So tired of job listings looking for “rock stars.” Rock stars show up six hours late, start drinking at 11, punch lawyers, and sleep with the account managers. Why would you want to hire one? (Rock stars are also generally uninterested in working on your unfunded demand-side mobile-advertising-as-a-service startup.)
Cowboy Coders are usually not worth the price.
Yeah, this one has always bugged me, too. The irony is that in the little contact I’ve had with people who might be considered actual “rock stars,” the term was used as an insult, as in: “yeah, we played with X last week, but he’s too cool to talk to us because he’s a rock star now.”
I’ve actually been pleased to see “ninja” moving up as a replacement for “rock star” in developer job postings, as it seems more apt:
- You rarely ever see a ninja in daylight.
- Ninjas never, ever talk about how they do what they do.
- In the course of doing their job, Ninjas usually leave a trail of chaos in their wake (and, of course, it’s not their job to clean up the mess).
I’m actually looking to hire a “Founder” for my new startup. Must have at least 3-5 years experience in self importance, good networking skills, only networking skills, the ability to network, the ability to talk about themselves, the ability to look down on everyone else, really really narrow tunnel vision, an inability to consider marketplace conditions, an unabashedly singular vision of the world and their vaulted position there-in.
MBAs preferred, but we’re also willing to consider siblings of wealthy entrepreneurs, children of VCs, and anyone who has spent a lot of time in a coffee shop refreshing Tumblr and/or Facebook.
