A big part of the problem is that everyone, of course, wants rockstars, they want the top 25, 10, or 1% of the talent pool. But not every company actually needs them. Not every company even knows what to do with them or can make effective use of them.
And not every company wants to pay for them. If you need rockstar results expect to pay rockstar prices.
As someone wrote recently, some companies say they're hiring when what they really want are shiny new people for their company. Rockstars are pretty shiny.
Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
When I was younger, I was also producing software faster, doing in 1 week what the senior were expecting in 1 month. Well, in reality it took the rest of the month to make it really works, but in my mind at the time I made it faster.
Nowadays I would still beat the deadlines with working software most of the time. Most of the time is the kicker. I know that I could need 1 month even though I will likely do it faster.
The more I know the more I find stuff that I don't and the less I would present myself as "the best".
Unreliable, delusional, unexperimented people, ... will reply to that offer.
>>Isn't that a sure way of not getting anybody competent ? Isn't that the hallmark of incompetence to think that you are better than everybody else.
Not necessarily.
There are two extremes. The first one is the Dunning-Krugger effect, where the person is so incompetent that they are not able to even recognize their incompetence, and instead think they are awesome. The second one is the opposite, called the Imposter Syndrome, where the person is extremely competent but believes that they are actually a sham who just got lucky.
There are many extremely competent people who are aware of their own competence, though.
What you're describing is know as the Dunning-Kruger effect explained in Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (1999).
Correct. And it seems people have only figured that out recently. Companies that really do only hire the top 1% are starting to post jobs that look like a whole lot more people are qualified for. See Instagram, for example:
Tons and tons and tons of people meet those requirements, and they surely get a mountain of resumes, most of which never even get a phone screen. But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
But they don't scare away people who are actually qualified but just don't see themselves as 'rockstars' or 'ninjas' or 'the best in the World' - even though they are.
Yah, they select against self-awareness. I think the dirty truth is that thinking you're the best in the world is more important to these companies than actually being good. If you have an outsized self-perception, you'll put up with unreasonable deadlines and terrible conditions on account of pride. That's attractive to someone who's in the business of exploiting naivete.
I'm a mediocre (96-97th percentile) software engineer whose expertise pertains more to the software ecosystem and economy. Knowing it (and myself) as well as I do, I know I'm not the best in the world. I even have that rare trait of knowing what I'm missing, and there's quite a lot in that category. But I'm more than good enough for 99.8% of the tasks that people need done, given reasonable learning time.
These percentiles are a bit shady, I'll admit, because "programmers" isn't a well-defined group. I have a pretty strong sense that I'm 1.7-1.8 on the software engineer scale but a weak sense of how to define the population. Whether I'm 96th percentile vs. 99th depends more on how tightly or loosely we define "programmer". I tend to think of myself as about 94th because I define it tightly, but I would usually say that I'm 96-97th in congruence with the looser definition that a lot of people use.
Compared to the average programmer, that's about 5-6x. I'd imagine the Google Fellows are 40x or higher. I'm not down on myself at all, but I recognize that I have a long way to go.
Although if I read that today, I would think the company is being unrealistic and overreaching.
Granted, they made it, but this kind of language would not build faith in a company if I were to read a job ad for them.
The added Alan Kay quote would further fuel my doubt that the submitter is just another worthless startup guy thinking he can get the best of the best with some shallow knowledge of what hackers think.
I would have been wrong this time, but I don't doubt for a second there are hundreds of ads like this for companies that crashed and burned shortly after.
As a programmer that has occasionally worked in teams that delivered great software in 1/3rd the time that sensible people thought possible, that advert really appeals to me -- to me it sounds like someone who really wants to get stuff done, and that is exciting. Like the GP said, the language in this particular post is interesting -- it feels very different to the usual 'are you a ROCKSTAR NINJA PROGAMMER?!?!?!' stuff that tends to typify the worthless startup guys.
That kind of high-performance environment is all about the team, not the individual. Usually it's hard to know who you will gel with until you have some sort of history of working together, then you self select. However, like I say, this advert really appeals to me and could possibly help me get over that pre-selection process in my head.
Back in the day a large quantity of the emails that I received (or postings that I saw) contained some tag line or quote such as that. I'm not sure exactly over what years that practice disappeared, but I can't remember the last time I received an email with a tag line.
Bezos was just doing what was quite common at the time.
I don't agree. Sure, "ninja rockstar" has been over/misused to the point where it's beyond cliché, but at the core is a requirement for essentially supernatural skills and the implicit understanding that those are not realistic, so only the best need apply.
The language requirements gives the ad a certain solemnity in today's context, but I don't think it would have conveyed anything out of the ordinary in 1994.
It's not a "requirement" if it's not actually required. I can guarantee you that if someone were to go into, say, silicon valley and find every single developer who got a job in a role which was advertised at some point using the word "rockstar" or "ninja" and then compared the average talent/skill of that pool of developers vs. developers as a whole there would not be much difference, if any.
Edit: I think I slightly misread your post, so you have my apologies.
It is much in the same vein as the silly "requirements" of x years in y, z years in w, etc. And a stack of degrees. Usually it's just a way to keep the walls high to weed out the truly unqualified.
No, I understand it can't be formally understood as a requirement - but that's how it's phrased. Hence my comparison with todays unrealistic "requirements".
Nah to me "rockstar ninja" it is just a marketing term. Sure it sounds great and may fill arenas of recruiters but I still can't quite define what such a person is.
Is it a good programmer who knows all the bits and bolts of a given language or an adaptable developer who can master concepts from another programming language? Will the ideal candidate write good code AND good tests?
It's just too vague... Simply doesn't rock my confusion.
"than the standard 'seeking unix ninja rockstar' stuff"
People do that because they are mimicking seeing others do that and additionally haven't seen it enough (apparently) to realize how annoying and cliche it sounds. If the ads that the wannabees read said something different repeatedly (like "extremely talented c/c++/unix developers" and then listed 20 specifics for example) they might be mimicking that instead.
This language conveys so much more competence than the standard 'seeking unix ninja rockstar' stuff that seems to be de rigeur these days.