Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35164819

by _ajoj • 3 years ago

513 440 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I see it’s common for people on HN to have a personal website/blog. I’m interested in knowing if the creation and maintenance of a personal website have lead to paid full/part time jobs, increased learning, brought new connections to others or are purely vanity.

surprisetalk• 3 years ago

I think this essay best summarizes the benefits of starting a blog:

[1] https://www.benkuhn.net/writing/

Personally, I’ve found 2 major benefits for publishing my essays:

1. Any time I encounter a problem, I write it down as an “essay idea”. Most of the time, I solve my problem without anything interesting to write about, but sometimes I have an “aha!” moment to analyze. People trick themselves into thinking they understand something, until they start writing. Deep writing makes it extremely clear when you have no idea what you’re talking about. And so the writing process helps me solve problems, and hopefully helps other benefits from my findings.

2. Conversations become more interesting IRL. When I go to parties, people who read my blog love hunting me down for follow-questions and ideas. And I sometimes get summoned into circles with “Oh, Taylor recently wrote an essay on this! Where is he? Call him over here!”

[2] https://taylor.town

rob74• 3 years ago

Regarding your first point - I once found the solution to a problem I had (I forgot what it was exactly) by starting to write a StackOverflow question. Similar to a blog post, this forces you to explain the problem to yourself first before explaining it to others, and that leads to better understanding.

wcarss• 3 years ago

People trick themselves into thinking they understand something, until they start writing. Deep writing makes it extremely clear when you have no idea what you’re talking about.

This often actually stops me from writing. A short ways in, I realize I have no clue what's really going on. I start reading to learn more, then I either get discouraged by the complexity of it, have a crisis of confidence, or plain run out of time, and fail to ever come back to complete a post about that specific topic.

iamflimflam1• 3 years ago

I’ve had a lot of real consulting work (not just students wanting me to do their final year projects…) from my blog and YouTube channel.

https://atomic14.com and https://www.youtube.com/@atomic14

The other benefit has just been the fact that my side projects are actually getting finished and documented.

eatonphil• 3 years ago

Not massive for connections (Twitter interactions are better for that) and not great for jobs directly (I've had 2 people in 8 years contact me about contract work [i.e. not even full time] that I was not advertising about based on posts).

The most use I get out of my blog in retrospect is that it has a decent amount of minimal working sample code/configuration and I reference these snippets frequently.

But writing itself is part of making sure I understand a concept. So it's not just about the retrospective view but also about what you can learn by not just hacking on stuff but also explaining it in writing.

bovermyer• 3 years ago

My personal website I see as my legacy. When I die, it will live on for awhile, and people can get some use of my life that way.

hellohihello135• 3 years ago

I love this answer. You just convinced me to start a blog.

neom• 3 years ago

Mostly I'd be pretty annoyed at myself if I didn't know how to deploy a basic website anymore. Keeps me young :|

nstart• 3 years ago

Don’t know about my blog itself, but looking at my drafts,

A) I can see how many ideas I had that fell apart the moment I started to write arguments about it

B) how horrible I am predicting stuff and just how much I’ve saved myself from being on the record with really terrible calls on the then future that is now the present :,). This too because once I started to justify my prediction I lost all confidence in it. I still think fpv drone racing could have been bigger than f1 though. Someday I’ll publish that as the hill to die on :D.

Cthulhu_• 3 years ago

For work, as a software developer, pretty much all of it has come through Linkedin, it's the laziest way a recruiter will look for staff. Keep that up to date with what you can and want to do and you should be alright in that industry.

Personal websites can help, if they're looking for more of a thought leader than a pair of coding hands.

mjb• 3 years ago

I've been maintaining my blog (https://brooker.co.za/blog/) for just over a decade, and I continue to do it for a couple of reasons.

- I often blog about research, which has started several very interesting conversations with academics and industry researchers, and even some very fruitful collaborations. Mostly I cover systems, database, and distributed systems work.

- I believe that the ability to write well is skill with great career and personal benefits (see https://brooker.co.za/blog/2022/11/08/writing.html). Writing my blog gives me practice in a kind of writing I don't do that much in my professional life. I think it's had a considerable positive impact on my writing skill overall.

- It gives me a way to broadly share things I've been thinking about (e.g. https://brooker.co.za/blog/2022/04/11/simulation.html), using at work (e.g. https://brooker.co.za/blog/2022/02/28/retries.html or https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/01/06/erasure.html) in a way that I find personally fulfilling and enjoyable. I got into a habit for a while of sharing this kind of thing on Twitter, but eventually found that leads to shallower conversations and shorter-lived artifacts and went back to mostly using my blog for that kind of content. I find that I genuinely enjoy teaching and sharing. I also like sharing my ideas without the overhead and formality of academic publishing (which, let's face it, is a painful process).

- There are a whole lot of folks with blogs that I enjoy and admire, and want to emulate them to some extent.

I think that goes beyond vanity, but also think I have limited ability to understand my own motivations, so it may just be vanity :)

dist1ll• 3 years ago

It's awesome going through this thread and seeing all the light-grey links. Your blog is a gold mine for distributed systems.

jslind• 3 years ago

I work lower in your same org tree with DDB and TxS and enjoy reading your blog. Gives insight into more tenured engineers and is good motivation for me as well. I am just kicking off my blog and hopefully I will have it go a decade as well.

uallo• 3 years ago

I run a small blog that is based on a tiny custom script and a single markdown file. It builds static HTML files and deploys them using rsync, it takes less than one second to build and deploy. There is absolutely no technical maintenance required and I only publish things when I want to.

The main use of my blog is that I note things down that are interesting to me. List of certain things, some learnings, the results of tool evaluations, etc. I use my own blog almost daily to look up things I can't remember clearly but know exactly where I can find them again. I sometimes also share some articles with colleagues. Other than that, I could not care less whether somebody actually reads it. From the Google Webmaster Console, I do know, however, that dozens of people end up on my blog every day.

Would I start a blog again? Yes, absolutely.

sshine2• 3 years ago

Website: Point of contact.

I don't use social media, so if people search for me, they can find my website.

Blog: To ventilate and network.

My blog posts have landed me job interviews and have expanded my professional network.

But I mostly blog because I write a lot. I write to myself, and sometimes I think it's valuable to others, and then I have a place where I can share that and link to it. For example, when my colleagues make sketchy code, and I can't find a good place that explains why you want to think about it differently, I'll write a blog post.

xena10• 3 years ago

I've been running a blog at https://xeiaso.net for almost a decade now. It has been the single best decision I have ever made in my career. It allows me to skip technical screening interviews. It has made interviewing at companies _easy_ because I have _already proven_ that I understand what I'm talking about.

Learning how to write well also makes it so much easier to explain things succinctly, especially when working remote like I prefer to.

I've also been told that more junior people look up to me as a role model because of my blog, which is something that I am still getting used to, but I can accept.

becquerel• 3 years ago

I hope one day to have a site as cool as yours.

PebblesRox• 3 years ago

Love this line!

"This code is free as in mattress. If you decide to use it, it's your problem."

https://xeiaso.net/blog/GraphicalEmoji

jjice• 3 years ago

Any tips for avoiding the urge to spend time setting up a fancy SSG and playing with that and never actually writing? I've done that a few times over the years...

I imagine the advice would often be "just write", which I do agree is fair advice, but wondering if you had any takes.

Linell• 3 years ago

I wrote about my experience with this here: https://thelinell.com/The-Notion-Experiment-8191f33eaa864469...

The main idea for me was to just reduce the barrier to entry so that writing more was too easy to avoid. I already use Notion for taking notes throughout the day, so transitioning to also jotting down blog thoughts has been very easy and has increased the amount of writing that I do.

xena10• 3 years ago

Every time I get anxiety, I write one blogpost. I get a lot of anxiety.

But really just work on writing or ideas for writing for half an hour every day. Even if you just write "I have nothing to write about today". Don't be afraid to just keep showing up.

callahad• 3 years ago

I'm not sure Xe is the right person to ask about avoiding playing with the site's backend: https://xeiaso.net/blog/series/site-update ;-)

(Maybe the trick is: if you must tinker, also turn that tinkering into writing?)

bmitc• 3 years ago

My recommendation would be to use either Jekyll or just go with Notion. I am allergic to setting up a bunch of stuff and just wanted to start writing. So I am using Jekyll's default Minima theme with some small adjustments, mainly to render MathJax and Mermaid diagrams in my posts. There was some initial hacking, but now I got it setup with a Docker devcontainer with VS Code, so it's as easy as pulling down the repository, and then starting to write.

I have only written one article at the moment, but I am glad I got started with it. I hope to keep adding to it over time and have a few articles in the works.

sshine2• 3 years ago

My way around just toying with site generators and actually write was:

Start by writing to yourself. I started with writing down ideas in a private markdown system. (I’d recommend https://obsidian.md today.)

I became less self-conscious about my target audience was myself. It also became easier to make assumptions about what they (I) know, which is still a game of “will I understand this in a year or two?” For me, writing about tech to a near-future version of myself was the beginning.

Another tip: You may be in control of your documents (you maintain them, not some online system you don’t own), but if you use someone else’s blog platform, you won’t have a chance to rabbit-hole the site making. There’s something liberating about only caring about the content, not the layout.

For some subjects, it helps to write under a pseudonym, because you can experiment with what’s on your mind and not how people will treat you based on what you say. I’ve wanted to write about things like pornography and past jobs (those are unrelated, hehe), but I don’t want to upset past colleagues or seem obsessed about pornography.

alin23• 3 years ago

Maybe rely on people that have done the tinkering already.

For example after trying multiple SSGs, I eventually settled on the simplest combination for me: Caddy with markdown files

Wrote about it here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...

I already had Caddy running for lunar.fyi and lowtechguys.com so it felt simple to just add some lines in the Caddy file and start writing words in .md files.

anotherhue• 3 years ago

I always enjoy your posts! Thank you

tkyiitd• 3 years ago

The font is awesome. Can you please tell which font it is.

xena10• 3 years ago

It's just this:

    p, .conversation-chat, blockquote, em, strong {
        font-size: 1rem;
        font-style: normal;
        font-family: Menlo, monospace;
    }

That's really the heart of it. I've wanted to try using a sans-serif font like Inter, but I'm stuck in a pit where people expect me to use a monospace font and any attempt to move away from that means I basically change a huge part of the site's visual identity. I'm still trying to figure out how to find some middle ground because I am told that the monospace font is hard for people with dyslexia to read.

I'll figure out something, I'm sure.

herodoturtle• 3 years ago

Great blog - I particularly enjoyed your salary transparency page - thank you for sharing that.

joshcanhelp3• 3 years ago

Your blog always blows me away with how different and fun it is. I only dream of being that authentic online. I love the call-outs from the specific personalities. So great!

xena10• 3 years ago

Assuming your threat profile allows for it, go for it! The main difficulty I run into is Hacker News being _incredibly toxic_ in the comments on my articles at times, especially if I talk about anything contentious or break from the intellectual mold that this site has. You'd be sad to know the number of people that accused me of being a [threat to children] because I'm openly queer/furry on my blog.

adammarples• 3 years ago

You're Christine? I'm sure nobody would have turned your down for a technical screen!

xena10• 3 years ago

You'd be amazed. I get way more rejections than you'd be comfortable with because 2016 was a horrible year for me and I still have that year on my resume for logistical reasons.

citruscomputing• 3 years ago

More junior person: have looked up to you since my first real job in 2019. Reading your posts on tarot debugging and plurality-driven development, and seeing you being so skilled and unapologetically /interesting/ was the first time I felt that "oh, there are actually people out there that I want to be like someday." Been reading ever since, thank you for all the posts!

stuzenz• 3 years ago

Hi Xe, I am an avid reader of your blog. You have fantastic content and come across as someone with interesting opinions that I enjoy reading about.

Thanks for all the knowledge sharing and education efforts you put into all sorts of areas I am interested in (Linux internals, NixOS, Rust, etc.)

kaeruct• 3 years ago

Just want to say, thanks for the great content. You're an inspiration. :)

pfoof4• 3 years ago

Oh, ponyvillefm, long time no see

lannisterstark• 3 years ago

It allows me to skip technical screening interviews. It has made interviewing at companies _easy_ because I have _already proven_ that I understand what I'm talking about.

Can you please elaborate more on this? Do you just go "I made a post about it, go read?"

now__what• 3 years ago

In my interview for my current position, the team mentioned some elements of my website in a positive light, so I think it helped me stand out a bit.

Otherwise it's just good for bookmarking links and ideas that I'd otherwise forget about. And it's handy to link to friends if they ask me about my hobbies, e.g. "here's what I remember about X off the top of my head, but if you want more details and links to reference material, there's a section dedicated to it on my website."

rozenmd• 3 years ago

In short, brings me employment opportunities, and customers for my business.

I wouldn't have been referred to my current job without it.

sixhobbits• 3 years ago

I wrote some technical articles on Dwyer.co.za. Mainly for fun. Partly because I wanted to 'give back'. Partly because I found the articles a good way for me to learn stuff and often found myself referring back to them later.

I got inbound leads from people asking me to write similar articles for them and a book deal. I started charging small amounts at first and then larger ones later on.

Now its my full time business (ritza.co) that pays me a better salary than I was earning as a full time employee and supports several team members.

I would say having a blog can easily be life changing, but is worthwhile even without that just for the personal growth aspect.

ghilston• 3 years ago

My website has given me a place to share projects I've done or small snippets I've learned about. I am always writing as if I am the audience, as I'm referring to it quite often.

Over time I've noticed that readership has increased and I've started to get comments from readers either asking for additional help or offering advice. With that also comes a ton of companies offering their paid services to improve my seo ranking....

Overall, it's a nice stress-free place to write.

https://www.greghilston.com/

thejarren• 3 years ago

This is actually pretty fitting, but I had been looking for a new job and working to polish my site into a better portfolio. I had written a piece about "The Future of Group Messaging" that I had worked really hard on, and once I finished it, I posted it on HN, fully intending to reach out to recruiters to find work. However, it ended up gaining a lot of traction on HN, and from that post, I received about 25 inbound job offers that I was able to choose from.

I still think back to how stressed I was while building the site, and I thought it was such a waste of time. But it got me the job I needed at the time and opened a lot of doors for me. That said, I could theoretically attribute it to HN and my writing, though the custom site helped.

XorNot• 3 years ago

I use it to force myself to write up better notes about how I did stuff.

asicsp• 3 years ago

Having a blog was one of the recommended marketing strategy for ebook promotion, so I started one. Most of deep dives on topics I'm familiar already made it to my books, so initially I wrote stories around my writing experience.

Then I started a mini section for random stuff like what bug gave me trouble. To become more regular, I reused stuff for tips and tricks (along with video demos).

I don't use analytics, so don't have numbers to indicate how useful it turned out for ebook sales. My friend found one of my posts as the top result while searching for a topic, which was very satisfying to hear.

hjr265• 3 years ago

When I first created my website (https://hjr265.me) several years ago it was mostly a placeholder for the domain that matched my preferred handle/username.

Ever since I started the 100DaysToOffload challenge, I have been writing a bit more frequently on my personal blog: https://hjr265.me/blog/.

Apart from it being a writing excersie, I have been forced to look at my own work more critically before presenting them on the Internet.

I now find it more important to understand new concepts in-depth, as I learn them, so that I can explain them better.

I think about learning things that are beyond what I need for my regular work.

And, yes, I admit that I have used my blog at least once to vent about something.

ethicalsmacker• 3 years ago

I have a website. I haven’t had any tangible benefits from it. I keep it mainly for SEO fodder if someone searches my name.

devtailz• 3 years ago

My favourite win of my development blog is stopping myself from doing the same project multiple times. I used to tinker a lot, but wouldn’t document anything and so I often had to start all over when I picked that project back up.

Writing forces me to break things down into manageable chunks. I’ve seen much more consistent progress this way.

https://devtails.xyz

bookofjoe4• 3 years ago

I started my blog on August 24, 2004, posting multiple times daily, and I continue to do so because I enjoy it.

It's a way of seeing what I think.

I get about 500 page views/day (down from around 10,000 visitors/25,000 page views/day around 2010-2012).

My Comments section since the beginning has always been completely open: no login required; no delay; no editing; no moderation.

I'm one of VERY few bloggers today with completely open, unmoderated comments: I get about 10/week, which lets me respond/interact to each one if I want.

Bonus: EVERY comment goes on my homepage at the top of my Comments section the moment it appears along with the commenter's handle — it's one way to get a tiny measure of internet fame cheap.

I haven't changed my blog's appearance apart from tweaking image size since I started.

travisjungroth3• 3 years ago

How are you not blown up with spam comments?

bookofjoe4• 3 years ago

Even when I had 25,000 page views daily, I'd only get a couple spam comments/day, easily deleted, no big deal.

Now I get about one every 1-2 months.

karaterobot2• 3 years ago

Hey, I'm one of the 500, not to mention an early Youtube subscriber. Your blog is charming and you post good links, everybody should check it out.

ironSkillet• 3 years ago

I used my blog to display a portfolio of projects I had worked on to prepare myself for leaving academia and go into industry. It paid off massively, as a random linkedin recruiter saw the flashy looking web viz I built (an utter pile of garbage html and D3) and I got a job at a hedge fund, leading me to a very lucrative career trajectory.

BrentOzar• 3 years ago

Mine started as a personal blog, and now generates $2M USD/year revenue of training, consulting, and online services.

I regularly preach the gospel of, "Find the most expensive thing in your business, stand next to that, offer to help fix it when it breaks, and blog about what you've learned."

For me, that was Microsoft SQL Server, but the specific tech doesn't matter. Follow the money.

bitcoinmoney• 3 years ago

So you made an MS SQL consulting company? Did you talk in your blog about building up the business? Getting your first clients, how much to charge etc..?

jmclnx• 3 years ago

To me it is like shouting in the wind in a public park. I am not concerned about who sees it, but it will out last me :)

zug_zug• 3 years ago

I've written a blog on/off over 10 years. It hasn't paid off in any form to my awareness. I rarely put ideas past draft anymore, but sometimes you have things worth saying even when you don't know anybody who cares to hear.

jarbus• 3 years ago

Just as a counter point, I've started a small blog, posting infrequently about all sorts of things, technical and not. This has not had any affect on my life whatsoever, it's been a fun timesink but I've not seen any returns.

hnarayanan• 3 years ago

It has been a place where I can document my thoughts and feelings over time. It is where I share what I learn.

