Ask HN: Poor Job Posting? "Our office is too big.."
First, the formatting is brutal. It is possibly a markup language I simply don't recognize – but then, neither does HN. The different roles blend into each other, the spacing is all uniform removing any visual grouping.
Second, the content is childish. It screams (to me) of either unprofessionalism or fake-cool. What's "TONS" of experience? What does "physically live at a ton of smb's" mean? Are you saying the product is already in use by a lot of business that hire mostly fat employees? What's an "extremely small core dev team"? 1? Scaling "really big stuff"? Like a mountain? Finally, the salary description includes "blah blah blah".
Here's a writing tip, words that end in "ly" can normally (see what I did there?) be removed. Drop the "ridiculously", "incredibly", the two "extremely"'s in the same phrase.
As a final thought, since you have posted this more than once, why not experiment with different formats/content and figure out what works best. Maybe I'm wrong and your format is attracting exactly who you are hoping it is. However, in my experience, people stick to a very specific employing process and never experiment/tweak – even though it's actually something where the impact of variations can be measured quite easily.
38 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 84.6 ms ] threadI see ads all the time seeking "world class engineers". Why are they wasting their time and money like that? There's really only a handful of these "industry rockstars" in the world. Just contact them directly.
Apparently "rockstar" is the more popular, followed by "ninja". Despite Johnny Depp, "pirates" will always be unpopular in an industry that sells software.
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I for one welcome the new tween season of YCombinator. Now that people are raising $40 million for unfinished photo sharing apps, it's time to start throwing that pasta at the wall.
I sort of liked it because I do have tons of experience and I often see job postings that make me think that my experience would not be appreciated. If I lived around there and was considering a move I'd apply.
These guys are trying to do a startup. It's a hard thing to do. Why grouse at them? Perhaps their posting is unprofessional because they are unprofessional, in the sense of not having had lots of professional experience yet. Maybe cut them some slack instead instead of increasing the concentration of venom in the commons.
From my perspective, it seems like they made a mistake, and didn't get feedback from a mentor who has hired before. Hiring is hard. Don't screw it up. And if you do screw it up, fail quick and listen to the feedback. I would listen to the HN community and reconsider the approach.
Because they raised millions of dollars. This isn't a game. Get your shit together.
It's frustrating seeing clowns with money when other people could rip a new paradigm-sized hole in the world given the same opportunity.
Some companies sit and write down a job post making sure they accurately describe the positions, cross all the t's and make sure not to say anything that may seem unprofessional.
Some companies write it on the back of napkin, have no qualms about coming off as "unprofessional" and want to make sure whoever they hire is a good fit culturally.
There isnt a right and a wrong way, someones professionalism is another persons beige, being open about your company culture is the best way to make sure you hire people that will fit in to the company.
I do think it would be really neat if they posted a 2nd one that was the complete opposite and did some analysis of the results.
Either way re-posting the same crappy ad so soon doesn't make sense. If it worked the first time around, why would they feel the need to re-post it? On the other hand if it didn't work, why would anyone expect an unchanged re-post to fare any better?
Also, OP is definitely helping them spread the word ;)
They are doing a startup. They are 110% focused on their startup and only their startup. They exist. You don't exist unless you can help them. They need help, so they'll stand on the side of the HN highway with their poorly written cardboard sign every day until Woz 2011 emails them to work for minimum wage + large empty option grant.
It's exciting. Not only is it exciting -- it's pure excitement. They live on concentrated adrenaline, weekly beans, user stats, and the approval of their other startup peers.
It even has its own entry in Axis II of the DSM IV.
Are they ads? Kind of. Are they posts? Kind of. Are they sponsored / paid for? No idea. I can't comment on them. I can't even permalink to them. I can't even know who posted it. I don't know how or if my vote is going to count.
It's obviously some kind of yc-/pg-sanctioned promotion for YC startup, but I think it needs to either be more transparently an ad, or more transparently a posting. It looks too similar to a normal posting to be an ad, but it has this uncanny difference that makes me very uneasy.
For anyone else curious, you are right that they are jobs for YC startups and it's the only advertising you see on HN. Generally I enjoy it..I mean for ads, they are pretty relevant.
I think merely prefixing the title with "YC Job Offer: " or something would make it more clear.
It's so tough to hire that everyone is trying to differentiate themselves as companies. They're trying rather too hard to be cute about it and failing....or not trying and succeeding.
For an hourly fee, I'll even teach you to sound like an adult in your written communication (ROI out the wazoo).
People posting jobs on HN, please give this person your money.
Please.
They've just closed their round of funding, and I'm sure they're feeling incredibly pleased with themselves for a well-deserved win. But the tone of the post makes it sound a little bit like they spent a bit too much of those 9 vcs' money on coke.
The super-stealthiness is going to be a big problem here, frankly. The kind of developers that they claim to want to hire can work anywhere they want. They are choosing where to work based on being able to do work which is meaningful and interesting. This post gives
* Zero information about the kind of work
* Zero information about the founders' personalities (except to make them seem unusually satisfied with themselves) and
* Zero reasons to want to work at the company.
If this product is really live at "tons of SMBs", why the stealthiness? What are you hiding?
There is a huge difference between 'we have a giant market to go after' and 'we are serving 10,000 SMBs and growing daily.'