<story><title>Business networking for nerds (2017)</title><url>http://benjaminreinhardt.com/networking-for-nerds/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fenwick67</author><text>Networking isn&amp;#x27;t talking to people about important things. It&amp;#x27;s talking to people with the specific goal of moving your career forward. That&amp;#x27;s what makes chronic networkers insufferable, and those people give networking a bad rap.</text></item><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>If you call it &amp;#x27;networking&amp;#x27; it sounds bad.&lt;p&gt;If you call it &amp;#x27;getting out there and speaking to people, listening to what their problems, hopes, opinions are, and sharing the same yourself and making a connection to see if you can mutually help each other&amp;#x27; then it suddenly sounds like a better thing, doesn&amp;#x27;t it?</text></item><item><author>incompatible</author><text>Think of how much society is set back because people who have no interest or ability with &amp;quot;networking&amp;quot; aren&amp;#x27;t given the opportunities that they should have had. Instead, we end up with the most socially aggressive &amp;#x2F; self promoting running practically everything (badly).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eropple</author><text>I network &lt;i&gt;all the damn time&lt;/i&gt;. I talk to people. I get lunch with new people who I don&amp;#x27;t know (there&amp;#x27;s a standing invite in my HN profile for a reason). I don&amp;#x27;t have some Specific Goal of Moving My Career Forward. I like people, I like meeting people, I like learning about them, and in the future maybe I&amp;#x27;ll do them a solid or they&amp;#x27;ll do me one.&lt;p&gt;It pays off, though. And it&amp;#x27;s fun.&lt;p&gt;But I have never started a conversation (at least, not with somebody I didn&amp;#x27;t already know well, like my boss) with the Specific Goal of Moving My Career Forward.&lt;p&gt;If that&amp;#x27;s what you think networking is, you&amp;#x27;re missing out.</text></comment>
<story><title>Business networking for nerds (2017)</title><url>http://benjaminreinhardt.com/networking-for-nerds/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fenwick67</author><text>Networking isn&amp;#x27;t talking to people about important things. It&amp;#x27;s talking to people with the specific goal of moving your career forward. That&amp;#x27;s what makes chronic networkers insufferable, and those people give networking a bad rap.</text></item><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>If you call it &amp;#x27;networking&amp;#x27; it sounds bad.&lt;p&gt;If you call it &amp;#x27;getting out there and speaking to people, listening to what their problems, hopes, opinions are, and sharing the same yourself and making a connection to see if you can mutually help each other&amp;#x27; then it suddenly sounds like a better thing, doesn&amp;#x27;t it?</text></item><item><author>incompatible</author><text>Think of how much society is set back because people who have no interest or ability with &amp;quot;networking&amp;quot; aren&amp;#x27;t given the opportunities that they should have had. Instead, we end up with the most socially aggressive &amp;#x2F; self promoting running practically everything (badly).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tomjen3</author><text>No, that is what makes bad networkers insufferable.&lt;p&gt;Really, when you network the goal should be to share and absorb information about who is doing and interested in what. Some time, which may be anywhere from milliseconds to decades, you might remember somebody who is going to benefit from that connection (could be you, could be somebody else, could be the person you talked with) and so you suggests the parties meet.&lt;p&gt;The people you complain about, and I agree with you 100%, are those who are focused on a particular goal, in the short term.&lt;p&gt;Human connections are like any other investment, if you try to get results this quarter, you will ruin everything. If you can wait ten years, you can get the world...&lt;p&gt;Networking is about give and take, providing value and making connections.</text></comment>