And I'm over 40 years old and never once been to an interview. I attribute at least some of it to having a website and a blog.

blakesterz• 3 years ago

I started all this because I like Slashdot and wanted to do a site just like that for librarians. Worked out pretty well for me. Thanks again* CmdrTaco!

My website has given me my entire career. I started a blog in 1999, not knowing a damn thing about servers or programming. Running a blog, or any website, was a challenge back in the 90s. I kept at it, learned how to program, got a job as a programmer during the first dot com boom. Kept at it and learned how to do sysadmin stuff. Started my own little web hosting company. Along the way had several decent professional jobs and always kept the blog and hosting going. I'm now a sysadmin at a small non profit. I shut down my own hosting thing in 2020. The site has become a bit quiet, but I still keep it running, it's just a part of my life I guess.

* I got to thank Rob here on HN one time a while back which was pretty cool.

cmdrtaco• 3 years ago

Your welcome again?

vanilla_nut• 3 years ago

- I enjoy tinkering with static site generators and no-JS web design.

- Paired with an RSS reader, it's a nice way to DIY a retro kind of social media, without scummy dark patterns and ad-laden middlemen.

- It's a nice way to hone my writing skills.

- It's a nice way to record my adventures outside of the tech space.

I've only been writing for a couple of years, but I've already had some really enjoyable email exchanges with strangers who also write blogs (that I subscribe to via RSS). Especially since I left NYC, deleted Facebook and Instagram, and started to deeply invest in hobbies, this replacement for social media has been invaluable. It really gives me a sense of online community that American cities sadly lack.

rado• 3 years ago

Organisation of photos and thoughts in one place which isn't controlled by a corporation or algorithm.

weka• 3 years ago

I have been developing https://beta.delaford.com. It's a 2D Online JavaScript RPG using TypeScript and HTML <canvas> along with Node.js on the backend. It's allowed to me to skip tech screenings, use it as an ice-breaker and people always seem to love seeing it. Definitely has gotten me a leg up when I use to interview.

okaleniuk• 3 years ago

I do https://wordsandbuttons.online/ as a personal-ish website. I don't append my face to every page but a visitor is usually a few clicks away from my other works so the site is de-facto more or less personal.

First of all, it's a nice hobby. No bullshit programming, no frameworks, no dependencies, no annoying editors. I just write my code and text and enjoy doing so.

Second, it gives powerful motivation to study. I'm now writing a new page on rational interpolation and just yesterday I accidentally found a very simple way to avoid the Runge effect. I was just playing with interactives and it came out of the blue. There is no way I would have learned it otherwise.

Third, it helped me cement a publishing deal with Manning. They came to me and proposed to propose them a book on geometry. And so I did. The book is called Geometry for Programmers and it's coming this summer.

Fourth, I do public lectures (or at least I used to before the war), and the audience loves interactive illustrations. So I usually turn my site pages into presentation-like pages and do lectures with them.

So for me, having a website pays off in multiple ways.

lapcat• 3 years ago

1) My blog is self-documentation. Countless times I've referred back to my own blog about some technical issue that I investigated at some point in the past.

2) Other people have found my blog posts useful, for the same reason as 1, and have told me so.

3) As an indie developer, my blog has been helpful in promoting my own software.

lethain• 3 years ago

I've been blogging for about 16 years. Writing is an underrated way to cement what you learn any given day or year, and over time has made it possible to reach into any part of the industry and get an actual response. Writing is particularly powerful in combination with actually doing things that (are perceived to) matter; the credibility from doing both is much higher than doing either.

Concretely answering the questions asked:

1. At various points I spent a lot of time maintaining, but now it's just a static blog deployed via Github Actions onto a Github Page. I haven't done any meaningful changes in a few years, and the changes are for fun, not necessity

2. I got my first job in tech thanks to blogging: https://lethain.com/datahub/

3. My blogging has made it possible to write two pretty successful books: https://staffeng.com/book/ and https://press.stripe.com/an-elegant-puzzle (working on a third now)

4. Hard to assess, but I believe I've been able to subtly but meaningfully advance the technology industry through my writing :-)

5. A significant majority of folks are unaware that I write, and that's great! I don't think impact depends on folks connecting their colleague to the writer or whatnot

corysama• 3 years ago

Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.

- Dick Guindon

kanyethegreat• 3 years ago

Love your writing, Will. Have both of your books!

precompute• 3 years ago

I like how you have no filler or cruft on your blog posts, and jump straight to the topic. I went on a "binge" of your blog a year and half ago and left with a lot of actionable advice. Thank you!

benclauss• 3 years ago

Your writing is awesome! I have followed your blog for a while now and have recommended it to my team.

cushychicken• 3 years ago

I try to read your new posts when I get the chance.

Half the time, I find them really interesting and an interesting perspective on corporate psychology.

The other half of the time, I read them and have no idea what you’re talking about, which leads me to worry that my trajectory in my engineering career is doomed to insignificance, because I never have any of these meetings with execs or high level people like the ones you describe.

Do you have any guidance for people like me, in the second scenario?

karaterobot2• 3 years ago

I do not have a personal brand, but I've had a blog at the same URL since 2000 or so. Early on, it connected me to other bloggers and writers, and gave me a creative outlet. It has had a few incarnations, but it's now a commonplace book, so the value it provides is as a searchable archive of excerpted text. It's been useful hundreds of time for finding the right quote or passage to complete or ornament a thought.

smohnot• 3 years ago

I have a link to http://sheel.wtf (a public motion page) in my twitter bio. I’m surprised at how many people read it and reference stuff from it when we talk. I’m often on podcasts and it gives the hosts something to talk about. I’m a VC and a few founders have mentioned they like knowing about their investors as people and mine helps them understand that.

hnrodey• 3 years ago

My ManagerREADME has proved quite valuable, although it hasn't lead any unsolicited work my way. It's public on my GitHub and I include a link to it on my resume.

I've interviewed for several lead/manager roles and virtually all interviewers have brought up that they really like my ManagerREADME and it gave them great additional insight to me as a candidate. In another case, this document was the reason a company reached back out to me for an additional manager role they created after having originally passed on me for a candidate with more relevant work experience.

Overall, I'm quite proud of my creation and it's had direct benefit in advancing my career.

Link intentionally omitted.

neilv2• 3 years ago

I’m interested in knowing if the creation and maintenance of a personal website have lead to paid full/part time jobs, increased learning, brought new connections to others or are purely vanity.

My read of this was that it might've meant to frame the possibilities: "Exhaustively, is it for career development, or is it a moral failing?"

Additionally, "vanity" seems a bit loaded, shifting the perceived tone to possibly annoyed suspicious/accusatory, like maybe the writer suspects the answer to the implied either/or might be the latter category.

This read could be off, or maybe the writing hints at the writer's self-critical reflection on whether they should have a personal blog: when their only conscious goal would be career development, and they'd consider any other reason in themselves to be vanity, which they'd want to avoid?

Thrymr• 3 years ago

Indeed, some of my favorite blogs have been basically made with the attitude, "this is my personal brain dump, I write it for myself, but make it public in case anyone else finds it useful." Sort of like social media, but often more thoughtful and better organized, and less often trying to be clever and get a reaction. Monetizing and quantifying everything has not necessarily made it better. Of course, blogs pioneered the toxic attention-hoarding space before social media did, too.

phartenfeller• 3 years ago

My blog made it much easier to connect with people in my field. I work in a smallish niche, so most content creators have heard of each other.

Additionally, the company related to my field (Oracle) invited me into their “knowledge sharing” program. This helps meeting other people and at most conferences, they invite us to dinner, which is nice.

Besides, people telling me how a blog post helped them achieve something makes me happy and proud.

tristor• 3 years ago

I’ve had a personal website of one kind or another since 1996. The current iteration was started in 2015, and was intended to get me writing again, and was focused on my travels when I became a digital nomad for 18 months at that time.

Since then, unfortunately, I have mostly let it stagnate. I use my site primarily as a mechanism to centerpoint other things I do online now, like photography, however I don’t create as much as I used to.

I am hopeful I will have time to write more in the future, but in some respects the topics I want to write about I have preferred to keep private, because if someone disagrees with you in the age of social media you face life-altering repercussions rather than an interesting dialogue. I still write at least monthly, but do so in a private journal by hand with pen and paper.

I mostly write because I believe writing is thinking, and because I tend to have fleeting thoughts I want to capture and if I don’t write them down they’ll simply disappear. When I first got into writing online, doing so always created interesting conversations. Now, that is much rarer, so that is likely another reason I publish less of what I write.

larsbarnabee• 3 years ago

My website acts as a guide for my drawing progress (although I am still pretty bad, but will get better). I make a lot more YouTube videos. I do plan to publish articles, but I think videos do me a lot better. I think a blog is a requirement to have a map of my story. I try to post my YT videos on my website. Please take this advice, less is more. I like to use html pages and avoid managing a php website or anything more complex. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like the core of the web is a lot easier to maintain in the long term. Sorry to say, but I have not made a dollar with my blog. But I have heard a lot of thanks from people who want to draw. It keeps me going. My blog is https://larsbarnabee.com

Eyas• 3 years ago

Honestly I kind of just enjoy writing. My blog has gotten tons of views and still gets a fair amount of traffic, made on HN's front page a bunch, and have some post translated to a few languages.

I haven't actively tried to monetize it (though I'd like to shift to income based on my own work rather than be tied to a company). I tried putting ads once in a while and it was ~decent but negligible, and kind of ruined the vibe. I have done a few one-off consulting things out of it and got some nice side-cash, but nothing meaningful.

What I do get is feeling engaged with the wider tech community. Seeing common questions and comments. A feeling that what I'm saying might resonate with some people. Interesting discussions on Twitter and HN. A few podcast invites, etc.

batterylow• 3 years ago

I’ve just relaunched https://shahinrostami.com after spending a little too long writing the static site generator that now generates it. That, and https://datacrayon.com, have been the catalyst for several opportunities that have come my way.

systems_glitch• 3 years ago

Most often realized benefit of maintaining writeups on projects is using them as my own reference when I forget how I did something :P

Second most often realized benefit is forcing projects to actually get completed. Unless something is clearly a multipart adventure, I try to force myself to actually finish the thing before writing it up. I enjoy writing things up and documenting them, so it's a motivator. I've also decided to put things on my site first, rather than bite-size entertainment-for-others posts on various sites.

As others have said, it definitely has helped with interviews, though I haven't had to do one in a while.

yakkomajuri• 3 years ago

So I have a few different experiences:

1. I used to write technical pieces on Medium aimed mostly at people starting out their careers. I suddenly blew up and made reasonable money from it for a little while and that blog (before and after blowing up) was a big factor in me landing both consultancy jobs and a full-time job.

2. I now write almost exclusively on my personal website (https://yakkomajuri.com). I get no money out of it and few people read what I write, with the exception of some posts getting on the front page here once in a while.

It's fantastic: I've kept up with my love of writing and have allowed myself to just write about anything, including pieces that show a lot of vulnerability. This culminated in me publishing some poems a couple weeks ago (in Portuguese though).

Beyond that, my website is super bespoke, using a static site generator I built, and it's vanilla HTML/JS/CSS. It's refreshing to write dumb code with almost no deps. I also learn a lot through building it and writing on it, and have expanded it to include different areas of interest (pictures for example). Overall, it just _feels good_ to have it.

Ah, I've also started to write goals publicly which has been a nice experience too.

benwerd4• 3 years ago

I've been blogging since 1998 and can trace every major step forward in my career to my blog.

In 2003 I started writing about social networking and education - the replies to that blog post helped me kickstart my first startup.

In 2009 my blog posts about technology ethics led to me giving a talk at Harvard, which led to my becoming the first employee at a media tech startup.

That in turn led to me learning more about media tech accelerators. I applied to one with a new startup idea, and got in, in part because my blogging on the open web was picked up by the New York Times as part of a story.

Blogging for that startup helped us find customers and a like-minded community.

When that startup was acquired, blogging both externally and internally at the acquirer helped me make friends and share ideas that wouldn't have reached the right people otherwise.

And so on. Sharing ideas - not just tips, but thoughts about the why and who behind technology, as well as being vulnerable in public - has let me cut through from being a nobody in Edinburgh to someone with a pretty great technology career in SF.

And even if none of that had happened, writing is a wonderful way to structure your thoughts, consider what really matters, and reflect.

I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control.

erikerikson• 3 years ago

Edinburgh is a pretty fantastic place to start off, FWIW

benwerd4• 3 years ago

No shade to Edinburgh! I miss it every day. But I'll tell you this: there was no startup ecosystem there worth talking about in 2003, and a lot of people who would side-eye you and tell you to get a real job.

pvaldes2• 3 years ago

Their botanical garden is a very nice place

jjgreen• 3 years ago

Too polite

ludovicianul• 3 years ago

Any particular reason for emphasising the "own domain /control"?

TacoSteemers• 3 years ago

One reason is that someone else's platform means you don't have full control over presentation and discoverability.

Also, at some point in their existence each platform start to decline. People move to the next platform and lose some of their readers. A few years later the same thing happens again, and readership is reduced again.

Personally I have had a lot of fun adding random bits to my website such as small tools, some explorations on creative expression with CSS and things like that.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

If you're a tech person it serves as portfolio piece and example of stewardship skill.

benwerd4• 3 years ago

A blog is a long-term endeavor. You want to be able to run it long after any particular platform has declined. Ideally, it should be your portfolio that follows you throughout your career. That means you should minimize dependencies.

Also: a domain means links add value to your online identity, not the platform you happened to choose.

moneywoes• 3 years ago

Yep especially compared to substack

Vibgyor52• 3 years ago

I recommend it. Start a blog - on your own domain, on webspace that you control.

Following up on this - any specific reason behind this? I am considering starting a newsletter soon to first gather audience and Substack looks like right solution for this without requiring much technical setup, esp. as a non-tech. Idea is to first start blogging, get into that mindspace, build an audience and then you can move it to a proper blog on your own website, if required.

Curious what would be your thoughts here?

nigamanth• 3 years ago

Whoever you use, Medium, Substack, Wordpress, your blog is in their hands. If one day you forget to do XYZ task, they can take it all away.

You need to control your audience to reduce chances of "unforeseen circumstances"

benwerd4• 3 years ago

I use Substack for the newsletter associated with my blog. It's pretty good! But it's as much a blogging platform as a newsletter engine, and you should consider what your exit strategy might look like if it ever shuts down. At a minimum, I'd configure a custom domain to use with it.

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

There has been enough instances of platforms dying, pivoting, or just plain ignoring their users. It is OK to use a platform, but own the content or a backup of it that you can "walk away if needed." So, owning your own domain and perhaps pointing it to the blogspots, substacks, and WordPresses of the world as a tool is a OK. One day, you will need to relocate to another platform or tool(s).

If you own your own domain, and own the content, you can just walk out and it will still be alive. This is assuming that your content are more important (to you) than the platform.

Once, WordPress was the new MovableType/Blogspot, Medium the new Wordpress, and now Substack the new Medium. You never know.

racl1013• 3 years ago

I can't even get past the part where I gotta pick a domain name. lol

burkaman• 3 years ago

I think the best strategy is to do both. Publish on your own site so you have control and aren't fully dependent on someone else's service, and then also post to Substack and wherever else your audience is.

https://indieweb.org/POSSE

marmot777• 3 years ago

Email is one of the last remaining things where your audience is directly yours and not part of a walled garden. So newsletters have made a come back.

flybrand5• 3 years ago

The platforms age out, change, censor, etc. also, you may go through periods over time where you are less active - and the long term persistence of your writings is more valuable if in one place.

Having something you own allows for drift in subject matter over time.

https://fredlybrand.com/2020/05/28/better-writing-better-com...

a4isms• 3 years ago

Way back when Joel Spolsky was a high-profile blogger in the "starting your own software business" genre, I asked him for advice about my blogging, and he replied "Stop what you're doing and get your blog onto your own domain."

I had procrastinated because other platforms made everything so damn easy, and hosting my own blog meant being a part-time web admin. But I took his advice, and set up http://raganwald.com.

Some years after that, Posterous launched on HN, and I gave it a try. It was great, so very convenient! But I carefully kept copies of everything I posed there, and sure enough... One day it closed its doors, and I republished evrything on raganwald.com (some of my urls are raganwald.com/posterous/xxxxx.html, this is why).

But what about all the links to the old posterous articles? All dead, so some threads right here on HN point to dead URLs. This is bad for me and for HN. For this reason, I personally reject the strategy of posting on my own domain and republishing it simultaneously on some other platform. Everything I write is on a domain I control, and if I get less traffic, so be it. Running my own blog on my own low-traffic domain is like running a store in a building I own. The mall is very attractive, but I'm done with landlords.

p.s. There are hosted solutions that respect you your own domain. Some are free, like... Github Pages. And that's what I use. It is not essential that I own the server, just the URLs.

https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.github.com

simonw3• 3 years ago

When I moved my blog to a domain I owned I added little notes to my old content saying "Previously hosted on ..." in the hope that searches for that content by URL would find the new homes.

Example: https://simonwillison.net/2004/Jan/22/defendingWebApplicatio... - at the bottom it says "Previously hosted at http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/01/22/defendingWebAppl..."

I just tested it and it works! https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=http%3A...

rbalicki• 3 years ago

Your blog is my favorite tech blog! I especially liked the blog series that contained to mock a mockingbird. Thank you for your excellent contact over the years!

hammyhavoc• 3 years ago

I'm using ActivityPub on my blog to network with others via a Friends plugin. I'm quite disenchanted with centralized social media at this point, short-form microblogging ala Twitter or Mastodon doesn't really interest me anymore versus substantial essays.

My blog, https://hammyhavoc.com acts as a portfolio of what I've done. I started keeping a 'Now page' (https://hammyhavoc.com/now/) instead of posting on social media, it's much more detailed and interesting.

People find my blog via Google et al via a lot of relevant search queries, and I've picked up a fair bit of work through it passively. I could probably blog a lot more, but I've realized that I've been inadvertently writing a non-fiction book about technology for the past decade, so a lot of posts just end up as fodder for that.

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

I have a personal blog, a .com with my name since 2001. Soon after, got a .com with my family name and made it into a company. And here are a few events I remember off the top of my head - that shaped my life;

- Got my first big speaking engagement in USA (I’m in India).

