What developers think when you say "Rock Star"

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."<p>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.

When a company asks for a rock star developer, I think pretty much this:<p>&#62; "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).<p>Or more specifically, they really need 5 people to do this work, but they only plan to get 1.

What I think of when I hear "Rock Star Programmers"?<p>I think how most musicians, <i>signed to a major label</i>, who perform as "rock stars" still get a net <i>zero</i> payoff after two years.<p>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.

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"<p>Recursive Super-Hero Bingo for the win!

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&#38;M's.

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?

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.

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

+10<p>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.<p>These guys offered me a permanent position, and I turned it down for a real job.

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.<p>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".

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."

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.

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.<p>A house with 'character' is in a bad state of repair.<p>A 'rockstar developer' is competent, but young enough to not know his or her worth.

A rock star is somebody who plays in a rock band!<p>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.<p>Stop using the term, right, now, it's stupid, seriously.<p>I'm not going to get started on "code ninja". Jesus... WTF comes up with this rubbish.

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.<p>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.

Whenever someone is advertising for "Rock Stars," I immediately have two thoughts:<p>1) Will they be paying me Rock Star money?<p>2) Oh great, another bunch of douchebag middle managers trying to sound trendy....<p>There is no way that they <i>really</i> 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.

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

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.<p>Someday we may well ask, "What was it, once, to rock?"

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.

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.

Why <i>are</i> software developers segmented between "rock stars" and "not rock stars"?<p>A salary estimate search on Simply Hired for "rockstar accountant" yielded no results :-)

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

There's only one rock star, Ajay Bhatt. Proof below.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I</a>

I recently discovered this site. Seems relevant:<p><a href="http://imarockstarninja.com/" rel="nofollow">http://imarockstarninja.com/</a>

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

I think "douchebag manager."

<i>If you want extraordinary people, can you compensate them extraordinarily or provide an extraordinary environment?</i><p>Being able and being willing may take a while to converge, usually after interviewing a large number of the ordinary.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Cargo cult practice in effect.

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