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One Final Thought
I promised to return to the idea that the skills to do good work and the skills to market and take control are very different. Of course, I recommend marketing and promoting yourself, but not without content. Content-free hype, or "marketecture," is the trick of the con artist, the heart of the problem.
The alternative to marketecture is content. That might mean turning down opportunities that are not quite right, turning away from titles, awards, and technologies that look impressive but lack substance.
Ultimately, it’s the choices we make that define us. To borrow a phrase from Microsoft, "Who do you want to be tomorrow?"
References
[1] Barbara C. McNurlin and Ralph H. Sprague, Information Systems Management in Practice, 6th Edition (Prentice Hall, 2003, ISBN 0131011391).
[2] Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, PeopleWare: Productive Projects and Teams (Dorset House, 1999).
[3] Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (New International Version).
Matthew Heusser actively develops working software and also writes and speaks on systems improvement. You can email Matt at Matt.Heusser@gmail.com, or visit his Web site, Excelon Development. Matt thanks Linda Hayes, Paul Carvalho, and Bernard Holmes for their generous review and contributions to this article.