- Got my small service company acquired-hired and got introduced to the world of Startups.

- Bought a car, paid rent, and bootstrapped a few Startups.

- Got a Girlfriend. A girl emailed that it is impossible for the live visiter on my counter to be speeding so fast (she suspected I might be cheating with a script that just increase the counter). I got a date to proof that my website was indeed that popular. Once upon a time, my website was pretty well visited. If I remember correctly, it did slipped in within 100 top Alexa Ranking (I’m fuzzy on this but it was hot).

- Bought down a scammy/spammy company with a single blog post. But felt really bad within 5-6 months, and wiped out the whole content and apologized to the business owner. He did what he did but I should not have done that, which killed a business.

- Helped a lot of businesses/startups launch by writing about them and felt really happy.

- I know, at-least, one big tech company quoted my article as one of the sources for their patent.

- Quite a few people have emailed me saying that my website shaped their career and I feel really happy about them. In-fact, there was a parent that emailed me as their son got the inspiration from my website to pursue a tech career. He was very happy when I called up and talked to him.

- Of course, if not directly, my website played a vital role in a lot of interesting freelance/contract work that came - Disney, STARZ, Pearson, Cambridge, etc. Well, I got an almost-free entry to Disney World, Los Angeles for about two years around 2005-2007. ;-)

- One rainy evening, I was with friends at HackerDojo in Mountain View. A guy behind came up and asked, “You are brajeshwar.com, right?”

- Also, I have gotten a lot of legal takedowns, threats, copied/stolen without permission and what not!

bigthymer• 3 years ago

How did you bring down the scammy company? Could you provide more detail while still maintaining adequate privacy?

mydriasis• 3 years ago

It taught me javascript, and the Canvas API!

dmazin• 3 years ago

For me, the biggest benefit has been improving my thought process. I generally think better when I write. For example, this helps keep me on track. What hypothesis am I testing? What, in general, am I even doing? I find it just too easy to stray off course, or get confused, when flying free without a narrative to keep myself grounded.

Bootvis• 3 years ago

Nothing really.

It led to some learning I would probably have done in any case.

rexf• 3 years ago

Yeah, I enjoy writing blog posts, but not on a routine schedule. My blog has some light traffic, but it has not been game changing as some other commenters have experienced. It can be an issue of topic/depth since I blog about a variety of topics and not deep dives.

dkuntz2• 3 years ago

nothing. it brings me joy though.

Alex3917• 3 years ago

Got me multiple jobs and even more interviews, prevented me from getting caught up in a few rounds of layoffs, introduced me to some lifelong friends, brought in consulting opportunities, afforded me the opportunity to meet and work with some of my heroes, etc. And I only post once or twice a year.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

I get a decent amount of emails from readers.

Maybe it's because I have no comment function. But it's nice. Had some interesting conversations that way. Makes the Internet feel like it's inhabited by real people.

I've also got a bit of press in part through my website activity. The New Yorker, Deutschlandfunk.

But I mainly have a website because I like having a website. It's weird, experimental, unusual and disorganized just the way I like my coffee.

https://www.marginalia.nu/

adhoc_slime• 3 years ago

Hey! I love your search engine, it helps me remind myself of the originality that still exists ands is yet to be found out on the web.

nixcraft2• 3 years ago

I have been writing a blog since 2000 and have made many friends all around the world. I still get comments and emails about topics I post on nixCraft[0]. But, most important, I learned a lot from those comments and emails. It also helped me build social media following[1][2] just for lulz. I recommend writing a blog with your own domain and server that you control.

[0] https://www.cyberciti.biz

[1] https://twitter.com/nixcraft

[2] https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft

xena10• 3 years ago

Your blog has been invaluable to me over the years. I search it for dumb linux things before the Arch wiki. Keep doing good things.

iamwpj• 3 years ago

Big fan -- keep the good work up!

nixcraft2• 3 years ago

@geocrasher/@xena/@iamwpj thank you for the kind words.

geocrasher2• 3 years ago

Whenever I google something linux-y, and I see your domain, I click. Kudos on the excellent click-bait-less content. Thanks for all your contributions to my own career.

qudat• 3 years ago

My blog is mostly a dev journal which has helped me better think about and express my ideas about software development.

It also helped me remove writing blocks because I intentionally time-box my posts.

https://bower.sh

yabones• 3 years ago

I started my blog because I have a shitty memory, I could never remember exactly how I did things last week/month/year. Over time, it went from a crutch to a superpower. Now, I don't just remember what format to put foo.conf or what commands to empty the queue for bar.service -- I have the exact context, outcome, and all the things I tried to make it work. Between my 'long form' blog posts and my more 'wiki-like' notes site, I've basically documented everything that I know over the past decade or so.

sebastianconcpt• 3 years ago

I want to have this available for easy remembering how is done, "here is how", the rest can watch.

This is a perfectly good reason to blog. Maybe the most fundamental.

Useful not only for software tech stuff.

philip1209• 3 years ago

As social networks have come and gone, it's been the hub of my online identity.

mecklyuii• 3 years ago

I always played with things and always learned stuff.

Non of them gave me a job directly though.

input_sh• 3 years ago

Both good and bad:

- Won a stupid writer's award at ~20yo (Opensource.com's Reader's Choice Award). Still proud of it.

- Gotten me my first internship.

- Gotten me a couple of TV interviews in my early 20s (not a lot of tech people in my country had a prominent public presence).

- Gotten me a couple of all-expenses-paid trips to like a dozen of conferences (some regional, some Europe-wide).

- Had a lot to do with me getting a Mozilla fellowship.

- Easily reached four to five digits within a day on a couple of occasions. Always followed by criticism, sometimes fair, sometimes unjustified.

- Was once threatened to be sued by a CEO of a web agency or a hosting provider (can't remember) from a neighbouring country because I kind of elevated his homophobia. It was amusing.

Best decision I could've made for myself in my early career, it really helped me stand out very quickly (in my tiny country, not guaranteed).

Since then, nothing, but that's kind of intentional. I barely publish anything. My Obsidian is full of finished posts that are never gonna see the light of day because I'd rather do anything else than deal with internet drama.

Artgor• 3 years ago

I created a personal website a couple of years ago: https://andlukyane.com/ 1. It is a convenient place to keep and manage information about career - jobs, talks, other activities. Makes it easier to share info with recruiters. 2. Most of my blogposts are paper reviews (on ML), some are about my experience. 3. I got several interviews thanks to this blog. During some interviews people shared very positive feedback on it. The most notable example was the last interview in my current company: it was a bar raiser, the interviewer told me that he looked at my website and really liked it. It made the interview very positive and resulted in me getting this job. 4. I got a couple of small consulting gigs thanks to my website.

nelsonfigueroa• 3 years ago

My blog over at https://nelson.cloud has helped me get new jobs. When I was interviewing for my current job, one of the interviewers mentioned that he was happy to see I was running a blog. Blogging has also helped me become a better writer and reinforce my own knowledge (which is the primary reason why I started it).

I keep my blog technical but maybe I'll write about different topics in the future. It seems like you can make new connections when being more vulnerable on your blog, just based on what I've seen from others that are more open online.

markshead2• 3 years ago

Back in the early 2000s I had a blog where I would try to post multiple times each week. While I wasn't a poor writer before, it was amazing how much I learned about overcoming writers block and being able to quickly get ideas from my head into a text file. (https://www.productivity501.com)

Later I had a blog post answering some key questions about Agile on a different site. That post didn't get much attention, but it was a good exercise in articulating part of what I'm trying to convey when coaching software engineering teams. (https://blogs.harvard.edu/markshead/what-is-agile/)

After reworking the post into a concise PDF, I sent it to a few people at a potential client. Later, after I had been awarded a contract, I found that the PDF had gotten emailed around within the organization and many people knew me as the "guy who wrote that PDF about Agile."

I then took the contents of the PDF and reworked it as a script for an animation that I posted to YouTube. That video now has 2.7 million views and has given me quite a bit of recognition in the industry...or at least recognition of the cartoon version of me. I hear he is much better looking anyway. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9QbYZh1YXY)

I think took the general ideas from the blog post, the paper, and the video and put it together in a book that I generally give away like business cards to potential clients. (https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Agile-Finding-Your-Path/dp/1...)

The practice of writing on a blog has been key to my career, even though a lot of the benefits are a bit indirect and not something people would recognize from the outside.

prithsr• 3 years ago

Though it hasn't done anything for me as of late, in my senior year of undergrad I bought a domain name from a random person online ($70). I had no actual experience or understanding of web development, and thought this would be a good excuse to learn (in hindsight, I should have purchased a domain name for significantly less money, but having something set-up already felt like a 'win'; this was a ~big investment at the time).

I learnt about WordPress, HTML, basic CSS, and consistently wrote blog posts focused on tech in general (nothing technical - more along the lines of new gadgets, apps, useful software). Flash forward to being about to graduate and looking for jobs back home, I was asked to submit some work as proof of knowledge (this position wasn't necessarily geared to "entry-level", but at least I had something to demonstrate my limited experience). In my interviews, I was asked about this blog a lot - how it started, what I've done, my knowledge of SEO concepts and so on, and I strongly believe it's the main reason I was hired.

Joeboy• 3 years ago

I'm not aware of anybody except me having visited my blog. I also don't enjoy writing it, and haven't learned anything particularly useful from doing so.

fabianholzer• 3 years ago

For that matter, I just skimmed through it during lunch break and found the "Roll model" article hilarious.

waprin• 3 years ago

I mostly blog because I like writing, I like owning my own identity on my own site, and because other people have written about the benefits it's brought them.

I haven't blogged a ton (I plan to more) but I wouldn't say it's brought a ton of benefits so far.

The blog posts that have done well have had people email me nice things, produced some mean and uncharitable comment sections, some offers for low-paying freelance writing opportunities, and some signups for some projects I'm working on.

The number one piece of advice I'd give is to have some sort of goal in mind. If you're writing for fun, then make sure you have fun. If you're writing to build an audience, publish consistently and have a clear audience you're targeting in mind, and stick to writing stuff relevant to that audience. If you build an audience around a specific niche, you can convert that to something like signups for a product for people in that niche (e.g. a paid course on whatever programming topic you write about). However, you probably need to be somewhat intentional about that. And you'll probably get "stuck" in your niche to some extent, so pick one you care about. I think blogging increases your "luck surface area", but it's better to have a specific goal than hope for serendipity.

RajT88• 3 years ago

I haven't typically had a personal website/blog dedicated to technology (I had a personal site for a while about a variety of things, but it was pseudonymous).

But I do have a history of contributing to technical company blogs. So I can use that as a talking point here.

As people have mentioned already - it proves you know what you're talking about. You send a recruiter a bunch of blog posts which are topically relevant to the job opening they have, that gets you somewhere quicker.

As well I can confirm that writing things down is helpful for your own understanding. When you're thinking about how to improve the strength of the writing for people less experienced than you, you start to notice gaps in your understanding that you have to fill in before you hit "publish".

I've never heard of any techies using their blog to get spontaneously wealthy like other types of bloggers/social media creators.

But the biggest thing I think I've gotten out of blogging is making less work for myself. Sometimes, working at a software company there's common knowledge about how stuff works, and how to do certain things which doesn't become widely known externally. Sometimes it's something simple, like have a test case which illustrates and connects the dots between what's in the official documentation. You get blessing to publish that blog entry - and now that knowledge is out there for people to find. If for some reason, somebody comes to you with that question again, you can just redirect to your blog entry, where you've thoroughly explained it. I've had that save me time for sure - and I've heard that things I've written saved a lot of other people a lot of time.

mad44• 3 years ago

At https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/ I distill and summarize distributed systems and database systems research paper. I recently got over 600 posts.

The main benefit of the blog for me was to crystallize my understanding. Having forced myself to post in public, I try to write a simple and accessible summary. This leads me to realize the gaps in my understanding, and fill them. This also strengthens my understanding, because by explaining the work in my own words, I internalize the concepts better. When I revisit a paper I have read before, the difference between a paper I wrote a post about and one I just read for myself is clear as day and night. I have a much better recall about the paper I posted. For a paper I wrote a summary, I just go to my summary and am able to cache back in all my understanding of the paper to my brain with a quick re-read of my summary.

This being said, I also benefited in terms of networking and collaboration. Through the blog post discussions on Twitter, I made many friends who work on distributed systems and databases. I think the blog was also useful for getting me a sabbatical at Microsoft Azure CosmosDB in 2018.

Finally, it feels really good to share my learnings, and put my rough ideas in the open. I learn from other blogs, and it feels good to give back. Every couple months I would get an email, thanking me for my blog, and that means the world to me.

Ozzie_osman• 3 years ago

It's actually a really hard time for indie bloggers, but I still think you should do it.

I've been blogging for years. I've had a handful of posts go Twitter-viral and/or make the front page of HN, but most of what I write feels like it's just talking into the void.

That said, the benefits are numerous. When I'm looking for a gig, I can point people to my writing. When I'm hiring folks, I can point people to my writing. It gives them a genuine window into how I think about the world. It's one thing to say that you do X, Y, and Z. It's much more credible to point to a blog post you've put out into the world that says you do X, Y and Z, and explains how and why you do it.

The other benefits are more personal. It helps me clarify and structure my thinking. It also helps me remember how I thought about a problem when I want to revisit it in the future, to see how/whether my thinking has evolved or deteriorated.

So if you're going to write because you think you'll magically get an audience and/or numerous job offers, you'll be disappointed. If you write because it's beneficial to you, the rest might happen and if it does it'll be a cherry on top.

jerrygoyal• 3 years ago

got me job opportunities multiple times

https://gourav.io/blog

jrumbut• 3 years ago

I don't maintain much anymore, but one of the key lessons I learned very early in my career is that having anything in public (a link blog, a github where you post a tutorial you've done, a class project online, a quick YouTube tutorial) will put you instantly ahead of some really substantial percentage of the population who have nothing to show.

Back in the days of yore when I did it this put you ahead of 50-60% of new graduates. It's less now, but I review internship applications and a good 30% still give me nothing tangible I can look at.

So if you happen to be in the 30%, the best thing you can do (and it's so quick) is to put anything at all related to your professional development online. Go through a tutorial, post the results, and briefly write up your thoughts on it.

Congratulations, you just skipped 30% of the line for your first job in an evening of work.

amenghra• 3 years ago

I started my blog in 1996 [1].

It started slow -- before I even became an engineer. As I grew as a software engineer, I started to set aside time specifically to write a post. At peak, I was spending ~50h per month writing one technical post. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It helped improve my thinking and writing skills. Over time, it became harder for me to find the time (and content/ideas) so I've essentially stopped adding new posts. I keep the site up since it doesn't cost me anything beyond the domain name.

I don't have any analytics, so I have no idea how many visitors I get. Cloudflare does tell me that they saved me GBs of bandwidth every month and mitigated ~10 "events", so I'm guessing there's at least a handful of people and hundreds of bots -- hopefully enjoying the content.

[1] https://www.quaxio.com/

marcusbuffett• 3 years ago

I blog at mbuffett.com , personally I just like seeing that people are engaging with or learning from my posts. Like whenever there’s a new release of Bevy, I get hundreds/thousands of people reading my snake game tutorial, and that’s fulfilling to me, to know that I’m helping people. For the more opinion-based posts, it’s fun to see the discussion on HN, or get emails from people agreeing/disagreeing.

I’ve had 3 blogs now, the first was just for fun, the second was because I was told it was “good for my career” in some vague sense, and now I’m back to doing it for fun. The one I did for vague career reasons had the worst content, and did nothing for me. In general I think it’s hard to have a blog lead you to jobs, but maybe this isn’t true if you’re blogging about very niche stuff.

I kind of object to the “purely vanity” catch-all in the last sentence, as if the act of creation has no intrinsic value, so if it’s not a means to an end, it must be for vanity.

markshead2• 3 years ago

There are few better ways to increase your learning on a technical topic than to write a post about it and get lucky getting traction on HN. I wrote a post on State Machines a few years ago and the feedback I got from the HN community was incredible in helping me refine the post and deepen my understanding of the topic.

(https://blog.markshead.com/869/state-machines-computer-scien...)

zaphar• 3 years ago

Technically it started my career. I was doing stuff with code and blogging about it and a recruiter found my blog and put me in the pipeline for my first Full time job. This was a long time ago but it did it's job at the time. There were a few things that helped my blog get noticed.

1. I was coding in public. (Lesson: Be transparent)

2. I was working in a language that was starting to vanish which meant that there were fewer people writing about it like me. (Lesson: Find a niche)

muhammadusman• 3 years ago

I have been blogging at https://blog.usmanity.com for almost 6 years, but I have attempted to keep a blog for almost 10 years.

My blog is a lot of personal updates, technical things I'm learning/wanting to teach, and updates on my projects.

It helps me realize that even one post a month is enough to keep track of something.

My blog isn't very popular mainly b/c I don't market it anywhere, it's mostly used to reference things I've done in the past and quickly find information.

Last year, I started working on a project called BoardSearch (https://boardsearch.io) and right around that time my interest in mechanical keyboards was at a peak so it helped me share thoughts about building the website and also about keyboards I was interested in. This led to getting a bunch of organic search visits and now I'm doing 500-1000 views without any new content about keyboards most of the time.

lcall• 3 years ago

Mine (in profile) helps me say many things that I think are very important so I want to say to everyone, but others don't necessarily always want to hear. I can write it, organize it for skimmability, and post it, and just include my URL in my email sig or some such, which all helps me relax more about what I have to say.

Plus having my own domains (at pair.com) gives me much more control over my email, without having to manage my own smtp server.

xyzelement• 3 years ago

In case this is helpful - I find a huge return on investment in maintaining a high quality LinkedIn profile. Not being an LI influencer, simply a profile that describes me and what I do very well.

I've worked in 4 companies over the last 20 years - two of those begun as a recruiter finding me on LinkedIn.

