developers want to read documentation
they won't look at any white papers
?!?!?!?!!
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
266 points (85.4% liked)
Technology
75258 readers
3416 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Here's the thing... I want to be sold something. Not anything, but certain somethings. There was a brief time when Google AdSense was new that I was excited for the experience. (I now know how fucking stupid I was, but hey, I was young).
The idea that a new product aligned to my interests and designed with me in mind would be advertised to me instead of feminine hygiene products or mesothelioma lawsuit ads seemed awesome.
I do not want your bullshit hype machine alpha male inside club cool kid image peddled as the reason I should hand you my money. You've got the wrong guy. Tell me what it does with a side of what I can do with it. And the "what I can do with it" shouldn't be "get laid".
The idea that a new product aligned to my interests and designed with me in mind would be advertised to me instead of feminine hygiene products or mesothelioma lawsuit ads seemed awesome.
Broadly speaking, the problem with modern American advertisement isn't the content so much as the volume. Tried to watch a football game a few weeks back and I barely saw any football being played. Every millisecond of screen time and every pixel of screen space that wasn't a moving football was consumed by ads.
I was at an actual game a year ago, foolishly thinking being there was going to be a better experience. NOPE. Ads on the announcements. Ads at the endzones. Ads painted into the turf. I got solicited to buy shit as I was loading up my ticket and right inside the gate once I was scanned in. The whole interior of the stadium was a mall full of overpriced crap. Seats were branded. The food was branded. I was buying something and I was drowning in people trying to sell me more shit.
I don't care if every single item on offer is something I might actually want. I can't fucking breath for it all.
Volume is the biggest problem, sure. Content is a close second. I was flabbergasted last time I was in the USA. Ads have barely any relation to what they're selling.
A poster for shoes features a full-body shot of a half-naked model, the shoes barely visible with the whole poster within your visual field at once.
Ads for beer, travel agencies, clothes and antidepressant medicine, which should be illegal to advertise, by the way, are indistinguishable from each other: just a few happy 20-somethings in a nonspecific late afternoon outdoors setting.
A bunch of ads I saw I don't even know what they were for, they just had hot young people and logos for companies I never heard of. No text, no nothing.
Several ads purporting to sell an "experience" when they were for the most mundane, use-it-on-autopilot products you've ever heard of. The products were so forgettable I can't remember an actual example, but picture an ad selling you on the wonderful experience of using the new ad-supported monthly coat hanger subscription service and you've got it.
Ads for lawyers (something else that should be illegal) were on point though: "hey, do you want money you know you don't deserve at all but can be argued in bad faith that you do? Hit me up".
Oh, and everything is perpetually half-off, because the American consumer is apparently too stupid to realize that just means they're lying about the price.
I think a slightly more insidious side to targeting ads is that even when they have the "right" product for you, it's the shitier and overpriced one. The one that spent money on marketing instead of quality.
This... strikes me more as self-aggrandizing than informative.
Yes, many technical folks are put off by certain marketing tricks. Good marketers just use different techniques when targeting people in this market, when they bother to at all.
We're not immune to manipulation; and thinking that we are makes us more susceptible to it.
But you need to remember that those targeted practices are very few in comparison to the volume of neuro-regular/non-technical folks.
So we arent peone to the same bullshit in regards to volume.
Maybe - but the marketing that won't affect you isn't what you need to worry about. It's the parts that do still work on you need to be careful of - and if you assume nothing will ever work on you, you won't even notice when something does take. Whether that's buying a trinket that doesn't actually make you happy, or joining a group that turns out to be a cult.
Always better to assume you can be manipulated, and check in with yourself periodically.
Spot on.
Bullshit
Funko pops. Lego. Star wars. Marvel
This article is about software tools, not those other things.
The phenomenon of fanboyism in Tech disproves that, IMHO.
Good marketing absolutely works on nerds. We will literally share cool ads (funny world best) with each other in the same way with memes, which is part of "viral marketing".
At the same time though, those lame ads using low-grade, overused memes (usually the comic ones) trying to be edgy pretty much make me want to pass on a product. Crappy AI-gen ads are even worse.
But next time I go to Japan, I absolutely still want to try a Sakaeru gummy because THAT marketing campaign was just brilliant and entertaining
( https://youtu.be/LQsMp4Oo6xM )
I've also seen a few cool tech things in ads that I've looked into. Generally nothing I'll grab right away but they often end up in a list of things that I potentially buy later when I've some free cash or the need. Aliexpress is pretty good with this as it tends to suggest neat tech things that are a cheap to add and fill that "free shipping" gap.
What DOESN'T work is cheap/lame broadside marketing with little to no product details. I don't want a video as an ad - especially not one from an influencer who has no clue but looks pretty - but I'm happy to look up an actual product demo that includes key features/points.
Honestly though, the best thing is if the product demonstratibly works. This is especially true for FOSS-based products that have stuff I can try for free at home (personal use) or ones where the main product is usable for limited seats etc and has a commercial/premium license with value-add like AD/SAML group integrations or SSO/MFA.
