“Ahoy, matees! Ye good ship [company name redacted] has openin’s for wild, talented, sea-worthy PHPirates an’ web developers t’ join the crew in thar normal behaviors o’ technical adventurin’ ‘n grog consumption. You’ll sail thee vast dataseas, wielding code like a sabre and buildin’ sites to confound and delight even the blackest of beards.”
Thus begins a job posting I recently stumbled across, leaving me to wonder, “Is this what it takes, now?”
Last week over at Indexed, Jessica Hagy put it nicely:
It’s marketing, of course. Just as applicants have to find a way to stand out, so do potential employers. And clearly it worked as I’m sitting here talking about it now.
There’s something about it, though, that’s reminiscent of the EXTREME advertising of the 1990s. Internet meme references replacing unnecessary yelling may be an upgrade but still comes across as tacky.
Why do our developers need to be pirates or rockstars or ninja wizards? Maybe I’m boring but if I’m hiring I want a solid developer, not a caricature.
If I’m a developer (and, hey, I am, so this is an easy hypothetical), I want to know what kind of cool problems I’m going to be asked to solve and what awesome technologies I’ll get to use. I don’t want to have to parse that information from a bunch of marketing-speak.