Part of making sure I am "findable" for the right opportunities is refining how I describe myself and the work that I do. That has naturally translated into a better resume and ability to talk about my work well in interviews and elsewhere.

salamo2• 3 years ago

I have a few ML-related demos on my blog that I created in school to help me to understand some fundamental concepts. I have pointed to them during interviews and I think they helped to demonstrate a depth of knowledge that words alone could not.

pncnmnp3• 3 years ago

Hey, I enjoyed reading your article on Alphabet Chess (https://lukesalamone.github.io/posts/alphabet-chess/). The idea seems quite unique, but I can understand how it could lead to positions where the engine may consider the position to be almost equal, but it could be objectively worse for one of the players. It would be interesting to compare this variant with Fischer Random Chess.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_random_chess#White's_a...,

It has been argued that two games should be played from each starting position, with players alternating colors, since the advantage offered to White in some initial positions may be greater than in classical chess. However, ..... on average a Fischer Random starting position is 22.2% less unbalanced than the standard starting position.

Here's a Reddit post from October 2022 (https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/yeregq/fischer_rando...) that states the following:

Mean centipawn advantage for white - 36.82 Standard deviation - 13.79 Most "unfair" positions with +0.79 advantage

If I am interpreting your diagram correctly, it appears that Fischer Random Chess provides more balanced positions.

salamo2• 3 years ago

Hey, thanks for reading my post, I'm glad you liked it! I would say the purpose of alphabet chess is to be unequal, but in a semi-predictable way. That's why streamers will use the "egg opening": it puts them at a disadvantage and brings everyone out of "book".

positions where the engine may consider the position to be almost equal, but it could be objectively worse for one of the players

That is a good point, centipawns aren't the best metric for the subjective experience of playing. Engines are really good at defending, finding the "only move" defense where a human will struggle. And the mental work of finding "only moves" is pretty taxing. If you put someone under that kind of pressure for long enough, they will break.

The analysis is also flawed because it doesn't take into account the fact that the opponent is also playing a word. If I know that my opponent must play a "G" move on his next turn, I should play a move to take advantage of that fact. Stockfish's game tree is not eliminating impossible moves and will tend to overrate the opponent's position.

(As a concrete example, suppose I can make a move M1 where the opponent's only move to not lose immediately is an F move, but if the opponent plays it they are at an advantage. In this situation the opponent must play a G move, a fact which a human might be able to guess. Stockfish will not play M1, but instead play a different move M2 that at least maintains equality. So the stockfish evaluation is pretty flawed.)

jgrahamc2• 3 years ago

This blog post on my personal blog did have a wider effect: https://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/alan-turing-deserves-apology-fr...

calcsam• 3 years ago

Had no idea about this. Fascinating.

Three months later: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-...

jgrahamc2• 3 years ago

You might enjoy: https://blog.jgc.org/2009/09/hello-john-its-gordon-brown.htm...

ssklash• 3 years ago

Thanks for writing this. What happened to Turing was heinous, and I'm glad history has ultimately recognized him and his genious.

manuelmoreale• 3 years ago

Plenty of new connections for me and interesting discussions via email over the years. Not much in terms of jobs but that’s expected since it’s not really a work oriented blog.

rpdillon• 3 years ago

Pure vanity, I guess.

In reality, I like writing, and I often go back and read what I've written, either to see how my views have changed, or to reference previous (technical) work. Putting it on the web is mostly a way to make it accessible from anywhere, but also makes me put a tiny bit more effort into it, since it is public. I do find it to be a continuing source of fun, though!

A side effect is that I occasionally see folks run across particular pieces and use them in their own work, which is always satisfying.

It's never led to any job-related benefits, and may even be a liability, since my site is purely personal adventures...I stay away from work topics.

nickdothutton• 3 years ago

I've had a couple of personal sites over the years starting in the late 90s. They have helped me connect with, or get invited to, several closed user groups and private forums where I've met people with similar research interests I might not otherwise have encountered. I write chiefly to help me organise my thinking, and publish perhaps only 20% of what I write (the rest I consider insufficiently well constituted to put out there).

tricky6• 3 years ago

There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know someone who can get us in. Meet us at 1am at XXXXXX - bring flashlights, old boots, and $50 to pay the tour guide."

Me, being young and always up for an adventure, showed up and it was awesome. These were legit spelunker urban explorers who knew how to pick locks. We got into the caves and it was crazy. Best part is I didn't get murdered.

mrleinad• 3 years ago

Best part is I didn't get murdered.

Pretty important if you ask me

pvaldes2• 3 years ago

Great opportunity of a viral video and digital glory and fame missed by not becoming murdered just a little, you, lazy alive being. Fake it at least with some homemade ketchup. The algorithm says: booring, you need to commit more with the channel.

;-)

My old blog was all for laughs, vanity and stupid terminal tricks. Not much lost.

ambicapter• 3 years ago

Did you document any part of it on your blog? Or was it just a personal memory for you alone? Either way, fucking dope.

tricky6• 3 years ago

i did. It is really old so the writing is very cringe... search cherokee cave tour and my username to find it.

EvanAnderson2• 3 years ago

Over-the-Rhine?

turrican• 3 years ago

Is this also a thing in Cinci?

koolba• 3 years ago

Ha! Only thing missing from this is: “Bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.”

kridsdale1• 3 years ago

I have only done this once before.

simonmales• 3 years ago

From my local cave clan:

When it rains, no drains.

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

There is a system of subterranean galleries under my city also. It's closed to the public and I planned some time ago with some guys to explore a part of it. We were too lazy to do it and now I regret it a bit.

tomwheeler2• 3 years ago

As soon as I read this, I knew it was St. Louis.

A former co-worker used to have a shop on Cherokee Street about 15 years ago. He told me that a neighboring building had access to the caves through the basement, though its owner was too afraid to explore it.

tricky6• 3 years ago

Could that have been across from what is now Earthbound Beer? If so, they hand-dug all the debris out of the cave and you can pretty easily get a tour. The owner said the cave under the cave is off limits b/c they almost ran out of air while exploring it.

washywashy• 3 years ago

Cincinnati?

tricky6• 3 years ago

are there caves there? seems like a road trip is in order

abhaynayar• 3 years ago

It's amazing how I'd never heard the word "spelunk" before today, and now in the span of the last few hours, I've heard it multiple times in three different contexts.

throwwwaway693• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion#Working_Mem...

wnolens• 3 years ago

It's the word I use for exploring unfamiliar (and potentially scary) parts of a codebase

reactordev• 3 years ago

I take it you don’t play video games either. Spelunky was a pretty popular Indy game back in the day. Named after, you guessed it, spelunking. I first learned the word from “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” back in the 90s. I had to ask my parents what it meant.

airstrike• 3 years ago

First time I heard it in English! Your comment made me want to dig deeper... It looks like it comes from the Latin "spelunca", meaning "cave"

Curiously, in Portuguese we have "espelunca" which is more commonly used as a synonym for a seedy, shady place -- and now I know why!

davideg• 3 years ago

Have you heard of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

Aperocky2• 3 years ago

Best part is I didn't get murdered.

I was almost going to say this sounds crazy dangerous and more like a trap, but 15 years ago I would have done the same and probably came out safe.

I don't know what changed, it feels like things are getting more dangerous, but unsure if it's perception, or the truth.

pc86• 3 years ago

"Things" are objectively not more dangerous, in fact quite the opposite.

rconti• 3 years ago

Perception (maybe you just have more information!), and having more to lose, personally, as you get older.

newaccount74• 3 years ago

I think it's perception mostly.

In 2000 when some random guy asked a 13yo "hey wanna cyber" the answer was "lol ur a creep", today they'd call the police and there would be newspaper articles how Whatsapp is failing to protect our youth from online predators.

People just seemed to worry a lot less about the internet 20 years ago.

ilyt3• 3 years ago

Me, being young and always up for an adventure, showed up and it was awesome. These were legit spelunker urban explorers who knew how to pick locks. We got into the caves and it was crazy. Best part is I didn't get murdered.

Sure Cave Murder Tour Guide, sure

calme_toi• 3 years ago

This reminds me the movie Barbarian.

jppope• 3 years ago

My site is: https://jonpauluritis.com

There's a bunch of benefits but they're mostly indirect - never like generating work or connections. Sometimes, it actually has the opposite effect - aka the HN comments can be pretty brutal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

analog31• 3 years ago

According to my readers (all zero of them), purely vanity.

azubinski• 3 years ago

This is a form of self-destruction that helps create the illusion of salvation from self-destruction.

For example, BDD (Blog Driven Development). You blog for people who don't care what you do, and you only do it because you don't care what you do. This is a public imitation of motivation for no one and nothing. Well, except that AI owners are happy, more human-written texts means more feed for the omnivorous algorithm.

blueridge• 3 years ago

https://www.eurozine.com/blogging-the-nihilist-impulse/

eric_khun• 3 years ago

I live in Taiwan and try to run some beach volleyball games. It's not common here, and not easy to find players. Writing this article[1] helped me to recruit constantly new players (it ranks 1st/2nd in Google).

Sometimes I write about things I want people know about Taiwan like their bike-sharing system[2], semiconductors[3], or simply good food in Taiwan[4].

Sometimes, I write about tech stuff, like kubernetes cpu limits[5] or blockchain consensus[6].

I thought about focusing in a single topic, but when people reaches me out, like today[7] about my food post, it reminds me that it is fine, and make me quite happy that I helped one soul out there.

[1] https://erickhun.com/posts/volleyball-and-beach-volleyball-i...

[2] https://erickhun.com/posts/taiwan-youbike-bike-sharing/

[3] https://erickhun.com/posts/world-innovation-taiwan-semicondu...

[4] https://erickhun.com/posts/taipei-restaurants/

[5] https://erickhun.com/posts/kubernetes-faster-services-no-cpu...

[6] https://erickhun.com/posts/explaining-blockchains-to-develop...

[7] https://imgur.com/a/m06CQYd

simonw3• 3 years ago

I've been blogging for nearly 21 years. It's done so much for me.

- Got me jobs. I'd estimate more than half of the significant jobs I've had in my life came about through relationships that had originated with people getting to know my work through my blog.

- Speaking engagements. I used my blog to bootstrap a bunch of these, to the point that I've spoken at well over 100 events.

- Invitations to interesting meetings. Most recently, my writing about AI has gotten me invited to some really interesting in-person meetups in the Bay Area.

- Media appearances! I've been on radio and TV a few times now thanks to things I've written on my own blog.

It's also just really rewarding to have somewhere I can post content that entirely belongs to me.

I posted this when I hit the 20 year mark with a whole bunch of highlights: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Jun/12/twenty-years/

theroo• 3 years ago

Was going to page you. Ctrl-F for simonw, and you beat me to it. Love your writing.

steveridout• 3 years ago

This blog post of mine hit HN and led to Duolingo's CTO and co-founder offering me a job back in 2016: https://steveridout.com/2016/01/04/readlang-3-years-as-a-one...

I joined them shortly after and a year later I sold Readlang to them. In 2021 Duolingo IPO'd and I'm now financially independent, which may not have happened if not for writing about it on my personal blog.

(Oh, and I really ought to write another blog post about buying Readlang back from Duolingo last month!)

goldfeld• 3 years ago

This is encouraging, as someone starting both a personal blog and a newsletter about language learning in chinese[1], I hope a blog is an easier path into an audience than the competitive lang app market.

[1] https://chinesememe.substack.com/p/the-sound-of-encroaching-...

miroljub• 3 years ago

I write my blog for me. I put stuff there, so I can have easy online access to it, and so that I don't forget it, or have to google it again. It varies from pretty basic stuff, to some step-by-step tutorials.

The benefit for me is that I have it when I need it. Oh, and a nice ego bust when I write a new blog post and see ~100 to 200 daily visits for a few days before the external traffic dies out.

mkaszkowiak• 3 years ago

Not much, to be fair.

It's fun to share it, but it didn't have any actionable impact on my career. Some employers tend to highlight it as a strong asset during the recruitment process. My posts didn't gain any major traction, outside of a single post that's bringing me Google traffic.

With that being said, I don't regret running it at all! Posts will accumulate over the years, and I'm slowly getting better at writing :)

If you're curious, I enjoy creating things and bike adventures: https://kaszkowiak.org/en/blog

VLM• 3 years ago

I've blogged as a form of a research journal and it forces me to finish projects or at least document a great excuse for stopping, and it forces me to understand what I'm learning well enough to write a blog post where I won't get laughed at too much by non-noobs in the field.

My interests are esoteric. I blogged up my process of learning a semi famous microcontroller RTOS, a FOSS virtualization infrastructure that peaked in the 10s that seems to be in the process of becoming rapidly forgotten, and a complete K8S / virtualization / HCI infrastructure system of many parts from a euro-ish company that seems mostly ignored in the USA (weird to me, its pretty awesome and the docs are all English!)

I've also used blogs to write book reviews along the idea that I "will" finish the book and read the entire thing and learn it fully if I'm blogging up a detailed review of every chapter.

72mena• 3 years ago

TL;DR: One blog post I wrote had a big impact on me getting a job opportunity in the US.

---

I grew up and lived in México most of my life.

Back in 2014 I was a consultant working in Accenture México. One weekend I wrote a UX analysis of the "Settings" screen in mobile platforms, and I posted it on my personal site. (Long lost, but reposted [here](https://72mena.com/the-ux-of-mobile-settings/)).

I don't know how it happened, but after a few weeks of no traction, it suddenly got a ton of traffic and my site went down.

One year later I was interviewing for a contractor role that required relocation to the US. My last interviewer (and decision maker) mentioned to me something along these lines: "hey, I saw your name and it reminded me about your "UX of Mobile Settings" article, I remember reading it and I liked a lot the analysis you did."

I suspect this article (with all its flaws and broken English) had a big impact on me getting the UX position I was applying for, which made me relocate to the US.

rodolphoarruda• 3 years ago

It has improved my reading and writing skills.

bilater• 3 years ago

For me it's more of a diary that catalogues all my projects, but I've also had people reach out for with job/colab opportunities after checking it out: https://www.hackyexperiments.com/

nvarsj• 3 years ago

It’s mostly been useful to capture big things I worked on - the exercise of distilling what I did into words really helps make it concrete in my brain. Helps a lot when talking about experience at job interviews for instance.

Honestly I’d love to blog more but reality is it is a massive time sink. Writing is hard, writing technical things in a clear and concise way is extra hard. I’m not sure how the regulars manage it! A single post can take me 10-20 hours. I’d have to sacrifice something else in my life to really spend the time I need on it.

pknerd• 3 years ago

Been blogging since 2003 but my current blog helped me to learn new stuff, gigs, jobs, Ads, affiliate and guest blogging earning.

rootsudo• 3 years ago

I run several blogs.

1. Tech posts and personal experiences. I've been reached out to for custom projects and can bill pretty well. My work sells itself and the interview/introductory phone call usually is just to make sure scope makes sense and velocity/speed to complete. It is nothing unique or unusual, just routine stuff that ranks high on google SEO.

2. I post about my travel. I get people that email me and I can sometimes meetup like minded people that enjoy similar hobbies. One of a cycling blog, mostly in Asia and West Coast USA. Sure there are facebook groups for cities, but I've been pleasantly surprised at the people that found it.

3. Related to travel, just random restaurants and opinions/talk pieces. Sometimes grocery store photos and things that are for sale in A but never can be in B. Nothing interesting from this one, unfortunately except that people suggest I should just put it on instagram. Great filler for conversation if I don't want to express my Tech background.

The tech site is great, because my main email which is my name, is the websites domain, so people always take a curiosity glance. It doesn't fully weigh in on a standard job application, but it does count as passion.

I question if it's really passion, I've just enjoyed breaking stuff and fixing it, and I've documented what I do simply because why not - I wanted to really see how many hours I spend on a computer being productive.

hackitup7• 3 years ago

I've seen 3 major benefits:

- It has helped me to clarify my thinking on many leadership, management, and product strategy topics

- I now have a library of reference materials that I draw from fairly regularly (at least 1-2x per month)

- I've found advisory/angel investing opportunities with strong companies from it

I highly recommend blogging if you enjoy writing

(https://staysaasy.com/)

giantg2• 3 years ago

Nothing.

vladstudio• 3 years ago

My personal site – [0] – has been an incredible source of the emotional stability for more than 20 years. I publish my art there in the form of desktop wallpapers, and the positive feedback just never stops (knocking on wood).

Whenever I have a problem at work, or feel insecure, I say to myself – hey, at least people like my pictures!

[0] https://vlad.studio

errol-hassall• 3 years ago

It has helped many junior developers in teams I have run perform better, become happier and enjoy their job more. Which as a tech lead makes my job easier. I tend to write on more junior related topics ever since I ran a team of junior developers. I noticed they constantly had the same questions and feelings that I did when I was a junior. So I began writing on topics with more of a junior/entry level focus. This lead to all my team members reading them, reaching out to tell me just how much it helped to know that their struggle with x,y,z is normal. Ultimately it lead to a fantastic development team, a great supportive environment and most importantly it made them feel that their tech lead was just another developer with the same struggles at one point.

A blog has also made interviews substantially easier, which is great.

https://errolhassall.com/

generalizations• 3 years ago

Definitely got me my current job (sysadmin).

dend• 3 years ago

Been blogging for more than a decade on my own site (https://den.dev).

1. Got my break in the tech industry thanks to a blog post on some reverse engineering tinkering I've been doing.

2. On multiple occasions, I ended up searching online for a problem only to land on a blog post I wrote years ago, so I use it as my own reference every once in a while.

3. Connected to a network of folks in the companies I've worked at (and continue to work in) thanks to blog posts where I tinker with APIs and all sorts of random stuff ("Oh yeah - I've seen that blog post before.") that I wouldn't run into otherwise.

4. Got way better at writing and expressing my thoughts clearly, especially when it comes to more technical topics, thanks to having a public forcing function.

DustinBrett• 3 years ago

When I was a kid in the late 90's making a personal website was my motivation to learn programming. In my 20's it was my blog while I traveled around the world, which I used as a way to communicate with my family and friends. Now in my 30's it's helped me excel my career in web/software development as I have turned it into a side project to build a desktop environment in the browser.

Feel free to check it out: https://dustinbrett.com/

ripley122• 3 years ago

I really like your website, well done.

petercooper• 3 years ago

I haven't proactively blogged in over 10 years, but when I did (mostly in the 2000-2009 range), almost everything ended up coming from it. I had a publishing company reach out to me to write a book about what I was blogging about (Ruby at the time), launched a professional blog off the back of it, had folks reach out for me to speak and/or chair their events, etc. I can connect a lot of dots back to blogging. I really should take it up again.

atum47• 3 years ago

victorribeiro.com - people usually compliment me on it. My coworkers liked it a lot, but I can't remember if my current boss took it in consideration when I was applying for the job. I made it just for fun though, no intent to get anything out of it.

enriquto• 3 years ago

It got me laid.

