
What developers think when you say "Rock Star" - nathanh
http://blog.hirelite.com/what-developers-think-when-you-say-rock-star
======
Xurinos
Whenever I hear the phrases "rock star developer" or "code ninja", I think,
"Oh, they want some young fresh-out-of-college full-of-himself developer who
thinks a language named after a rock is the wave of the future."

Jokes aside, those phrases raise red flags in my mind. I think maybe it is
that from such an employer, I would expect to see the occasional presentation
with swear words ("We're all adults, here" -- "Sure, but you act like you just
left your parents' house, and with your first taste of freedom, you express
your naughty self."). Ah, that is the word I am looking for: professionalism.
I have a hard time taking them seriously.

~~~
mey
To me, rock star/code ninja also conveys a bit of prima-dona attitude. I'd
rather take someone humble over egotistical any day of the week.

~~~
michaelhalligan
To me it means I'm going to have to keep a large supply of cocaine and cheap
whisky around the office.

~~~
mayank
Which might also be an effective recruiting tool. I used to sit next to
someone who used to hit the restroom at 1pm every day, like clockwork, and
come out reeking of whiskey. Also kept a bottle of Wild Turkey on his desk
that slowly diminished. He wasn't fired, so I assume he was good and got his
stuff done.

~~~
run4yourlives
A functional alcoholic, to be sure.

~~~
baxter
You're suggesting he was a Lisper?

------
sbov
When a company asks for a rock star developer, I think pretty much this:

> "Rock star" signals that you haven't thought enough about the role this
> developer will fill, leaving developers with a feeling that they'll be
> receiving ill-defined requirements, not enough time, or not enough resources
> to do their job (in addition to being overworked and underpaid).

Or more specifically, they really need 5 people to do this work, but they only
plan to get 1.

~~~
blantonl
In all fairness, there are individuals of that calibre that can accomplish an
enormous amount of progress - even on the 1/5 ratio that you reference.

But I would venture to say that you never find that kind of person from a job
posting. A "5/1 ratio" person certainly only lands his next gig through word
of mouth.

~~~
chime
The company I used to work at, is in the process on hiring 2+ employees and an
outside IT services company to replace me. It was an amicable, planned
departure and I've helped them keep everything running till my replacements
are found. Frankly, it hasn't been easy to find the people. The helpdesk
person was fortunately easy to find but proficient programmers aren't easy to
come by.

My experience from reviewing/interviewing people based on job postings is that
almost all of the applicants are looking to be a part of an already
established team - very few seem to have the initiative to work on their own
or create new systems from scratch - both of which are something you'd look
for in potential employees at a startup. Almost all of the applicants have
worked well in teams but haven't done much on their own. I'd say they're good
1/1 candidates but not 5/1. The latter are indeed found through word of mouth.

------
joe_the_user
What I think of when I hear "Rock Star Programmers"?

I think how most musicians, _signed to a major label_ , who perform as "rock
stars" still get a net _zero_ payoff after two years.

I think how if programming degenerated to the level of music or motion
pictures, the average programmer would labor for nearly nothing in a start-up
"hoping to be discovered" while handful got a fake buy-outs with no long term
money and a much smaller handful became actual multi-millionaires.

~~~
alnayyir
> if programming degenerated to the level of music or motion pictures, the
> average programmer would labor for nearly nothing in a start-up "hoping to
> be discovered"

Welcome to the source of my startup skepticism.

------
fablednet
A recruiter contacted me via email looking for a developer "at the Jedi
level". Interestingly, though she said she'd read my resume, she was looking
for a Java developer in Maryland (I am a Ruby developer in Chicago). I asked
her to clarify what skills the Jedi level entailed (I couldn't help myself).
She wrote back and said that it meant they wanted "a rock star"

Recursive Super-Hero Bingo for the win!

~~~
khafra
Perhaps you should have alluded to an ability to produce code without
physically interacting with a computer system, and to control the minds of the
weak-willed--like department VPs. I'd be interested to see how far you could
push it.

------
TamDenholm
I've always felt like going to a "rock star" job interview with dyed blue hair
in a mohawk, ripped jeans, chains, black string vest, black nail polish, black
eye liner, leather jacket, walk in late and demand only blue M&M's.

