I agree very much with the last two words!! 😛

I completely agree with you. As someone told me once about becoming a better tennis player: Who do you want to play against if you want to improve: someone who is better or worse than you are?

Clearly, the answer is someone who is better. It will just naturally raise your skill level.

Same thing with programming. Get a job in a high-powered shop and you will become high-powered yourself (or get replaced).

There is definitely some truth to what you say, but I think it has to do with perspective. The reason why certain success level people hang around together doesn’t have to do so much with exclusion as it does to do with shared perspective. When you climb higher, you find people who are also higher up who have much more in common with you.
A good career strategy, and life strategy, is to always try to find friends and make new friends that are a little better than you– who you’d like to be in 5 years.

However, if it were as easy as hanging out with a better class of programmer then everyone should be clamoring to hang out with the geekiest people in the organization. The funny thing is that those people (us? LOL) are usually clamoring to hang out with you “more normal guys” but we get run off.

Seriously, I do get it. The best coders (or lawyers, salesmen, whatever…) logically hang out together. I am thinking you have to come in the front door on this one, though: work to become the best coder you can be AND THEN come and hang out with US.