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by oldandtired 3054 days ago
Labels like rockstar, guru and ninja are labels we don't need. We need competent generalists and competent specialists who can work in teams as well as work alone and can communicate with those who are part of the team or part of the management and user bases.

When a person takes on for themselves labels like rockstar, guru, ninja, etc. I don't doubt that they can write code, but I certainly doubt that they can write code that fulfils the needs of those who will be using it.

Labels likes these are a detriment to the profession. If we want businesses to take note and consider those in the IT profession to be anything more than ignored, we need to lift our game a long way.

What is IT known for (in the general sense), games, social media, search engines and lots of crappy software that users have to fight to get anything done.

Yet we have people and companies that produce great software that fulfils the needs of those who use it in a way that is not detrimental to those users.

It's coming up to forty years that I have been involved with the industry and I hear complaints every day from users who are frustrated by the inconsistencies in the software they are using, whether it be social media, business software, games, etc.

In general, as an industry, we are far too arrogant about our own self-importance and what we develop. Whether it be the likes of Apple, Oracle, IBM, Google, etc, the industry has forgotten that they only exist as long as people will tolerate the bull dust that is thrown at them by these companies. We are always looking for the "next big thing", yet many of the actual needs that we could be filling are not being done. We like flashy and not substance.

1 comments

We don't need titles like that at all. Let's change rockstar to MVP Developer, Ninja to Builder, Guru to Experienced Builder, and the 3rd type of developer described in GP to Maintenance Developer. I think the industry could go a long way if it admits that it needs all 4 of these types of developers, so that expectations were transparent for employees and needs are transparent for developers.
I object to those terms. The rockstar is most definitely not the MVP. To the extent that I have worked with any, they are the insufferable primo donnos that fill the garbage bin and set it on fire then they proselytize their own trash fire to management until they think it is "hot", "energetic" and "enlightened". The rest of us then get stuck dealing with their legacy issues. If you're going to title-ify it, how about "prototype developer"?

The others can be "foundation developer", "transition developer", and "maintenance developer". It's still meaningless as long as different companies won't standardize on those titles.

We likely all know which category we belong to now, and which one we want to be. We also know that any company that asks directly for a "rockstar", "ninja", or "guru" is probably one to be avoided.

minimum viable product
But you see now how the TLA could be ambiguous.
There are those who get it done RIGHT, and those who get it done RIGHT NOW.
Yes to both of these, but there are other options as well.

The frustrating ones are those who talk a good talk about "doing things right" (and, generally, talk a lot...), but then work on something for an age and come back with a solution that's objectively worse than the "RIGHT NOW" solution we've been using in the interim.