As you build your technical skills, your next step is to create your own open-source software project, to demonstrate those skills to the world.

Ideally it will be a project that is fun for you to create, and also will teach you about a new technology you are interested in...

But its primary purpose is to be marketing asset. An asset that is marketing YOU.

I call this your Artifact. Your Artifact is a dynamic marketing asset which efficiently signals your elite status to the job market, and attracts the opportunities you want.

Every word of this matters:

• It is an asset. Meaning something you create, which generates more of what you want, as a side effect of its existence.

• It is a marketing asset. Its purpose is to market you. It is a tool for professional self-promotion.

• It is dynamic. As technology and the world evolves, you refine your Artifact to adapt to new job-market conditions.

• It signals your value. It demonstrates your expertise, communicates your skills, and broadcasts your value to the job market. As your goals change (and you learn to think bigger for yourself), you pivot the Artifact to signal differently.

• It signals efficiently. What your Artifact communicates about you is communicated immediately. It is instantly believed with little or no skepticism. Just like an author of a book is assumed to be an expert in that book’s topic, so your Artifact creates instant and powerful first impressions of you.

• It signals status. Your professional status, your industry reputation, and the esteem in which others at the top of your profession perceive you.

• It attracts the opportunities, the professional relationships, and ultimately the career you want.

Your Artifact takes the form of an ongoing project. This Artifact can be

• A software tool, used by your peers to do their work

• A software library, used by your peers when they write code

• A web application, useful to people in your domain of technology

• It can also be a book, though that is much harder (speaking from experience). I recommend you do one of the above first.

Creating your Artifact does NOT need to be difficult, or require a lot of work. The notion that success can only come from extreme exertion is a limiting belief. The career-boosting results of your Artifact are largely independent of the effort and time you put into it.

It's more of a mindset. Asking yourself: what Artifact can you create, that will attract the opportunities you want?

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