Caption Contest: The Hotshot (The Seven Types of Software Engineers)

by The Cranky Product Manager on October 29, 2008

Submit captions for this cartoon of “The Hotshot” in this post’s comments. And don’t forget to submit captions for the other Software Engineer Types as well…

The Hotshot

Smart and knows it, often quite young. Has great ideas and hacks crap together at midnight, then… is done.

Distinguishing Characteristics:

Unfortunately has little appreciation for what it takes to actually ship software and thus never really finishes his features and his stuff is often fragile or just broken.
Can’t be bothered with making sure his stuff is internationalized, thread-safe or designed to scale.
Can’t be troubled to fix what he built because he’s on to the next thing.
Detests “process” and all the process hangers-ons like QA, PM, Training, and Project/Program Managers.
Doesn’t read the documentation OR reads the documentation and codes something “better.”
Says things that annoy his fellow engineers and managers like, “If it takes Ed more than 2 days to do this feature, then he is seriously stupid.” But of course, Young Hot Shot never actually finished a real feature in just 2 days either. That is, if “finished” means working in more than just an obscure corner case scenario.
Rarely seen without headphones or earbuds. Plays World of Warcraft and Halo.
Drinks Red Bull and stacks empty cans up in his cube as some sort of offering to the God of Unmaintainable Software.
All shirts purchased from threadless.com. Appears to either skate or snowboard. Green IM status 24/7.
Natural habitat is start up environments.

Do you need this engineer?
Depends on whether you’re building something that a person will eventually need to use.

Project Pitfalls:
None, really, because you are not even on his radar.

Achilles Heel:
Cannot build evolvable, sustainable software.

Best Bet:
Convince him he’s a genius who really belongs in your company’s “Innovation” or R&D group.

Also in 7 Types of Engineers

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Tagged as: caption contest, cartoon, hot shot, product management, seven types of software engineers, six types of software engineers, software engineer

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Caption Contest Winners: 7 Types of Software Engineers | The Cranky Product Manager: December 24, 2008 at 3:16 PM

{ 9 comments }

1 The Cranky Product Manager October 29, 2008 at 3:56 PM: To get things rolling:

“Dude, can’t hear you. Just IM me.”

“He told you TWO WEEKS?!? Dude, I could build that thing in 2 freakin’ HOURS.”
2 Scott Sehlhorst October 30, 2008 at 5:46 AM: Comments? The code is the comments – just hire someone smart enough to read it.
3 V Breakey October 30, 2008 at 6:38 AM: Yeah project is gonna be late, Gaslight Anthem is playing a club show and I’m so gonna be there dude.
4 Greg October 30, 2008 at 9:41 AM: Dude, I finished that code last night. I’m sure it works! Now ’scuse me while I go grab a Red Bull…
5 roadmapwarrior October 30, 2008 at 10:52 AM: It works as designed.
6 Dave October 30, 2008 at 10:41 PM: I told you – all they need is the latest version of the SDK.
7 The Other Eric November 2, 2008 at 11:17 AM: “If YOUR users don’t understand it, then YOUR users are stupid and they don’t deserve ME.”
8 Stewart Rogers November 4, 2008 at 8:03 AM: Tests? QA write tests.
9 Eric November 6, 2008 at 6:15 PM: C# is so old school

or

A level 5 Night Elf noob wouldn’t even use Visual Studio