A while back, when I was still job hunting, building mini-projects, and trying to figure out what I wanted my future to look like, I became obsessed with a weird question.
"How does someone build the next Apple?"
Or Tesla.
Or Nintendo.
Or Microsoft.
You get the point.
Because when you're younger, companies feel almost magical.
You see the products.
The launches.
The technology.
The cool presentations.
The success.
And it's easy to assume that great companies are simply built by great engineers.
Which, to be fair, is partially true.
But the more I looked into it, the more that explanation felt incomplete.
If engineering alone was enough, every team full of brilliant engineers would've accidentally built the next Apple by now.
Clearly something else was happening.
And that realization sent me down a rabbit hole.
At first, I started looking at businesses the same way I look at software systems.
Instead of seeing "a company", I started seeing components.
Engineering. Product. Finance. Operations. Sales. Marketing.
And then a question appeared:
What do these people actually do all day?
Without all the corporate buzzwords.
Without the LinkedIn jargon.
Because from the outside, most of them felt like black boxes.
Engineering was easy.
I was already living inside that box.
Marketing, however, kept pulling my attention.
Just because it felt interesting.
Every company seemed to have it.
Every successful business seemed to depend on it.
And I couldn't quite put my finger on why.
And then, almost comically, a connection I'd made a while back reached out and said:
"If your N3 result comes through, we might have something for you."
Fast forward a little.
N3 went well.
And suddenly I found myself working part-time in a marketing role.
I thought I was about to learn campaigns.
Ads.
Growth hacks.
Social media tricks.
The usual marketing stuff.
Instead, I ended up learning something completely different.
The weird part is that I thought I was studying marketing.
Looking back, I think I was actually studying people.
Why do some ideas spread?
Why do some products get ignored?
Why do some communities grow while others disappear?
Why do some people seem to attract opportunities wherever they go?
And perhaps the question that still bothers me the most:
Why do some genuinely valuable things fail?
Because if value alone determined success, the world would look very different.
Google Glass was technologically fascinating.
Kodak literally helped invent digital photography and still lost the race.
Sometimes being good isn't enough.
Sometimes being first isn't enough.
Sometimes being right isn't enough.
Which is both terrifying and fascinating.
Because somewhere in the middle, people have to understand the value too.
The funny thing is that while I was asking these questions, I realized I had already been doing marketing myself.
I just didn't call it that.
When I was looking for jobs, I wasn't simply applying.
I was trying to stand out.
The bilingual portfolio. The mascots. The animations. The blogs. The projects. The Japanese learning journey. The weird mix of things that made me... me.
I thought I was just being creative. But I was also trying to communicate something.
Not just what I could do. But who I was.
And surprisingly, that mattered.
Then came the part I didn't expect.
Negotiation.
Positioning.
Understanding incentives.
Communicating value.
Finding situations where everyone wins. Or at least where everyone leaves reasonably happy.
One lesson hit me particularly hard.
I used to think professionalism meant being agreeable.
Turns out those aren't always the same thing.
One time, after terms had already been discussed and agreed upon, an influencer came back wanting to re-negotiate.
Past me didn't say "no" outright. I did communicate our side and the agreed terms. The problem was how I communicated it.
I was so focused on being polite and professional that I came across as too accommodating. My manager pulled me aside and basically said:
"You need to stop being so mellow. Otherwise people won't take you seriously either."
At first I didn't like hearing that. But the more conversations I had, the more it made sense.
Being respectful doesn't mean being vague. Being professional doesn't mean avoiding firmness. If you don't clearly define the value you're creating and the boundaries around it, other people will eventually redefine them for you.
And chances are they'll define it in a way that benefits them more than you.
The thing that surprised me most wasn't that marketing was useful.
It was how similar it felt to engineering.
Both are ultimately communication problems.
In engineering:
You take requirements and turn them into software.
In marketing:
You take value and turn it into understanding.
Both fail when assumptions replace communication.
Both require empathy. Both require clarity.
And both are giant optimization problems.
You're constantly adjusting variables, testing assumptions, collecting feedback, and hoping the outcome moves a little closer to what you envisioned.
Even though the tools are different.
The thinking feels surprisingly similar.
The deeper I go into my career, the more I keep running into the same realization.
Freelancing wasn't just coding.
Corporate isn't just work.
Learning Japanese isn't just vocabulary and grammar.
And marketing isn't just marketing.
Everything seems to have an invisible layer underneath it.
A layer made up of people.
Expectations.
Trust.
Communication.
Motivation.
Incentives.
And somehow that layer ends up mattering just as much as the technical one.
Sometimes more.
I still wouldn't call myself a marketer.
I'm just a regular curious engineer who wandered into another department and started asking questions.
But I'm glad I did.
Because I originally started looking into marketing to understand how great companies are built.
Instead, I ended up understanding people a little better.
And that might've been the more useful lesson.
Of course the journey continues beyond this as well.
Because every time I learn something new, it feels like I discover three more things I don't understand yet.
And somehow that's becoming my favorite part.
What's something you started learning because you thought it would help your career...
...but ended up changing the way you think altogether?
