Who the sign is really for

Walk past almost any building site in Doha and the fence around it will tell you who is involved. The developer, the architect, the structural engineer, the main contractor, sometimes a dozen logos in a neat row.

Almost nobody walking past reads them. The people who do are other architects, other engineers, other contractors, and the families of the people named. Which is the point. The fence is not really talking to the street. It is talking to the trade, and offering the small pleasure of driving past your own name on the way home.

There is ego in that, and it is not useless ego. A firm whose name sits on a fence across town is easier to join, easier to recommend, easier to be proud of working for. Being known among the few dozen people who matter in your field is worth more than being glimpsed by thousands who do not.

A social profile is the same fence, made smaller and moved onto a phone. Most of the people who look carefully at a freelancer's page are other freelancers, a handful of possible clients, and her mother.

That is not a reason to ignore it. Getting it right forces useful questions. What do I actually do? What would I want a peer to see first? Which work am I proud enough to put my name beside? Doing the kind of work that makes the page easy to fill may be the best thing a profile ever does for anyone.

It is just worth remembering who is reading. Worth getting right, and not worth taking too seriously. The fence comes down when the building is finished.