[troels]

I also researched _every_ person who I'd be talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.

That doesn't sound very sincere.

[kami8845]

I'm already pretty handicapped by being an introvert and not having English as my first language, so I'll try and make up for the difficulty of holding a conversation by other means. I'd love to not have to rely on these things, but right now I'm not confident enough in my conversation skills to forego these "conversation hacks". At least during the initial conversation.