That said, any asshole who cold-calls me pretending an existing business relationship to setup a marketing meeting is going on "the list", and vendor "demos" that are just marketing slides aren't far off on that either
I liked the ads and saw the candy in a japanese speciality shop.
The small packs with 5 pieces has a very artificial grape flavor.
Not my cup of tea tbh.
I am sympathetic to the frustration with and resistance to feeling marketed to, but this person just seems to lack self-awareness... And lack of awareness in general. Not a good look.
I won't assume he's representative of large swathes of developers 👀👀👀
Nice try. This is just trying to get us to lower our guard and become complacent!
Or it's brewing up excuses for declining sales.
Yeah pretty much, i mean you cant just assume because someone is a developer that they have a brain but this sums up my relationship with all the sales people ive met in my career
Me: Hey i need information about your product
Sales: Hey id love to swing by and show you our product line. How many can we put you foen for? Can we schedule a call?
Me: finds a different vendor
I was always on the front lines of dealing with software vendors and I was just fine setting up a call. Now if the website wouldn't give me so much as basic info and pricing, denied.
Related, one night I spend an hour researching bulk sandbag prices. Found ONE site that displayed my cost, no "call for pricing".
Yeah I think sales people are so trained into being sales people that they dont actually know how to talk like a human being anymore.
Seriously, there is something about those guys. They just cant talk normally. Not everyone. I have met some of them that just talk normally. and are aware of their products pros and cons in relation to what you need. Those are useful.
On the other hands, nerds can have their own little annoying habits too. Sometimes they have no social skills at all and act like machines.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I've had a theory for a while that most marketing is targeted at neurotypical people, and that it is therefore far less effective on some neurodivergent people. People love to act like neurodivergent people are immune to marketing and propaganda. Maybe the detail-oriented ness of someone with ASD does ruin a narrative, but I feel that it's mostly just that people and companies aren't used to targeting these demographics.
There probably were some ads in the past that might've (probably unintentionally) targeted people on the spectrum. The IBM Selectric ad from the 60's instead of bullshitting about changing your lifestyle (like today's car ads do) focuses on the product's technological prowess.
Now I want one of those type elements as decoration
Has anyone been to any kind of convention for nerdy things. Nerds are so captured by the marketing and products being sold that they let it take over their personality and they can’t stop buying junk.
Yeah, this is self-aggrandizement from a group of people who consistently believe they're smarter than everybody else, when in reality they just lack self-awareness. Nerds will smugly post in this thread using their overpriced mechanical keyboard as a wall of Funko pops and Star Wars slop looms behind them. I worked in marketing for a long time and I know damn well I'm not immune to it.
I believe that thinking you're immune to something makes you even more vulnerable, because it creates a cognitive blind spot. If you think you can't make mistakes, you don't stop to wonder if you are making one.
Pretty much, yeah.
The article points out how a bunch of specific techniques don't work on programmers. That's because they're aimed at project managers, not programmers. And yeah, they work. Hardly any programmers willingly chose Jira for their ticketing system, but project managers love that shit, and it's everywhere.
All it really means is that it takes a different set of marketing techniques to reach programmers. They generally don't bother, because programmers don't typically control the budget directly.
load more comments
(23 replies)
load more comments
(19 replies)
As someone who works in marketing. We are not ignorant to how people operate and how to get in front of them. Go to the sentence that "Management makes most of the decisions". We'll be aiming for the people who actually buy things. Unfortunately in B2B sales that is usually the CEO/CFO/VP who has very little time to read and learn and would rather someone call and explain everything to make a problem go away. Typically they are of an older generation and hate digital media and wouldn't be caught dead on Reddit.
That said, I always say honestly sells itself. Embellishing the truth or straight up lies will only get you so far and it's typically short term gains.
Agency's love scummy marketing tactics. This because it's good numbers to them and they could give a fuck what it does to the client. They just want them to see that the graph goes up sharply for the first month and than silently bleed them dry as it flattens out and they can push more tricks or services to make graph go up again.
Inhouse teams (like me) can't shit where they eat, so have a more genuine strategy for the long term. We are vested in the well-being of our company.
Seems to me the difference between ethical and unethical marketing is the difference between trying to inform vs. influence your potential customer.
Products need a way to find customers, and customers need a way to find products - this is the problem marketing should be solving. Instead I see businesses hiring people trying everything but just informing customers.
Yeah, no prices. I move on. Same with job ads, no salary no application. If I get an intrusive ad, I'm not buying that product, I'll deliberately seek out another brand in fact.
Is that a weird attitude to have? I thought it just made sense. We shouldn't be rewarding this BS.
Really? Then why is Apple so popular among a subset of developers?
Because Windows fucking sucks and Linux is a can of worms not everyone wants to deal with?
Apple isn't free of sin, but it's the simplest way to get a system that doesn't actively work against you.
As much as I hate it, Apple has good products. And it's enough for enough people to have active development community. By that point it's catch 22.
Have you ever tried to setup a development environment in Windows? Windows fucking sucks for development unless you're committed to handing over wads of cash for a VS license, and even then it's really only good if your okay using a bunch of proprietary MS stuff.
Actually yes, I do cross platform development on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mac is by far the most work and breaks constantly.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›