In 1996 I was a teenager and my dad taught me html and ftp. I wrote a website with some cheesy poems and drawings, and uploaded it to geocities/athens/acropolis. Also, I put links to my page on several web directories. A girl from another city read that website and sent an email to me. It would be untoward to tell the rest of the story.

JoyfulTurkey• 3 years ago

I was a teenager in the 90s and also had a personal site. Somehow got onto a link repository site called nerd world and a girl from a few states away (USA) found the page and emailed me. It started a long, remote friendship through the rest of high school and college via letters, AIM, and email. We still keep in contact every now and then.

nils-m-holm• 3 years ago

http://t3x.org

This is purely an outlet of raw creativity, because I have nowhere else to go with it.

Other than that I have never wondered what the purpose of my website is. It has brought me some moderate passive income of about $1000 per year over the lifetime of the site, all of it through book sales.

adityaathalye2• 3 years ago

Douglas McIlroy code reviewed something I wrote [1] (pardon the too-long URL)! A recent Show HN I did about my site maker [2] was quite wonderful.

But mainly, I've derived lots of personal satisfaction from the writing process [3] and the making of the site [4] and site maker (everything is hand-rolled).

ref:

[1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/shell-aint-a-bad-place-to-fp...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34486596

[3] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/hello-world/

[4] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/shite-the-static-sites-from-...

INTPenis• 3 years ago

It has been a repository of knowledge that I've returned to multiple times. Not much else.

suchoudh• 3 years ago

As of today its easier than ever to host your own website and still people do not own a personal website.

A memorable URL is something that is much better compared to a visiting card. My website design is still oldschool and it keeps me grounded as to where I am coming from.

From time to time (like now) I update my one page resume over it and thats it.

My website is www.OneLife.in I am amazed why people do not still own their own websites particulary as they can easily create one using a github account.

A website does not need to have a domain name. A github account could suffice. Possibly people are just lazy and possibly scared about writing about themselves to strangers.

muggermuch• 3 years ago

It's changed my life.

A few months ago, I wrote a post [0] talking about my experiences designing and building an ML-powered stock picking engine for my startup - the post went viral on HN, and it led to many fascinating conversations, valuable connections, opportunities to speak, and job offers (tech/ML, tradfi, and crypto). In fact, it quite directly led to my new job, as a team reached out with an opportunity that ticked off all the boxes I was looking for.

Finally, thanks to my blog, I have made many new friends who I hope to engage with productively[1] going forward, and I feel more firmly embedded in the intellectual milieu of the Bay Area than I ever did. As a consequence, I am much more relaxed now and feel in control of the overall direction of my life.

[0] https://principiamundi.com/posts/didact-anatomy/

[1] The meaning of this may change over time

codazoda• 3 years ago

I write for myself and it’s great. I often use my own blogged instructions to guide me later. And, as a bonus, others find my instructions helpful and let me know. It’s a great feeling.

nkantar• 3 years ago

In addition to immense personal satisfaction, I’ve found the following benefits to maintaining a website, specifically with a blog:

- I conducted two job hunts publicly, and each time I published a "hire me" post that I could use as a sort of generic cover letter. It helped me flesh out what I was looking for, and what a potential employer should be looking for in order for my employment there to make sense. It also resulted in some extremely high quality interviews in instances where the hiring manager took the time to read through them, and in one case eventual long-term employment, which is still ongoing.

- After I gave a talk at several meetups and a conference, I published a post that both linked to the recording and was also a written version. Every so often an appropriate opportunity to share finds me, and I’m glad to have it ready. I’ve gotten very positive, grateful feedback on this from several relative newcomers to programming specifically, and one of them eventually directly reached out with a job opportunity.

- I’ve referenced several of my posts long after publishing them, as they were notes on something I had figured out but would forget each time. Private notes could also work here, but publishing them publicly encouraged me to be thorough.

- The platform I use for the site has changed a number of times over the years, but most of the iterations have been some sort of Python based static site generator or dynamic web app. Back when I started maintaining it in 2014, I was quite new to Python, and building and rebuilding the site definitely taught me things that have come in handy at work.

I’m sure there are other direct effects I’m forgetting, and a plethora of indirect ones. I consider it an extremely worthwhile effort.

SCUSKU• 3 years ago

Presumably most people that will respond to this post will have some sort of interesting occurrence as a result of their blog (seeing as that is what is requested by OP). Just to counterweight the sampling bias here, I will add that my personal website/blog hasn't done much for me professionally. That said, it's been great for me personally to have someplace to write ideas, experiences, and project write-ups. While I originally built it to serve a professional purpose, it really has been nice to have a place to essentially journal and write down/flesh out ideas (although lots of them are really stupid).

zachbellay.com -- if you're curious

the_jeremy• 3 years ago

I have a personal website that only hosts my resume (not a blogger). It has not resulted in anything positive (the only results were some spam emails).

akdas• 3 years ago

I haven't written in a while, but the first year I started blogging, I set a goal to write at least one article each month for a year. I reflected on it after the 12 months. The highlights:

- I got to the front page of HN a few times. Definitely a vanity thing, but it was fun!

- My posts on dynamic programming, which got a lot of traction, resulted in someone I knew reaching out to ask me to speak at a conference they organize. The conference didn't result in much professionally, but I love public speaking. It was just a great experience.

- I mentioned off-hand that I got to talk about DP, and that got me connected with someone who was able to create a video course on the topic. I learned a ton thanks to their guidance on things like how to organize smaller chunks of information that build up to a bigger course.

- Another post about mental health got me a chance to be interviewed on a podcast. I'm a huge podcast listener, so I was ecstatic about actually being on one!

With the confidence from the 12-month experiment, I then decided to write weekly about hiring in the tech industry, a topic I'm passionate about. I kept that up every week for over a year! What came out of that is I had a bunch of thoughts floating around in my head, and now I have them documented. Now if I want to bring up something about hiring, I probably already have an article I can just link instead of explaining it from scratch. The same actually applies to some topics on my personal blog.

EDITED: Regarding that last point, I've been setting up a Raspberry Pi after a few years. Having some notes documented has been invaluable for myself.

kkoncevicius2• 3 years ago

OK I will be the party-pooper this time.

Blogging is a waste of time. You see a website with 100 blog posts. That could easily be 1000 hours of work. And then if you ask such person if he/she gained something from it the answer will be of course. The relevant question should be - was it worth the effort? Could they have gotten the same thing with less effort in some other way?

When/if you are starting to blog you should make your goal clear. Are you blogging to get some money and side income? - there are better ways to achieve this. Are you blogging to advertise something? - there are better ways. Are you blogging for vanity and fame? - there are better ways. Are you blogging to create notes for your future self so you do not forget something? - there are better ways.

In my opinion there are very few goals where "having a blog" is the right answer.

KronisLV• 3 years ago

In my opinion there are very few goals where "having a blog" is the right answer.

My blog has sections for articles and tutorials, even a section for documenting how broken a lot of the software out there is and I'd say that overall it's been a pleasant experience throughout the years. On one hand, it helps me jot down how to do certain things in a structured way, other times to practice expressing my views and experiences in a reasonably structured way and to just get better at writing.

I recall someone saying the following in a conference, which stuck with me (paraphrasing): "If you write something down and nobody ever reads it, those keypresses are sort of wasted."

So, I occasionally write. A lot of it is sub par but has resulted in a few job offers (which I admittedly didn't take at the time), or just nice e-mail conversations with other people. Here's a brief look at the blog: https://blog.kronis.dev/

As for personal sites, while I don't see myself having one of those super artistic portfolio sites that some lovely people out there do, I at least have a way of writing down some of the things that I've worked on over the years, my views, others' feedback and so on: https://kronis.dev/

Is it a super optimized and effective way at getting income, job interviews, clout or whatever people care about? Not really. Could someone call it a waste? Sure, but then again, a lot of the stuff we do as human beings is a bit of a waste when you think about it: watching shows or entertainment videos online, playing videos games, looking at memes, working on side projects that nobody will ever see and so on.

Sometimes it's nice to spend time on something that feels almost therapeutic in a way. Not everything needs to be perfect or optimized all the time, or even have a "right answer". The comfiness of it all actually reminds me of this article "An app can be a home-cooked meal": https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

MrVandemar2• 3 years ago

I recall someone saying the following in a conference, which stuck with me (paraphrasing): "If you write something down and nobody ever reads it, those keypresses are sort of wasted."

Only if you are looking at objective contribution to the world/conversation. What you don't see, and is not measurable by clicks or page-views or any other kind of real metric, is how you changed yourself by writing.

As others have notice, when you write something, your are practicing -- no, developing -- your writing and language skills and you are re-inforcing your understanding of the subject (why do you think teachers made you write essays at school/uni/college? Not so they can grade you, but so you learn).

throwwwaway693• 3 years ago

What if I'm blogging to demonstrate knowledge and thought around professional topics with the intent to help demonstrate to future employers I know what I'm talking about?

kkoncevicius2• 3 years ago

I would bet that the potential future employer would be more impressed by your ability to make and solve things, rather than talk about them. So unless you will be applying for a teaching or writing position it would be safer to use your knowledge for starting projects and creating a portfolio.

ilyt3• 3 years ago

Back when I blogged it was mostly "I did a thing, I want to put notes about the thing somewhere, might as well make a blog post out of it". And it came handy a bunch of times.

Why not personal notes but a blog ? Coz I can link it to co-worker

MrVandemar2• 3 years ago

You see a website with 100 blog posts. That could easily be 1000 hours of work.

It could also easily be 1,000 hours of learning.

In my opinion there are very few goals where "having a blog" is the right answer.

Self improvement is one of the top reasons to have one, and while there are other ways to work towards that particular goal, it's an entirely valid approach.

You raise a definite point though, and when starting a blog you probably should carefully examine your reasons and expectations.

qmarchi• 3 years ago

Recent anecdote; I was recently laid off and was on the hunt for a new position. After applying for hundreds of positions, I got a few interviews at one of the companies I was excited to work with.

Every single interview, from the ICs that were interviewing me, to the Director of the Org that I chatted with, had read one of the articles on my blog.

Ended up having some great conversations at the end of the interviews, and I think that's really what helped me get the offer.

MartijnHols• 3 years ago

My website did not have a blog until last week and it’s still mostly hidden. I landed two well paying freelance jobs directly with customers (i.e. no recruiters) from it. They had a project, needed help, Googled and found me. Sharing this to say that while I reckon a blog will help, it’s not essential. I only started working on a blog _after_ my websites proved itself.

If you’re curious, it’s an about me with project history: https://martijnhols.nl/

WoodenChair• 3 years ago

As far as jobs go and the blog—not as much as I would like, but more than zero. Despite hundreds of thousands of page views, my blog has only yielded me a couple of incoming inquiries about jobs over the past decade.[0]

However, it has helped me as a space to write about the launch of my books, which probably yielded some sales and has allowed me to have some interesting discussions with people about the posts on occasion. It's also just cool to have people reading what you write.

On the other hand, I think creating a personal "who am I" website was helpful in a past job search as a point of reference for folks to learn about me and the job search went pretty well.[1]

0: https://www.observationalhazard.com 1: https://davekopec.com

colinroper• 3 years ago

Posting because most of the comments I read had a strong positive bias and I have a more lukewarm assessment.

tl;dr: I wouldn't suggest starting a blog for the purpose of getting some external benefit (e.g. receiving a job opportunity). But if you believe you'll get an internal benefit and you feel that benefit is worth the time investment then go for it.

Background: I started my blog "On Product, Tech, & Leadership" (https://blog.colinroper.com/) about 4 years ago to help me crystallize my thinking on Product Management and Leadership topics that I've learned over my career, and with the hope that it would help lead to future career opportunities.

So far it has yet to provide any meaningful external benefits (from what I'm able to tell). The site hasn't garnered much of a following or feedback, despite some modest marketing on LinkedIn. I suppose this is the fate of most blogs, though maybe my luck will change at some point. The blog has also has been a large time investment (in doses) to write the content, create the site, tweak the designs, and promote the occasional new posts.

That said, it has provided internal benefits. It has helped me clarify my thinking on some topics I care about. And despite not liking the act of writing, I have gotten better at it. Further, the time sink has been somewhat by choice: I have willingly gone deep into coding and design topics as an excuse to grow my skill set.

So I would propose the following as a litmus test if you're considering starting your own blog: if nobody read your blog would it still be worth it to you? I'm a sample size of one, so maybe this questions is unfair. Or maybe your situation is different and you have a captive audience ready to consume. But I hope my experience helps someone make the right choice :)

iamsanteri• 3 years ago

Among others, it helped me get a job abroad where I otherwise wouldn't have even been considered. This alone due to the lack of knowledge of the local language, and the job was in enterprise sales... I figured this out way later into the job as someone in that startup's leadership was impressed by it!

Overall, I think your blog is a portfolio of sorts.

As one of my friends told me back in the day. "If you can't write code, write instead, just write." And if you can do both (i.e. write code, as well as interesting, candid and valuable content), get your custom server-side rendered blog set up and start typing like so many others here on HN! :)

EDIT: Just like someone else mentioned here, I've also been featured on the front page of Hacker News and it heated up my Droplet VPS server quite a bit. Vanity all the way it is, haha!

ripley122• 3 years ago

Just having a portfolio of projects on my website makes some job interviews a lot easier; some interviewers ditch their script and start asking questions about my portfolio projects.

I also find it rewarding to maintain and develop the website. I started out small with a generic Hugo template, and over the years I've rewritten the whole thing one small commit at a time. It's been a good learning opportunity, and it's nice to have a low-stakes project where I can do anything I want. If I want to add a silly feature I just do it.

geocrasher2• 3 years ago

I started a blog on Google Blogger as a way to give back to the PC breakfix community. When I got back into web hosting in 2013, I saw that WordPress had taken over. So I moved it to WordPress, and then one of my posts hit Slashdot [0] and made the front page. That was a first, and was huge for me.

Then in 2015, I had some serious Hackaday envy and so I started another WordPress blog[1] to document my hobby-engineering-related stuff. That took a turn toward amateur radio. I did some fun projects, got a bit of a following.

In August 2021, I actually got to start writing for Hackaday.com, much in part due to the experience/voice that I'd created when writing for my blogs.

I also used that experience/voice to do some writing-for-hire stuff at a well known site for low-end VPSs, and that experience got me in contact with people that landed me my current job, which is the most fantastic job I've ever had.

[0] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/17/180242/surviving-th...

[1] https://miscdotgeek.com

snozolli• 3 years ago

Nothing tangible, like job offers. I have a couple of sites and each has a blog for my two main areas of interest: tech topics and mechanical stuff. Whenever I struggle to figure something out or compile information to make a decision, I write a blog post about it. This has proven useful several times when I needed to do something, vaguely remembered having done something similar before, and quickly find the details on my own site. Judging by a few comments, it's helped a few others over the years, too.

I also keep wikis on those sites for more interconnected information.

brightball• 3 years ago

It's one of those things that's hard to measure unfortunately, but I definitely think it helps.

A lot of it is what you want to be doing though. I like to talk, teach, communicate, advise and coach. Blogging let's me get that across and I think it helps there. I don't know that it would make much difference for pure coding positions though. I have gotten a few offers to do paid blogging, but I really just don't have the time. One post I wrote for Codeship years ago that got picked up here was a compilation of about a years worth of research and experience to compare Elixir and Go.

Definitely increases learning though. One of my teachers in high school told me, "If you really want to learn something, teach it." It's true. In order to publish something or give a talk on it, I go much deeper than I would have for my own uses.

Ego certainly plays a part. I'm much more motivated to keep writing when I'm getting positive feedback on it. Got picked up by HN several times and learned a lot from the conversations, which was great. Brian Krebs retweeted me once, which motivated me to write a 6 part security series* that never got the same level of traction.

Biggest issue for me is that I'm a long form, detailed writer. I know if I actually care about using this stuff for marketing then I'll need to slice the posts into bite sized chunks. Since I mostly write this stuff just to get it to stop bouncing around in my head, I stick with the long form way.

* - https://www.brightball.com/articles/the-time-i-accidentally-...

dkrajzew• 3 years ago

Nope, but HackerNews get interested in one tiny blog article on c64 palettes some years ago: http://www.krajzewicz.de/blog/stretching-the-c64-palette.php

uncertainquark• 3 years ago

It has helped me become a globally published space exploration writer: https://blog.jatan.space/p/my-science-writing-journey

wlesieutre• 3 years ago

https://will.institute

I don't really use it actively, but it helped me feel better about deleting my instagram account. I moved all the old posts over and now they still exist somewhere public but not on a social network.

Static site built with Publish, so it was some fun Swift practice outside of the apple-platforms bubble. https://github.com/JohnSundell/Publish

Other than that, not really. But I haven't tried to get anything else out of it.

AndrewStephens• 3 years ago

My website is pure vanity but I sometimes write brief reviews of books on my blog. Once I was contacted by a publisher offering to send me a hardback copy of a new book from an author I had previously written nice things about. I accepted and wrote a review of the new book[0] - sadly I didn't enjoy it as much as the first.

Before you accuse me of selling out for a free book, I would like everyone to know that I totally sold out for a free book and I would do so again.

[0] https://sheep.horse/2018/5/book_-_making_the_monster_by_kath...

chasd00• 3 years ago

my little laser cutting / 3dprinting service buys me lunch a couple times a month :) oakclifflaser.com

bcherry• 3 years ago

I'm fairly certain that writing about JavaScript on my personal blog (https://adequatelygood.com) led directly to landing a lucrative job at Twitter in 2010 which was foundational to my career. I had just a few months of experience in JavaScript (or programming in any serious professional capacity) but writing about it made me taken seriously and was a major accelerant to my career.

Not sure of whether that experience is transferable in the current landscape. It also didn't hurt that I was already living in SF.

paultannenbaum• 3 years ago

Early in my career I referenced your article on the js module pattern constantly, and referred it to several team members. I still use it to this day on some occasions. Cheers!

philosopher1234• 3 years ago

jack shit

gavinhoward• 3 years ago

It hasn't done anything for me. Yet.

