People skills for programmers, in terms they can understand

Via Coding Horror

We're all software developers here, so let me put this in terms programmers understand: Dungeons & Dragons character statistics. You know, the classics.

RPG character stats: STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA

If you're a programmer, and you want to get better at your job every year, you might think that the most important character stat to build is coding. Let's call this INT. So at the end of many years of toil, you'll end up something like this:

str 6

dex 9

con 12

int 51

wis 13

chr 4

OK, you're a genius programmer who can code circles around everyone else. But you may never ship any of your code for reasons that you don't control. That's an illusion. You can control when, how, and where your code ships. You probably spent too much time building your code and not enough time as an advocate of your code. Did you explain to people what your code does, why it's cool and important? Did you offer reasons why your code is going to make their lives better, at least in some small way? Did you make it easy for people to find and use your code?

Hee, hee, hee...