Node Sydney: Ninjas just aren’t cool anymore (and they never were)

James
James
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read
Not Ninjas

It’s funny how technology mirrors societal revolution, just on a truncated timescale. In it’s early days, output was all. Was the software working? Did it perform to the constraints laid by hardware? Nobody really cared who built it or how. Now we consider ethics, methods, language, techniques, striving for continuous improvement.

In the last 15 years, we have had more project management methodologies, open source languages, libraries and frameworks than you could shake the proverbial stick at. My twitter feed breathlessly proclaims the latest [insert random word].js will take over from angular or react.js. (although the opportunity for that has never been better) on a minute by minute basis. In fact, I honestly think that if the same amount of effort was put into actually developing a product rather than constant tooling updates, the singularity could be in sight.

What does this have to do with ninjas and society? I’m getting there, and what bit of content about open source software would be complete without a bit of a whinge to start it off?

Ninjas, rockstars, gurus, many have waxed lyrical on the redundancy of these job titles and self-proclaimed nomenclature. The desire to be considered “elite” and thought of as one that small group that knows what they’re doing. We too have been guilty of this at Node Ninjas (obviously).

For years.

And we’ve known it.

In 2015 we held a retro to discuss the name of the meetup and received some pretty stark feedback that it’s a little stupid to equate peasant mercenaries from the 15th century Iga and Koga clans to a sedentary job that involved sitting down (or standing up on one spot if you’re weird) all day.

We’ve been open and vocal about how we want to be inclusive while sending the message that unless you identify as male, are a member of a specific social class, capable of scaling walls with nothing more than a coat-hanger, a penchant for stabbing people, and love hiding in dark places, you’re probably not our target audience. I’m obviously joking, however, the truth is not so far removed — there’s an element of elitism and bro culture in the use of the name that we’ve always sought to avoid. We think we’ve done a fairly good job of vocalising this, however, on the whole branding thing: Not really.

Inclusivity aside, Node Ninjas is also a ridiculously stupid name that makes me wince every time I say it.

Well, that’s all changed. I went on holiday and left Romain and Jess to pick up the reins in my absence. It turns out I should do this more often as we have a fantastic new name, new site (that I actually write code for, that Romain corrects then metaphorically pats me on the head over Slack) and we’re working on a logo (we’re keeping the meetup.com site the same until after the next event to avoid confusion).

RIP Node Ninjas. Long live Node Sydney!

)

I’m a Tech Recruiter Based in Sydney, Australia. I also help run the Sydney Node Ninjas Meetup group where I drink beer and talk rubbish.

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