![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="48" height="48"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
Click to Subscribe to yacinelearning
networking guide for a hardened technical introvert
ok just to make it very clear this is a social networking guide not a telecom networking guide.
I've been chilling and networking in SF for a whole week and met really great people.
what a nice city
a few of them I would qualify as "hardened technical introverts".
amazing folks, but with a heavy thick shell of introversion. when it came to the topic of how they could get more opportunities and realize their career goals I nudged these souls to network with others (to their disarray).
so if you clenched just now at that word this article is also for you.
you may think: "yacine why should I network? I just want to do cool technical work man fuck this clown shit"
I hear you 100%.
but you gotta take 2 things into consideration:
- the world is vast. like real big and (no disrespect) no one cares about you particularly. not because they are mean or that they hate you. there is just so much going on in everyone's lives that they won't go out of their way to find you in your cave.
- the majority of technical work has a massive social component even more so the cutting-edge research stuff.
so. drop a bit your guard for 12 seconds open your mind just a tiny bit and answer me this:
Q: who would you prefer to work with?
- person A: you don't know them but they have very good technical skills.
- person B: you do know them well (and like them) and they have matching technical skills.
yessss that's it it's person B ding ding ding.
ka-tching
now the sad brutal truth is that you could reduce the technical skill component of person B by a pretty large margin and that person would still be the de-facto preferred candidate.
yes yes it suck. what a waste. the world would be a better place if the person with the most impeccable technical skill always got hired yes.
so let's make the world a better place by getting you out of your hardened introverted shell and into people's radar shall we?
warnings
I don't want you to burst out of your introvert cocoon into a hellish sociopathic butterfly.
please don't
no people CRM.
no "how to make friends and get people to like you" type of garbage.
the purpose of social networking is to build a social harness that you can feed and leverage.
we're going for making a net positive karmic contribution to the broader social networking graph ok?
mindset: building a social graph
I was reading this management book a whole while ago about networking (don't remember the name sorry) and boy was I prepared for corporate cringe.
I was literally ready to throw the book in the garbage before even reading the first page.
however it turned out it was a fantastic well balanced read (and actually got me more out there and shaking hands).
the gist of it is that you could encode all of your social connections as a weighted undirected graph with you in the middle of it.
remember these bad boys
everybody you ever met in life is a node in this graph.
now some edge are super strong (like with your immediate family) and some edge are barely there (your 2nd grade crush you barely talked to sorry joannie).
what they found out was that the "power networker" who seemed to get all the opportunities, close the most sales, hire the best people were the one with the...
suspense
the largest weak edge social graph.
this really opened up my eyes because this has massive implications on what exactly is effective networking.
activity: effective networking is weak edge graph building
now that this deep secret is out your objective is clear.
you just need to create a whole lot of weak edges in your social graph!
so you should definetly use one of these LinkedIn auto-messaging spammer bot and create a billion weak edges.
RIGHT?
LETS CONNECT RIGHT???
stop right there my nascent socipath and linger in the cocoon for like a few more minutes.
you actually have to make a meaningful weak-edge social graph. one that you can feed with something useful and can leverage whenever needed.
kind of like a natural symbiotic relationship.
some folks are amazing but useless from a weak edges graph building perspective.
for instance the 15+ aunties your mom knows are probably not going to help you much with your agentic AI career.
the activity is therefore to find two things:
- what population of folks would you like to be closer to that would be able to help you in future endeavors? (don't think short term)
- what slice of this population can you help in a way that is appreciated?
the first part is self-evident you are networking to potentially make use of an opportunity that will pop out of this graph at some point in the future.
the second part is one that is often overlooked but is absolutely crucial for a proper weak edge to form.
let's give an example:
- you find a population of tech enthusiasts in the RL space you really want to get closer with because you wanna work in RLVR building environment in the near future for enterprise SaaS in the automotive sector (wohou).
- you message every single one of them a BIG paragraph telling them everything about your life story from the moment you were born to that one trip you took in bulgaria that made you think about RL in this very niche conference...
ma man you are not going to get any edges out of these interactions.
the thing that is creating and sustaining the edges in your social graph is both nodes exchanging bits of information back and forth in a way that is conducive to exchanging more in the future.
doing this well without becoming a social monstruosity is the name of the game.
karmic graph theory: how to make good edges
alright folks let's put on our little jhanas tin foil hat for a few minutes please.
let's discuss and exchange about B2B RLaaS for the automotive sector.
the big fat secret of how to be really good at networking in a way that doesn't feel like you are a sleazy account executive with a PIP damocles gun over your head is to adopt some karmic-woo-woo moral compass.
concretly you are trying to feed your network much more than you are taking out of it.
I repeat.
at any point in time you are giving more through the edges in your social graph than you are taking.
you will quickly realize that for some nodes you can't give anything much. others it's very easy..
you will also realize that there is a repetitive pattern in the form of help you provide to some nodes.
this is great because as a smart technical person you are in the unique position to scale that help you provide to the graph through education or technical solutions.
also as your graph grows you will start to feel it's network effect:
- some people will start to initiate connections.
- some nodes that were not accessible will start to open up.
- and you will now be able to help some people you couldn't before through the power of your weak edges graph by giving them connection bridges.
but it all comes down to what you can give to that social weak edges graph.
btw you don't have to start shoveling their driveway or repairing each of your connection roofs.
we're building weak edges here not trying to make 10,000 best friends.
"concretely man what the hell do I do?"
okok it's very simple and it looks like this (in-person or online):
you: hey man how's it going
other: hey doing great thanks
you: I see you are in ____ what do you do exactly?
other: yes I'm in _____ I do _____ and also ____
you: oh wow that's nice I also dabble in ____ are you working with ____ or _____?
other: oh no no we actually work with ____.
you: that's very cool, but watch out for _____ because that fucking sucked in project AELLA we were trying to spin up.
other: ok cool thanks for the headsup.
.... (might stop there)
other: what do YOU do in ____ btw?
you: ah me I do _____ it's actually a silly story I was in bulgaria and [...]
I want you to notice a few things my dear chrysalis:
- you are curious about their thing.
- you are not absolutely clueless about the thing they do.
- you don't trauma dump 78 paragraph worth of discussion topic.
- 🚨🚨🚨 YOU STOP THE CONVERSATION AT SOME POINT. 🚨🚨🚨
at some point some people are done talking to you.
don't take it personal man their dog might be dying right now they don't care about anything you might say.
this is the jolly power of LOTS of weak edges graph building.
because you can start many of these conversations and some of them will go further than others.
some might restart after some time. some might just continue to a ridiculous degree and YOU will need to abort.
but overall you are able to slowly help this social graph and after a while before you know it you are a person B which people really want to work with!
hope it help buddy best of luck out there.
also side note while networking you will have the beautiful opportunity to find kindred spirit that you will not be able to resist creating stronger edges with.
do it. it's the best part.