~~~
timwiseman
That would be amusing.

The M&M's thing served a purpose when it started though. It showed attention
to detail when that could be important for a decent show or even safety:
<http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp>

~~~
Paulomus
You can read the actual contract rider for yourself at:
[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/van-halens-
lege...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/van-halens-legendary-
mms-rider) In my opinion, the document is full of a whole lot of weird stuff
and the safety excuse may just be a post-facto rationalization.

------
zachwaugh
If by rock star, you mean someone that parties all night, comes in late and
hungover, has weird contractual demands, and trashes hotel rooms on business
trips, then yes, I guess I'm a rock star. When do I start?

~~~
SpaceHobo
I agree with you that to me "rock star" always connoted "bratty prima donna"
to me.

I would point out that the weird contractual demands are often canaries meant
to uncover a venue that has not read the contract closely enough to guarantee
the safety of all performers and the audience. The famous example, of course,
is Van Halen and the brown M&Ms:

<http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp>

------
smokey_the_bear
A Microsoft recruiter told me I was a rockstar after an internship interview
in 2001. It felt awesome at the time. But now it sounds like a dated way to
recruit 19 year olds.

~~~
easp
In about the timeframe at MS, I remember stumbling upon a couple of living,
breathing, but rarely bathing, young developer/gamer stereotypes being shown
around one of the buildings in the Office division by two young, well, they
looked like strippers dressed to appear in a porno as two hot "professional"
women who let loose at the office.

Perhaps you were recruited by a related program?

~~~
smokey_the_bear
Well, I'm female, so I wasn't recruited by strippers. But I did get to go to
their 'Diversity Weekend' before my interview. They invited out about 30
college kids - women, minorities, and some white males who happened to be in
the society of black engineers. They took us to a couple of dinners, saw some
sights around Seattle, and we had a full day of mock interviews with real
engineers where we got immediate feedback. I had a great time and the
interviews were helpful.

Perhaps the event you saw was the sister event for their not-diverse recruits.

------
kabdib
Rock Star = I get to fix the problems, all the race conditions and exceptions
and bugs that the RS developer didn't do a good job on.

Rock Star = He looked more productive than he actually was.

~~~
wheaties
Couldn't agree more with the first statement but add to that unmaintainable
mess and spaghetti code

Rock Star = praised, promoted, highly visible, and in management's view
infallible.

~~~
ursablanco
Yup. Partially finished code - the main use cases covered, the fun and
satisfaction drained out of the project. Now that I hire, I wouldn't ask for a
rock star since it doesn't actually convey any of the qualities that we're
looking for.

------
terra_t
+10

I worked at one of these places, as a contractor. They never offer health
insurance. They buy a lot of pizza and junk food, and give out lots of cheap
praise, but will never send you to a conference or otherwise contribute to
your well-being or professional development.

These guys offered me a permanent position, and I turned it down for a real
job.

------
nickdunkman
It's just semantics. The term rock star was involved in the recruiting process
of my current job, and those who used it included a great hands on CTO and a
CEO with above average tech knowledge. I had no illusions as to some kind of
huge salary or RIAA like treatment.

It's cliche, yea. But sooner or later you'll miss out on a great opportunity
if you run away when you see "rock star".

~~~
iskander
>It's just semantics.

It's probably all the time spent on LtU mucking with my brain, but I have to
suppress a minor rage every time I see this idiom. Does this happen to any
other programming languages people?

~~~
silentbicycle
"In popular culture, people like to say 'It’s just semantics!', which is a
kind of put-down: it implies that their correspondent is quibbling over minor
details of meaning in a jesuitical way. But communication is all about meaning
[...], therefore, we will wear the phrase 'It’s just semantics!' as a badge of
honor, because semantics leads to discourse which (we hope) leads to
civilization. Just semantics. That’s all there is." -Shriram Krishnamurthi,
_Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation_
([http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/200...](http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/2007-04-26/))

In other words: Absolutely. (Good, free book, btw.)

