I’m a developer at a startup in San Francisco. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money that the _vast_ majority of developers are so-called ‘dark matter deve

I’m a developer at a startup in San Francisco. I’d be willing to bet a large sum of money that the _vast_ majority of developers are so-called ‘dark matter developers’. Contributing to open source projects, writing helpful blog posts, and participating in hackathons is going above and beyond the norm. Heck, even reading HN and proggit regularly and staying on top of new trends is probably going above and beyond the norm. That said, it does sometimes seem like there is increased cultural value in being busy with lots of things — going to conferences and meetups, writing blog posts, contibuting to any and all open source projects. This kind of seems at odds with the old programmer ethos of laziness as a virtue. I'm tempted to say that a lot of this ‘engagement’ with the community is cargo culting. In any case, thanks for writing this anon. I've had similar thoughts and it's always reassuring to be reminded that I'm not the only one.