I was the Computer Operations Director at a major national retailer, running the systems for a multi-billion dollar company with a small team. Then on a Friday night everything crashed. It wasn’t a minor glitch. It was a complete failure, the kind that could cost the company millions if it wasn’t fixed by Monday morning. I spent hours trying everything I knew. Then I started calling vendor numbers. Most didn’t answer after business hours. The ones who did treated me like any other customer who could wait until Monday, which from their side was entirely reasonable.
I sat in that empty office surrounded by broken computers and worked something out. Twenty years in the industry, and I’d built exactly zero meaningful professional relationships. There was nobody I could call.
Why do technical people avoid building a network?
Because I thought networking was for other people. For most of my career I kept my head down, did the work, and avoided the social side of business entirely. Networking was for slick salespeople and smooth talkers. I was an introverted computer person and it wasn’t for me, and I said that to myself with a certain amount of pride.
That worked, in the sense that nothing forced me to reconsider. I was good at the technical part and the technical part was what I was paid for. There was never an obvious day when the absence of relationships cost me something, and that’s how you arrive at twenty years without noticing. The bill doesn’t arrive gradually. It arrives on a Friday night.
What does a network really do?
It gives you somebody to call, and that’s nearly the whole of it.
People discuss networking as though it were about opportunities, or visibility, or a larger contact list. Those are side effects. The function is that when you’re in trouble, at an inconvenient hour, there’s a person who picks up and who knows enough about you to help.
What I had instead was a list of vendor support numbers, a commercial relationship, and commercial relationships operate on business hours. Nobody on that list owed me anything or knew my name. I had been perfectly professional with all of them for two decades and it bought me exactly nothing at eleven at night.
The crash eventually got fixed through determination and sleepless nights. It got fixed the hard way, and the hard way was available only because it was a technical problem. Plenty of problems aren’t. I went through four major crashes in those years, and this was the one where nobody picked up. What I resent now is how long I let myself believe a support contract counted as a relationship. It counts as a phone number, and phone numbers keep business hours while systems don’t.
Does technical skill protect you?
Up to a point, and the point is closer than most technical people believe.
Being good at something is a real asset and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. What it doesn’t do is create the conditions under which you get help, get considered, or get told things early. Those all run on relationships, and skill doesn’t generate them as a by-product no matter how much of it you have.
That was the harsh version of the lesson. Technical skill had carried me from the beginning of my career to a director’s office at a company doing billions in revenue, and it couldn’t get one person to answer a phone.
The book on this: Networking Without the BS is 32 chapters on building professional relationships when you’re not a natural at it, written by somebody who had none after twenty years and had to start.
How do you start building a network from nothing?
Not by walking into a room full of strangers, the advice that puts most quiet people off permanently.
Ten people who know your work and would answer the phone will do more for you than four hundred who recognize your name.
You start with the people you already know and have let go quiet. Former colleagues. The vendor rep you dealt with fairly for years. The person you helped once who would be glad to hear from you. That list is longer than it feels when you’re convinced you have no network, and reaching out to somebody you’ve already met is a completely different act from introducing yourself to a stranger.
The second thing is to make it ordinary.
I can’t stand people who surface only when they need a favor, and a Friday night like mine is exactly when you’d be tempted to become one, calling a former colleague after five silent years because a server is down. Everybody can feel that difference immediately. Call when nothing is wrong.
How do introverts build a professional network?
Depth instead of volume. That turns out to be the better strategy anyway.
The extroverted model is a large number of light connections. It works for the people it works for. For somebody who finds the whole business draining, it’s both unpleasant and inefficient, because it produces the exact thing I already had: a lot of names and nobody to call. Conference organizers and networking gurus sell the volume model because volume fills rooms and sells badges. For a quiet technical person that advice does real damage: it convinces you the whole business isn’t for you, and that belief cost me twenty years.
Ten people who know your work and would answer the phone will do more for you than four hundred who recognize your name. Ten is a manageable number. It’s roughly one new relationship every few weeks for a year, built through ordinary conversations instead of events.
| Aspect | Volume model | Depth model |
|---|---|---|
| Size | A large number of light connections | About ten people who know your work |
| What you end up with | A lot of names and nobody to call | People who would answer the phone |
| How it’s built | Events and rooms full of strangers | Ordinary conversations, starting with people you already know |
| Pace | Constant events | Roughly one new relationship every few weeks for a year |
| Fit for quiet technical people | Draining, unpleasant and inefficient | Manageable, and the better strategy anyway |
I would have rejected this advice for most of my career on the grounds that I was busy and it wasn’t my sort of thing. Both were true. Neither helped on Friday.
My take
Technical skill won’t save you on a Friday night when the system’s down and nobody answers. People will. Build ten relationships with people who know your work, one every few weeks, and call them when nothing’s wrong. Skip the volume networking events if they drain you. Four hundred names who barely know you won’t pick up the phone. Ten who do will.
When should you start building a professional network?
The absence costs nothing until it costs everything. There’s no warning and no gradual signal.
Start with people you already know. The neglected list is the easiest and it’s where the real relationships already are.
Ten is enough. Stop imagining networking as a numbers exercise you’d be bad at.
Do it on ordinary days. Relationships built when you need something aren’t available when you need something.
Being good at your job isn’t a substitute. I believed it was for twenty years and it was the single most expensive assumption I’ve made.
I fixed the system that weekend. I also stopped being able to tell myself that the social side of business was for other people. That was the more useful outcome of the two. A lot of good engineers are still sitting where I sat, sure their competence will cover them. It won’t cover the night the system dies and every number you have belongs to a call center that opens Monday. Call one person you’ve let go quiet this week, while nothing is broken.
Introverted technical people need a network before the crash. My book Networking Without the BS starts with that Friday night and shows how to build relationships that hold.