------
JustinSeriously
My experience is "Rails, small team, git or hg, won't mind you reading
programming blogs during work hours, office environment will look fun,
telecommuting unlikely."

------
motters
The whole notion of software engineers having much in common with rock stars
seems rather misguided. Being a software engineer does not usually involve
making loud noises, trashing hotel rooms, having a shallow superficial
personality, attracting teenage groupies of the opposite sex, repeatedly
firing your manager or buying football teams.

~~~
Vargas
You mean you don't have groupies?

------
lwhi
Recruitment consultants and estate agents have a lot in common - both use
limited vocabulary as props to fill adverts they don't spend nearly enough
time thinking about.

A house with 'character' is in a bad state of repair.

A 'rockstar developer' is competent, but young enough to not know his or her
worth.

------
jph98
A rock star is somebody who plays in a rock band!

There is no such thing as a rock star developer. It's a stupid stupid term.
You have no inherent connection with rock music, you are not famous and don't
have thousands of adoring fans. I'm convinced that a number of balding, pony
tailed idiot developers and snotty college grads think they do - but you don't
- get over yourself.

Stop using the term, right, now, it's stupid, seriously.

I'm not going to get started on "code ninja". Jesus... WTF comes up with this
rubbish.

~~~
thenduks
What's the big deal? It's just a bit of fun. If one doesn't like the attitude
that a 'rock star' job posting conveys then one should simply not apply.

~~~
jph98
No no, it's not the attitude it conveys, it's the attitude it encourages in
the way developers act.

~~~
thenduks
The title of a job posting does not encourage or influence the way I act...
They're just trying to differentiate themselves from the mundane 'Java
Developer w/ 2 years exp' jobs, that's all. It's really, _really_ not a big
deal. I'm really having a hard time understanding why everyone is so hung up
on what is essentially marketing fluff. Can we please yell at people posting
jobs with 'requirements' like "6 years of RoR" rather than some cute buzzword
in the title?

------
BrandonM
The analogy breaks down when the author implies that rock star musicians (or
really musicians of any kind) are paid a salary by the record companies. All
the record companies pay are advances, and then the rest is just gouging the
artist's creative output for every expense they can muster.

At first I thought that's what the article was going to get into: "We want you
to produce amazingly high-quality output for an unfairly-low wage and
relatively low performance bonuses." Instead it implied that rock star
musicians get a significantly better deal than "rock star engineers," and
that's pretty bogus. Just ask an aspiring rock star if they'd like to make
~$75K base salary with bonuses (i.e. equity) that reward the quality of their
output.

~~~
philwelch
For real rock stars, records are a loss leader for concert tickets and
t-shirts.

------
grammaton
Whenever someone is advertising for "Rock Stars," I immediately have two
thoughts:

1) Will they be paying me Rock Star money?

2) Oh great, another bunch of douchebag middle managers trying to sound
trendy....

There is no way that they _really_ want a rock star, i.e. a fussy, unreliable
prima donna who won't work unless they get things their way. What they really
want is a genius who's inexplicably dumb enough to work for median salary.

------
iuguy
When I hear Rock Star Developer, I expect them to work for Rockstar Games.
Otherwise they are not a Rock Star Developer.

------
5teev
Here it's just a lazy way for clueless HR people to say "highly/broadly
skilled." It indicates as little thought as someone who says, "You rock!" when
you performed some technical task they don't understand, whether it took ten
hours or ten minutes.

Someday we may well ask, "What was it, once, to rock?"

------
lr
I think we owe it to the community to email this link to the poster of a job
position that mentions wanting a "rock star" programmer.

------
jonathanjaeger
Finally someone put into words the cringeworthy feeling of seeing "rock star"
all over the place. On the other hand, I think people use the term because it
so commonplace nowadays, rather than it being due to some sort of pretentious
attitude or outlook.

------
thirdstation
Why _are_ software developers segmented between "rock stars" and "not rock
stars"?

A salary estimate search on Simply Hired for "rockstar accountant" yielded no
results :-)

~~~
alphaoverlord
The graphics in this article is very misleading. The first three salary values
are average values from SimplyHired.com while the last value for rock stars is
the "average salary for the top 10 best paid music stars". If you use the same
criteria to search for the last category (rockstars), you simply find an
average salary of $54,000, not $50,000,000.

