Roast My Job Offer

Deleted benefits and process sections as I exceeded characters limit, but this should give you already a good idea of what I'm trying to accomplish. Thanks!

Can you link to the negative feedback? I can't find the original job ad on Hackernews.

I'm not qualified to criticise the design-specific points but one of themes in yesterday's post was that you have a lot of text and inappropriate tone. It's the same here - you have irrelevant text, out-of-place joke, other red flags and lots of defensive points. It comes off like you know that your company sucks and you're trying to defend it in front of someone who is probably just learning about it now.

1. If you list boxes you don't have to tick, you are automatically discriminating against women. Men are more likely to apply missing skills than women.

2. TLDR.

3. I want to be told why I should spend 15-30m with your recruiter to talk to you for 45m to then do 3-4h of interviews. If your pitch isn't strong enough... screw it. I have better things to do. Remember, we all know what engineer's time is worth. I value my personal time at the same hourly value. So, you are asking me for $20-50 for a 15m call. Your opportunity better be worth it.

It sounds like you’re trying to blow up the job description to be more compelling than it is. Like you’re offering a grade “A” opportunity, when you should just come clean and say you’re a small shop with semi-experienced developers and management, a handful of clients, and you need help with UI work. You don’t have to say it like that, but your words should imply that.

Just be honest! If you really think the opportunity is as great as you make it sound, but you don’t list salary (which I’m guessing is below market) or benefits (which I’m guessing don’t exist), how are you going to behave when I get the job? Probably like you think I should feel lucky to work with you, when in reality, at best we’re both sort of in the same boat—you just have clients, and at worst, you’re lucky to work with me.

> You should be comfortable with just a dash of chaos. This is not the kind of job where you show up and we tell you exactly what to do every day.

Translation: we don't know what we want from you, but a successful candidate will be able to figure it out anyway.

I'm turned off at the first sentence. Who gets chills over UI? Why the hyperbole? I feel like engineers with experience are going to want to sidestep the "hype" and talk about business. My humble opinion - strip away the hyperbolic job description and go with a more professional tone.

The posting makes the job sound pretty fun! I like the examples.

I don't really like the use of the word "badass" in the ad; it feels kind of unprofessional.

Also this is minor, but...

/s/acutally/actually

A "Job Offer" is the letter you send the candidate that you are hiring after they pass your interview. It contains salary and benefit information specific to that candidate.

This is a "Job Description", not a job offer.

Rambling.

It also seems to seek to ambiguously define your organisation culture without doing so.

Is C1+ best needed? B2+ should include C1. Do people take tests identifying themselves as such? I've always seen the term, while useful, as used mainly in academic circles.

What's the salary range? Asking for a friend. Most people I know who are really good won't engage in early chats without a salary unless you're a big co.

Disclaimer: I'm making a lot of assumptions and you're seeing a lot of my personality here and naturally you don't have to agree with any of it. That's why I say: I am just one feedback point. What I'm good at is being honest. So here it is.

Also, I have no clue what would be a good job posting.

My thoughts:

Who are you looking for? If you're looking for someone that wants to extend their personal life into their working life that has a particular personality, then this job ad seems quite good for that. I bet you are that way. I suppose you want more people like you, nothing good/bad about that, just my thoughts (it can be good/bad depending on circumstances).

Also, I'm not judging, I don't know enough to make any accurate assessment about whether that's good or bad. I just look at the market dynamics that I can glean from the job market and this job ad.

It also reads very American as work-life balance seems to be a bit more blended and/or bad.

Now let's personalize it to me, since I don't know enough about anything else. I'm not a UI designer but I happen to be interested in it. I'd never apply to your company (unless the salary is twice as much as I make now or if I'd be in a desperate position), here is why:

This job ad also makes me feel that you guys have no clue about the power balance between you and an employee.

Here is how that power balance can look like:

Let me tell you that getting fired sucks (I sort of have experience with it). Why does it suck? In my case, because I didn't don't know if I'd be okay in the future. It took me 18 months to find a job (with a master in CS even) and after 7 months was not extended. I was down on my last dime after searching for 6 months again. What would I need to do? To steal? I don't know. But I'm not going down without a fight. Welfare is a thing in my country but I've seen how it gets distributed and I know how raw things can get based on what I've seen with others. I'm not going to be a passive homeless person (I'd rather not exist). Luckily for me, I got a job again after 6 months so nothing like this came to fruition and I'm currently financially in amazing shape. It'll be hard for me to ever get homeless.

In any case, that was my situation. Whenever I'd read a job ad where I was treated as if we're all equal, well, we're not. Because if you (the boss) say something fucked up, then if you don't believe it is being fucked up and someone calls you out on it that employee is what we call in a perilous job situation and will possibly get fired by continuing that behavior. Yet, you can still be abusive without knowing it. So we're not equal.

Professionalism comes down to keeping things clean. I was working for a CTO once that would play Ramstein in the whole office and we all had to listen to it. I quit that same day after hearing the 5th dick joke. I like Ramstein, but not when I need to concentrate. Their humor was on point and had great technique but also felt very offensive to women. But we're all guys right? Well, yes, but I know many women and I like them. Ah it shouldn't matter. Okay, so what if I joke about a family member of you dying from cancer? Oh that matters? Really? So you can be a psychopath about one thing but not the other? I call that being egocentric. But all of this is solved if you simply say: let's keep the jokes clean and the working environment clean. Professionalism feels very sterile because of it, but it helps for a conductive and collaborative work environment because people don't get emotionally fucked by other people their emotional quirks or abusive tendencies.

And don't get me wrong, you can talk about your personal life, but still keep it clean. My current CTO for example said once during the standup that he had a very shitty weekend (since we always ask "how was your weekend?") but he didn't go into it and I could...

I actually think this one is way better than the first. It's a little too wordy and breezy for me, but it does speak to your identity as an organization and provides insight into the environment a candidate would be entering.

1. Agree with others cutting out phrases like "chills", "badass","haha just kidding"

2. Typo: "sleek and crips UI design" --> crisp

3. As a general rule, less is more. So as an exercise, ask yourself what you would write if you had to eliminate 50% of the text in this post. What about 75%?

I know there's a lot of negative feedback, but personally, if you were looking for my skill stack I would ping you for more information.

I like the idea of not working on yet another shopping cart or figuring out how to get 0.02% more people to click a link all day. Your description reminds me a lot of https://digitalscientists.com/

I like that you are specific about technologies that you use and specific about what kind of candidate you don't want. I like the reference to Van Halen's M&Ms. I do that in a lot of project proposals.

It certainly stands out of the sea of nearly identical postings that are written by an HR person who doesn't really know what the technical words mean... and that I can apply without filling out a form.

My suspicion is that candidates aren't getting to it - they never see it. Double check where you are posting it and make sure you are conforming to the expectations there.

Be prepared to back up everything in your listing with details. If I were applying, I would want to dig deep.