I suspect part of it is also just visibility. You can't be hired, if people don't know about you. Being active in a community gives pretty large visibility surface area, while still being able to provide genuine value & build relationships.
yes, i believe that's very true. the challenge now is for me to figure out what the best places are to be visible on.
programming language forums are good when they are growing and there is more demand than can be satisfied. i was in a group like that and it worked well for a while.
i think potentially small business forums should be good. a least when i want to target small businesses.
> any recommendations or other suggestions?
Sure, but not any you should really deeply pay attention to :)
Targeting small businesses can be good and fun, for a variety of reasons. It's just... small business mean everything from rivet manufacturers to real estate agents. The more generalised you are, the less you can set yourself apart.
The more focused you are, the more you begin to understand your market / audience - what matters to them, common problems, financial cycles, the overall network etc - the better you can serve them (including making actual products for them). This creates a positive feedback loop... over a long period of time. Years, probably (at least it was for me. I started from scratch in the web dev space, it's taken about 4 years to get to a 'good' financial position with nice clients).
I've begun specialising in web-tech-for-hardware (so not embedded, but web tech focused around accessing, commissioning, controlling embedded devices by non-engineers), and providing the supporting software for those (web apps with serial support, manufacturing test systems, in-field mobile apps to access & setup devices when there's no internet). It's niche, but I thought it was a good field because I also like UI/UX design, and I felt it's something embedded engineers aren't great at.
I originally started my career in the embedded space (before taking a detour into the business world), so I guess it gave me enough of a leg up to understand just enough parlance to talk shop. Not enough to really build anything, but to know what UART or I2C are, to know to poke fun at PLCs, the difficulty with soldering LGA/BGAs, why performance and low power matter, etc etc. This builds trust... but that's a by-product. I genuinely enjoy the space and like the people, so I guess that comes across too.
Maybe instead of focusing on a technical field, if you're interested in helping small businesses, see if they have any industry groups or bodies you can join + conferences you can attend. Be the guy in the room that has the skills they don't have. There might be lots of more competent engineers out there (certainly true for me), but in my case I'm the only guy I know that's willing to be in _this_ particular space.
