The hacker

Quick to jump on any task, makes it work over lunch. Does not open PRs; merges straight to main. A code review would show it's all stuck together with duct tape and mud.

The blueprinter

Doesn't touch the code unless there's a story with acceptance criteria, finished designs, and lengthy instructions involved. Will find flaws in your spec and ask for many revisions.

The overengineer

Thinks in microservices. Will optimize an algorithm that gets called once per minute, just in case. Treats minor bug fixes as opportunities for major refactoring.

The perfectionist

Won't open a pull request until it's perfect. It's never perfect. You wait forever.

The singularitist

Leans on AI for everything. Pipes task from ChatGPT to Claude. Runs three GenAI editors in parallel on the same folder. Generates code salad. Opens a pull request that adds 10.000 lines of code and removes 7000 for the simplest feature request.

The cowboy

Has never written a test. Deploys on a friday afternoon. Fixes the bugs he caused straight on production. Leaves his ssh keys on the server so he can commit from there.

The naysayer

Declines all requests because it would either take too long, be too expensive or the tech is not mature enough. Plays Clash of Clans 8 hours a day, because he successfully deflects all work.

The extrovert

Organizes whiteboard sessions. Meets with Product 5 times a day. "Hey, are you free for a quick chat?" Doesn't write any code. Fantastic at talking about writing code.

The lifelong junior

Got too comfy. Knows PHP and SQL, kinda. Puts database queries inside a for-loop. Everything is a flat file of 2000 lines of code. Copy-pastes functions from other parts to frankenstein together new features.

Thing is ...

I had a bit of fun with the descriptions, but the point is, sometimes you need a hacker to bang out a quick killer prototype or an overengineer to tell you what not to do.

It's not all good or bad. Find out your people's strengths and deploy them wisely.

P.S. Who did I miss?

Yours,

Taj