I totally agree 100%. If I see rockstar or ninja, I skip right past your ad.

You want to get my attention? Tell me you're looking for a professional, and you're going to treat me like one. I want to know that I get 8 hours a week to work on opensource. I want to know that you're looking for craftsman, not ego maniacs. Mostly, I want to know that I'm not working with a group of people that saw the word rockstar and thought to themselves "Oh, rockstars huh? That's totally describing me."

Also, please please please don't tell me you have funding from a "Top Tier" VC. It's a sure fire way to convince me that you care more about your ego than running a successful company. Who the fuck cares who funded you? I don't care who, I only care that you're going to be around for a long time. And, you're going to consider anyone that gives you a ton of money to be "Top Tier", so it's completely meaningless anyway.

Job ads are usually full of cliches. The interesting thing to me is how much they've have changed. Ten years ago it was "team player." Now it's "rockstar." Silly as it is, that's at least a sign of progress. It means employers have now realized that you want the smartest programmers, rather than obedient ones.

I suspect Google's example is the main reason for this change. Or evolution.

This could revolutionize social news sites. Imagine if the average reddit/digg/slashdot user were to actually read the article he was commenting on first.

I find it hard to believe working on the projects they do is the most interesting thing those guys can think of to do for 30+ hours/week. Either they're incredibly boring people or a bit delusional.

I think they continue to work on them because it's mostly pleasant work, they have total control, there's a lot of inertia, and of course because it's making them wealthy.

The test of a language is what it gives the user, not how many lines of code it is. JMC's original Lisp is about 50 LOC.

Imagine if I spent the next year writing an immensely complicated optimizing compiler for Arc, and succeeded in making it 2x faster than code generated by the compiler the MzScheme guys have spent so many years writing. A lot of people would be more impressed with Arc then. And yet I'd have pretty much wasted my time. Arc is already acceptably fast. So at the end of this exercise I'd have produced a language that was better in ways users didn't care about, and no better in the ways they do (language features).

Instead I work on language design. Like JMC's code, this kind of thing is easy to copy-- once someone has already shown it to you.

You know, when I write about how one should work on the problems that really matter instead of the ones that are prestigious, people read those essays and think "yes, obviously, that's exactly what I'd do." But it's not till you try working on unfashionable problems that you see how immense the pressure is to work on fashionable ones.

Just as well I've avoided saying most of the "things you can't say," or 90% of the people who read that essay and think "hear, hear" would hate me instead....

There are some strange sentiments in the announcement on http://www.xobni.com/blog/2008/07/23/xobni-is-growing-adding...

"And while we are sad to see Gabor go, his departure is a big opportunity for Xobni." It's spin to present the loss of a technical founder as an opportunity. The fact that they couldn't keep him in a CTO role, distinct from a VP of Engineering role, speaks volumes. And it's an insult to characterize it as an "opportunity."

The blog entry goes on to list requirements for the new VP "The right person will:

   champion our engineering ethos, [CTO]
   deliver a fantastic product, [product manager]
   on-time. [product manager]
   be an able manager [vp engineering]
   who excels at rapid company growth. [vp engineering]
   know how to ship desktop software [product manager]
   know how to add or remove process [CEO]

This is probably at least three people: a VP of engineering, a CTO, and a product manager. And I think the last is more properly the province of the CEO. Their detailed position description at http://www.scribd.com/doc/4062717/Xobni-VP-Engineering has this sentence: "they must contribute as an architect, but still get their hands dirty coding." Those skills don't normally come in a package with an excellent manager who understands process and rapid company growth. This is the VP Eng vs. CTO split in a rapidly growing technology driven company.

That in no way explains why Gabor left.

commiserate (http://definr.com/commiserate)

     v : to feel or express sympathy or compassion [syn: sympathize]

I think you meant a "commensurate rate" :-)

In your case being that you don't want to overspend, this is more about convenience than credit, with the side benefit that you will build up a good credit score just by acting naturally.

I put almost all my charges on my credit card. From a $1.50 bottle of soda to a $100 tank of gas. The bill of course gets paid in full every month. Using the card means I don't have to carry a bunch of case, and I'm afforded some minor degree of security should my wallet get lost/stolen/misplaced as compared to cash. I also get to "keep" my money an extra 30 days to earn a trivial amount of interest.

It's good for you to be thinking about these things, but getting a credit card is not a life-altering decision, it's just a normal thing like getting a cell phone or a pair of shows. How you use the card, and put it to work for YOU, it what makes all the difference.