Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by maxxxxx 3175 days ago
I would replace " No ninjas, rockstars or brogrammers, please; just nice, caring humans." with "Just nice, caring humans". "no..." sentences sound defensive to me.
7 comments

You could say:

We value the ability to work with others over exceptional technical skills. That is, while there is value in the latter, we value the former more.

No "no", no defensiveness, but the preference is clear.

That's still defensive.

"Here, we place a strong focus on ability to work with others and collaboration. Success requires teamwork!"

Don't justify your preference, just state it directly. It's not about tradeoffs, it's that we're fundamentally doing something collaborative -- everyone needs to be on the same team.

That is the one "no..." sentence that I'd leave there. It serves to distinguish them from the a particular culture.

That message is lost when you just say "nice, caring humans".

Don't you think it's odd to be replacing a non-inclusive culture by creating a new one?
Life involves choices, most of the reason I dislike the 'no brogrammer/ninja/rockstar/competent people' culture is because its so wishy-washy about what it actually does and does not like.

I'd rather know that my talents aren't welcome than waste time in meetings explaining why their feels don't make the code work. There are plenty of companies that want people who can manage to code something that works without involving 16 other people.

There are plenty of people who want to work in that environment and it helps me filter out the places I don't want to work by knowing they don't want individual contributors.

Doesn't seem that defensive, just highlighting that a self-focused individual won't thrive here.
I detest the phrase 'brogrammer' so damn much.
If ninja, rockstar, and brogrammer are meaningless words, which they are, then the best course of action is to leave them out, not use them. If someone thinks they know what a ninja programmer is, and knows whether they are one, they've already thought more about it than you really want them to.
The first part is important to signal that you aren't just trying to find people to work with, but that you also want to join up in a culture war, and a culture war requires promoting ideas to hate instead of letting them fade away.

Imagine how it would look if they wrote "no pushovers or girly-girls, please"

This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

Avoiding plummets into flamewar is why we have that guideline, so please follow it, as you should follow all the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I've heard ninja is just the new term for full stack developer, though.