The proverbial "10,000 hours" is not enough. Here are some problems with that. * You get 5 focused, highly effective hours in an average day, possibly 6 days p

The proverbial "10,000 hours" is not enough. Here are some problems with that. * You get 5 focused, highly effective hours in an average day, possibly 6 days per week. You can work productively for 10-12 hours in a single day, but it's not effective in the long run. As an absolute maximum, your harvest for something as difficult as programming is going to be about 1500 hours per year. So if you really max it out, you're going to need 7 years to become a great programmer. That's if you're maximally efficient and control your own schedule. * What you mentioned about bureaucrats becoming worse writers is probably true. It takes deliberate practice. It takes feedback and interaction and exposure. It may require a mentor. In fact, one of the most important "meta" skills is knowing when to recognize people are better than you, and to learn from them. Otherwise, you might be practicing doing things wrong. Most people at their paid jobs are doing just that, because the corporate world is one of oppressive mediocrity. * The software industry sucks. Most of the work is busywork and most of the shit being done is being done wrong. Few people get any deliberate practice at their paid jobs. In fact, I would say that most paid software work is negative toward long-term greatness, because it forces you to do things wrong. Programming is an especially hard thing to become really good at, because (a) to become a great software engineer, you must interact with the real world, but (b) the vast majority of the real world is dismally broken, and 99% of the real shot-callers are idiots who've never even seen a line of code except in the movies.