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So when I was in college I was pretty shy, but I heard that networking was essential for career success, and so I was kinda terrified about what my future held. It's 8 years later, I'm in my early 30s, and I feel like my network is doing pretty well. At least, some of my direct friends - people I would invite to crash on my couch when they're visiting town, or go out for dinner with weekly - are tech leads of major consumer products with millions of users, or entrepreneurs with a successful exit, or heads of university research departments, or responsible for managing tens of millions in investment portfolios. And my 2nd degree connections include early Google employees, venture capitalists, heads of government agencies, etc. This is all without doing all that much in the way of deliberate networking. I just get involved with things that I'm passionate about and seek out other people who are passionate about it - or, more commonly, get sought out by other people who are passionate about it. It's a little paradoxical that almost all of my big career successes came from my network, but almost none of my network consists of people that I specifically "networked" with. I think what a lot of people miss about general social interaction is that people like to hang out with other folks like themselves. If you specifically believe that networking is the key to success, you will attract other people that believe networking is the key to success, and you will end up with a network full of...well, networkers. Which can be great in fields like enterprise sales or politics where success is pretty much based on knowing lots of people who know lots of other people. But if you want to network with people who are passionate about changing the world for the better, your best bet is to be passionate about changing the world yourself, make your actions congruent with that, and you'll find that you will find and attract other such people. |
ding ding ding ding ding. This is what networking is. Purposefully interacting with people whose passions, and goals overlap your own.
It saddens me that so many tech folks do exactly what you did: writing a screed about how networking is useless, in which you explicitly note that you networked, and that your network is responsible for all of your big career successes.