Hacker News Reader

Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

Great article, but I can't help but CRINGE at the "ninja" references. I think that's already played out within the industry... and although pop-tech writers tend to lag a few years behind, it will sound extremely dated in the mainstream within a few years.

View on HN

Agreed, and I've been waiting over a decade now for the demise of tiresome qualifiers like "ninja" and "on steroids" (we could all add a few, I'm sure). I was really, really tired of "uber", too, but now that one seems here to stay for quite a while longer. Oh, well...

I agree that these are all problems, but the one that bothers me most is the use of "x master race" such as PC master race. Considering the association with the Nazis and genocide, I keep hoping that it will finally die.

Why? What could be more insulting to Hitler than associating his 'glorious master race' with a bunch of gamer neckbeards living in their moms' basements? One of the greatest abilities we have to take the power away from something is to redefine it.

> “The tagline is, Do you want to be a machine learning ninja?”

I don't really like the word, but I don't really give a flop either.

I'm not sure how its better or worse than guru, rockstar, or any other lame word recruiters like to use to make us feel like the special snowflakes we are.

Which word would you like to see in place of 'ninja'?

I'd rather see all of those juvenile testosterone labels discarded in general.

Sheesh... "Do you want to make the world a better place?", with a photo of Gavin Belson holding an animal, would make me more inspired.

if it makes you feel better, i don't think you were supposed to be inspired. "ML Ninja" is just the name of the rotation program. if your team sends you, it's because they need someone to get the training, not because the program name makes it sound cool. i doubt the PM thought it would be public when she named it.

Consider the turtle ...

What are the juvenile "testosterone" labels?

The article leads with a low-testosterone star.

The word "ninja" in recruiting was almost dead before today.

Well, if she's a black belt 2nd dan in a martial art, she's entitled.

If she's a 2nd dan then she'd be qualified at a high-level in taekwondo and wouldn't be entitled to call herself a ninja, who practice different martial disciplines.

Expert?

Because not all of us are ninja fans. I personally like the Shaolin masters more. And while we're at glorifying paid killers, why not go all the way and strive to be like the original Assasins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins)? Granted, they were Muslim Shia killers that had a bad habit of also killing Crusaders (i.e. Christians), so that might not play out so well on a professional programmer's CV.

That first paragraph almost made me stop reading.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com