Based on the comments here, it looks like we committed a faux pas by using the word rockstar. Sorry about that. We didn't anticipate getting a negative reaction to the word. I had always conceptualized rockstar as a compliment to someone's skills, and I hadn't seen enough job ads to know that it was becoming uncool.

s/rockstar/talented

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest you were uncool :)

I certainly wouldn't know if it was cool or not anyway. For all I know, it is the coolest term out there. I just don't like the phraseology. I never have. I don't like guru, ninja, or the other ones either.

> s/rockstar/talented

    Substitution replacement not terminated at line 1.

Good catch, I haven't coded perl since 1999. This might be more appropriate for the kind of background we want:

  "YC startup looking for rockstar designer".gsub("rockstar","talented")

Or maybe:

  "YC startup looking for rockstar designer".replace("rockstar","talented") 

for the pythonistas.

Is "double plus good" better? Of course if it was appended with "programmer" you'd have to assume fluency in Newspeak.

I agree. It is being thrown out in every other job posting. It is getting kinda annoying.

Part of what can be annoying about the "rock star" label -- other than that it's a buzzword -- is that it's now a buzzword without a standard definition. At one point it clearly meant "you, o techie, are a recognizable name and thus a brand unto yourself." But in the last few years it's come to mean "miracle worker."

I got so worked up about this, some weeks ago, that I even blogged about it: http://advice.cio.com/esther_schindler/rockstar