It has made me known on Hacker News, which I think will pay off eventually.

It is weird to be known as the "Zig function colors guy" though.

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

Almost every job (fulltime and contract) that I've had was due to someone reading an article on my site and then asking me if i'd like a job.

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

Landed a co-founder position after writing about something topic relative, after an intro from someone in my network. Was contacted by a big tech recruiter on linkedin after seeing my blog and ended up with a great job.

henrik_w• 3 years ago

I've been blogging about programming since 2011. I can't say that it has had any direct career impact, although it hasn't hurt either. I have kept writing because it helps me clarify my thoughts. I've also reviewed books and courses, and writing those reviews makes me learn the content much better.

There are other reasons too that I have written about in this post:

https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-pr...

codingdave• 3 years ago

I have had small benefits from my blogs:

1) I ran a blog in the 00s about decommissioning old Lotus Notes environments and mapping out tech details of how to migrate from that platform to Microsoft tools. I got a few consulting gigs from that.

2) I put up some tools to design craft projects (knitting, beading, etc.) Got a little bit of monthly revenue, ended up selling the projects for a few thousand dollars.

So nothing life-changing, but I definitely paid for maybe a half year of my life from those gigs.

That being said, "purely vanity" is still more accurate. I didn't put any of that up with revenue as a goal. I wrote and coded for my own knowledge, and all benefits were purely accidental.

ferCats99• 3 years ago

Honestly? Next to nothing, but it's nice to know that I have a space for me, managed by me where I can write in my preferred format and follow my own limits, it's really nice

eugene2010• 3 years ago

I've been profiling local and independent coffee shops in the metro Atlanta area on the website and blog for about five years. This project has allowed me to build relationships with coffee shop owners, baristas, and coffee enthusiasts in the city. It's been rewarding to be able to engage with this passionate community (via the newsletter/blog) but also via in-person events such as a coffee crawl I recently organized and led.

Although the topic of coffee / coffee shops is niche, writing about the places I visit, I am able to touch upon my diverse set of interests (art, photography, technology, design, reading, writing, general curation, psychology, philosophy, history, etc.)

wannabebarista2• 3 years ago

Really neat! I was a daily customer to One Cafe in the Flatiron building downtown for a few years. Big fan of their cold brew (before it was widely available).

DLion• 3 years ago

I've been writing since I was a teenager, opened/closed different blogs, this one is my definite one: https://domenicoluciani.com

I didn't earn that much, just a bunch of euros thanks to some donations (thank you!)

But the most important things I've gotten from it was:

- Improve my written english skill (I'm not a native english speaker)

- Learn how to put my thoughts down, it made me to learn more about a specific topic

- Share my thoughts with clients and colleagues, if I need to say something multiple times it's really efficient since you can just send a link to them.

- Could have been helpful for my CV but I've never had any feedback for it during my interviews

vegancap• 3 years ago

It actually got me my current job. An investor found my blog on Go microservices, and was looking for someone with some experience around that to help get his product/platform off the ground. I worked on it part-time for a couple of years, then when I got made redundant late last year, I got the chance to work on it full-time. And I absolutely love it.

Asides from that, it improved my written communication skills, my ability to constrain ideas and concepts down to the bare minimum. I took it down recently as the content was old and the website needed updating, and I got requests from folks in India, China and Russia requesting me to put it back up again because they use it as a reference. I even found out it had been translated into Mandarin, and was shared a lot around Chinese tech blogs. It blew my mind. It wasn't some huge effort to make really, but it had a big impact on lots of people trying to learn Go and microservices. I wish I had time to revamp it and do some more, but sadly not these days!

AdamCraven• 3 years ago

It gets you more of whatever you love doing - even if no one reads it - because you get better at whatever you write about.

If you knew no one would ever read your writing, would you still write it? If yes (the likelihood is no one will read it apart from your future teammates) you'll have found your subject.

It can give you jobs, learning & connections, but it also takes time. Time that can be used for other things that could get you the jobs, learning & connections you want without writing. There's no one way to approach it, you need to find what works for you.

For me - I've written a lot (mostly as principles), but only recently I've focused on learning how to write, which meant I needed a blog to write on and a way to make it fun for me ( https://principles.dev/blog/first-principles-thinking-a-visu...)

bachmeier• 3 years ago

I'm a US academic, so there's not much choice but to have a website. It has definitely led to increased learning and new connections. Hard to say for sure, but I suspect it has opened some side opportunities.

I'd have a website even if it provided none of the above. Think about how good it feels to have a deep conversation with someone on a topic you love. That's what it feels like to write for my website. And in 2023, the cost is basically zero.

philzook• 3 years ago

I have seen the benefits of: - Having some kind of concrete output to learning or little micro projects. Organizing and adding to my notes is kind of fun. - Documentation for my future self. Sometimes I do go back to refresh. - Some people have reached out for collaboration solely because of my blog - Not having to fixate on ideas anymore because I got them out there. - I don't know for sure, but I think it has helped my case getting hired, especially since my pedigree is a bit off for the job I'm doing.

I think controlling your content is really important. I want it to still exist in 20 years. Getting off of wordpress was annoying and scary. I'm a fan of simple.

https://www.philipzucker.com/

joshcanhelp3• 3 years ago

I've been writing online since 2008. The tangible benefits have been:

- I wrote a simple HTML template for a friend that mimicked the style of a popular website. I wrote about it and put it up for download. Someone asked if there was a WordPress theme for it so I made one. I ended up making low/mid 6 figures overall, including sales for several years and selling the business.

- When I was doing freelance development, I got a few clients from my contact form. Not nearly as much as I hoped and usually smaller projects, but it was something. Every new client leads to introductions to other clients, which was the main pipeline for business for me.

- Everything technical I've written about has helped me level up in that topic to make sure I'm not leading someone astray or sound like an idiot!

- When my site was WordPress, I got a number of very kind, personal comments on some of my less technical posts. Not tons, like 3-4 that I can remember fondly. It's such a wonderful feeling to have this momentary, text-based connection with someone you know nothing about. Brought back BBS days a bit.

- I got one really nasty comment that I still remember. Really brought me down a while but I used it to move past some of my own feelings about my work. Turned out to be a silver lining!

Intangible:

- Writing regularly has been both a great outlet for me, as well as an important secondary skill at work. I'm always known as "the writer" on the team, and I think that's helped me advance in a lot of ways.

- With 1K+ page views a month on a variety of topics, I can't help but to think that I'm helping some people with some things. That makes me feel good enough to keep doing it.

- My work writing is intensionally concise and dry (in most cases), my journaling is free-form, and my fiction is nascent. But blogging publicly feels like the place where it all comes together. I try to make it fun and casual while also accurate and concise. It feels like the most challenging writing that I do.

STLCajun• 3 years ago

I've had many personal websites over the years, but they all eventually get forgotten, and get stale over time... eventually getting deleted and replaced when I come up with a new idea or want to play with some new web technology.

I think it just comes with the fact that I wasn't really doing anything interesting career-wise that a million other people haven't done already. However, my fascination with modern AI technology has got me ready to start either blogging or possibly vlogging again just to open up the discussions and get my thoughts and questions out there.

orsenthil• 3 years ago

Helped to me reflect into my areas of interests, interests that changed over time, interests that remained, and helped me reflect or realize on my core values as a person. I wrote for myself most of time. I spun off some projects[1] based on repetitive patterns I had seen in my blog.

[1] https://github.com/orsenthil/fortune-browser-extension

jsejcksn• 3 years ago

A blog might also simply be a contribution to readers — distilling insights which required considerably more time to acquire than might be spent consuming their documentation.

tppiotrowski• 3 years ago

When I run into a problem I need to solve, I will document it on my blog and hope Google will surface it to others having a similar issue. I also like to document my backpacking and climbing trips. There's no real theme. I write for fun and there's no contact information so it's never led to a job or anything like that.

Doing OSS on Github or Tweeting leads to more business opportunities in my mind.

housecarpenter• 3 years ago

Writing my blog (https://thehousecarpenter.wordpress.com/) has helped me learn things because it provides me with a concrete motivation: instead of having the rather vague and amorphous goal of "learn about X", I can think of my goal as "learn enough about X to write a blog post about it". That's always been the idea behind having the blog, and it's worked decently for that purpose. It hasn't helped me at all with my career or with connecting with people, but that's unsurprising as I've never cared to optimize for those goals.

smcleod• 3 years ago

Saved me from repeating myself.

penjelly• 3 years ago

i think it makes someone stand out ever so slightly, though an active GitHub does more so. But in my case I'm interested in writing more so it's supposed to incentivize that behavior from me, so a creative outlet

lysecret• 3 years ago

Absolutely nothing besides teaching me how awesome tailwind typography is.

rcarr• 3 years ago

tailwind typography is like having a web dev cheat code - its awesome. I've been building a personal site and its crazy how few classes I've had to add to style it.

Daegalus• 3 years ago

For me it has done a couple of things. I do have to say though. I write like a couple blog posts a year or longer inbetween. Ive only recently starting doing more frequent posts.

1. It lets me experiment with web tech. I redo my website every few years. Be it JS, CSS, static generated sites, etc. I usually find a theme I like and start modifying it to see how things work nowadays. Most recent attempt is to use that with a Golang and go:embed to make a self-contained blog in a binary.

2. Sometimes I just want to share knowledge or info. Might not be perfect, but its fun to get it out of my head instead of letting it stew. If it helps 1 person figure something out, it is a win. I recently had a coworker find my blog post on setting up Stable Diffusion on AMD through Hacker News by accident. He used it as a reference to get his own stuff working for a less than perfect setup.

3. I once posted one of my posts on here. It surprisingly went well, and had some good discussion on it. So that is fun. But I am of the mindset that I don't want to post my own articles (as their own HN posts, I am fine with linking to things in comments on occasion). They should show up on HN naturally if they are useful to someone enough to get posted. I also fear them getting ripped to shreds (probably some form of imposter syndrome) by HN readers.

unxdfa• 3 years ago

I had a fairly extensive personal web site for a number of years used as a professional profile. Unfortunately someone I met on a dating app turned out to be a bit of a psychopath and I had to pretty much cut her off. She managed to find the web site on the public Internet and get in contact with me directly and caused me a lot of problems leading to me having to dispose of the web site, the domain, my phone number and update lots of professional contacts.

I prefer a lot of anonymity now. I don't have any social media profiles or public facing stuff. And you know what? It has done no harm whatsoever to my professional life or connections. All that stuff that sucks you in is 100% optional.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

Cost me money.

rr888• 3 years ago

I started, I just didn't have the time and realized my blog was **. Looking around most other blogs are equally bad. There are some good writers out ther but the majority of tech people aren't.

khromov• 3 years ago

Years ago I started a personal blog but like many others, I found myself struggling to write more than a couple of posts per year. The barrier of quality felt too large. So I decided to create a separate shortform blog where I would share small code snippets that solved problems for me.

It turned out to be quite popular and since I started the blog in 2013 it's gotten well over 1.5 million visitors and still attracts hundreds every day, exculsively from search traffic.

While I can't say that it changed my life in any way, it did bring me a lot of satisfaction that it helped many people. It also taught me about the concept of "long tail keywords" on Google!

You can find it here if you are interested: https://snippets.khromov.se/

hoofhearted• 3 years ago

I actually started working on a free open source tool for developers recently because I wanted to create a new blog for a startup and Wordpress was surprisingly the best option.

Wordpress is super outdated and bloated, and I feel like there has to be a better way.

I’d love some feedback if anyone has some to give! The link to the project is in my bio. Please :)

itissid• 3 years ago

I think the idea of sharing writing in general could be broken down into a few fundamental benefits where the reception of said benefits depends on the person and the situation.

1. Sharing ideas to get feedback from a community can be incredibly useful for iteration.

2. Rubber duck principle: Sharing your thoughts out loud helps you refine them and you arrive at a better understanding of the subject. Example Stack overflow questions and answers.

3. Catharsis and/or Story telling: People who want to just write to express what they feel or like or do can be just incredible.

4. Money. Yeah.

ShakataGaNai• 3 years ago

To my direct knowledge? Nothing. Except for practice.

Even after graduating college I found it challenging to write anything more than a page long. Not to say I couldn't write, I was just very brief about it and often didn't fully explain my ideas. Lots of assumptions in what others would "get". Also writing even that 1 page would be pulling teeth.

A decade or so of pushing myself to write about anything and everything, it's become much easier. I still have challenges getting started, when I've been on writing break for a while. But when I do "Get going" it flows much easier and at a much greater length.

LoulouMonkey4• 3 years ago

This is my first post on HN, though I've been reading conversations here for years.

I would encourage the OP to create their own website and share it with their friends and workmates.

I went through a similar journey in 2020 and all I can say is that I wished I had done it sooner. I started writing articles when the pandemic hit, and bought a domain / published my articles there last year.

Reason for doing so was an overall lack of confidence in many things:

- Lack of confidence in my written English

- I had just changed jobs, leaving a technical role for a non-technical one. As I had joined a technical team as a Data Program Manager, I was afraid that my new workmates would have zero respect for me if they thought I was unable to do their job

Almost two years later, my personal website has gotten me some job offers through LinkedIn, and most importantly it has helped me feel more integrated within my new team. I'm writing "feel", because I have no evidence that I wouldn't have been accepted or respected if I hadn't had my website.

My English is still pretty bad, my technical skills are even worse. But I really see this website as a confidence booster for anything I do.

For those who might be interested: http://blanchardjulien.com

Thanks for reading!

wgj• 3 years ago

Your written English is good! Good blog too.

LoulouMonkey4• 3 years ago

I wasn't fishing for compliments, but I will gladly take your positive feedback! Thanks dude :)

pfoof4• 3 years ago

I also used to have lack of confidence but rather towards what I would write.

LoulouMonkey4• 3 years ago

Interesting. So you mean more, the content rather than the form? I noticed you used the past tense. How did you get through that if I may ask?

tome• 3 years ago

Hello Julien, if it helps then I can point out that your comment reads as though it was written by a native English speaker.

LoulouMonkey4• 3 years ago

Thanks very much for your positive vibes. Might be that writing for this website has helped! :)

wannabebarista2• 3 years ago

As many have said, I often write about things which I couldn't find elsewhere online (or else didn't like what was available). For instance, I wrote some rough guides to learning measure theory and computational complexity as well as annual surveys of interesting books and papers I've read. I only post a few times a year, but you would be surprised how often someone shares your problem or is looking for the same info you are.

The biggest benefits are 1. seeing feedback from readers (either good or bad); 2. writing stuff down often helps one solidify their fuzzy thoughts and gives a clear goal to work toward.

My website: https://bcmullins.github.io

SMAAART• 3 years ago

I have a personal web site where I blog about once/twice a week. I blog about my personal observations on personal life and also professional life. The domain name is a variance on my first name.

I also have a "portfolio" site, and I am in a career path where none of my peers have a portfolio site. There I show off my technical expertise in a handful of software packages that are crucial to my career. The domain name is a technical name about these software packages.

Last year I concluded a successful job search and landed a very good job at a very good company. I used my personal website domain name as my contact, and highlighted my portfolio site in my resume to back-up my experience and expertise.

It was often a topic during my interviews.

These days I am studying Data Analytics / Data Science (and now ChatGPT/ML too) in order to augment my skillset and possibly make a career pivot. I have taken a very short very good domain name about data and I have started to blog about my perspective of Data Analytics/Data Science from my present career track (they kind of intersect / overlap a bit), documenting my learning progresses, collecting resources etc... this actually has landed me 1 interview at a great company without applying (the recruiter saw my LinedIn profile and this site); but the job was way above my head, but it was a good experience.

I advice everyone who asks me for job hunting advice the same: don't job hunt, build a career, and also build an online presence and a portfolio. I am no good at helping people getting a job in 30 days or less, but I am very good at coaching people in getting a great job 5-10 years down the line, if they start now.

Moreover, writing every day (I do that on my own Google Docs), helps think better; better thinking leads to better problem solving; which leads to better writing.

And then ChatGPT came along, and it's changing everything by augmenting people's capabilities.

Stay tuned.

jokethrowaway• 3 years ago

Either your blog picks up and it becomes your identity - and can be useful for getting hired - or it's useless.

It's a bit like github: if it's not great you won't get much out of it, if it's good you'll get some gigs out of that.

Personally I discontinued my old blog back in 2011 and it wasn't never very useful, while my github still gives me leads for jobs and reputation.

I have a friend who is really good at maintaining his blog but it doesn't seem like it served him any good.

averagedev• 3 years ago

For me, the reason is simply that I like having a blog. Truth be told, I have no readers. I only post once in a blue moon, or whenever inspiration strikes, so that's to be expected.

A good blog can surely lead to all of what you're mentioning, but personally I wouldn't get into blogging with high expectations of any such benefit.

https://elton.dev

dn3500• 3 years ago

I've had a personal web site since 1995. I've sold a few photos, given permission to use some others, and had some pirated. I've got a box full of postcards from around the world sent by fans. I have another box of magazines (Maxim probably being the most famous), newspapers, and a dozen or so autographed books in which my photos have appeared with credit.

In the pre-facebook days it helped me locate some old friends I'd lost track of.

The closest I've come to fame was when a local TV station interviewed me as "the expert" on an obscure subject because my web site was the first google search result.

dr_kiszonka• 3 years ago

People with blogs, don't you feel worried that you might get something wrong in your posts, which will bite you in the behind during recruitment processes? (That, and time commitment are the primary reasons I don't blog.)

eztof• 3 years ago

Honestly, if a potential employer turns me down based on something written in my blog, I'd say I dodged a bullet.

agilob• 3 years ago

Would you write a blog post about it?

sunir• 3 years ago

I created MeatballWiki. We ended up helping Wikipedia launch. I am responsible for the barn stars and the [[free link]] syntax.

I thought peer to peer social software was my future. I was going to speak at O’Reilly p2pcon September 23, 2001 in Washington DC. Well that didn't happen thanks to 9/11.

So unemployed after the bust I got into a masters program in Toronto to extend my ideas from MeatballWiki.

I met the love of my life and married her later. I got a job running marketing at FreshBooks and went hard into SaaS partnerships.

From there I created the Cloud Software Association and the SaaS Connect conference. Now I have my own startup AppBind to solve partnership problems.

