I’ll admit it. I’m a jealous developer

I am 100% part of those developers that is trying to improve their communication skills. Since February I have made it a big focus to try and find a voice.

It's super hard.

English is not my native language, and even if it were, I am not a good communicator. But I started writing tweets and a blog.

It's a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, I've had a lot of success, I have followers, readers etc... on the other hand, it's very hard to do it without compromising oneself and still finding an audience.

Twitter is also a world on its own. Hell, I don't believe I deserve the following I have and it's very hard to find a style of communication that works for developers on that platform. The result is that it's skews toward short, simple tweets, the simpler the better.

Being a good communicator is important, but it doesn't come without a cost.

The best developers aren't putting out tons of content or courses. The people putting out popular courses are just the best course developers/marketers.

There are plenty of folks like Tom Christie, who has minimal social media following, but who built Django Rest Framework, which is used by tens of thousands of projects.

The best developers are leaders, whether or not they're thought leaders.

Not to downplay the course developers and marketers. That's a valuable and difficult skill! It's just different than developing.

I think this definition of success can be quite entrapping. Certainly, the pool of outstanding developers that do not fit these criteria is huge (in fact, the absolute dominant one, considering how narrow the definition is). As such, if you are a young developer, examine whether this definition suits your career aspirations (it seems to do so for author, which is OK of course), and know that there are many roads to "success".

I used to think the same thing for the better part of my 20s, but not anymore. I am also virtually non-existent online (in the author's sense), but I am quite satisfied with my career. I am of course one data point, but I have many colleagues and ex-colleagues in the same boat.