You don’t need to be great at every developer skill. In fact, you can build a great career with mostly mediocre skills.
It also doesn’t matter what other people tell you to do. You don’t need to copy the advice of some guru or the practices of someone you most look up to.
There’s a meta lesson to be learned here: Those people got to great skills, careers, relationships, places in life, etc by leaning into their unfair advantages.
You should too.
What’s an unfair advantage?
The word “unfair” is kind of misleading in this term. Maybe I should’ve called them unique advantages.
But they’re “unfair” in the sense that everyone else will have a hard time competing with you on the skills & abilities where you’re the strongest.
For some developers, their unfair advantage is a deep understanding of code or a highly algorithmic mind.
Contrary to popular belief, I’d say those developers are in the minority.
Others of us — myself included — have unfair advantages in other parts of our personalities, skills, or past experience. Those other skills, outside of raw coding ability, are also valuable. Sometimes, more valuable than coding skill!