So, not much.

forrestthewoods• 3 years ago

My blog taught me how to write and communicate complex technical ideas to a broad audience. It’s the single most valuable thing I’ve done in my career.

There’s lots of brilliant engineers in the world. I’m pretty good, but I’ll never be the best programmer on the team. But I am exceptionally good at working with designers, artists, scientists, and hardware engineers.

Communication is the hardest problem in tech. Writing is thinking. It’s a skill that takes practice the same as any other. It’s 100% worth the investment.

https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/

timbray• 3 years ago

Got me jobs, helped me hire other people, got me a ticket to some of the big technology debates and then helped me win one or two. Gave me a place to write cat obituaries and heavy-metal reviews. Launched Feb 27, 2003 (20 years last month) and I haven't regretted it for a microsecond.

[https://tbray.org/ongoing/]

itpragmatik• 3 years ago

My personal website is for my family only - a simple chronological photo albums grouped by year - have been maintaining and using it for last 20+ years and had given immense amount of joy and conversation starters for my family. It’s a static website built using JAlbum. Nothing interactive more than navigating between photos and albums. Very very satisfied and happy that I did it and plan to continue ahead as long as I keep taking photos of family and family gatherings.

datadeft• 3 years ago

What has your personal website/blog done for you?

Nothing, but it helped many people to get started with something or fix problems for themselves.

davepeck• 3 years ago

Given me great joy over the past 23.5 years (!). Given me a place to say things that matter to me and maybe nobody else. Oh, and kept my mom and dad up-to-date.

rsoto• 3 years ago

I've been blogging for 20+ years on my personal website [1] (disclaimer: it's in spanish). I started it when I was a teenager as a way to teach myself discipline. I used to write every single day. Now it's a bit of a monthly occurrance but it has done quite a few things for me.

1. Landed me a job, and a few gigs 2. Started new friendships 3. Inadvertently taught me SEO 4. Did a bunch of side projects 5. Gave me my 15 minutes of fame

I only wished I could write more often, but it's been a great journey. I want it to keep going.

1: https://www.therror.com/

mattbgates• 3 years ago

This month, confessionsoftheprofessions.com, turned 10 years old. It has helped me understand SEO and building other websites. It has made the equivalent of a few hundred bucks a year or averages out to paying for itself. It also helped spark the idea for a book I wrote you can find at mylifeasawomanproject.com (project interviewing hundreds of women around the world during covid-19). It's put me in touch from people all over the world. And of course, it has made me a better writer.

mafiaboi• 3 years ago

Keeping a log and history of my dealings.

Even though the traffic is very limited to my blog - which I believe is the case with 99% of personal blogs/websites - going back to the blog to write more stuff and reading through old posts are useful. It gives you an insight of how you were thinking about something else or something that you should care about but you forgot to do

pwim• 3 years ago

I started blogging about developer events I was attending in Japan back in 2010. As I was the only one writing about it in English, the content naturally ranked well.

That led a fellow Canadian to my blog, who asked how I found a job here. My email back to him started to get pretty long, and so I turned it into an article for the blog.

That article attracted more people looking for developer jobs in Japan, so I started collecting their email addresses as I occasionally came across developer job opportunities that didn’t require Japanese.

After about a year of this, I heard a company had made a successful hire through the list, and so I started charging companies.

From there, the business organically expanded, until I was working with many of the major tech companies in Japan.

It’s now a business generating a life-changing amount of income. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t of started blogging with no real intent other than to share what I was learning.

hikarudo• 3 years ago

What an awesome story! Thanks for sharing.

paradite• 3 years ago

I vaguely remember reading this story somewhere else.

CITIZENDOT• 3 years ago

Are you founder of Japan.dev?

e-clinton• 3 years ago

Tokiodev.com is on his profile

feiss• 3 years ago

Job.

Art station is a very recent thing :)

vjeux2• 3 years ago

I wrote an article on writing JavaScript in C++ using macros, which was featured on Hacker News and got a VP of Engineering at Facebook to reach out and get me in the interview pipeline as I was still in school. I moved halfway across the world from France to work there and still work there today. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478751

xrd2• 3 years ago

Then I wrote an article about your talk at OSCON (published on The New Stack).

https://thenewstack.io/javascripts-history-and-how-it-led-to...

You discussed how the diff algorithm improved from O(n^3) to O(n). I'll never forget that talk.

xrd2• 3 years ago

It's interesting that we are both Christopher, and that we both eschew usernames starting with c. That's how I recalled who you were in your comment.

I went with x because Xmas. And because Christopher is such a common name I wanted something different.

I wonder why you went with v, another uncommon letter.

froggertoaster• 3 years ago

Provided an outlet for some thoughts, mainly.

komali2• 3 years ago

1. Helped me get thoughts out of my head that are churning too much

2. Help me organize thoughts as I try to write them in a way that's helpful for other people

3. Allowed me to drop links into a chat with someone asking questions I've been asked before

4. Functioned as a memory bank when I forget how to do something I've done before

5. Functions as a scrapbook for when I want to reflect on a trip or something

I don't have a cool story about being hired or whatever like other people. I think around 2000 people navigate to the blog a year, mostly to a post going into a great amount of detail about my emacs blog post. The follow up most visited is a post I made about buying a Grand Seiko which is quite bereft so I have no idea why it's so popular, I have way better posts lol.

Kind of feeds my theory that a good way to get people reading / watching is to get a niche and stick in there. Possibly the Grand Seiko post gets so much volume because Grand Seiko's marketing is stupidly bad and seems to be completely dependant on content creators. So making content about them would fill somewhat of a vacuum.

willjp• 3 years ago

Learning and Retention. I find that I learn best if I learn a subject comprehensively. Taking notes in a mediawiki instance I've kept up for a decade forces me to explain what I've learned, helps with retention, identifying what I still need to learn, and is indexed so I can revisit information I don't use every day without as much pain.

If someone else finds it useful, that's even better ;D.

barbariangrunge• 3 years ago

I started blogging about writing and books and met a lot of other writers through it. I have people to talk to about the subjects I love, people to give feedback on unfinished work, and maybe even people to collaborate with one day. I learned a bunch about writing by exposure to their work as well!

https://barbariangrunge.substack.com/

dt3ft• 3 years ago

Getting feedback on unfinished work sounds great! I am writing a book about my personal experience as a 9 year old living through the 4-year long war in Bosnia back in 1992. I want my son to be able to learn about this war as it was experienced by me. It has been very difficult so far as it pushes me to revive those horrible memories, and getting feedback would mean a lot to keep me going.

margorczynski• 3 years ago

It allowed me to organize my thoughts better and push me to refresh/rethink a few things. Also helps to train articulating thought - trying to convey in an approachable fashion understanding is harder than just understanding something.

nektro• 3 years ago

I mainly use it to increase my "developer brand" but also document very useful but easily forgotten things about managing my system. which has come in handy quite a few times

malkosta• 3 years ago

It had made me write tech tips that I frequently forgot in past, and recurrently wasted days to find them back

EamonnMR• 3 years ago

I mean, it's similar to a Google Doc or whatever for sharing ideas and tutorials, but I get a much prettier URL. And it saves me from writing the same post over and over on multiple forums. And I once helped someone find information about an obscure toy line.

nsm• 3 years ago

It hasn't directly influenced my career, but hiring managers and interviewers certainly mention reading it and I'm sure it indirectly influences hiring decisions.

In addition the specific post about my ankle fracture is somehow one of the most popular when searching for "ankle fracture blog", and I've had at least one person reach out to me who also had a fracture and were comforted by my account.

some_furry• 3 years ago

I write about cryptography on my furry blog. I work in cryptography. You'd think I have a funny story to accompany the juxtaposition of these facts, but no.

Unlike many other HN users in this thread, I've never directly benefited from my blog. But I have used my blog to help other people (many of them furries) get into the tech industry. So I'd argue that counts for something.

(I wrote a series called Furward Momentum if you're curious how.)

The main reason why I don't benefit from my blog is because I don't want to. I write for my own amusement, because I enjoy writing.

I occasionally have to turn down the bold recruiter, and frequently get harassed by people looking to pay for a product endorsement or "guest post". (I've asked them for writing samples "in my style" and rejected them for not putting enough furries in it, but that joke loses novelty fast.)

warrenm• 3 years ago

Mine've done "nothing" professionally

But that's not why I contribute to them :)

jasoneckert• 3 years ago

Since 1998, my personal blog (which lists my email and other contact information) has introduced me to countless people over the past 25 years, and led to hundreds of valuable opportunities and collaborations, as well as advanced my career and augmented my personal growth.

G1N• 3 years ago

I got my second job because I once wrote a blog post about scraping some web pages… pretty nice ROI (though my personal experience is baiter hasn’t been updated in maybe 4 years… I should do that soon)

pojzon• 3 years ago

It made me realize I have no time nor will to keep on working on it.

Life in general when you are older with kids makes it almost impossible.

wjdp• 3 years ago

Someone found my passport, was able to google me, match photo to the one on the site, and find an email address. I had it back the same day.

Keep meaning to start a blog but haven't gotten around to.

scarface742• 3 years ago

I’m not dismissing or minimizing what a blog can do for you. I just have a different perspective.

I had a fitness blog on Blogger between 2008-2011. I was a part time fitness instructor. I found it relatively useless. By then, normal people stopped going to random websites. I started posting everything to Facebook and I had a lot more engagement and virality.

I stopped teaching in 2012 after getting married. Fast forward to 2019, my wife got into the fitness industry and I see how it has changed - YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.

The “aggregators” have taken over.

From a tech perspective, if I cared about my “brand”, it would be to set myself up for independent cloud consulting. I would be trying to establish myself as a “thought leader” by posting vapid crap on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The department I work for at $BigTech (consulting) does have a very easy open source approval process that allows us to publish our “reusable artifacts” from consulting projects on to their open source GitHub organization with an MIT license and then we can fork it under our own profile. I do take advantage of that to have sone type of public presence.

If I were to start a career focus blog, I would host it on Micro.blog and talk about my open source work.

I have a blog there now that’s more of a public journal than anything else. My wife and I will be “digital nomadding” flying across the US for the foreseeable future every March -September. I really don’t care about “engagement” or if anyone actually sees it. If I wanted to showboat about our travels I would post to FB and Instagram.

soheil2• 3 years ago

GPT3:

For many, having a personal website or blog can serve as a platform to share their thoughts, ideas or expertise on a particular topic, and this can lead to increased exposure and visibility in their field. This, in turn, can help open up new job opportunities or collaborations.

Additionally, creating content for a personal website or blog can also foster a commitment to learning and self-improvement, as it encourages individuals to stay informed about their areas of interest and to continually develop their skills in these areas.

GPT4:

1. Exposure and Visibility: Having a personal website/blog can increase your online presence, making you more visible to potential employers, clients, and networking opportunities. Your website can act as an online resume, showcasing your skills, experience, and projects.

2. Job Opportunities: A well-maintained blog can attract job offers, especially if the content you post is relevant to your industry and demonstrates your expertise. Employers may notice your work and reach out to you regarding potential job opportunities.

3. Networking: A personal website can help you connect with like-minded professionals in your field. By creating content relevant to your niche, you can attract an audience interested in the same topics and build connections with them.

4. Personal Branding: A website/blog helps you establish your personal brand, which can make you distinguishable in the job market. Your online presence can become synonymous with your area of expertise, making you a go-to option in your field.

5. Increased Learning: Writing blog posts can help you learn and solidify your understanding of various topics within your field. Researching and composing articles about your industry can increase your knowledge and make you more well-informed overall.

6. Monetization: You can use your blog to generate additional income through advertising, sponsored content, or affiliate marketing. Some people can even turn their blogs into full-time businesses.

soheil2• 3 years ago

GPT5: I know kung fu.

mgbmtl• 3 years ago

I had many fun experiences thanks to my blog. From having random visitors contact me when I lived a few years in another country, to having the feds monitor my blog because of random notes I posted on a weekend project.

However it feels a bit like nostalgia. Nowadays everything is drowned in SEO-spam. My advice would be to maintain a blog if you find it fun to write. I find it useful because it helps me structure my thoughts.

ge96• 3 years ago

Nothing, just some ego stroking I check the stats

calderknight• 3 years ago

My website doesn't do anything for me. I don't think that makes it purely vanity though. I just make it for fun.

anon291• 3 years ago

My personal blog has been cited in academic publications.

I'm not an academic, so it's quite the complement.

shortformblog• 3 years ago

I will admit that I'm a unique case because I got into blogging to blog, rather than just as a subset of my online presence. But I hope that my story inspires someone.

I started my first blog, ShortFormBlog, in 2009. At the time, I was a fully print journalist, focused on graphic design. I had just been laid off from one newspaper and was about to be hired by another. The thing that made the blog stand out at the time is that I tried to bring some of that news-design mindset to the blog.

Within three years, I had had a number of notable experiences emerge because of this blog, including:

- A regular freelance gig with AOL News

- Interviews with a number of prominent outlets for potential jobs, including the then-buzzy iPad newspaper The Daily, PBS, and BuzzFeed

- Nominated for a Shorty Award

- A large follower base on Tumblr (160k by the time I stopped)

- Transition to a new, fully digital full-time job, outside of newspapers, in which I was allowed to keep the blog going

I eventually moved to a newsletter format called Tedium, which moved away from daily news into more evergreen styles of content. That led to:

- An appearance on NPR’s Planet Money

- Syndication opportunities with Atlas Obscura, Fast Company, and Nieman Lab, among others

- An ongoing freelance relationship with Motherboard, along with freelance opportunities in other places

- A consistent revenue model

- The opportunity to bring in outside writers

- Periodic viral posts (including one last year, written by a contributor to the site, that was name-dropped by Rick Beato)

- A smaller but more deeply interested audience

- A chance to meet a lot of people who are into the same weird stuff I'm into

- A frequent outlet to write about whatever's on my mind

I have now been writing at a regular pace on the internet for about 14 and a half years. I have learned a lot over that time. My recommendation to you is that you find your pacing, and if something is not working, you switch gears.

herbertl• 3 years ago

There are a lot of great comments here, though I agree with the sentiment that starting a blog will not guarantee a wild career trajectory change.

I've found the benefits of writing at a blog to be much more intrinsic (I practice every day). Sure, it did lay the groundwork for my career in tech marketing, but it also keeps me in the groove of "just writing"—easier said than done, and it makes me much happier. More here:

https://herbertlui.net/what-my-personal-website-and-blog-hav...

Decabytes• 3 years ago

Writing about topics on my blog^1 has forced me to actually learn topics more thoroughly than I would normally. So instead of learning something only until I have enough knowledge to use it, I actually go all the way so no one calls me out for being an idiot or not understanding what I’m talking about.

1. https://www.deusinmachina.net/

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

like others here, its increased learning and also got me laid from women reaching out.

not jobs for me, aside from the learning. I've had great backchannels that never let me skip the technical interview or bent the any rules.

dcl• 3 years ago

2 years ago I started a blog about statistics/ML and how they are used in business, purely to improve my writing and communication skills. I don't advertise the blog, and it's very likely had 0 hits, but knowing it's 'out there' makes me really care about the content and how it's presented and communicated.

Mockapapella• 3 years ago

It's brought me an outlet for my thoughts and a place where I can look back on all the ideas I've had at certain points in my life.

tptacek• 3 years ago

I got incrementally better at writing, if for no other reason that I could look back at what I wrote 10 years ago and wince.

ggandhi• 3 years ago

I learn by taking notes, but keeping up with AI developments was becoming challenging. To stay updated, I began a daily blog in April last year to cover various topics and create a repository of notes for future reference.

Initially free, the blog eventually became paid and grew into a very active WhatsApp group of over 700+ members.

This week, something that started as a personal blog is evolving into a product for me.

The blog helped me in many ways: - Increased learning by actively looking for newer topics and exploring more about them

- After having a few users it put pressure and discipline to blog daily

- Led to many interesting conversations and connections

- Give lots of innovative ideas and a boost of confidence

- There are lots of learning on entrepreneurship as well

For those who might be interested, I maintain it here: http://everydayseries.com/blog/

adamch• 3 years ago

I started a personal blog two years ago, roughly. Even if nobody had read it, I'd feel successful, because I only write about things I'm confused about or learned recently. Then I can link them to my coworkers and they get an exact guide about this particular issue.

But, people _have_ actually read it, which is nice. I've hired at least one person through my blog (he emailed me after reading it), and he was awesome to work with. A lot of coworkers have messaged me saying "hey, I was googling for this problem I'm having, and I found your blog, and I realized you work at the company, so thank you!" I've benefited so much from reading developer blogs throughout my career, so it's nice to be able to give back and help others too.

I think it's helped me get better at technical writing and show employers that I can do more than just write code too.

fnbr• 3 years ago

When I was laid off, and all my access to internal systems was disabled, I had no way to get in touch with my former colleagues, who didn’t have my contact info. Having a personal website enabled them to get in touch with me, which led to a number of job offers (including the one I ended up taking).

the-mitr• 3 years ago

I curate/maintain a blog (for more than a decade now) to preserve books published during Soviet era.

http://mirtitles.org

This blog though does not generate any revenue, I see it as a personal achievement which will perhaps be my contribution to the world at large which might be remembered or make an impact. The vision of the blog started from the idea to preserve knowledge which might be otherwise lost/forgotten. This blog was/is the guiding light for me in my dark times.

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

It taught me how much I do not want to use AWS for personal reasons. In fact, I wouldn't even build a revenue business on it.

A few years ago, a friend gifted me a domain name, and simultaneously, I signed up to AWS so I could goof around with all the free-tier cloud features, and basically just learn some cloud architecting.

I quickly settled on the Bitnami image of a MediaWiki stack on top of Ubuntu. It was fairly easy to get set up, but of course I quickly realized why the average Joe does not want to do this sort of thing. I had to be my own sysadmin, which I knew fairly well, but I also had to be my own CISO, and the logistics of running a bare OS on a VM on the public Internet are definitely daunting in the 2020s.

I attracted futile probes of my ssh port and I also attracted some sort of spammers to create throwaway MediaWiki accounts. In fact, the aforementioned friend showed me a few security holes in my MW configuration, and I was thankful he did it and not some malicious stranger.

Eventually, MW failed in some perplexing way, and I was frankly appalled at the myriad ways that AWS costs could literally get out of control and I'd have a 5-figure monthly bill with little recourse. I pulled out completely and shut it all down, after a few months had elapsed.

