@ctp I have always maintained that a team of people who know their shit, are reliable, polite, and supportive, even if they aren’t the “best of the best” will clean the fucking clocks of a team full of hyper-individualistic superstars.

It’s like baseball. If I have 9 people who consistently get singles and have solid fielding, I’m going to win a lot of games without even needing a single home run hit. Won’t be as OMG, but that record will do all the work the press won’t.

@ctp Overall I agree. I think some folks’ definition of “rockstar developer” may differ, though. Personally, I’m OK with strong (well-informed) opinions/philosophies, as long as the engineer is capable of being pragmatic and compromising in the face of constraints.

I wouldn’t call anyone a “rockstar” that isn’t capable of working effectively with a team. Most of those folks I just call “assholes.”

LB: self-deprecating self goes, yeah, I'm not that good a musician.

Because I'm not a musician. I'm a developer. Who knows they produce stuff in varying styles, all the time, on demand, consistently. And has been told it's amazing. (As in, asks manager in AMA what the succession plan is for me, to be told there isn't one "Because you're too damn good at what you do.")

I don't know if there's a long list of folks who'd say you'd want me as an engineer. But I do know it's not empty.

Not sure if knowing all that helps me or not.

@ctp I was a manager for some developers for a while, and when it came time to do reviews, I had some concerns about one developer and took them to my manager.

"I don't know what to do about X," I said, "because they're totally reliable, their code never has bugs in it, but it takes them three times longer than anyone else to complete tickets, and they don't really have any drive to improve."

And of course the answer, which seems obvious in retrospect, was "figure out what we can do to make them happy because we could use someone like that on every project."

@ctp this looks like the same line as "Be Glue":

https://noidea.dog/glue

> Every senior person in an organisation should be aware of the less glamorous - and often less-promotable - work that needs to happen to make a team successful. Managed deliberately, glue work demonstrates and builds strong technical leadership skills. Left unconscious, it can be career limiting. It can push people into less technical roles and even out of the industry.