[jkeel]

One of the best pieces of advice I received for my career was from my university's computer science counselor.

I asked him what I needed to do/study to be better than other programmers. I started asking, "should I study C, Java (it had just come out), etc. He said study something to improve your communication. He said in the real world business just look at you as a computer person. They don't know the difference between a programmer, network engineer, PC support person, etc.

He said anyone can code and the ones that are way better will not be recognized enough by management to make a difference in their careers. Since computer people are sort of known as introverts, just being able to speak well and communicate with everyone will go further than being the expert at language X.