Source
r/AskProgramming•
programmingacctwork

It feels like almost everything in this industry is an advertisement, is it like this in other industries?

It seems like the majority of dev conferences are really just someone plugging the product for the company they work for with some "tips" sprinkled in.

Same with most blog post tutorials, how to do x with x.js and the author works for x.js

Even on twitch / youtube, like Learn with Jason for example, the guest is almost always someone plugging their product and it's masked as "learning"

I'm just curious if this is common in other industries as well, and how do I look past it because it's annoys me more than it should to tbh.

Posted Dec 17, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

714
2this4u•

How do you think they pay for conferences (and profit from them too)? Same in all industries.

11
Isvara•

By charging for tickets and having sponsors. The speakers aren't paying.

1
2this4u•

It's common for speakers to be there in coordination with a promotional sponsorship. E.g. if you have someone from Microsoft speaking about .NET, sure they haven't paid to speak but they're there to promote their product and to do that in the best way they might also have some sponsorship of the show - they're part of the same marketing plan.

1
Ikkepop•

All serious C++ conferences are really packed with useful information, cant say I ever seen anyone advertise anything in them. Also all the serious security conferencea I"v seen follow that vain. NDC is also really good..

Webdev tho... those are always so boring and useless

5
KingofGamesYami•

I really haven't encountered this. Yeah there's plenty of 'how to use x' content by the creators of x, but that's to be expected: I'd much prefer the creator documenting how to use their shit than the community having to do it for them.

3
nemec•

I was looking up "Jira alternatives" on Google the other day and all of the top results were competitors writing "Top X Jira Alternatives" lists where their own product was always coincidentally at the top of the list.

2
noratat•

Depends on the conference.

For what I do, there's one called DevOps Days that has various local conferences that's excellent. There are vendors there of course but they have their own clearly marked space.

Sadly the one near me was cancelled the last two years due to COVID - hoping to see it again never year finally.

2
baseball2020•

It’s totally rampant in some communities and not so much in others. I had to unsubscribe from certain Reddit’s to alleviate vendor spam.

2
grooomps•

i think you don't realize how lucky you are with the programming industry and how readily available tools are for free...
look at everything you can do with React, and things like express, node, databases, etc - you can get all of these tools for absolutely free.
to create and launch an app the only thing you would need to do is actually pay for the hosting.
how many industries have that?

2
nemec•

Capitalism, baby.

1
dashid•

Yes. My wife's LinkedIn feed are people sharing experiences and stuff. Where mine is "register for this event where we will flog your details to the supplier of the product we're pushing".

1
Dparse•

I don't think so. I hate advertisements but I don't feel like I'm being advertised to very often with programming. Neither Strange Loop nor GDC are advertisements in my view. It is not suprising that people talk about the things that they work on - that's what they are most informed about, and in the best position to speak about. Doesn't make it an advertisement. And of course your best friend should be documentation which is pretty clearly not an advertisement.

0
whalesalad•

It’s still the early ages. Everyone wants in on the gold rush.

-1
Isvara•

Yeah, it's only been, what, 70 or 80 years?

1