Maybe it was psychology.
Maybe design.
Maybe public speaking.
Maybe sales.
Or maybe you accidentally wandered into a completely different field and found lessons you never expected.
I'd love to hear about it.
Top comments (41)
I would say dev.to gives us the opportunity to Market ourselves since we are showcasing what we can do. It doesn't have to be advertising a service or product you have (though that is common).
If we show what we can do, it builds trust to someone out there that needs that type of engineer. Without it showcasing yourself, it's difficult because they would have to assume they would take your word for it (which they won't by default).
I think of it as this way "If a recruiter wants to hire you, you need to prove that you can do the job".
Great work Aryan! Can't wait to see you in Virtual Coffee (Hopefully today) :D
That's actually a really good way of looking at it.
I think before I started digging into marketing, I associated it mostly with products, ads, campaigns, and all the obvious stuff.
But platforms like DEV made me realize that a lot of marketing is really just making your work visible enough for the right people to find it.
Not in a fake "personal brand" way. More in a "here's what I'm learning, here's what I'm building, here's how I think" kind of way.
And you're right, trust has to come from somewhere. People can't evaluate what they can't see.
Honestly, this blog series probably wouldn't exist if I hadn't started posting here in the first place lol.
And yes! Looking forward to the future Virtual Coffee as well. It's been really cool seeing how many opportunities and friendships have come from simply sharing things online. Wouldn't have imagined meeting so many new people in just 7 months of writing on dev!
Hey Aryan! Can't wait either. To be honest, I couldn't imagine myself getting this far and make genuine connections within the first half of this year. It is really an accomplishment I would never imagine achieving!
I had a similar shift recently. I used to think good code would speak for itself, but that only works if people can actually understand what you built and why it matters.
What stood out to me is how similar the thinking feels to engineering. You're still trying to reduce assumptions, understand what the other side needs, and adjust based on feedback.
The output is different, but the process feels closer than I expected.
I think that's exactly what surprised me.
Before getting exposed to marketing, I assumed the process would feel completely different from engineering. Instead, I kept running into the same patterns: understanding requirements, identifying assumptions, gathering feedback, iterating, and trying to reduce the gap between what you think people need and what they actually need.
The output is different, but the underlying loop feels surprisingly familiar.
Maybe that's why I've enjoyed it more than I expected 😄
Yeah that loop part is what makes it click.
At first it feels like a completely different skill, but once you see it that way, it’s basically the same process applied to people instead of systems.
That’s what made it interesting for me too. It stopped feeling like “marketing” and more like another layer of problem solving.
Here’s what I think about indie developers and marketing:
If you’re a genius, you don’t need marketing. Others will find you.
If you’re an ordinary indie developer like me, keep improving both your development and marketing skills.
If you have money, pay a marketing professional! 🤣
I used to think exactly like that, that if you're a genius people will just find you.
But after seeing a lot of really good work go unnoticed, I’m not so sure anymore. Talent creates the value, but something still has to get it in front of the right people.
Agree on the second part though. For most of us it’s probably just improving both sides over time. And yeah, paying someone who knows what they’re doing definitely works too.
I’m glad to see that many people are noticing you these days without you having to pay a high-priced professional marketer! 🤣
LOL
Honestly, after spending some time around marketing, I'm not even sure the geniuses get to skip it.
There are probably thousands of incredibly talented people building amazing things that most of us will never hear about.
I think talent helps create value.
Marketing helps people discover that value.
Though your third option is definitely the fastest one 🤣
"Pay someone who knows what they're doing" is a surprisingly valid strategy.
Posting on DEV.to is a form of marketing. And I'm lucky to have supportive friends like you who help spread the word. Thank you for your continued support! 🥳
I didn't start it to help my career, but it ended up having one of the most profound impacts of anything I ever learned on my career: Meditation and mindfulness.
If psychology educates you about how people work, then meditation and mindfulness educate you about how you personally work. It's such a wonderful way of living, and so different from how I used to live. Everything is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to be present, an opportunity to grow. In the book "Full Catastrophe Living" the author says: We're starting from the assumption that as long as you're breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you.
The principles of mindfulness, as set out in that book, have made me more accepting of my own humanity. Being accepting of my own humanity, and the possibility of making mistakes, has in turn made me less fearful. And being less fearful has changed...everything. Once you get to a point where your own sense of self-worth is not on the line in your job anymore, you become way more relaxed than before.
I don't go back and forth ten thousand times on things anymore. I analyze, I decide, I do. With the certainty of knowing I have good judgement, and the compassion to forgive myself any mistake I might make. People say you can't forgive yourself, but I disagree. Sometimes the only one who can forgive yourself is you. Maybe because others won't. Or maybe because others don't blame you in the first place. Sometimes you need your own forgiveness to be able to move on.
Because as long as you're breathing there is the possibility of creating beauty in the world.
This is a beautiful answer honestly.
What stands out to me is that almost everything you described sounds less like learning a skill and more like changing your relationship with yourself.
The line about your self-worth no longer being on the line every time you make a decision really hit me.
I think a lot of us spend years trying to avoid mistakes because we unconsciously treat mistakes as evidence about who we are. Which makes every decision feel heavier than it actually is.
