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"The best place to find remote jobs." I get really annoyed when such blatantly false statements are slapped onto a website. If you can't say that honestly then

"The best place to find remote jobs." I get really annoyed when such blatantly false statements are slapped onto a website. If you can't say that honestly then it is a great opportunity to be creative with messaging and say something that adds value. This has been a pet peeve of mine for as long as I've been running online businesses. Our competitors are always #1... all of them, at the same time.

pryelluw 9y ago
How about: A good place to find remote work. I/We try our best to find you good remote work. Still sends the message and positions the service as one that is for the benefit of the user.
- Kurtz79 9y ago
  How about: "Weekend/class project where I managed to implement a form for submitting jobs and a search box, together with the backend. Planning to turn it into an actual website for submitting and searching remote jobs, which will be better than the alternatives because..." It would definitely get much better reception and honest criticism.
WhitneyLand 9y ago
It's PIMM (pre-Internet marketing mindset). Execs or Companies with PIMM have trouble adjusting to the concept that transparency is now often the best way to build trust and strong customer connections to a product, service, company. They don't realize even when they are wrong or make mistake transparency can still come out ahead. They don't realize that if you are trying to for example, sell a TV, creating expensive, buzzword laden, high production value marcom, might not be as effective as having a couple of employee subject matter experts make videos for youtube and provide unvarnished, useful information.
- notahacker 9y ago
  I'd say the opposite: claiming to be #1 even if you were set up yesterday (and - something of a tangent - striving to be #1 more than striving to be profitable) is the defining paradigm of the internet marketing era. In the pre-internet marketing era you actually had a well established #1 job board for each vertical at the back of a printed trade publication full of expensively-created content to try to build customer connections to classified advertising. In the internet marketing era, people that want jobs Google $industry jobs and find a whole bunch of established or brand new identikit job boards often syndicating the same job ads paid for by the same central supplier, each claiming to be #1 (or "the best" or "biggest choice" or similar) because their metrics suggest making such boasts increases search clickthroughs and return visits.
wheelerwj 9y ago
why do you care? it's a Show HN, it's obviously just the tagline the one dev made up to show off a weekend project to their internet colleagues. So its not the best right now, but at least they have a goal.
- jcadam 9y ago
  Bah, I've had job interview "take home" projects that were about at this level of difficulty. Note to employers: "Implement a simple REST service in language X" is getting really, really old. You ought to be able to come up with something more challenging that isn't such a boring time sink.
- akcreek 9y ago
  Not specific to this site, but the cavalier use of this type of statement bothers me because I highly value honesty, integrity, ethics, etc. even on the internet where accountability is limited. If that line is truly their goal then why not just say that, "Building the best place to find remote jobs" That small change honestly communicates why the site exists, why I should be interested in it and why there are limited legitimate job postings at the moment. It also tells me that this site is still evolving and I should check back.
bonsai80 9y ago
Not sure it was done purposely here, but frequently the "Best Such and Such" wording is used for Google, which in turn is because that's what people search for. Those seeking higher Google SERP rankings (everyone) are rewarded for using phrases like "Best Cloud Storage" as their title, h1, and in the description text. I agree with you though, and it'd be nice to see this go away, but it won't until Google changes how this works (or perhaps they already did, but websites assume they're still on to something).

pryelluw 9y ago

How about: A good place to find remote work. I/We try our best to find you good remote work. Still sends the message and positions the service as one that is for the benefit of the user.

Kurtz79 9y ago
How about: "Weekend/class project where I managed to implement a form for submitting jobs and a search box, together with the backend. Planning to turn it into an actual website for submitting and searching remote jobs, which will be better than the alternatives because..." It would definitely get much better reception and honest criticism.

WhitneyLand 9y ago

It's PIMM (pre-Internet marketing mindset). Execs or Companies with PIMM have trouble adjusting to the concept that transparency is now often the best way to build trust and strong customer connections to a product, service, company. They don't realize even when they are wrong or make mistake transparency can still come out ahead. They don't realize that if you are trying to for example, sell a TV, creating expensive, buzzword laden, high production value marcom, might not be as effective as having a couple of employee subject matter experts make videos for youtube and provide unvarnished, useful information.

notahacker 9y ago
I'd say the opposite: claiming to be #1 even if you were set up yesterday (and - something of a tangent - striving to be #1 more than striving to be profitable) is the defining paradigm of the internet marketing era. In the pre-internet marketing era you actually had a well established #1 job board for each vertical at the back of a printed trade publication full of expensively-created content to try to build customer connections to classified advertising. In the internet marketing era, people that want jobs Google $industry jobs and find a whole bunch of established or brand new identikit job boards often syndicating the same job ads paid for by the same central supplier, each claiming to be #1 (or "the best" or "biggest choice" or similar) because their metrics suggest making such boasts increases search clickthroughs and return visits.

wheelerwj 9y ago

why do you care? it's a Show HN, it's obviously just the tagline the one dev made up to show off a weekend project to their internet colleagues. So its not the best right now, but at least they have a goal.

jcadam 9y ago
Bah, I've had job interview "take home" projects that were about at this level of difficulty. Note to employers: "Implement a simple REST service in language X" is getting really, really old. You ought to be able to come up with something more challenging that isn't such a boring time sink.
akcreek 9y ago
Not specific to this site, but the cavalier use of this type of statement bothers me because I highly value honesty, integrity, ethics, etc. even on the internet where accountability is limited. If that line is truly their goal then why not just say that, "Building the best place to find remote jobs" That small change honestly communicates why the site exists, why I should be interested in it and why there are limited legitimate job postings at the moment. It also tells me that this site is still evolving and I should check back.

bonsai80 9y ago

Not sure it was done purposely here, but frequently the "Best Such and Such" wording is used for Google, which in turn is because that's what people search for. Those seeking higher Google SERP rankings (everyone) are rewarded for using phrases like "Best Cloud Storage" as their title, h1, and in the description text. I agree with you though, and it'd be nice to see this go away, but it won't until Google changes how this works (or perhaps they already did, but websites assume they're still on to something).