Surprise! The best developers aren’t rock stars. They’re normal people who do their job and spend their spare time doing stuff they actually enjoy. It’s an industry of fucking narcissists.
Most of the people I’ve met who consider themselves “rockstars” are middling at best, and are pretty much led around by the nose by whatever latest fad they just studied/found learning material for/found sales material for.
They absolutely knew how to play office politics and games about appearances to execs (being able to spout a lot about whatever latest term is showing up in the financial magazines the execs read while not saying anything concrete helps a lot), but when push came to shove they were always trying to find ways to make their responsibilities everyone elses problem so they could play with some new toy while they left a trail of halfassed rush work and mountains of tech debt in their wake.
