Speaking as an employer of remote programmers: initiative cannot be underestimated. Often this can stand in for other skills, in that if you don't have skill X yet, but you've demonstrated again and again that you can and will figure out "how to get there from here" in a variety of situations, you're a very attractive candidate vs someone who already has skill X, but due to a lack of demonstrated initiative may be less certain to use it effectively.

Consider the position of syntax in learning to program. When you first start, it seems daunting, and you spend all your time fixing compiler errors because you forgot a semicolon or whatever. Once you actually learn how to program though, the syntax and even sometimes higher order structures of a language will fall away as you start to think more abstractly about how to get the machine to do what you want.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but it's a similar kind of thing here: early in a programmer's career it seems like [ COBOL / SQL / HTML / Java / Ruby / NodeJS / $framework / Big Data(tm) / ML / etc] is The Thing to focus on, and that you'll become instantly more marketable if you develop that skill.

This is a little bit true in the very short term, but it burns out quickly as an approach, and cultivating Generalized Problem Solving -- including especially the motivation to solve any problem within range -- is much more valuable.

The famous quote from Musashi[1] comes to mind: “The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.”

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/38725-the-primary-thing-whe...