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Hmm, well. I would consider the first job posting another version of a) a bad job posting and b) the modern form of "bullshit" I agree with the rest of what h
by ErrantX 16y ago
Hmm, well.
I would consider the first job posting another version of a) a bad job posting and b) the modern form of "bullshit"
I agree with the rest of what he is saying, but I think the first example was poor and derailed the point.
How would I have done the advert? Try:
We're an unannounced YC company, but you may have heard of us (millions have). We're profitable, and we're looking to hire a smart all-around programmer as our first hire. Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus.
We like pragmatic people who get things done. We're looking for someone relaxed and with the ability to think about the product as a whole and their impact on it.
You don't have to be world class at everything, but you should be willing to get your hands dirty with everything from database design to javascript to system administration to customer support and customer development.
We're profitable, have hundreds of thousands of users and a rapidly expanding user base. We are a relaxed company run by programmers, so no corporate nonsense.
You will be the first employee of a small successful startup; with a paycheck and equity. It you are interested and live in Silicon Valley, send email about yourself to recycledthrowaway@gmail.com.
There, bullshit removed. Clean, simple, descriptive.
The problem with the original is that the company is not announced, so any "exciting" description is just bullshit and unhelpful. The job ad in this case is there to say what they want and what roughly they are offering, it is to filter out some basic candidates. And at that point you can turn on the charm when it makes more sense to the potential employee
Never try to sound cool in a job ad.. it backfires. Go for friendly but offhand professionalism :)
- jdp23 16y agoBreaking: different people see different things as bullshit. Film at 11! I also was completely turned off by the first job offering. I don't want to work for a company that isn't bothered by starting off with a cliche. But then again, maybe neither of us are the kind of person they're trying to hire. In the rewrite, it's a great opening line if you're shooting for somebody in the YC universe. If not, starting with an acronym that people don't know is a turn off. At least to me, it gives the impression of wanting a utility player (rather than somebody with deep skills at anything in particular) who wants to work in a relaxed programmer-friendly environment (as opposed to somebody who's passionate about whatever it is they'll be working on or is looking to join a business-focused company). If that's what they're looking for, great. Especially in this day and age I probably would move the bit about being profitable to the very front because it establishes legitimacy. One of the things we did at Qworky was to ask the kind of people we wanted to hire to review our job description. So when we were looking for a system adminstrator candidate we asked several good sysadmins "is this the kind of job you'd apply for? how can we make it a clearer and more appealing job description?" lo and behold our JD got much better in a hurry and we wound up with great candidates.
- MrIncognito 16y agoI figured most people who read HN know what YC is (the post was on HN). This comment thread has been pretty helpful in figuring out future revisions. Thanks for the tip.
- ErrantX 16y agoI mean, the ad wasn't particularly bad IMO, I'd be willing to say the vast majority of software job adverts are just not good. It was certainly near the top of the curve :)