I love that someone came out and admitted this. I'm in the same boat. Not a rockstar ninja code shepherd wizard. I'm just a developer who enjoys getting stuff d

I love that someone came out and admitted this. I'm in the same boat. Not a rockstar ninja code shepherd wizard. I'm just a developer who enjoys getting stuff done. At 38 years old if I were a Torvalds, Woz, or Knuth I'd know it, and you'd already know my name. I'm not, and I'm ok with that. I've stayed in this industry through tenacity, passion, and the ability to get stuff done. I do like to call myself a "hacker" because I feel I fit that definition like so many in our field. But to me hacker defines someone with a strong passion for discovery and curiosity, breaking the rules and learning new things. It's not a magician, genius, or hot shot that others should bow to when we enter a room. A hacker could be anything from Woz to a five year old kid who figured out how to build something different with Legos. It's not a resume bullet point. I too am growing a little tired of these labels in job ads, asking for some "ninja" who's fresh out of school willing to work 90 hours a week for founder bros because profitability is "just around the corner". At this point in my career I'm looking for fast paced, exciting work but I'm not going to drink 10 red bulls a day to get your platform as a service app finished while drinking IPAs and coding between ping pong rounds. I'm not going to sacrifice 99% of my free time for your baby just to be thrown to the street when you sell out to a bigger company or (more likely) run out of funding. That's the image that those keywords conjure up for me. I'm the boring middle aged programmer that will work his butt off to get stuff done. I'll exercise due diligence to build things to the best of my abilities and work hard to make sure my skills get better and better as time progresses. I'll get stuff done. I'll ship, and ship good stuff. That's what the kind of companies I seek out are looking for anyway.