20 Nov 2009, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Thought & Theory, 0 Comments

The Fallacy of the Rockstar Developer

The Internet age certainly didn’t create the concept of an industry “rockstar” – but it sure-as-shootin’ exacerbated it. Whether its Ruby’s DHH or Digg’s Kevin Rose people demand that a select few from among their peers be singled out and lionized.

My ire was stoked by a raffled book at a recent ColdFusion user’s group meeting, “Secrets of the RockStar Programmers” by Ed Burns. My problems with this book are as many as the errors are egregious. The many interviews with programming “rockstars” are published as they were transcribed rather than some kind of coherent narrative. This means, for example, if I’m seeking advice on time management I need to try to piece together the logical chapter the author should have created. And being forced to read through the unnatural pacing means enduring qualifying responses like “I’m not sure what you mean” and “I never thought about it that way”. Seemingly random facts that would have no bearing on programming, like one’s birth order, are thrown in. Further, the interviewees “rockstardom” seem heavily skewed toward the Java world. There’s no front-end developers – because, obviously, outputting things to a screen constitutes design, or something. There’s no web-centric stuff. Finally there’s an inexplicable interview with Weird Al Yankovic, just cause.

For developer’s looking for some non-language specific tips for setting up a great software production process I’d encourage you to check out Joel Spolsky’s classic: 12 Steps to Better Code. It’s insight is worth more than this book …and the post available for free.

More troubling than that above, however, is the idea of the rockstar as applied to development. One does not become a “Rockstar” because they’re brilliant, or productive, or creative. If we were talking music who first comes to your mind when I say “rockstar”? I’m betting its someone more known for their antics than their musicianship. That’s fine for selling albums; the line between being a good entertainer and a successful musician is a thin one. However, with code the charisma required to be a character isn’t the same talent necessary to prolifically write code.

The software that operates the shuttle is an envious system. A December, 1996 FastCompany article has much to say about the team that is able to put out 11 versions of a 420,000 line program with only 17 errors (the commercial equivalent would have more than 5,000):

“To be this good, the on-board shuttle group has to be very different — the antithesis of the up-all-night, pizza-and-roller-hockey software coders who have captured the public imagination. To be this good, the on-board shuttle group has to be very ordinary — indistinguishable from any focused, disciplined, and methodically managed creative enterprise.”

A bit later….

“…it’s the dominant image of the software development world: Gen-Xers sporting T-shirts and distracted looks, squeezing too much heroic code writing into too little time; rollerblades and mountain bikes tucked in corners; pizza boxes and Starbucks cups discarded in conference rooms; dueling tunes from Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis Morrisette and the Fugees. Its the world made famous, romantic, even inevitable by stories out of Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and Netscape.

“It’s not the story of the on-board shuttle group. Their quarters are a study in white-collar pedestrian. The most striking thing is how ordinary they look. Other than the occasional bit of shuttle memorabilia, you could be in the offices of any small company or government agency. Everyone has his or her own small office, and the offices have desks, PCs, and sparse personal artifacts. People wear moderately dressy clothes to work, neat but nothing flashy, certainly nothing grungy.

“It’s strictly an 8-to-5 kind of place — there are late nights, but they’re the exception. The programmers are intense, but low-key. Many of them have put in years of work either for IBM (which owned the shuttle group until 1994), or directly on the shuttle software. They’re adults, with spouses and kids and lives beyond their remarkable software program.”

And the money quote…

“What’s going on here is the kind of nuts-and-bolts work that defines the drive for group perfection — a drive that is aggressively intolerant of ego-driven hotshots. In the shuttle group’s culture, there are no superstar programmers. The whole approach to developing software is intentionally designed not to rely on any particular person.”

Do civil engineers seek to be on the cover of magazines? Do chemists dream of book deals? Perhaps, but when it comes to technical disciplines the software world seems to have outsized ambitions. Are we still hung over from the dot-com bust where every 20-something with a laptop was bestowed fame and fortune? Why do seek to elevate and emulate the rogue hacker with shaky team skills, the maverick that eschews process in favor of heroics? Where does this come from?

I’d love to hear what you think below.

(Special thanks for Glen Lewis for the heads up to the FastCompany piece.)

• Update 1 – The Business Insider asks Google’s New York office “who are the rockstar engineers” to which Google replies “we don’t really work like that”.
• Update 2 – Avoid this Job has this wonderful quote on the matter:
  

  “‘Rock Star’ is perhaps the most abused phrase in the history of job listings. Nobody should be looking for a ‘rock star’ accountant, HR recruiter or janitor. Whoever is posting these jobs is grossly misinformed as to the nature of rock stardom. Or accounting. Or both.”

  The Signal-vs-Noise blog has a great recap of this article but from a developer recruitment perspective.