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The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them

Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: "We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture."

Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfect job posting is one which says something about the job. Don't write platitudes about how you're looking for people who think outside the box; say "we think the most exciting thing in the world is designing algorithms to target advertising better, and that's what you'll be doing if you get this job".

I actually find it boring to apply for a job to "design algorithms to target advertising".

Think about it: do you want to do that for the next 10 years of your life? Do you want the next 10 years of your life to revolve around such a thing? Even if you don't mind it: is that what entices you to apply for the job?

I don't care what the work itself is. I care about the environment and the culture.

I'd rather design a spread-sheets application in a hacker-centric culture, than design hard-core search algorithms in a typical management-and-sales-centric culture.

Seriously? Rather you than me. They're hardly going to advertise having a crappy company culture. ("You'll be reporting directly to two different managers with opposing objectives, but don't worry, we provide a generous mental health package!") That's for you to work out by reading up on the company and when you go to the interview. Plus, you're claiming a false dichotomy. I doubt great culture and great tech challenges are negatively correlated.

Besides, the "next 10 years of your life" argument is a strawman. If you don't want to be working on the same, hard micro-problem forever, pick a smaller company, where your work will vary wildly. Sure, not all of it is going to be solving super hardcore problems, but I'd want evidence in the job description that there are interesting challenges ahead.

They don't have to advertise a crappy culture, it will just manifest itself as bullshitting.

> pick a smaller company, where your work will vary wildly

Exactly!

No, I don't want to do that for the next 10 years, but I want to know that they expect me to do it. Maybe not for the next 10 years, but a least initially. And if I don't like this I can decide to pass on the opportunity.

Even with good environment and culture you still have to do the work. Every day. For the next few years. So, I think it would be a good idea to know if you like to do what they want you to do.

It's not only the culture what is important for me, but what are my strengths, what am I good at? If I do what I am good at that can be the win-win situation. I am not especially good at the frontend work they described. I mean I could do the job, but it is not my strength. I am better at creating algorithms, and I am also more enthusiastic about that kind of work. Also they mentioned lots of dynamic languages. I am better at a job where I can go deep into problems preferably using only one or two languages. And I better like let's say Scala than all those dynamic languages. I am also a speed-optimization enthusisast: at speed all those mentioned languages suck. Company culture is important, but by far not the only important thing.

I don't want to design algorithms for targetting adverts, either. That's why I think job postings should include such information -- so that people can say "nope, not interested" without going through a lengthy interview process.

>This bit could describe the local transit system

You don't happen to live in Toronto, do you?

He lives in Vancouver. It applies to BC Transit, but even more so to the TTC.

I would have guessed San Francisco.

No, Vancouver.

I don't think it's unusual; it's very rare for job postings to say anything of substance about what the job/position really entails. From May to September, while I was looking for a job, I must've read a thousand or more of job descriptions, and none (OK, maybe a handful) would leave me confident that I knew what I'd be doing there, in case I got the job.

It was extremely frustrating and kind of scary to be in that state of uncertainty.

It'd be a problem if that is the entire posting, but I consider it better to have it in the text than not. Obviously, it's not going to be enough for the posting alone.

That a lot of people say the same about thinking out of the box doesn't mean that you can't mean it - and it gives you a chance to call their bluff at the interview to make sure you don't get a job you don't want.

I agree that the posting overall is too vague on what the actual job is about - you might just as well be required to mop the floor before you punch out.

They mention the skills required, the state of the business and the kind of people they'd like to work with, but leaving out what the startup is actually about and what your role will be breaks the deal. It makes it sound like they need a code monkey.

In fairness to the original posting, there are concrete examples of what you'd be doing (as their programming generalist) that I omitted in the original draft of the post:

"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."

Updated now.

That's part of the answer, but not all. Telling me what tools you need me to use helps me determine if I'm qualified or not; but it doesn't tell me what I would be doing with those tools.

I'd rather solve interesting problems in a language I hated than solve boring problems in a language I loved.

Heh hold your horses, Colin. The tools are only there to show you that you can't live in one and ignore all others here.

And you're right, I spent a lot less time telling you what's great about the company than I did on trying to make it obvious who we're not looking for. That's because we're looking for a very specific breed of person.

