Have you seen the job postings for “Rock Star Web Developer” and “Web Developer Ninja”? I suppose “Rock Star Web Developer Ninja” will follow.
Here are some examples I found from doing a search on DuckDuckGo.com.
“You’ll work across multiple departments using your mad ninja skills for customer facing web materials.”
This says nothing about web development other than you’re going to have coordinate with a lot of people and somehow “mad ninja skills” are going to help. Apparently ninjas are good at coordinating and gathering materials in an office environment?
“Linux ninja skills (you’ll spend a good part of your day SSH’d to our servers).”
Ah yes, Bruce Lee was excellent at the command line! So it looks like you will be working on a “live” server much of the time. That should throw up some red flags as to how this company is run.
“You need to be ninja status, yes that is right!”
Is there a test somewhere that I can take to find out if I have achieved ninja status? Or maybe it’s one of those things where if you don’t already know that you’ve achieved ninja status then you’re not a ninja…
“If you are a rockstar web developer show us your webdev prowess.”
First of all it’s “rock star” with two words unless they really do mean “rockstar” in which case I have no idea what that means. Secondly rock stars do what they want, they don’t have to show anything to anyone.
“This is a permanent opportunity for a creative “rock star” Web Developer with strong Javascript, a passion for Web Development, Social Apps and/or Gaming who would like to be part of a company who is doing some very state of the art development.”
This one has it all, unfortunately. Not only are they looking for a rock star but a creative and passionate one as well which to me means you’re looking for someone who wants to do their own thing on their own terms and be passionate about it. That should make for an awesome employee and team player [sarcasm]. Also they are doing some “very state of the art development”, yes everyone is, especially companies that need rock stars.
So why are employers using words like “ninja” and “rock star” in their job postings. It looks as though they are convenient replacements for words or phrases that actually mean something like “expert”, “experience”, “in-depth”. They also denote that you will be responsible for developing with many technologies from the front-end to the back-end and everything in between. The unfortunate truth to job seekers who are flattered by these words are that these job descriptions don’t fit what the company is willing to compensate and rarely is the environment what the job description portrays. It’s an unfortunate, sad start to a business relationship where both parties totally embellish the truth.
