Chad Fowler – Don’t Follow the Lemmings
There is an excellent video posted on Google Video about a talk that “Chad Fowler”:http://www.chadfowler.com/ did for the West Michigan XP Users Group. The talk is entitled, “Don’t Follow the Lemmings.”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8984753198261505541 In the video, he offers up some advice on how to be a success, or how to move beyond your current plateau and not be one of the developers shaved off the bottom.
One interesting point that he makes fairly early in his talk is, he says that he was once asked by a young programmer how to become a great programmer and his answer was, “you seem like a very smart person, why have I never heard of you?” The point that he is trying to make is that developers need to get their names out there and do things that result in people knowing who they are.
Another point that he makes in the talk is that, he as a manager, likes to hire the disruptive programmers; the people who are not opposed to offer up an opposing viewpoint. As he says, if you are not offending someone then you are doing something wrong. I tend to agree with this, with the one caveat that there is a difference between stating your opinion, even if contrary to the accepted view, and being a jerk.
This is an excellent talk to watch, but be warned that it is almost 2 hours long.