[http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-(rockstar+OR+%2...](http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-\(rockstar+OR+%22rock+star%22\)+-+developer)

That's not to say the website's information is accurate or indicative of what
people each of these categories actually make.

Salaries probably not a normal distribution, and the real high earners
wouldn't be captured by guesses based on mean income. I would rather make the
argument that the graphics displayed and information provided are really bad
metrics. They are at best confusing, at worst misleading.

~~~
Retric
If you want to find the income from the top programmers you would need to
include people like Bill Gates. While he spent most of his life as management
most of his wealth from stock gained while he was a programmer.

------
newobj
"Rock Star" is the 2000's version of the 1990's intra-office Nerf fight. Bait
for idiots to apply at bad companies.

------
flannell
There's only one rock star, Ajay Bhatt. Proof below.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I>

~~~
Hoff
That isn't Ajay Bhatt. That's an actor.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/05/intel_a...](http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/05/intel_ad_campaign_remakes_rese.html)

~~~
icefox
:( So sad

------
yummyfajitas
I recently discovered this site. Seems relevant:

<http://imarockstarninja.com/>

------
seltzered
I see you posted a question about this six months ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248389>

------
ja27
I think "douchebag manager."

~~~
chipmunkninja
This. I find it is frequently accompanied by a non-trivial degree of
condescension and complete and utter lack of understanding about how what
they're trying to build would actually work.

------
mmt
_If you want extraordinary people, can you compensate them extraordinarily or
provide an extraordinary environment?_

Being able and being willing may take a while to converge, usually after
interviewing a large number of the ordinary.

------
tdfx
This captured my feelings exactly about the ubiquity of this term in wanna-be-
trendy job postings. I've seen quite a few companies use it, and without
exception, it has meant that the company didn't know what you'd even be doing.
It also means the person that's hiring you probably wants to "jump on a call"
to discuss things, to see how you can "build out" their ill-defined, overly
ambitious projects with whack-a-mole feature creep.

------
joelmichael
I have never minded terms of endearment and respect like "rock star". Much
better than being treated like a lowly cog, if you're the sort of developer
that has some ambition and self-respect. I think the term comes from coders
who are a bit hipper and more arrogant in their attitude than your typical
computer nerd. I understand some might find that attitude grating, but I don't
really care. Their attitudes are boring and docile.

~~~
cwp
It's one thing if your boss calls you a rock star after the fact - ie, based
on your performance. It's something else entirely if a company says they're
looking for a rockstar in a job ad.

------
alexyim
The difference between 50mil and 31k is 1622x, not 1622%.

------
pvg
It kind of reminds me of another fad where someone was equating hackers to
painters. Oh wait.

------
catshirt
always seems strange to me when a company publishes such a subjective post.

~~~
lwhi
It's basically an advert - they're trying to appeal to developers.

EDIT: the article has a purpose .. it's content designed to complement the
main purpose of the site - which is to get people to use their recruitment
service. They are showing that they understand what developers think - and at
the same time, they 'might' also be educating hirers.

A less cynical response for the downvoter - and yes I expect to be downvoted
again ;)

~~~
catshirt
moreso, it's the way they present it so matter of factly (when in fact, it's
not):

 _When you write, "We're looking for a rock star developer." A developer sees,
"We want to treat a developer like the RIAA treats rock stars."_

------
jw84
Cargo cult practice in effect.

------
sabat
"Rock star" is an overused term, sure. I don't know that its by hiring
companies use makes developers think of abuse, though.

