“Rock Stars” are a phenomenon that is not unique to software development; politicians like Barak Obama are often called rock stars, as are some top professors, and even (gasp) rock musicians! If you are at the top of your profession, any profession, “Rock Star” seems to be the requisite title. But that’s not a title you can award yourself, alas. It has to be bestowed upon you by your peers.
Detecting a potential rock star in a job interview is very difficult. Just because someone can answer all the technical questions in an interview does not mean they are a star; it just means they are knowledgeable. And as to whether they can learn their job quickly and perform all the duties of that position to a standard that significantly exceeds expectations, that’s something that only time can reveal.
That doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people consider themselves to be rock stars. And certainly just about everyone considers themselves to be above average, just like the kids in Lake Wobegon. But of course that's statistically impossible, just as no more than say 10% can be stars, and no more than 2% can be superstars. And yes, I just pulled those numbers out of a hat – but I think I’m accurate to within an order of magnitude.
So how can you tell if you are truly a rock star? Here are some signs:
- Are people constantly coming to you for help or advice? (on technical matters, not just to shoot the breeze)
- Is your calendar filled with appointments, half of which you cannot attend? (technical and design discussions, not pointless BS meetings).
- Is your boss always giving you more work than you can handle? (and not just busywork)
- When a crisis occurs, are you the first one they ask to troubleshoot? The go-to person? (and not as the fall guy)
If these things don’t happen to you, you can kid yourself all you like but you’re not a rock star. Alas, you might even be a great performer worthy of the title but stuck toiling away in obscurity – rock stars unfortunately don’t thrive in caves. You should learn to sell your achievements to others, or at least get a good promoter.
1 comment:
Hear, hear, but I'd make your numbers a whole lot smaller. What percentage of all the kids who play basketball end up as starters in the NBA? More like .01%, I'd guess.
I'd add: is every project you touch in significantly better shape in every way once you're done? Most programmers, if they join a project (or do maintenance on a project) with poor architecture, bad source control setup, no automated builds, etc. just complain.
Rock stars come in on Monday and announce that they completely automated the build and unit testing over the weekend.
Here's another one: when you solve a particular problem in one project, do you come back a few months later and find that every project in the organization is using your same solution?
There's another easy test -- if you think you're a rock star, you probably aren't. Rock stars have such high standards that they think they themselves are nothing special.
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