How to Grow your Network 🍻

A no-nonsense guide for engineers and introverts.

For as long as I can remember, a good share of the people I admired have recommended me to grow my network.

VCs, other founders, people at conferences — they all seemed a lot into it.

The problem is, I am not a big networker.

I am kind of an introvert, and for the most part of my life I haven’t put much thought into meeting more people. I have a small, trusted circle of friends; I have a set of current + former co-workers who I respect—and respect me likewise—and that’s it.

That’s until two years ago. In just a couple of years, the following things happened to me:

1. I started to work 100% remotely.

2. I started writing Refactoring as a side gig.

3. I quit my job to work full-time on Refactoring.

In hindsight, all these events gradually shifted the bulk of my work relationships from those with my co-workers, to those with… strangers on the internet!

This changed the game completely.

While at the office you may not need much effort to relate to people, because they are all around you, when you are alone at home every gesture is intentional. If you don’t put in the effort, you don’t get anything in return.

So, over the last year I have developed routines that help me keep track of the people I care about. Things are not perfect, and what works for me might not work for you, but these principles and systems have served me well and I am now comfortable that, at least, I am not missing out big way.

It’s the classic 20% of effort to get 80% of results.

So, this article is my take on how you can create and nurture your network in tech. It covers:

• ✨ How friendships are made — backed by science™!

• 🌱 Three types of relationships — not all relationships are made equal.

• 🌟 Principles for networking — the non-trivial ideas that have been the most useful to me.

• 🔄 How to nurture relationships — what I do to meet new people, and to make sure I keep showing up.

• ✏️ Journaling + CRM — the personal system that I use everyday for keeping track of people and events.

Let’s go!

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✨ How friendships are made

If you search on Google for something like a formula for friendships, you will find plenty of books and papers, each with a slightly different theory.

However, even if some quality might get a different name, or something present here might be absent there, the main themes stay the same.

Two factors, in particular, seem to have the most impact on forming good, long-lasting relationships: Familiarity and Vulnerability.

• Familiarity — is about repeated, physical proximity with the other person. In several studies, physical closeness predicts interpersonal attraction. This might be the result of the mere exposure effect: we tend to prefer things that are the most familiar to us.

• Vulnerability — means being exposed to the possibility of being hurt, physically or emotionally. Vulnerability is key for meaningful relationships because it requires being open with each other, which in turn creates trust.

So, it is not surprising that the bulk of our relationships come from the environment where we share the most experiences with others, early in our lives: school.

At school, relationships form naturally. Familiarity is at an all-time-high, and so is vulnerability created by the turmoil of our own growth.

Things are so natural, that people never learn to seek and curate relationships intentionally, which instead becomes crucial at a later stage of your life when you have 1) less time, and 2) less exposure to other new, interesting people everyday.

So, fast forward to our adult age, let’s start with a basic question: who should you be friends with?

🌱 Three types of relationships

In February of this year I wrote an article on the various types of growth relationships, focusing on the three main ones: Sponsors, Mentors, and Coaches.

People who make you grow 🌱

The article covered the professional angle of such relationships, but I have found that the same dynamics can be found within your personal ones.

Here is a recap of what these roles are about:

1. Sponsors — people who can help you reach your goals by doing something for you, like introducing you to somebody, or sponsoring you for a job. These people might be super connectors; prominent people in your space, colleagues or potential partners.

2. Mentors — experienced people willing to support your personal or professional development. They are those you reach out to for advice about specific matters, because they have gone through the same things.

3. Coaches — people whose judgement you trust and can help you figure out what the problem really is. They challenge you and help with introspection.

People in your life can play different roles at different times, so you can’t simply tag them into one of these categories. However, I have found that these types of relationships, in this order, often match with how close I am to somebody.

Most of the shallow connections I have can be described as light sponsors. We do things to help each other, create intros to other people, partnerships, etc.

With people I am closer with, there is often a mentorship relationship. This might be reciprocal — we give each other advice about the things we are respectively experts about. Also, such expertise is often the thing that made us get closer in the first place.

Finally, my best friends act as coaches with me, and I try to do the same with them.

I find it hard to coach / being coached by people I don’t have a close relationship with, unless we talk of professional coaching. I think that’s because good coaching requires openness, vulnerability, and regular encounters. These are the same key ingredients for good friendships. In fact, the opposite also works: I have often become good friends with people I have coached professionally.

So, what’s the point of all of this? This simple model is useful to ask yourself some questions:

• What’s the role of this person in my life right now? And what is mine in theirs?

• Is the relationship with them where I would like it to be? Can we do better? How?

I have found this model especially useful to reflect on the how part, which can be translated into more specific questions, like:

• As a sponsor — can I create more opportunities for this person? What are their goals?

• As a mentor — can I help them based on my experience? What do they want to learn?

• As a coach — can I be more of a good friend to them? What are they struggling with?

This looks good in theory, but how do you apply it in practice?