Fried considers being a good writer most important, stating "Probably the most important thing and probably one of the surprises is you have to work with people who are good writers."
Joel Spolsky, another well known programmer and author is also looking for good writers. He says "Being able to write clearly, to write English clearly is more important to developing useful software than almost anything else and that's something you're more likely to learn in the English department than in the computer science department" in this podcast.
Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis also offered some tips for job seekers during a recession in a recent blog post.
Here are some tips on progressing from a beginner to an intermediate developer if you get a programming job. (As you will see, some of the tips are applicable for non-programming jobs as well).