What developers think when you say “rock star”

This guy at one Hirelite blog made a very good point about those job advertisements you see looking for a “rock star” programmer. Same basic principle applies to “ninja” coders.

Stop it, just please stop it. As well as everything that guy just argued, a “rock star” programmer to me means someone who’ll take horrible shortcuts and code nasty hacks into already dodgy systems (if the company is iffy enough to seek out a “rock star” programmer, they’ll be dodgy systems) to meet stupidly short deadlines. While completely disregarding proper planning and teamwork. Sure, they’ll look amazing to management in the short term (“wow! you got that working this quickly?? But those other shmucks told us it’d take twice as long!”), but in the long term, other developers on the team will want to knock their heads off the nearest whiteboard as they end up compensating for said rock star’s shitty, hacky should-never-have-been-given-life code.