Another major example is being able to identify which problems matter to the company. Rodrigo works on whatever his manager tells him to do and executes splendi

Another major example is being able to identify which problems matter to the company. Rodrigo works on whatever his manager tells him to do and executes splendidly, while Gabriella identifies the big problems that most people don't even realize can be solved with code and fixes them. In this case, Gabriella can easily be massively more valuable. I've mentioned on HN before that I used these same problem-identifying skills, combined with very crappy, amateurish coding, to save a former employer $2MM in under a year. And I've continued to do this-e.g., by writing SQL Stored Procedures to solve problems that many people in a company run into, which has been a tremendous help for my career. That's not to say communication skills aren't important, but identifying the projects/problems relevant to the business at large are even more so.