Super Powers Exist
And you don't have to be born with them.
Superpowers Exist!
I have always felt like software development was a superpower. We can literally take a process that would take another person 20 hrs and do it in 20 min or even 20 seconds.
How is that not a superpower?
The reason it works is because of leverage. You are leveraging computational power in a way that makes you capable of disproportional accomplishments.
I have identified 3 other superpowers for a total of 4.
Software Development
Marketing
Investing
Leadership
We have already talked about software dev. Here is how the others are superpowers.
Marketing: Take two people. Give them the same product and $1000 in Facebook ads. A skilled marketer could crush it and come back with 10k in sales. The unskilled person just pays FB $1000 and wonders what happened. They have the same opportunity but by choosing the right words one person has incredible leverage over the other.
Investing: Give 2 people $1000 and tell them to invest. One person could come back with 10k and the other with nothing. Again, they have the same opportunity but one person who knows how to invest can use the leverage of the market to make money.
Leadership: This is the oldest superpower. Take 2 people and give them each a team. The skilled leader will accomplish the mission creating a unit that is more than the sum of it parts. An unskilled leader may even cause the team to produce less than if they were on their own.
Look at some of the most successful people in Tech: Besos, Musk, Jobs.
They are masters in all four of these areas so they had tremendous leverage.
Instagram IPOed at 1B with just 13 people. This is because a tech company can pull all 4 levers and have outsized leverage.
So what?
If you are a developer you already have one of the levers. Adding 1 or 2 more can be a game changer. It will give you more leverage to accomplish things.
I’ve recently added leadership and am working on marketing. Making the decision to go into leadership and become a development manager will give you that next super power. I can help.