At Mux, we encourage everyone across all teams to participate in speaking opportunities–that includes engineering, product, data science, sales, and so on. We feel so strongly in the value of this that it’s a part of our onboarding document for new employees. The following is taken directly from that document.
Why we speak
We’re smart and we build cool shit, both individually and as a team. When we go speak about what we work on we give outsiders a glimpse into what makes us special: us. The content itself is, of course, also critically important, but we’re a team full of personality that cares about what we’re building and the customers we support.
Giving a talk about what we do to execute on that mission helps people. Those people may never be our customers, and that’s totally ok. Every developer that thinks well of us is one more person that might answer a question with, “have you thought about using Mux?” either in person or online.
We should always look for opportunities to advocate for ourselves so we can build advocates in others. A Mux employee talking about the joys of Mux is great, but random developers talking positively about us is how we win.
While speaking about our work benefits us as a company, it also benefits us individually as professionals. This creates a virtuous cycle where we build our reputations together: People know Mux has great people, therefore Mux is great, and vice versa. This reputation also outlives an individual tenure at the company. We all take our reputations with us when our career takes us to a new team.
Be yourself, just remember you represent us.
This reputation building goes both ways. As we go forth and speak, remember that we represent the whole team, and once we’ve held the microphone people continue to pay more attention to us. Keep that in mind as we chat with people in the hallways and head to after-after parties.
What if I throw up on stage?
If you think public speaking is [insert worst feeling ever], don’t worry, speaking isn’t obligatory. Our ultimate goal is to add value for developers. So although we’d encourage you to try something outside of your comfort zone, there’s a ton of ways to connect to our audience and make a positive impression. You can: represent Mux at a dev conference, answer questions at meetups or online forums, help us host a happy hour, write various content, create a screencast, and the list goes on!
If this sounds interesting, come join us! We're hiring and have a variety of open roles.
Banner photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash
