We all know that colleague who cranks out work from 9 to 9. He's known by many names, among them ninja and rockstar. Managers unabashedly herald hi...
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That is not true. Companies are interested in maximizing the value of their employees. If the company knows that paying an individual more will result in a greater increase in company value, it'd be in their interest to pay that individual more -- or give them more perks, holidays, reduced hours, whatever.
Good management is interested in maximizing productivity. But if their only approach is more hours and less pay, they suck at their job and the company's directors/officers should be looking to replace the managers.
Hi thanks. I didn't say good companies or managements. I did think in general most of them (the way they are financially positioned) are incentivized to slip into this bad territory. It's like the case that if most people wake up one day with a superpower, they are incentivized to do bad things. But some will still manage to become responsible and emerge a superhero. Doesn't mean they have to, but it's easy.
Sadly, the relationship between for-profit companies and good management is not 1:1.
Companies might honestly be interested in maximizing the value of their employees, but managers often have more focused goals, which, when optimized to the extreme, can result in what the paradox the article describes.
Thanks for the comment. I do not agree that great companies do this. I think most companies are incentivized toward this. So it's easier to fall into this trap. Better ones realize this and create a long-lasting culture with much needed employee loyalty.
Separate from this, for me a lot of that pressure comes from the fact that we're all programming using languages, libraries, algorithms, data structures, etc. that rockstars have created / invented.
I'm not sure there's another field where you have such a close relationship to the tools, and the tools are so often created (and so recently) by very small teams, down to teams of one.
Perhaps academic research has this quality as well, though I can't speak from much experience on that front.
This is an interesting take. Although I want to be clear that great programmers are not necessarily rockstars. Rockstar is a term of status marketing/recruiter/media helped come up to distinguish a certain stereotype that's easy to market and discriminate "the more normal ones".
Great programmers who have created languages, libraries, tools have used today are just great human beings because most of them did without or with little financial benefits. I've come to know in person a person of this caliber (let's just say he invented a language) and he's more similar to most people I know. He struggles in the same way we all do. He may have more theoretical experience and a more streamlined thought process, but he wouldn't strike you as a genius or rockstar. He is just a resilient, patient and very humble man who always ask for feedback.
github.com/dylanbeattie/rockstar
I don't get it. How do you program in it?
It's all written in a rock balled sort of syntax, it's more of a joke language so now you can actually be a rockstar developer. 👨🎤
If the manager rewards those who sit late at the office as against those who actually work and score goal points, then its a problem with your office culture. You might be talking about some old contracting IT companies, most modern ones have transparency and processes in place, so that this kind of injustice doesn't happen. But yeah, there are those "old style" ones too, especially those who were established in the pre-90s and haven't changed with times until today.
Hi thanks for the comment. It's not necessarily my office culture, but this still happens even in the most forward-thinking startup companies. Sometime in more subtle forms.
Rockstars are generally hard to get along with, aren't they?
A rockstar isn't a real person. It is just a classification that management came up with to alienate people who don't fall into the stereotype.
I was not clear enough. To me, rockstars, in the first place, are famous and successful members of rock bands. They are quite real. I hope so, at least. For some reason, rockstars are used as a metaphor in software development. But if we think about real rockstars, are they easy to get along with in general? If not, is it a good thing to be a "rockstar" developer?
Perhaps this article might shed some light on the origin of the buzzword. However, I think the preciseness of interpretation is secondary here compared to its harmful usages in the context of workplace culture.
If anything, rockstar implies celebrity status, which means someone the general public put the spotlight on mostly superficial features of that figure. That means when you call someone a rockstar, people will inevitably take notice of that person's characters, appearance, skills, etc. and just like a real rockstar, they will either get inspired to imitate him or compare him to themselves.
You don't want people to imitate or compare themselves to a few privileged in an organization. You want them to be confident of who they are and do their best in their own swagger.