From the Hirelite Blog:
When you say “rock star” in your job post, you’re discouraging the best software developers from contacting you.
When you write, “We’re looking for a rock star developer.”
A developer sees, “We want to treat a developer like the RIAA treats rock stars.”Using “rock star” in your job post may have communicated a trendy vibe at one point, but those times have passed. Now it communicates a desperate attempt to seem cooler than you really are, a sign that you’re too full of yourself, or that you’re just naive.
Naivety worries developers the most. To developers, “rock star” communicates that you’re not sure what you want. Or rather, you do know what you want, and what you want is a miracle worker. “Rock star” signals that you haven’t thought enough about the role this developer will fill, leaving developers with a feeling that they’ll be receiving ill-defined requirements, not enough time, or not enough resources to do their job (in addition to being overworked and underpaid).
