and at being interesting who suddenly decided to present at a conference might find your advice more traumatic than useful.

A similar presentation that uses the same facts you do but shifts its perspective somewhat might sound more like this: "Here are some tools you have to express yourself. These are the ways that people use them; this is why they use this one instead of that one; here are some instances of good behavior with this tool that might inspire you." Perhaps you then explain why expression might be good for people, might get them work/recognition/whatever. By phrasing it that way you get to a core issue — what's the point of using these tools specifically? — and also move away from suggesting things like, "if you are not happy then it's probably that you're not using these tools", which is frequently wrong and occasionally harmful.

I'm on your side here. I just think you presented your thoughts in a somewhat problematic way. Hopefully there's some ideas worth turning over in our discussion here that lead to future ideas. :-)

bourdine• 16 years ago

yes, selfpositioning can get some buzz among those who can hire you, but if a person achieve is finished on selfpositioning, and, in fact - can not work, or is able to work like everyone else, then the company still sucks and beyond, with these empty buzz, sic.

donaq• 16 years ago

Judging by the negative/indignant comments, I think the title was unfortunate. Reading the article, though, I don't see the OP advising people to do anything actually degrading or unethical. Perhaps he should have clarified that only the programmer-employee part of you is the product (at least where your employer is concerned).

I have a slightly different perspective, which is that rather than you being the product, your skills and time are the product, for which you are the vendor.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

Judging by the negative/indignant comments, I think the title was unfortunate.

I don't. I think there's a lack of understanding what a metaphor is. The tech scene is not known for its glut of English majors, alas..

You Are a Product

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