Success in Programming: How to Gain Recognition, Power, and Influence through Personal Branding

CHAPTER 7

The Secret Ingredient: Your Tribe

Your Network Is Your Most Important Tool

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

—George Washington

You’ll see in this chapter how people you know online will be critical to your success. The interview here is with someone I’ve never met in person. We follow each other, talk on Twitter once in a while, and once even worked for the same company. Rey Bango is principal software development engineer at Microsoft. He is well respected in the industry, and not too long ago, he was leading the evangelists team at Telerik.

Let’s see if Rey thinks personal branding is important for developers.

I think for a developer, a more important factor is thought leadership and genuineness. Those two areas determine ...