Jacob Mather has written up a (somewhat lengthy) post about things for developers to consider when wanting to improve at their jobs.

At Symfony Live San Francisco 2012, I gave a little talk. No, really. A little talk. Seven minutes. I'm not even sure I used all of it. That's not a lot of time, but I think I managed to at least provoke some thinking. At least I hope I did. Hmm. How do you act like you care about your work, as a developer?

He has the post broken up into several different categories including being involved in the community, continuing your education constantly, working with automation to make your day-to-day easier and what your real job is (hint, it has more to do with problems and less with code). He also includes a section with suggestions about dealing with coworkers of all different types - everything from management to designers.