Indeed. My ad scoring program deducts 5 points and transparently kills off ads that contain terms like "ninja" and "rock star" because to my mind they indicate a propensity for either abuse ("a rock star should be able to code this in three days!!") or fad-following ineptitude ("rock stars are the coolest kind of programmers, I must have them! also, we write EVERYTHING in Ruby, it's like the Mac of programming").
Personally I think those terms indicate feeble attempts at psychological manipulation. I feel like responding to job ads like that would be like admitting you're a gullible fool. They're trying to recruit and stroke egos, not people.
I dunno. Think about Steve Jobs recruiting for Mac engineers with a pirate flag flying from the building. If 'pirate' then == ninja/rockstar now, you might be missing a great job.
Was that part of Steve's recruiting schtick? IIRC, that was just internal company culture and not something that Apple HR (or Steve if he was interviewing) would have mentioned.
I do believe he used words like "changing the world", etc. These are more about results than ego. Huge difference.
You are on to something here.
If people want o make it a hipster contest don't use the recruiting op and waste it. It simply does not add up unless you are stuck in a mindset that is not conductive to anything productive. Nihilists are us should never be a place one "wants" to work at unless there are no other ops available.
my typical response to ads for rockstars is pointing out that rockstars tend to earn 10 to 100 times more than a great studio musician and generally have to be the prima donna all the time. Then I ask if forcing myself to be the center of attention is part of the job description, and just how much better the position pays compared to the typical valley salary.
Along that same lines... you never see a good ninja. So if I'm hired under the guise of being a ninja you can expect to never see me in the office. So telecommuting would be expected?
I'm going to apply for and get a job at a company advertising for "ninjas," then not let my boss know when I'm taking vacation or a sick day - just so when he calls to ask where I am, I can reply with "Well, you did say you wanted a ninja programmer..."
if you were really a ninja however, you would have stolen that line under cover of night, replacing it with a forgery that looked identical, before using a selection of grappling hooks to make a stealthy escape across the rooftops...
