Developer Personas

This document is designed to help potential employees comprehend the types of developers that thrive at Full Stack Ninjas, and the ones that typically have difficulty. We hope that you will recognize one of the personas, which will help you decide if you are likely to do well at FSL.

Successful Developers

  • View challenges as an opportunity to succeed

  • Aim for responsibility and control over their projects. 

  • Possess a high level of self-reliance, and be aware of when to request assistance, and when to solve things independently.

  • Capable of putting in effort and dedication on a daily basis.

  • Like being part of a team and taking responsibility for the team's work.

  • They anticipate their employer to invest in their career growth, and in exchange, they put in their time, effort, and commitment into the businesses they work for. They plan to stay at each company for at least two years, and ideally would remain for longer if possible, as long as there is room for career progress and increased wages. Job hopping isn't appealing to them, and they recognize that it can be damaging to their career in the future.

  • They relish working on new projects frequently and embrace the difficulties that come with mastering new technologies and tackling new issues.

  • They have a very strong sense of ownership over their work, and accept accountability for the successes and failures of their project. They are open to offering and obtaining feedback so as to improve, and assist others in doing the same.

  • The concept of becoming a cog in a machine frightens them...they'd much prefer to work with a small team of developers to create and launch new applications, rather than be one of numerous developers on a large team dealing with a legacy system.

  • They really appreciate working remotely as it enables them to concentrate without the interference of a place of work. They are not easily diverted when working from their home office, and they are not tempted to take part in activities unrelated to work during the day, simply because they are working remotely. They recognize that their employer has put a lot of faith in them, and they honor that trust.  

Unsuccessful Developers

  • Developers who don't favor working as part of a team.

  • Have numerous personal duties outside of work that they must take care of during normal business hours, and on a regular basis.

  • Are easily diverted and can't concentrate on a single task at once. Work a bit on multiple things, but can't seem to finish anything.

  • Prefer to take their time and work at a calm pace, even when they (or their project) is behind. If they are truthful with themselves, they only work hard about 25% of the time. The rest of the time they are just going through the motions.

  • They don't want to be overly supervised, but as soon as they face an issue they reach out to their manager and anticipate their manager to come up with a solution. They think their manager's primary job is to solve problems for them, and then leave them alone the rest of the time. But, they also aren't able to manage their own time or solve things independently.

  • They don't comprehend the idea of pixel perfection. As long as a feature works, who cares if the user interface is pixel perfect? UI errors are a typical part of software development so why bother fixing them?

  • Software development is an art form and a hobby, not a profession. Working for a business and programming in return for money is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless. They'd much rather spend their time on their own projects and open-source work...their job is really just an obstacle that hinders their real enthusiasm.

  • In their opinion, software developers are in very high demand and it's simple for them to get another position, so they might as well take it easy and endure each job for a couple of months or possibly a year maximum, and just do enough to not be fired. Then when things become too hard, get another job. 6-12 months is a reasonable length of time to work for a company.

  • Being a cog in wheel sounds quite attractive to them...working within a team of hundreds of developers, where no single developer has too much accountability, sounds like the ideal scenario. That way there's no real responsibility or accountability.

  • They really like working from home as it provides them time to do tasks unrelated to work throughout the day...things that you wouldn't usually do in the office.