Networking.

While I, like many others, am guilty of overcomplicating networking, the whole thing isn’t harder than how you make friends on the playground as a child.

If you find out that someone is doing something you think is cool, tell them, and ask them about it. If you wonder about something that someone is well-versed in, ask them to pique their brain.

Sitting at a computer all day will do exactly nothing to expand your network. It might feel comfortable tough. You scope neat mini programming puzzles for yourself, solve them, and can brag to yourself about being productive. You can then spend the rest of the week wondering why your phone is never ringing.

Reach out to people who used to be in your network. If you weren’t totally socially inept (which I failed at occasionally), they’ll remember you and won’t be upset about hearing from you.

Networking is not a separate skill set to learn and work hard on. It’s, at its core, about being friendly, being interested in other people, and looking for opportunities to help them. Most of my social successes were correlated with me being helpful to people who have appreciated it.

That’s it.