It dances around becoming good and having a lot of things to point to to demonstrate being good, but doesn't go near the actual question.
It seems the relevant "answer" is :
>To become a great programmer with very marketable skills, you have to build things and write code. [...] As you are building, save your work and put together a little portfolio on your website.
The projects portfolio gets people interested. I've seen some websites that showed off a project and on the webpage somewhere would be blurb like: "Btw, I'm also looking for a job in Javascript blah blah blah." And then the recruiters or hiring managers would email them because they were impressed with the work they saw.
No it doesn't. My portfolio that I've been adding to for the past 10 years doesn't get me any offers at all. You get offers by networking and making buddies with high powered people.
The first method I personally used was to work for the guy one week with ludicrously low pay. He said yes at 7$/h, but I would have gone down even more. This kick started my carrier enough to not worry about searching for jobs anymore.
Second method I employed to get to the place I wanted to be was to build something that would impress them and publish it. It took 2 years and it worked.
This is all anecdotal but it worked for me.