In the past, picking up clients used to be easier. Don’t get me wrong, you still had to put in the work to track them down and do the research but once you reached to them, they’d respond back. Often, you’d study what they were looking for, the problems they were trying to solve, and offer technical expertise (consulting). The best part about all this was that you could point clients to your site (i.e portfolio) where all of your learnings, open source work, speaking engagements, and much more is laid out for all to see. More often than not, they would be eager to start a conversation because they would be happy that you sought them out instead of the other way around. Plus, finding professional talent with integrity and grit — that shows up day in and day out — is hard to come by.

These days, this is less possible because few are responding. If you send an email to inquire further, you’ll most likely get no response back. If you do get a response back, it might be terse or an immediate rejection with no explanation as to why. That’s confirmation, at least, so you know what they are saying publicly doesn’t add up with the behavior that got you excited to reach out in the first place. In other situations, you might get a response a month or two months later which, at that point, you definitely don’t want to work with them since this is another indicator that they don’t have their act together.

Leadership is hard to do well because you must put in constant effort to maintain the trust of your team all while your team is constantly growing and adapting as well. This means the motivations of those you lead are changing too. Much like shifting sand where the landscape is always reforming.

What’s new is leaders are starting to ghost those they manage. Seems completely counterintuitive — and it is — but also deeply unprofessional.

For example, you might have someone you report too (i.e. client, customer, team lead, etc) where you keep them abreast on progress, concerns, blockers, innovate ideas to adopt, and they’ll straight up ghost you. No response or acknowledgement. In some cases they’ll have the outward veneer of positivity but when you press them, they won’t dig in to learn more as to why you are pointing out cracks in the architecture, team, business strategy, etc. I can’t imagine ever doing this to someone else and can’t believe I have to write about this but leaders that ghost their team is reason to find different work.

Mentorship is similar to leadership but more hands on where a mentee seeks out the mentor or where you offer instead. This is especially true as you get older and more established. Good on the mentee for taking the initiative!

This is a serious commitment that isn’t to be taken lightly because you’ll be spending hours investing in the individual. Especially if you practice Shuhari.

Then, after you start up the conversation, you’re ghosted. There’s no follow through or further correspondence. What is initially meant to be an act of kindness and a way to pay it forward so-to-speak is now a no hire.

Attending local interest groups, traveling to conferences, and meeting new folks, in general, is always a good way to forge new relationships. Sometimes you might bump into folks that already know you through your writings, open source work, an so forth. Always a happy occurrence, especially when you learn you’ve made an impact on folks or helped level them up in a meaningful way.

Other times, you’ll meet people that are eager to work with you. That’s exciting, as well, but tricky especially when they don’t have the skill to match the experience. This isn’t a bad thing, mind you, but does mean investment is required. Where things get awkward is when an individual claims to have a decade or more worth of experience but has nothing to show for it. No writings. No speaking engagements. No open source work. No projects you can dig into to learn more about them. If you’re lucky, you might get access to a private repository to review but then find the following:

None of this adds up with what has been communicated. So the next step is to help them out and give them feedback on what they could do better by pointing out the above and emphasizing why it’s important to have good hygiene and pride in your work. Then: ghosted! No acknowledgement or gratitude for taking the time to provide feedback. Only silence.

Getting feedback — especially when kind — might not always be appreciated but ghosting as the ultimate response is lazy (let alone, unprofessional).

Working with a lot of people over the years means you have a lot of people you can reach out to. What’s shocking is some of them — even those you’ve spent a decent amount of time with — will ghost you too! This is hard to grapple with because this feels like any semblance of social grace has gone out the door. Sure, people are busy but providing a small acknowledgment like a short reply that they’ll get back to you or even follow up after a slight delay is much better than total silence.