Characteristics That Don't Matter As Much As You Might Think

Hustle isn't the only characteristic that you might admire in other aspects of your life but that doesn't work very well in software development.

Persistence

Depending on the situation, persistence can be either an asset or a liability. Like most value-laden concepts, it's identified by different words depending on whether you think it's a good quality or a bad one. If you want to identify persistence as a bad quality, you say it's "stubbornness" or "pigheadedness." If you want it to be a good quality, you call it "tenacity" or "perseverance."

Most of the time, persistence in software development is pigheadedness—it has little value. Persistence when you're stuck on a piece of new code ...

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