[ChuckNorris89]

Your formula of success has many truths in it but missed a few big and important ones:

  5. Be in a hot area with many opportunities you can leverage. Being a rockstar is not enough if there aren't many employers bidding for your expertise.

  6. Market yourself and have visibility to your professional successes both inside your org and, ideally, outside as well, for others to spot your talent and approach you. Being a rockstar is insufficient if the results of your work are not visible up the org chart, to the guys who sign the pay cheques or to outside competitors.

  7. Have a network of contacts you can leverage. In my area, best jobs are gotten through connections. The open positions you find on LinkedIn are the bottom of the barrel left after the good spots got taken.

  8. Have up to date technical skills that match the demand of the market in your area. Being a rockstar is not gonna get you anywhere if you were a rockstar in an obsolete tech nobody needs anymore or has been offshored.

[rtikulit]

Those are great points. I have to think about how to incorporate them. I'm thinking that the four are still required to fully exploit the ones you've mentioned.

[ChuckNorris89]

Yeah, of course, that's why I said mine are an addition to yours.

[tomerv]

I really prefer the original list, which is short and to the point. Your #5 is a subset of

    3. Be a member of the prevailing tribe.

Tribe can mean many things here, including: team, company, country, and I guess also gender and skin color (but there's not much you can do about that).

Same with #6 which is an expansion of being charismatic.

[shard]

If #4 is expanded to "Be charismatic and social", that would cover #6 and #7. I think #5 and #8 are part of #3, being in the right geographic location is definitely part of being the prevailing tribe, and so is having up-to-date tech skills.

Come to think of it, #2, being easy to work with, can be subsumed into being charismatic and social without much loss.

[rtikulit]

"Easy to work with", "member of the tribe" and "charismatic" are separate categories because the model is intended to embody the truth that social factors dominate, and to give hope and direction to those who are never going to be members of the tribe. :-)