[cookiecaper]

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").

[lawnchair_larry]

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.

[huhtenberg]

Or they think of themselves as ninjas, which is too a big red flag.

[bestes]

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.

[r00fus]

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.

[novalis]

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.

[joshAg]

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.

[jack-r-abbit]

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?

[slavak]

This is great.

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..."

[joshAg]

if you don't mind, I'm going to borrow that line from you...

[jack-r-abbit]

I don't mind at all.

[ktizo]

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...

[EwanG]

I gather you read Perfect Crime Party (Bakuman around chapter 90) then?

[ktizo]

nope, just looked it up just now, looks fun

will add it to my reading list, needed some new manga to get into anyways, thanks for that :)

[joshAg]

how do you know that i didn't, and this is just a diversion?

[ktizo]

Because I'm wearing lucky pants, of course.

[alphakappa]

Your program would do the same for an advert that said something along the lines of "We don't care whether you are a ninja or a rock star"?

[readme]

It would be great if you made your software available as a web app for all of us to use.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

The argument made in the article applies in both directions.