41–50 of 71 posts
The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one. Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable…
As a programmer who has perused hundreds of job postings in the past, I'm inclined to agree with the author that the HN post was a good one. Yes, some of it is bullshit (the napping part), but most of it is great. It's quite specific and does a good job differentiating itself from many other postings. Here's what I think when I read it: > "we’re looking to hire a smart all-around programmer" Looks like I'm gonna have…
Napping at work is something that people get nervous about, so we want to lead by example by napping mid-day to show it's cool.
Social impact is pretty important, not just in the doing good sense, but also in the making the economy more efficient sense. This is taking a huge market and shrinking it.
The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one. Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable…
The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…
That a lot of people say the same about thinking out of the box doesn't mean that you can't mean it - and it gives you a chance to call their bluff at the interview to make sure you don't get a job you don't want.
I agree that the posting overall is too vague on what the actual job is about - you might just as well be required to mop the floor before you punch out.
They mention the skills required, the state of the business and the kind of people they'd like to work with, but leaving out what the startup is actually about and what your role will be breaks the deal. It makes it sound like they need a code monkey.
That line stuck out for me. Writing is window into the minds of the people you might hire as well as the company doing the hiring though.
I was thinking the other day about the tests companies give prospective employees to do pre-interview. One idea I came up with in addition to giving them the usual fizzbuzz programming problems was to test their writing ability by:
(1) Giving them a page of simple code with comments removed and asking them to add comment headers to each function, and
(2) Asking them to write a description in plain english of how a moderately complex function works (make it a function that implements an algorithm rather than something that processes data).
I'm not in a position to do any hiring and try this myself but I think it would add a lot of value for the employer in filtering applicants. If I were looking for a job seeing an employer doing this would give me a lot more confidence in them also.
The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one. Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable…
The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: " We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture. " Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfe…
You don't happen to live in Toronto, do you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's part of the answer, but not all. Telling me what tools you need me to use helps me determine if I'm qualified or not; but it doesn't tell me what I would be doing with those tools. I'd rather solve interesting problems in a language I hated than solve boring problems in a language I loved.
Heh hold your horses, Colin. The tools are only there to show you that you can't live in one and ignore all others here. And you're right, I spent a lot less time telling you what's great about the company than I did on trying to make it obvious who we're not looking for. That's because we're looking for a very specific breed of person. In this startup, you will not only be doing engineering, but also answering custo…
I didn't like the first because they couldn't give me even the slightest inkling about what they do, and that is important to me.
The second was bad because it attempted to describe pretty basic things in a way that made them seem more exciting than they really are. It also gave me the impression they were trying to actively mislead me; I don't like that.
Having said that, I think the OP made it seem like the second was completely impossible to understand and it wasn't: it was just obviously created to sway and mislead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
See, I read the "we're profitable" as "we make enough money to keep ourselves alive with ramen noodles and maybe hopefully pay rent". Perhaps I've just grown cynical in my old age...
This particular startup is more profitable than that.
It seems to me that the literary criticism in this thread is getting kind of thick. The job posting is like a resume in reverse, and a resume is not designed to be a window into someone's immortal soul. It's a teaser.
A job posting is a telegraphic commercial that's designed to describe the job in the broadest possible terms, so that the obviously unsuitable might be discouraged while the potentially suitable might be prompted to waste a few minutes on an email cover letter. That is why they use the same jargon, that is why they deal in cliches and fashionable labels ("Lean Startup", "Fortune 500 company", "lifestyle company" -- these terms may not be highly specific but they tell you important basic things about the company's outlook, just as the words "SWF, thirtysomething, seeks SM with LTR potential" tells you boring but crucial basic facts about your potential first date.
Don't expect Tolstoy. If you want to learn what a company is really like you're going to have to pick up the phone or start an email discussion.
Need help with an iOS project? Let's talk, I'm great with both UX and code.
If I can help you out with a project you’re working on, let’s talk.
Danilo, I hope you get the chance to work with these guys, but stop speaking bullshit.
There is no incentive for people to speak clearly[1] when their careers, environment and everyday interactions are highly hierarchical, and they're paid, and indeed retain their positions, by being obscure, in an attempt to sound "big". Sometimes they don't even mean it. Getting clear answers from the Enterprise types is akin to the Socratic method, if not psycho-analysis. You would have to repeat the same question o…
Or to quote Bob:
So what is it you DO here?