How To Identify A Lame Programming Job

Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by enjo on Thursday December 03, 2009 @03:23PM (#975148)

Basically a list of this guys personal preferences.. lame.

Here is a foolproof method of filtering out bad programmer jobs:

If they ever use the words 'rockstar', 'ninja', or anything similar, run very far away. If throughout the interview process they focus purely on pumping up your ego run very far away. If all they can talk about is how they have Rockband and Foosball, you got it, run very far away.

Great programming jobs are those in which you are solving interesting problems surrounded by interesting people. If they have that they don't need 'ninjas' and 'rockstars'. They don't need to talk about foosball (I'm not saying Foosball is bad, it just shouldn't be the focus of your work). Instead, they'll talk about interesting problems.

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Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by spudlyo on Thursday December 03, 2009 @08:04PM (#975570)

I'm sure there are great places to work where HR drones who want to sound cool bandy about terms like rockstar and ninja. I agree it's annoying, but it doesn't mean anything IMHO.

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Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by pwnstigator on Thursday December 03, 2009 @08:41PM (#975616)

It's a strong warning sign. Anything to the effect of "we want rockstar developers" suggests something unsaid-- that they consider most of the applicants that they get to be of low-quality, which says more about them and the mismatch between what they think they offer and how the market perceives them than it does about the applicants.

It's like writing "please be cute" in an online dating profile.

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Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by demallien on Friday December 04, 2009 @01:24AM (#975906)

I have to disagree with that, simply based on my current job. It's a big corporation, but my particular team is just a group of 7 engineers who have simply been told to design a brilliant product - we have massive control over what the product does. The problems we face are very similr to those that you get in a start-up, as we are building an entire product from scratch.

Yet, if you asked someone that hadn't worked there what they would expect the atmosphere to be like working there, they assume that you're probably going to be a cube-farm drone, putting out more paperwork than code. It sounds like a boring place to work, without actually being a boring place to work.

PS: If anyone is a Gentoo guru looking for work in Paris, don't hesitate to contact me :-)

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Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by spudlyo on Friday December 04, 2009 @10:36AM (#976489)

PS: If anyone is a Gentoo guru looking for work in Paris, don't hesitate to contact me :-)

Sorry, I won't work at places where people use the term 'guru' to refer to their workers. ;)

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Re:How To Identify A Lame Programming Job by nailer on Friday December 04, 2009 @08:17AM (#976281)

"Anything to the effect of "we want rockstar developers" suggests...that they consider most of the applicants that they get to be of low-quality"

Yep. I'm cool with that. I like working at places with high standards, and I'm glad they understand the difference between good people and great people.

I'm an infrastructure guy (who happens to program), and I've worked with people who are both competant and people who are great. Both can do the job, but working with the latter makes a world of difference to both the work environment and the output.

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