The idea of being able to analyze, decide, act, and then trust yourself enough to handle whatever happens afterward feels incredibly freeing.
Also:
That's one of those sentences I'll probably remember for a long time.
Thank you for sharing this. I really appreciate comments like these, the kind that make me think in more ways than one.
Such an interesting read! It's so cool that you have the curiosity and courage to go out of your comfort zone and learn things that are out of your box 👏🏻
If I were to point out one thing that I picked up to help my career, but that changed much more, I would point to Docusaurus. It appears in many job offer descriptions for technical writers, but I never had the opportunity to work with it. I ran it, started building, and I loved it! And actually, this got me into coding 💛 I'm still a beginner, but learning to code gives me lots of fun and satisfaction!
Thank you Klaudia! 💛
And that's actually a perfect example of what I was talking about in the post.
You started learning Docusaurus because it was useful for your career, but along the way it opened the door to something much bigger.
I think some of the most meaningful learning happens like that. You chase one thing and accidentally discover an entirely new interest.
Also, getting into coding through technical writing feels like such a technical-writer origin story 😄
Exactly! I especially like how it changed my mindset – before, coding was something reserved only for software engineers, who I considered much more intelligent and experienced.
After learning Docusaurus, I got a bit more self-confident. It turned out that it's not such a black magic and, given the accessibility of information nowadays, it's something I can actually learn myself 🙂
same realization hit me mid-build. I kept optimizing the code thinking that was the bottleneck. distribution was the actual job the whole time.
I think developers naturally assume the bottleneck is technical because that's the part we can see and control.
Then eventually you build something decent and realize the next challenge isn't "can I build it?" but "can I get it in front of the right people?" Very different problem, but just as important.
yeah, once you flip it's uncomfortable - shipping fast loses meaning if nobody in the right room is paying attention
Many people don't intentionally set out to learn marketing—it often happens naturally through business, freelancing, content creation, or trying to promote a product or service. Once you start working on attracting customers, building a brand, or growing an online presence, marketing becomes a skill you pick up along the way.
The interesting thing is that marketing is everywhere. Whether you're writing social media posts, creating content, networking, or selling an idea, you're essentially marketing.
At Aqva Marketing, we've worked with business owners who initially had no marketing background but gradually learned the importance of SEO, content marketing, reputation management, and customer engagement. Sometimes the best marketers are those who learned through real-world experience rather than formal training.
Has anyone else here accidentally become a marketer while pursuing something completely different? 🤔
Aryan, the line about studying marketing but actually ending up studying people was probably my favorite part.
I have noticed something similar whenever I learn about things outside of development. You start because of the technical side, but somehow you end up learning more about communication, trust, and how people make decisions.
I also liked your point about already doing marketing without realizing it. When you're building projects, writing posts, or putting together a portfolio, you're not just showing what you've built. You're also telling people something about yourself, whether you realize it or not.
I think that's what surprised me most too.
I expected marketing to teach me about campaigns and promotion. Instead it kept pulling me back toward questions about people, incentives, trust, and decision-making.
And yeah, the portfolio realization was a weird one. For a long time I thought I was just documenting things I was building. Looking back, I was also telling a story about what I cared about and how I approached problems.
Really glad that part resonated with you.
Really enjoyed this perspective. It’s funny how many of us start out thinking that building great things is all about the technical side, and then slowly realize how much communication, positioning, and understanding people matter too. Great read!
That's right, and what's even more interesting is that how this makes sense for so many other professions out there... I am glad you enjoyed reading through! Thank you!
Welcome! Aryan❤️
One thing that stood out to me was the idea that value alone isn't enough. As engineers, we often focus on building better products, but we spend far less time learning how people perceive and understand that value. This post connected those two worlds really well.
I think that's exactly what surprised me.
For a long time I assumed that if something was genuinely useful, people would naturally recognize its value. But the more I looked around, the more examples I found of great products, ideas, and even people being overlooked simply because the value wasn't being communicated clearly.
Building the thing matters.
Helping people understand why it matters seems to matter just as much.
Glad the post resonated with you, and thanks for reading!
This is something I think about a lot.
The more I grow in software engineering, the more I realize technical quality and perceived value, these are actually two different problems. Building the product is one thing. But making the right people understand what you built, that's a completely different problem to solve.
And it's the same with career growth. Most engineers, including me, we just focus on getting better at the technical side. But I observed that the engineers who actually get opportunities they are not always the most skilled ones. They communicate well. They are visible. People trust them.
Skills matter. But skills alone don't create opportunities. How you present yourself, how you talk about your work, how people perceive you that decides a lot.
Your post made me think about this in a different way and For that thank a lot.
I think that's exactly the realization I've been slowly bumping into.
For the longest time, I assumed opportunities were mostly a function of skill. Now I'm starting to see that trust, visibility, communication, and reputation all play a role too.
Not in a superficial "personal brand" way, but in the sense that people need some way to understand what you can do and why it matters.
The technical work creates the value.
The human side helps that value travel.
Really enjoyed reading your perspective on this.
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