Here’s an actual job ad I saw on Craigslist this week. Not that I’m looking, of course.

Taken literally, let’s ponder for a minute the pool of candidates for this position. Maybe that bloke off last season’s American Idol. Or possibly Brandon Flowers from the most inexplicably popular band of recent years, The Killers.

In actuality, what they’re looking for is a mac monkey with excellent HTML and CSS and reasonable JavaScript. And, granted, I’m speculating at this point, but I’m going to hazard a guess that they would like someone to show up on time, work forty hours plus a week, consistently meet deadlines, be reliable, stay sober etc. You know, the typical contractual obligations that “the man” has put in place to suppress our humanity and naturally creative spirits.

Would you like this man to be responsible for the cross-browser and section 508 compliance of your web presence? No, of course you wouldn't.

And, again, I’m going out on a limb now, but what they probably don’t want is someone who occasionally drops by the office on the way to their connection, vomits over their keyboard, bangs underage groupees on the boardroom table and then throws their monitor out of the window in a fit of artistic pique should anyone object to their creative and inspirational wireframe mockups.

How the term rockstar became synonymous with being great at one’s job, rather than simply being great at one job, namely playing rock music, is a mystery to me. Perhaps it’s just a sad attempt to glamorise IT, admittedly a sphere of human endeavour considerably less sexy than pig farming. But the term “Rockstar Developer” isn’t just oxymoronic, it’s moronic.

Don’t get me started on Ninja.

Posted in Social Media Web Management
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