In this startup, you will not only be doing engineering, but also answering customer emails and chat messages. You will likely be an important part of strategy discussions, and you may have to write the odd press release. You may even need to go door to door and figure out what our customers want. Not every engineer is interested in that stuff, and I wanted to make sure those people didn't apply.

You will basically a cofounder-level person coming in at a stage where a lot of the risk is removed.

As far as some of the interesting challenges...

Heavy image processing, data processing, and analytics. Primarily client-side web application with client side data processing. Very heavy database loads with poor potential cacheability. Data synchronization across multiple clients. Near duplicate document detection. Graph problems which need to be precomputed to varying degrees to make the application very responsive. Spam detection.

Sounds fantastic. Why don't you say that in the ad? The specific toolchain is the least important part of what you just described. I could care less if I'm doing those tasks in Ruby, Javascript or Java, if you want to sell it to engineers I think the actual problems are far more interesting - certainly that's what I'd want to know. While you're right that it's important your candidates understand the non-tech aspects of the role, I think you sell the tech part short.

Yeah, I would include it if I could edit it (it doesn't appear to be editable).

I agree with lemming: That comment should be in your job posting text.

Why aren't you saying what company it is?

What do you think you gain by keeping it secret?

I think it might be a question of which double-speak speaks to you. The listing of languages is concrete in a sense, and says lots about the sort of culture they aspire to, but tells me nothing about the job. The other ads also say a lot about the culture you'd be working within.

Personally, I would care tremendously about what I am doing, and not just which tools I'd be allowed to use. The fact that you respond positively to it means that it's serving its purpose as an advertisement, but I'm not sure that means it's any more or less clear as to the job description.

So while I'd probably prefer being part of this mystery company to being a "Front-End Architect" in a cubicle, I still have no idea what the job would be and the ad doesn't offer enough specifics to make me excited in the abstract.

Agreed. After reading the first job description, I know almost nothing about the company or the product. I feel the opposite from his rant about that description.

The second job description (once you read the full thing) is actually quite reasonable. They describe their product, responsibilities, their financing, company size, languages in use, etc. It's not stellar, but it's far from bullshit.

Same here. Pardon my French (I can say that, I am French ;-) but there is also a lot of bullshit, predictable and lame developer's jobs in the world of hot startups too. How many devs join a young hot startup thinking they are going get a chance to create a great new product or improve on one, and find themselves working out the quirks of old core code, or regressing boring bugs all day long? or worse: find themselves without a job 3 months later because the startup ran out of cash? I think this article is full of "clichés".

They pretty much had me at profitable.

The way I read it: You're not a bozo, you know what you want your candidate to do, you make money. Pretty good to me. There isn't perfect clarity on the product, but they're keeping that under wraps for a reason.

That posting gives you a better idea for your prospective gig than 99% of posts for launched companies.

See, I read the "we're profitable" as "we make enough money to keep ourselves alive with ramen noodles and maybe hopefully pay rent". Perhaps I've just grown cynical in my old age...

This particular startup is more profitable than that.

And you would figure that out in the interview. If it matters enough to you, you can figure it out in the first five minutes of the phone screen before going further.

It seems to me that the literary criticism in this thread is getting kind of thick. The job posting is like a resume in reverse, and a resume is not designed to be a window into someone's immortal soul. It's a teaser.

A job posting is a telegraphic commercial that's designed to describe the job in the broadest possible terms, so that the obviously unsuitable might be discouraged while the potentially suitable might be prompted to waste a few minutes on an email cover letter. That is why they use the same jargon, that is why they deal in cliches and fashionable labels ("Lean Startup", "Fortune 500 company", "lifestyle company" -- these terms may not be highly specific but they tell you important basic things about the company's outlook, just as the words "SWF, thirtysomething, seeks SM with LTR potential" tells you boring but crucial basic facts about your potential first date.

Don't expect Tolstoy. If you want to learn what a company is really like you're going to have to pick up the phone or start an email discussion.

"Ramen profitable" would be the term for that :)

Yes, but does any startup actually make the distinction between "ramen profitable" and "profitable" in their want ads? If so, props for honesty, but I'm not so sure about their business sense...

Eh, it's hard to talk loudly about something secret.