Few things are as important throughout your career as developing a network. Building a strong network allows you to tap into other like-minded individuals in your field and often gives you access to ample opportunities.
Having access to other talented Software Engineers has been extremely beneficial for my learning throughout my career, and I imagine this will continue being the case well into the future. Being connected with other well-respected, experienced engineers has also been helpful in ensuring that I maintain a certain level of flexibility with my employment.
It’s great to have options of other companies to be introduced to, even if you’re not planning on leaving your current company. Half the time, knowing I have other options and therefore am not beholden to my employer is enough to reduce stress.
Now that we understand the value a strong network can provide, what are the steps to curating one? Here are the three steps that I’ve used throughout my career to do so.
Do Good Work
The first and most important step to building a strong network is learning how to do good work. Without developing a wealth of knowledge in your field and being able to perform at a high level, it will be difficult to develop a network of any value. The reason for this is that being good at what you do is a prerequisite for others wanting to associate with you (at least in the professional sense).
Remember, a network cuts both ways — you’re connecting with someone as much as they’re connecting with you, and if you don’t provide value they don’t have much incentive to help you where they can. While this might sound shallow, it actually makes a lot of sense, especially when considering that one of the ways your network can help you is by referring you to jobs. It’s hard to write a referral, let alone one that would be compelling to your employer, for someone who doesn’t produce good work.
Because of this, the first step in the process of developing a strong network is becoming good at what you do. What constitutes “good” should and will change as you progress in your career, but always be putting in the time and effort to further sharpen your skills. Sharpening your skills sharpens your network.
Help Others
Once you’ve successfully developed a valuable skill set in your field, the next thing you can do to develop a strong network is help others. I hope that a point like this is generally understood to be good, but in case you need convincing, read on. Everyone likes someone who’s willing to help. People who are good at what they do, and are willing to help others, are like magnets — they attract people.
People who check these two boxes have no problem developing a strong network because it will largely develop itself. If you possess these two qualities, people will come to you. Being willing to help others also has a multiplier effect, since others who know you will speak highly of you to others who they know. At this point, you’ll largely be able to pick and choose who you’d like in your network. Help others, it’s the right thing to do and it'll help you in return.
Build Influence
The third and final way I’ve found that can help you develop a strong network is building influence. Thinking back to our first point you already have built influence by developing your craft, but at a smaller scale — only within the people you interact with in person and on the job.
But a beneficial thing to do is scale this influence by other means like building an audience online. There are countless platforms to do this on and all of them can provide value in different ways. Over the years I’ve built audiences on platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and Substack and I’ve connected and met countless kind and talented developers because of it.
While this step isn't necessarily required, I highly recommend it as it has changed my life for the better.
Your career is long invest time in developing a strong network. The sooner you do, the more it'll be able to help you!
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I couldn’t agree more with what you said.
Most of my career I thought you can do it on your own but it’s a lot harder. When I started building an online presence I got to know many likeminded people and this opened a whole new perspective for me.
I will follow this to Shape my career