Why aren't you striving to be a leader in your field?

Striving for leadership seemed like a path of diminishing, even negative returns for me in a corporate job. Those at the top worked twice as hard (at least) for maybe 10% more pay and were just as subject to layoffs as I was. The economics dictated that I just go with the flow.

There's also a risk in the corporate world. Bad managers see leaders as threats and terminate them. I've seen it happen too many times in my careeer.

Now I'm on an different path, where leadership is demanded and rewarded (startups), so my attitude is very different. I have a long ways to go.

Disagree with "If I said that the top people in your field, at your experience level, are active participants professional societies, write popular blogs about your industry, get asked to write articles for magazines and regularly speak on conference panels, that's probably a reasonable estimation of what it means to be on top, right?"

That isn't a reasonable estimation of being on top. It's a reasonable estimate of someone who fits into that kind of [rather social] professional circle. Doesn't apply everywhere.

In any esoteric field, you find out who are the top people after you enter, and swim around for a while. The ones with the most exposure are just the ones with the most popular appeal.

I have a friend who is wicked smart. I asked him why he isn't full of ambition. He just doesn't give a frolicking fancy. He feels like he has what he needs. Who is just the opposite? Napoleon. Is there something going on here?

Maybe some top fellow will write about it in Psychology Today.

First of all, what is with the recent deluge of poorly written trite?

secondly, this guy is failing to see that being a "leader" in the field is different from being at the top. Being at the top connotates that one is the best; their abilities are superior to others. A leader can simply be him who recognizes a vacuum in power and seizes it. Being a leader in no way implies that one is at the top of their field.

The best programmers/hackers I've met were quite content to hone their skills without the public attention that only the "leadership types" seem to require.

Striving for a "leadership" position seem like a zero sum game to me. It is like trying to make into major league football or something.

Rather, I prefer to play a game where I'll win eventually like working on some pretty cool library that everybody want or a semi popular game. If it happen that I got to be in the top 10 hacker list, than that's just an unintentional bonus.

Pick battles you know you're going to win like building a successful startup, working on libraries that everybody wants but can't find, having a semi popular blog, and other ultimately winnable events.

For me, I am learning game programming and dream of making a living as a developer of open source games. I know it is going to be rough. However, I believe if I pick my niche right, than I should be able to stake out a small piece of the market just enough for decent living.

I agree that being a leader in the field does offer flexibility and choice. But I don't think that's always (or even mostly) why people work to that position. They do it because they LIKE writing and speaking, or because networking is a key part of their responsibilities.

I'm a nuts and bolts, head and shoulders deep in code kind of guy. The stuff that gets my crank going never requires an audience. TOP-of-field is my career ambition. Being so good at what I want to do that people will pay me to do it.

Everyone in the Rails community is trying to be the leader in their field. The result is a lot of blog posts about how everyone else is worse than them.

Someone I admire a lot once told me "we get bad politicians because anyone who wants power so much that they’d allow the media to humiliate themselves and their family is someone who wants power too much to use it responsibly"

At the time I thought it was a really cynical thing to say but as I’ve gone along in life I’ve often seen how right he was. How people who desire power for power’s sake generally aren’t worthy of that power.

That’s the category I’d put this article in. He’s basically saying "you should strive to be a leader because it makes you important." But I’d counter that by saying leaders should only lead if they see things headed in the wrong direction. If you work in an industry where you’re happy with the direction it’s going in you probably don’t need to be a leader.

I guess what I'm saying is that leadership is a response to an external stimuli not an internal desire.

Short version: There's no traffic jam on the extra mile.

Maybe it's because I'm in the wrong field. I'm not a technology junky. I don't run my own email server, DNS server, and token ring network at home. I'm frankly not interested in how something works unless it's not obvious how it could work. The most valuable people in my company are the ones who know the (to me) excruciating details of every technology we use, the excruciating details of how every part of our system works, the excruciating details of all of our customer relationships, and the excruciating details of exactly which person out of thousands to talk to about every issue.

Frankly, all of that bores me. I like solving logical and algorithmic puzzles. My work provides me with a regular but meager diet of such things. My ability at such stuff makes my code correct, performant, and reliable, and I'm valued for that, but I'd probably be a more productive employee (a better Software Engineer, in other words) if I couldn't write recursive code but could remember the names of all the people I've been in meetings with in the last six months.

Having leadership in your field as a goal implies that one makes that a strong part of one's self-identity. Or more simply, you need to self-identify with your work, that you feel you are the work you do.

However, work is not the top priority for many people, particularly those with families and significant life outside work, and nor should it be.

I think a lot of it comes down to initiative. It's the difference between saying "man, somebody should do X" and just doing it.

I wonder if by leadership he means someone of high caliber or skill in their chosen field.