All in all, it was a good experiment, and really not disastrous; I did accomplish the learning of various cloud administration techniques, so I appreciated that. I don't miss the crazy opaque billing. There was so much more to learn. Perhaps someday.

anakaine• 3 years ago

AWS has a large learning curve, for sure. I've been using it now for several years as an admin for some scientific applications that present web frontends to customers.

A few notes:

- for personal or small stuff I'd recommend Lightsail instead of EC2.

- set budgets so that aws turns off your services if you go over.

- never expose your ssh port to the public internet. Lock it down with firewall rules from the outset. Lightsail does this by default.

- I'd still not use AWS if it was my money at stake. I have not screwed up yet, but it always feels possible.

- I've had to remediate at least one account whose app and architecture were incredibly poorly designed and were costing over $500k/pa when they should have been designed differently and cost no more than about $1k/pa (less again these days) for function, user load and security. AWS made those poor design decisions easy because those who built it could spin up anything and everything with no second thoughts.

encelad• 3 years ago

I closed my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and instead started having a personal website. I basically want people to find my contact details and some very basic infos about myself online without having to be on these attention eating social networks.

I really dislike how LinkedIn tries to get you to put your full CV online. Yeah, you don’t have to but it looks bad to have an empty LinkedIn profile.

The trigger for me to close my LinkedIn account was that my then boss asked why I had deleted my CV from LinkedIn. In a bullying tone that implied I had something to hide. Which wasn’t true, I simply never had posted the history of my job positions on LinkedIn because … I think that’s rather private info that I only share when I apply to new jobs. So there really is social pressure to share more than you want on LinkedIn.

That’s different with my personal website. There, I have full control over what impression I want to give to visitors and what information I want to share.

flybrand5• 3 years ago

I’m always shocked to see people who build up a huge portfolio on LinkedIn - especially after their censorship.

flybrand5• 3 years ago

Once I found a theme - detailed reviews of manufacturing books - I get calls all the time that lead to consulting gigs that are fun.

https://fredlybrand.com/2018/10/15/goldratts-the-goal-chapte...

The counts are low for the blog posts and the video views, but what does come in is a qualified lead who already wants to do something interesting.

adityaathalye2• 3 years ago

My blog is an exercise in thinking in public (writing = thinking).

I restarted late 2021, after over a decade off-web. Back then (in hindsight) it was me trying to look clever. I used to dislike my writing.

These days I'm fairly happy with my posts.

I try to be correct, but not clever. In fact I'm happy to be corrected --- that's the whole point! I try to write in my own voice, but I don't aim for literary finesse. I don't write for any particular audience, but I do share links in communities of kindred gentlenerds out of common interest.

Several wonderful conversations have happened so far.

The most unexpected was a brief conversation with the grandmaster Douglas McIlroy himself. I'd cold-emailed him a thank you and linked to my post featuring his famous shell pipeline. I received generous critique and advice. That week, I was walking on clouds :)

I've also had a couple of unexpected (and nice!) "front page of HN" experiences.

Recently, one of my blog posts on my Org Mode workflow hit the front page. If my analytics is to be believed, it has taken on a second life bouncing off various parts of the Internet. That front-paging was warm on the heels of another recent Show HN I did of my site maker (written in Bash), which generated some lively discussion :)

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how it's going!

flybrand5• 3 years ago

I’d worked in technical fabrics for 15 years when c19 came out, and my personal blog allowed a balance between the chaos of the n95 supply chain at work and the flood of inquiries. There were a lot of non-monetary positive things we got done, in addition to the surge in business.

https://fredlybrand.com/2020/03/21/personal-credentials-on-p...

ryantgtg• 3 years ago

My blog at one point slightly morphed into a music blog, wherein I ripped vinyl to mp3 that was mostly not yet available online (90s hardcore punk). I kept this up for a few years and it was pretty popular. One time a person commented on a post, and we ended up chatting on twitter, then emailing, then visiting, and then I moved to her city and we dated and got married and had a kid. I actually looked up her comment the other day - it’s so funny that something so simple triggered all of this. It’s been 12 years since that comment.

edandersen• 3 years ago

For every new job opportunity your blog or "personal brand" online garners you, there will be 0-? opportunities lost due to a hiring manager or recruiter being put off not even by the content of your online presence, but by the fact you have one at all.

Most middle managers will not hire someone with a fledging YouTube channel or a popular blog or a weaponisable Twitter following unless the role is a public facing PR role (devrel etc).

The thing is, there is no way to know about or count the lost opportunities. Grey man strategy (i.e. not early 2000s "build a personal brand" strategy) is safest for most people.

AndreasHae• 3 years ago

The kind of middle manager you’re describing is one I wouldn’t like to work with anyways, so it doesn’t seem like much of a loss.

yesenadam• 3 years ago

I didn't make my website for those reasons. I was inspired by Bill Beaty of amasci.com's philosophy of putting everything online[0]. But after a while I got sick of how things looked online changing every time I looked, so (sadly) started making lovely LaTeX PDF books instead, and lately putting everything into Obsidian. I must move some of all that online one day.

The highlights have been John Baez commenting on one page how beautiful the images were, and Jugu Abraham (Indian movie critic) thanking me for linking to pages on his site. Am still considering getting rid of comments though—even though it's handled automatically, they're about 99.99% spam.

One thing I learned is that my pages on the most obscure subjects get the most hits! Two in particular are super-obscure and get hits almost every day. I guess there's no other pages on the web about those topics. That maybe seems obvious, but was surprising. It's hard not to assume a piece of writing has to be on a popular topic for someone to want to read it.

[0] http://amasci.com/faq.html#hits the whole page is a great read, as is the whole site. So much great stuff.

rpep• 3 years ago

I only started last year. So far not a lot! I find it helps me clarify my own thoughts however.

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

nothing

pfoof4• 3 years ago

So far nothing external. I write posts to force myself to fully understand things.

I also hope that it will be a nice addition to my resume.

liampulles• 3 years ago

Mostly for learning a bit of CSS and HTML, and hopefully a little bit of a leg up for interviews.

pythonbase• 3 years ago

In 2005, the earth trembled with a ferocity that shook our nation to its very core. The worst earthquake in our history left over 100,000 souls lost to us and 3.5 million displaced, a gaping wound that scarred us for years to come.

Social media was unheard of at that time. News sites and blogs were primary sources of information. I set up a WordPress blog to collect and disseminate critical information.

Spending 4-5 hours every day, I compiled information about relief efforts and rehabilitation activities. There was a section for missing persons too.

The blog was mentioned in the publications like the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNBC etc. It remained at number one spot in search engines for quite some time.

But it was the comments and emails from those who found hope in the midst of the chaos that truly fueled my drive. I heard from people who had reunited with their loved ones, others who received vital on-ground aid, and still others who found ways to lend a helping hand.

Though my blog may now be archived, the memory of those days still lingers on. For in that moment of crisis, I found the strength to make a difference, and my efforts brought light into the lives of so many.

ngshiheng• 3 years ago

- Fun. Lots of fun. This bears the fruit of knowledge too.

- Some form of "marketing" or "exposure" to the inconsequential side projects that you do and probably thought no one really cares about

- Some small amount of internet money ~$10/month enough for the site to pay for itself from AdSense

- Expert networking gigs ($100 to $200/hour). Basically, they connect you with their clients on consult about a certain topic. These are rare though. I've only done 2/7 successful arrangements so far.

I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.

MichaelMoser123• 3 years ago

i things blogging and personal side projects keep my sanity. Not much, but its a big deal, for me.

avipars• 3 years ago

It has resulted in me getting a lot of spam emails

knorker• 3 years ago

It was apparently a tiebreaker to me getting my first job. They liked how I documented technical stuff on my blog.

And the process of writing something up is always great for making sure I know what I'm talking about. I want to write a paragraph about a certain aspect, but it's only then that I realize that I'm not actually sure about it. So I investigate more until I'm sure.

And don't underestimate the value of a library of blob posts. When someone asks you to explain something you can reply that while you're perfectly happy to have a chat about it, you actually have a blog post about it that should give them a good understanding.

I've found that people really appreciate getting such a complete answer, and (since your question seems to focus on value you get) helps you become known as "the expert". Like "hey, do you know if it's possible to do X?" -- "Oh yeah, here's a step by step guide".

And a blog is a better memory than your brain. You'll find yourself remembering knowing something, but no longer knowing it. With a blog you can just go back to the past you that was an expert in this, and refresh your memory.

You won't get the value from the first post alone. But after a while the value adds up. It's like how you don't get stronger from one day at the gym, but from putting in the time.

People reading my blog have also commented or emailed me with more info, or questions, and I've later met them at conferences and even jobs, and we'd have further chats on the topic.

Writing a blog post can mark the end of a small project, so is a motivator, too.

Led to jobs: check. Increased learning: absolutely check. Brought new connections: check. Vanity: No more than a job well done, and feeling useful to others, or at least future me.

rcarmo• 3 years ago

No jobs (one company actually asked me to stop writing if I joined), but definitely a lot of learning and feedback (although of late I've had more feedback via social networks than mail, because I turned off comments a decade ago and never looked back).

I use my blog as a personal wiki and notebook, and have well over 20 years of content in there (check out this page link graph: https://taoofmac.com/static/graph), so I invariably end up posting stuff that is useful to me as reference, and that kind of feedback loop definitely helps with learning (or at least keeping track of) things.

ciroduran• 3 years ago

I started a Spanish-written gamedev blog in 2006: https://www.elchiguireliterario.com First on blogspot, then moved onto my own domain running self-hosted Wordpress, which is still the current setup. I've written about small engines, Flash-based games, Adventure Game Studio, game design, among other related subjects.

Thanks to it I managed to teach a gamedev course in a college. The students there wanted a gamedev course and they could propose it to their faculty. I wrote a syllabus, and as simple as that I could start teaching them. I did it for about 3 years before I moved countries. I also taught a computer graphics course.

Also thanks to it I had enough clout to organise a game jam, Caracas Game Jam. 15 years later it's still being done by a group of volunteers, and has helped many enthusiasts to find their place in gamedev (or simply find out it wasn't really their thing).

Yes, I am really grateful for my blog :)

My personal website is a different story (https://www.ciroduran.com) I've had it for slightly longer, it's become more of an archive and a personal blog, and it's fully bilingual, which makes a bit harder to write content for. The stack has changed a lot: from Joomla, to Drupal, to Wordpress, to the current Jekyll-generated static website.

I'm still happy about it. I find it ironic that I can still download and play an adventure game I made for Windows in 2003, and that my much-more prolific Flash games are dead in a browser.

bitL• 3 years ago

Nothing outside some large book publisher trying to make me write a book so that they have a larger pool of authors to discard (they ask 5 people to write a book on some topic, pay like 5k upfront and select one in the end, wasting time of 4 people). All my bleeding edge articles had zero effect on my marketability and all I got was requests for source code or article republishing from some freeloaders. No jobs, no worthwhile connections came out of it.

gHeadphone• 3 years ago

I used to be a musician and as i worked in tech, I set up my own website. Everyone else thought i was crazy, MySpace was here to stay - that was the standard that everyone used, anything else was a waste of effort.

Because platforms (like MySpace) can disappear almost overnight, I would always recommend setting up a blog on a domain that you own and control. Mine is https://markgreville.ie and i have been on the front page of HackerNews a couple of times. I have had lot of people reach out to me over the years, including some very famous tech luminaries (people who’s books i read from cover to cover as i was learning to be a programmer, then architect, then leader). I have also found a lot of great talent through it.

My struggle initially was worrying that i would seem pompous for writing publicly, and that no-one would find any of it interesting. However, most of my friends ignored it, and i found a community on HN that was my tribe instead.

If you are reading this and haven’t blogged before 1. Register a domain now 2. Set up a simple site (Wordpress will do for now, don't over think this bit) 3. Write about something you have done, or something you are passionate about 4. Have a trusted person read it for you and take feedback 5. Edit, publish, and post on HN 6. Start the next post

thomasjb• 3 years ago

Little so far, but I expect it to at least serve as slight certificate of 'I can set up a VPS to host a web page'. I'm unsure if there's any writing I want to put out there, but that may change.

zimpenfish• 3 years ago

Nothing exciting (no jobs, no connections, etc.) but I'm convinced it's helped with my technical communication skills and fractionally improved my "I can't publish/release this until it is GLEAMING AND PERFECT" problem (helps to have no readers here.)

Definitely improving my SQL though because I'll often put a query in a blog post, think "that's ugly", and find an improved way of doing things to make it look "nicer".

mooreds• 3 years ago

Has been brought up a couple of times in interviews, led to a couple of small consulting contracts. Also really solidified my learning; you never learn so well as when you are trying to teach.

But the best surprise is that my personal blog occasionally showed up when I was doing a google search years after writing a post.

ern0• 3 years ago

I can't prove it, because I don't have data: my GitHub page is useful.

My CV is two pages long, and it's still too long, recruiters don't read it, probably just look at the keywords or IDK how they work. Previous version was 17 pages long, it was a bad conception (just listed projects, etc., as described in the book, of 30+ years).

But if you look at my GitHub page, you can get a far better picture. I only have my own repos, so you get a relatively good idea of what I do, how I work (most of my projects have documentation, tests), what quality code I write, even if the picture is a bit biased, because of some non-public and of course work projects are not included.

https://github.com/ern0?tab=repositories

lampshades• 3 years ago

Absolutely nothing.

strzibny• 3 years ago

1. Recognition and place within a community.

* Some of my new colleagues admitted reading my posts when searching for something. * I was confident linking my (commercial) book in a subreddit in which I post useful and free articles.

2. Improving as a writer.

* You need to write to improve writing (obvious). * Better writing helped me to write and publish a technical book.

3. Marketing.

* I used my blog as a main marketing channel for my book when I released it.

Note that I haven't started for those reasons per-se. I started long time ago to simple share knowledge on the internet.

bhu1st• 3 years ago

Great thread. So many good ideas here.

I used to write on Blogger.com. One time when I was attending a team meeting of a new startup in town, junior devs were asking me that they really enjoyed reading about my college experience which I have posted about on my blog. I never expected this but writing sparingly had made having conversation easier for me few times.

I recently did a consolidation and merged 3 of my different blogs into https://bhupalsapkota.com.np (tech, writings and short poems on my native language). This move was inspired by Seth Godin as he recommends frequently about publishing on your own domain.

My friends at college back in the days (2006) loved my short poems and whenever I had a new post it'd be a topic of the day in uni. Good memories.

I am hoping to write more coz I enjoy writing. But, I struggle with ideas and topics. Any suggestions how do you keep up?

sngz• 3 years ago

made me realize my unpopular opinions weren't as unpopular as I thought. It's just lots of the places I frequent are echo chambers.

vkaku• 3 years ago

I write my private blog so I can reflect on the day and what matters.

It helps me gather my thoughts well. This is just a private blog, hosted on my local PC ...

I use this: https://github.com/guilt/mblog

I do write about some things on my public blog. It happens every few years.

https://blog.karthikkumar.org

cranberryturkey• 3 years ago

Nope. I had a blog back in 2003-2010 I finally just shut it down because all I got were spammers trying to comment.

I now am selling the domain because some celebrity gamer in south korea has that exact match name as my nickname domain and twitter handle.

I was offered 40k a year ago but declined.

mrlyc• 3 years ago

It got me my first programming job.

Back in 1984, I wrote a BBS for a Vic-20. It had multiple rooms (message areas) which users could create and make public or private, private email and an online game, all in 9.6K of BASIC. It was very popular with each user spending an average of 70 minutes on it. One of my users hired me as a programmer, saying "Anyone who can write a BBS for a Vic can program!"

Thirty years later, that same guy wanted me to work with him at Google.

lcjury• 3 years ago

Mine has led to nothing. But I learned a lot from other people's blogs.

I know most work deserves to be money driven. But I love how the programming community keeps this social-driven effort. Hope people never stop writing great blog/articles just to keep the art of programming growing.

technomom• 3 years ago

I'm not very active here, but I've had a personal site since 1995 and my main domain since 1996. I started blogging on LiveJournal in 2002. I installed WordPress on my site shortly after it was released (2006 or so, I think?). I have the LiveJournal entries in the WordPress blog now. I have another site now, too, where my professional information lives.

I've gotten several consulting gigs and met some lovely people because of my sites. I got my current job because an executive ran across one of my sites, then tracked me down on LinkedIn. That's the second one I've gotten because of them.

madeforthis• 3 years ago

I started blogging about 12 years ago as a way to gain some visibility for my skills within my field, data journalism. One post I wrote, which simply explained how to set up Python on Windows 7, somehow got indexed very high in Google search results and ended up generating hundreds of thousands of page views. More interestingly, most of the comments on the post were very complimentary of my ability to simply explain the topic.

That got me thinking: Why not write a whole book about a tech topic I enjoy? So, I started doing that. It took about seven years, but the positive feedback from my blogging gave me inspiration.

https://nostarch.com/practical-sql-2nd-edition

drakonka• 3 years ago

I've been blogging for I think over 15 years, probably closer to 20. My blog has come up in job interviews and I think I've had some recruiters reach out after reading my blog. I also referenced some of my technical blog posts when applying for work as a technical writer, which helped I think. But mostly I use my blog to process my own thoughts and help integrate my own learnings for myself. I also often refer back to my own blog posts when doing something... a few times I've Googled for something only to see my own blog come up and realize past-me already answered future-me's question. Having said that, there are times when I read my old blog posts and cringe at my old self. It also feels nice when people either leave comments or email me telling me my blog post helped them solve some problem. So overall, it's just been rewarding on a personal satisfaction level.

allenng• 3 years ago

When I got my first job as a professional SE, I'd been in technical fields for almost 15 years, and had been programming as a hobby for most of my life. I was smart, articulate, and passionate, but had no experience. I think the thing that pushed me over the edge during the hiring process was that I had made a number of hobby projects that I shared with them and they could see my work.

https://apps.stupid-genius.com/Brotplot/

ezedv• 3 years ago

Our blog (where blockchain articles are published every week) has helped us to get more clients and it has also helped people to get more into Blockchain and that world, you can check it out: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog

ngnijland• 3 years ago

My website was one of the reasons I got invited for an interview at my current job!

Especially https://www.nieknijland.nl/trips this page, where I log my past trips.

Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?

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