Why should IT specialists develop their own media presence?

Development as an expert and speaker can help you increase your income and find a new, interesting project. But if a person focuses his efforts more on self-presentation rather than on the quality of the information he broadcasts, this can cause him reputational damage.

The opportunity to earn extra money from a blog, mentoring, and courses provides financial independence, which may be perceived negatively by employers. The company may feel that you will be distracted from your projects. Mentioning expert articles and your own training videos during an interview gives a certain advantage, if you do not specify that they bring additional income.

Popularity always goes hand in hand with hate. You need to be prepared for the fact that relatives, colleagues, and just onlookers on the Internet will criticize you for completely different reasons, including those that may not depend on you and the quality of your material.

Career and blogging are often incompatible things. As a rule, such engineers eventually go completely into the media space. Bloggers with an audience can earn many times more than a practicing engineer. Also, the disadvantages of working for hire are the salary ceiling and work schedule. Therefore, it is worth initially understanding whether this is exactly what you want or whether it is worth considering a different vector of development.

Results

To be or not to be – everyone decides for himself. But we should not evaluate the development of media as a magic pill. It is a tool that can help you achieve results when used correctly. It is important to clearly understand your career strategy and the points that you can highlight to be more productive. For example, an employer is looking for QA, and they need to fill the need for this part, and not build a DevRel/blog/PR brand. That is, having a personal brand can be a plus if the company has such a need.

Publicity also imposes some restrictions on you: you must control all your statements. This applies not only to your personal brand, but also to the company you represent. If your articles are based on the work of the company, then it is worth monitoring the information taken out so that it does not cause damage to the organization.