Whether you’re currently employed, or are actively seeking (as in, job-hunting is your full-time occupation), one of the most important things that you can do is to build your Portfolio.
We talked about your Portfolio in this previous blogpost, with examples of how to use GitHub, LinkedIn, and your personal domain as “Portfolio bases.”
Your Boss Is a Tired, Whiny Five-Year Old
Here’s the single most-valuable tip that I can offer. EVERYTHING that follows will be ways to carry this out.
Treat your reader (prospective boss) like a five-year old. A tired, cranky (and secretly whiny) five-year old. The last thing that they want to do is to read your stuff.
Rule 1: Your boss is a tired, whiny five-year old. Tell them a bedtime story.“
A.J. Maren – “Five Rules for Writing”
So … instead of writing a dry, dull technical report … tell them a bedtime story.
That is the most powerful essence of today’s post.
Everything else supports that overall theme.
You as (Understated) Hero: Telling the Story
The essence of the bedtime story is that there is a problem. The problem looms ever larger. It threatens the safety of the kingdom. The ruler (your boss, or prospective boss) dispatches the best knight in the kingdom to solve the problem. (The “knight” would be you.)
Now, you’ve solved the problem, and you’re coming back to tell the ruler that you did it ... keeping in mind that all the ruler REALLY wants is to know that the job is done, and done well.
Your job is to tell this story as succinctly as possible.
The ruler (your boss) does NOT want to know all the details.
That person wants to know enough to be certain that you did the job competently. As in, you slew (or maybe even tamed) the right dragon, hopefully in the right kingdom, etc.
So coming back in triumph, of course you want to tell all the details.
Save that for the town tavern, where if you buy sufficient rounds, someone will feel obligated to listen to you.
For your boss – as tight and abbreviated a summary as possible. Illustrated with pictures. (Remember – cranky, whiny five-year old.)
Rule 2. Every story starts with the heroic challenge.”
A.J. Maren – “Five Rules for Writing”
Short, Simple, Summarized
When you return to tell your story to the ruler, the ruler will be seeing you at the end of the day … and all your ruler wants is to have one more glass of wine and to go to bed.
But … your ruler is a good, conscientious ruler. Someone who wants to be assured that the job is done, and done well.
So – tell your ruler the essence of your story, with these important points:
Rule 3. Make your story as short and to-the-point as possible. ALL DETAILS go into appendices. Keep the essence very tight and focused.”
A.J. Maren – “Five Rules for Writing”
There are three essential steps:
- Keep the storyline tight. Move all details to supporting appendices.
- Keep EVERYTHING short. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.
- Introductions, summaries, and transitions. It’s that old rule of “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you’ve told them.”
Remember EVERYTHING that you learned in Freshman Comp 101. (And I just don’t have the time or energy to re-teach you all of that here.)
A Simple Example
Last quarter, my heroic quest was to teach myself generative AI.
Along the way, I realized that I had a serious mis-understanding of the generative AI fundamentals. (We’re talking math/info-theory/statistical mechanics fundamentals here – NOT which LLM does what.)
The essence was that I (and collectively, we) need to use the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence, not the “regular” Kullback-Leibler divergence, when starting to understand generative AI.
Also, the ORDER in which we used certain “big concepts” was important.
I expressed this in a simple infographic.
Rule 4. Use pictures, infographics, diagrams, flowcharts, tables, and every possible well-constructed visual device to tell your story.
A.J. Maren – “Five Rules”