> Being kind and humble isn't the only path to accomplishing great things, of course, but I've seen enough examples of it to conclude it's a very viable path.

> Being kind and humble isn't the only path to accomplishing great things, of course, but I've seen enough examples of it to conclude it's a very viable path. It is a very viable path and on top of this, they naturally create little coves of open-hack spaces where like-minded geeks hang out :) I was lucky enough to have met a few and spent time in their company. They were all very accessible, if not shy at times. Visibly detached from the career path concerns and fully immersed into technology, building and tinkering. On the opposite side, I had a misfortune to meet less talented types, yet with egos only matched by the senior management. They fervently protected their turf and enjoyed dispensing condescending remarks. I will never forget as a junior dev, I was trying to understand how a piece of the system works and in my search came up to a stellar DBA asking about a stored procedure of interest. After a couple of minutes of witty pokes at my expense, he concluded: "Listen, you don't need to know this. It's not your concern. Go away." Well, eventually, I got access to the guarded secrets and figured it out :)