Gavin King, You are my hero

Tonight I read a blog post by Norman Richards, fellow JBoss and Seam developer, who has recently left Redhat to work for a startup. In his post, he shares his last interview experience with a big company. It is a quite interesting read. But more interestingly an idiot asshole named John Smith put a comment like this:

"I think you are a prima donna on this issue. They don't know you from anything. Lots of programmers have had jobs for years but don't know much about programming. I talked to someone who had been programming in Java for 5 or 6 years and they said something like "I never know if I'm supposed to build one or two classes for an app that I write". On paper this person looked like they were experienced. After talking to them, their way of programming in Java is something we wouldn't want to deal with.

So, yes, you are being a prima donna for not answering the basic questions. It's a good thing they "failed your screen" because with an attitude like yours I think you would fail my screen too. I want a team player who is willing to work with the slower developers and mentor them, not someone with an attitude who can't be bothered with that stuff."

And here comes Gavin King! For those of you who may don't know him, let me introduce him shortly. He is the creator of Hibernate and Seam frameworks and one of the true brilliant programmers today. Working with Seam was an eye-opener for me and I really like his thinking style about Java EE. Also he is not a conservative intellectual like many others, when he should speak, he does it very well ;) Look at his answer to John Smith below:

"John Smith, you're an idiot.

Norman is the author of successful books on Java technologies and has worked as a core developer of innovative technologies at JBoss for something like 5 years. He's not a guy who spent 5 years building internal web applications using JSP like you and your team, and his resume would have shown that. If the person interviewing Norman doesn't already know something about the projects Norman has worked on, then that person doesn't have the necessarily level of expertise to interview him. Simple as that.

Yes, he's a prima donna, because he's earned the right to be. In his position I would have thanked the HR guy for his time and quickly hung up the phone. Because there is no way in hell I would want to work for any company which insulted me like that. And no, John Smith, you don't want someone like Norman or I on your team, because (a) we're more senior than you, (b) we think you're an ass, and (c) your project bores us to tears :-)

And I think Norman's post is interesting and shows why large companies have problems attracting the most talented people. The most talented people *are* often prima donnas, and don't often have time for timewasting bureaucracy. That's why Norman is working at a startup company, and why big companies are filled with seatwarmers like John Smith."