From: Zundra Daniel <zundra.daniel@...>
Date: 2009-10-01T09:41:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Exceptional Rails Developer

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I could hug you right now

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 8:32 PM, David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 30 September 2009 06:54:16 pm Greg Donald wrote:
> > We programmers all already think we are exceptional.
>
> Well, most of us.
>
> > You
> > won't make less of us apply for a job by trying to single out people
> > using silly buzzwords.  So stop it.
>
> That, I'm not sure of.
>
> Ok, silly buzzwords, yes. It seems every marketer ends up using
> "exceptional"
> or "ninja", etc, so it's watered down.
>
> On the other hand, I'd much rather work for a place which values talent
> (whether or not they can find it) than one which values rapid-but-buggy
> prototypes using the cheapest contractors that money can buy. I'm talking
> about best practices versus "I tried stuff until it worked."
>
> I mean, it is nice to occasionally be the smartest person in the room -- or
> at
> least the most knowledgeable. I'm back in school (since I don't have a
> job),
> which means I'm starting at the very beginning -- I'm talking about a class
> which will spend a week or two on binary and hexadecimal, along with plenty
> of
> other trivia, before writing a single line of code. It's fun to finish a
> weeklong assignment in an hour, or an hour-long assignment in ten minutes.
>
> But I don't really want to spend my life correcting everyone else's
> mistakes.
> As intimidating as it is, I'd much rather work in a place where everyone's
> smarter than me, or at least interested in improving, than working in a
> place
> where a bunch of codemonkeys punch a clock -- or worse, a startup filled
> with
> Paula Beans in Aeron chairs with dual-30" monitors.
>
> (That's not a sexist comment, I promise. Google Paula Bean.)
>
> So that's the reason "exceptional" at least got my attention. It shows that
> someone is at least pretending they care about learning and improving,
> about
> making their craft an art form, and about doing things The Right Way.
>
> But I'll give you a secret: If you want a buzzword that'll really catch my
> attention, throw around words like metaprogramming and Domain-Specific
> Languages. Talk about how your product will be fun to work on, and ask for
> people who specialize in interesting things like CouchDB or virtual machine
> architecture. Mention conferences you send your team to -- both to
> advertise
> and to learn.
>
> In other words: We're programmers. Find out what actually excites us, use
> actual technical buzzwords (not marketing buzzwords), and use them
> properly.
> Be a cool place to work, and explain why you're a cool place to work.
>
>

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