

So you think you are a Rockstar Coding Ninja? - edw519
http://www.deannolan.co.uk/post/So-you-think-you-are-a-Rockstar-Coding-Ninja.aspx

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sant0sk1
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.'"_

~~~
leif
Strange. My feelings about Demitri Martin are similar.

~~~
rms
You're so witty!

------
ojbyrne
"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.

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

~~~
gaius
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.

~~~
abalashov
Really? The authorities think pedobear hangs out at Bebo?

How strange...

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natch
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.

~~~
wheels
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.

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iigs
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.

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abalashov
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.

~~~
yamil
install them asteRISK and let pay $$$ for support

~~~
abalashov
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.

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dasil003
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.

~~~
dbz
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!

~~~
thenduks
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.

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thenduks
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'.

------
fsm
Cool programming: <http://www.assembly.org/summer09/compos/realtime>

