Week 941

Matt Kirkland

It's Week 941!

Joey Roth has this great visualization of a scale between TALK and WORK; he breaks down a few character types based on their allocation on this scale. A Martyr is all work and no talk, a Charlatan is all talk and no work, and a Hustler is all work AND all talk.

Programmers, introverts, and midwesterners all tend towards the Martyr side of this: they do a bunch of work but don't tell others about it, and so thus don't get credit. But they also don't help people understand the work they do.

BNB has a lot of programmers, introverts, and midwesterners! But we need to be Hustlers. It's important that we do great work - that's a given - but it's also important that we communicate that work also. We're pretty good about this internally, and we're improving about how we communicate our work to others. But we're definitely still on the 'Martyr' side of the scale.

In part this is because a ton of our work is literally stuff we can't talk about. It's NDA'd within an inch of its life, and more importantly it's an internal tool that gives our clients a competitive advantage in their work. What we deliver to clients often becomes part of their secret sauce that helps them win.

But for the not-secret parts? We want to get better at talking about it. We're really proud of the things we make with our clients. And even more important: it helps our partners and stakeholders understand the work that we're doing together, and helps them communicate to others.