So you think you are a Rockstar Coding Ninja? | Hacker News Reader

So you think you are a Rockstar Coding Ninja?

deannolan.co.uk

37 pointsedw51927 comments

My feelings about rockstar/ninja/warrior job postings are similar to how comedian Demitri Martin feels about bumper stickers:

"A lot of people don't like bumper stickers. I don't mind bumper stickers. To me a bumper sticker is a shortcut. It's like a little sign that says 'Hey, let's never hang out.'"

Strange. My feelings about Demitri Martin are similar.

You're so witty!

"The only way you can sound remotely great is if at a bar you say

    Yeah, I made Bebo"

Speaking from experience there's only a select number of bars (largely confined to SF) where that gets you anything at all.

I hadn't heard of Bebo until I read this post.

It is the most popular social networking site in UK(more so than Facebook). (The author is itself from UK)

Not among people who are old enough to drink it isn't. Any adults on Bebo are likely to shortly be on the receiving end of a visit from the Paedofinder General.

Really? The authorities think pedobear hangs out at Bebo?

How strange...

Link to stats? I don't know anyone who hangs out on bebo, but then perhaps it's mainly kids.

My money would be on facebook being biggest in UK :/

No. Anyone who uses the 'R' word in a job ad can fuck off.

I do get shit done, and make tons of money for companies I work for. And play well with others. That should be more than enough.

Yes, but imagine the look on their faces when on the first day of your new job you arrive in the PHBs office with a whig and a guitar, and a keyboard sticking out of your pocket.

When he then asks you what you're doing you whip out your shuriken, zap it in to the imitation wooden filing cabinet at eye level, about 2" left of his ear and say "did I misread your ad or what ?"

...

I always imagine what would happen if you got one of those jobs and didn't show up for the first three days, and then when you did, you were hung over and toting a whisky bottle, wearing leather pants and had glitter on your face.

I'd just come in in parachute pants, strummin', "Woke last night to tha sound uf thunda!!!"

"Plays well with others" is so incredibly important, and, at least in my experience, in an entirely different universe from the 'rockstar' mindset.

Working with a 'rockstar', frankly, sucks. They know everything, they're better than you at everything, and they're faster than anybody else... at least, in their own minds.

It's impossible to work with someone who is 'too talented' to listen to other people. Sure, most of these people are genuinely talented, but they seem to lose track of the fact that other people can have skills and knowledge as well.

It gets worse when the rockstar starts managing -- all kinds of direction changes to chase new development fads, huge micromanaging, massive weekend rewrites of other peoples' code... no thanks.

When I see an ad for superrockstarninja coders I can't rid myself of the image that they want to pay salary in ThinkGeek trinkets instead of dollars.

The people whose technical abilities I admire the most uniformly are or would be appalled by such pandering. They [do, would] want to be paid fairly, listened to when they offer advice or make a judgement call about something they've been asked to do, and left to their own lives when not working.

This correlates poorly with the typical corporate arrangement wherein people are hired as cheaply as possible, for a role as an unquestioning code grinder (we've already got the ideas here, thankyouverymuch), and they try to make up for it with beads and baubles.

I'd love to hear how these ads work for companies, though.

I'm in VoIP telephony, and utterly unimpressed with the sorts of stuff that shows up in that category in Rentacoder/guru.com, etc. The emphasis tends to be less on "rock star coders" but is equally preposterous:

"I am looking for complete SIP/H.323 interworking solution.

Maximum budget: $500

K THX BAI"

Yeah, right.

EDIT: For those who have no reference frame for a SIP/H.323 gateway, that's something that could easily be a multimillion dollar project for someone like Aricent or Wipro.

install them asteRISK and let pay $$$ for support

It's just not that simple.

Actually, most of my business comes from folks who started ITSPs because they saw Asterisk and went:

1. Asterisk 2. VoIP 3. ?!?!?!?? 4. $$$ PROFIT $$$!

... and, well, that turns out not to be the case.

I disagree that programming is not cool. Absolutely it can be cool, and it can even come off as cool to non-techies if you know how to play it. But using phrases like "Rockstar Coding Ninja" will never do anything but brand you as a dork.

Asking for stuff like that from coders is going to get you exactly what you ask for wannabe hotshots that think they are gods greatest gift to IT. Good luck getting anything useful out of that.

I'd almost word the ad like this: If you are a rockstar ninja coder then please don't apply.

If you can hold your own any two of C, Java, Lisp, Perl, PHP, python or any other mainstream language, you've found just like we did that in the end the differences between programming languages are smaller than the things they have in common and you have the willpower and stamina to become part of a team extending and maintaining a fair sized codebase then feel free to apply.

Bonus points if you are operating a website of your own with more than 1,000 visitors / day.

More bonus points if you have prior experience with large scale web applications.

Don't send us references of companies that you worked for, send us references from your co workers.

I agree. It seems if a person's perspective is that coding isn't cool they either don't like coding or don't like the employer they code for.

Programming can be cool. Back at school I was using a text editor people hadn't seen before, they asked me where I got it and I told them I programmed it myself (It's really not that hard to make a text editor, but they didn't know that =p), and they thought I was so cool- for at least ten minutes- after which they went back to their work. But hey! Programmers can be cool!

I made a skateboarding game and got a number of little 10 minute coolnesses.

Being cool takes a lot of work. You can't just write one text editor, get your 10 minutes and then carry on. It's a constant battle where you always have to be looking for those 10-minutes-of-cool. In other words, people who care about 'cool' have very short attention spans.

Agreed. It might be somewhat specialized and not a good topic to bring up at your average superbowl party, but then I don't go to those anyway.

Programming is about creating something new (or at least enhancing something) and it is done almost literally by thinking it through and simply writing it logically. Things of enormous importance are built this way. That is cool.

While the first type of ad (the 160 hours in 2 weeks for $500 ones) are obviously ignore-worthy, the second I don't see the big deal about.

It's simply some new slang around the growing-in-popularity field of software development. It shows the company is light-hearted and paying attention to the community it operates in. I wouldn't call myself a 'rockstar' or 'ninja' but I'm very open to working with a company that doesn't take themselves so seriously. In fact I already do, and I love it. While my current company didn't use these terms in their job posting, I can easily see us doing so -- it's amusing!

I said in another thread on this subject a while back that, essentially, it's just another way to say "Senior Software Developer" or "Experienced Ruby Programmer" or whatever without implying age (or even actual years of experience... or worse, education level).

In short, let's not take these words literally when they're just meant to evoke a sense of the style of the company. Wanting a 'rockstar' just means they want someone passionate about their tools -- they probably use a Mac or other Unix, they switched to git from subversion, they spend most of their time in the shell. They are interested in discussing and debating what the best tool for the job is, the best approach to a problem, etc.

Put even shorter: The times, they are a changin'.

Cool programming: http://www.assembly.org/summer09/compos/realtime

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