Are Hacker News Job Postings Successful? What Is a “Rock Star Developer”?

9 points by jmannon 10 years ago | 7 comments

Everyday I see Hacker News job postings, are they successful? Usually they are looking for the "Senior Rock Star Developers", or they are offering crazy benefits. I also notice some of the same companies reposting pretty often. Does that mean these companies are having trouble keeping people as employees, or they are just expanding that fast? I'm a pretty new developer, 1 1/2 years of professional experience at the same company. I have no plans of leaving my current company, but I just wonder what exactly a "Rock Star developer" is?

thecupisblue 10 years ago |

Rock Star developer is a legend about a guy you hire.

He is the one that closes all the issues so fast you can't believe it, writes clean code, writes the documentation, and then refactors some ugly piece of code on the other end of your app/site into something beautiful.

Every team member understands his code, yet don't know how to implement it, especially in that short time. He does code reviews, writes tests, finds ways to make your site/stack/app/build process better, faster, cheaper, safer. And he does all of that 10x faster than other devs. So when he's out of work, he writes blog posts and conference talks and everyone claps and follows him on twitter and sends him linked-in requests and knows your company because he works there. In his free time, he contributes to open source, works on side projects and his github profile shows full green. You're probably using his libraries.

He's that creature of myth created by the internet that every PM wants to work with, every CTO wants on his team and every recruiter chases. The ever eluding white rabbit of development.

maha_funk 10 years ago | |

This was so well written

facorreia 10 years ago |

Coincidentally, right now there isn't a single post asking for rock stars on the jobs page. They are like "X Is Hiring Ruby Developers".

sickandtired 10 years ago |

1. White Male.

2. Preferrably went to some elite college.

3. Previous founder or has a passion for startups

4. Is popular on sites like github with 100+ followers

that's the standard, don't expect a reply unless you fit all of these things.

throwaway1410 10 years ago | |

I've found two jobs in the Who's hiring thread twice, both of them remote! And I'm not even in the US. Out of your list, I only meet the "White Male" criterion.

S4M 10 years ago | |

I always thought a Rock Star Developer was a developer who plays in a rock band during his free time. I never got why employers were so adamant in hiring them.

dylanjermiah 10 years ago | |

I'm assuming you have no data to support your assumptions?