Why no one is looking for 'rockstar programmers'
During my (not so) recent presentation at CareerCon I talked about the skills you need when pursuing a (web)developer career. Here are 5 points I made:
Be an egoless programmer. Remember that you are not your code. The only way to improve is to be open to feedback from others and give honest, non-judgemental feedback to others.
Be a team player. Building software is a team sport. You don’t “own” your parts of the code. Instead, your job is to make sure the whole package works as expected. Don’t be a typical “well, it works on my machine” guy. It has to work on users machines.
Be a learner. Technology is changing fast. What was hot 5 years ago is no longer the best—stuff that’s relevant today didn’t even exist 5 years ago. You have to constantly learn new things (e.g. languages, libraries, patterns).
Be a T-shaped person. Specialize in one narrow field and have a general understanding of a broader range of technologies. This makes you a very valuable asset within any organisation.
Be relentlessly resourceful. Become a go-to person that can solve any problem. You don’t have to be able to solve every problem yourself, but you always know where to go to find the answer.
The full presentation is embedded below:
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