4 ms·
Does Quid Have The Most Pretentious Website of Any Startup Ever?
- sabj 16y agoIt doesn't seem like all hot air. Problem is, how to actually apply? Their jobs page doesn't have any links or email addresses.
- sharpshoot 16y agohey sabj email me: sumon@quid.com if you want to fwd to the right person. We're working on some serious data crunching, and algorithms.
- bkudria 16y agoIndeed, we're building, so we (the devs) didn't spend too much time polishing the jobs page. Email (ben|jobs)@quid.com
- frognibble 16y agoI'd want to know where the company is located before applying, but I cannot find any mention of the location the website. Perhaps that's a test and I failed.
- bkudria 16y agoGood point. We're in SF.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wccrawford 16y agoI think it is. Never before have I seen a company's website with so much pomp and so little substance. Going on and on about your name and typefaces, things which appear to have absolutely nothing at all to do with the main business, tops it off.
- hugh3 16y agoGoing on about the typeface is probably overkill, but I think we can assume there must be a serious typography geek involved. There isn't much substance there, but the company appears to be in a pseudo-stealth mode where they don't especially want to tell you exactly what they do or to sell it to you. They do, however, want you to know that they're all very clever, and that's exactly the impression which their site manages to convey. They use the word "lacuna" on their front page, for crying out loud! Who uses the word "lacuna"? Actually, I thought that this: Oh, and I almost forgot, good news for those who have recently finished their Rhodes Scholarships in Classics/Particle Physics and are looking for a gig in between singing in an Art Rock band, learning their 16th language and joining the French Foreign Legion! Quid is hiring. sounded sufficiently enticing that I thought about applying, but turns out you also need to know Javascript and Rails.
- pigbucket 16y agoAside from the word "lacuna" there is also an actual lacuna on the front page: it's missing a specified referent for the word "lacuna."
- gcheong 16y agoCTO Sean Gourley gave a TED talk on the "Mathematics of War": http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_war.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sean_gourley_on_the_mathematics_of_...
- tripngroove 16y agoThe section of the website in question is basically a colophon. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing). Including a colophon is a fairly common practice, especially in the world of print design, when a publication has been artfully assembled and polished by a professional designer. I hardly think it's fair to use this as a point of criticism; it just means they have a designer on staff who: a) might have a history in print design b) knows his typography c) was thinking about the culture of the business when making design decisions It's no mistake that all the typefaces they've chosen have long, strong histories firmly rooted in England. They are Bulmer, Baskerville, and Underground (of London underground fame - most of us have seen the old signs from the subway). Furthermore, wccrawford's earlier assertion that their name and typeface choice has nothing to do with the business is obtuse; if you check out http://quid.com/team.html http://quid.com/team.html, you'll notice that most of the hackers involved are either from, or studied in, England, which makes their branding choices eminently appropriate in the context of their shared history.
- petervandijck 16y agoMmm, no, it's not a colophon. The page is titled "the quid story". If the best you can do there is some branding drivel, then that's a huge red flag. The quid story should tell us something about the company, what it's goals are, why it was started. Not why some branding consultant chose a god damn font.
- the_rara_avis 16y agoWhat a cute little slideshow...
- dannyr 16y agoSo many cliche words in one page: "Innovative, disruptive, explosive impact, novel uses, proprietary algorithms, etc." When I visited the site a few days ago, I wasn't quite sure if it's real. The team's record is impressive but I hope they get it why people think their site is pretentious.
- jeffffff 16y agotheir requirements for data engineer make no sense. why would you need to know html, css, javascript, and web frameworks to do data mining?
- aston 16y agoLooks like it's founded by one of the founders of YouNoodle, which had similar foundations in big data crunching. Is this a rebrand? A new company based on similar technology?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]