
For the love of God, YC companies-to-be stop posting ambiguous job description - startupcto
I am so frustrated because I am one of those potential candidates that you all YC companies that are seeking - the important first hire but this is the one thousand four hundred and seventy-forth time that I see posting that just wasted 20 seconds of my life reading and got no freaking clue what I signing up for.<p>If you can't say what your company actually does, I'm sure you can say things like you will be working on solving monetization issues for the laundry machines.<p>I want to give props to some that are doing it right and here's one: 
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2877677<p>Here's one that I'm not really interested in what they have to say. 
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2878738<p>I've built cool stuff and awesome systems so I don't need fluff.
======
TheSkeptic
YC S11 Company Seeks Uber Python Dev

We're a young company that's so hot, we melt ice in our sleep. Some of our
investors even believe we're responsible for global warming. Out hotness is to
be expected: our 5 founders hail from top engineering schools, and one even
won $5,000 in a single night playing online poker when he was 13 (for reals).

Our users? Cooler than a polar bear's toe nails. Think Tom from MySpace, but
even cooler. They're young, they love technology and they all have fat bank
accounts. Oh, they're all beautiful people too.

Our trajectory is clear: extreme penetration of a lucrative niche market in
Year 1, and world domination in Year 2. We've already grown 500% in our first
2 weeks after launch. See <http://yfrog.com/kfu2tcj>

We're looking for an awesome Python developer with a big ego and low self-
esteem. Someone who knows he's the sheeeeet but doesn't want to prove it at a
big company that does lame stuff like QA. Someone who can down a can of Coke
and a box of Mentos and then go on to devour a four-course meal of web-scale
challenges the likes of which no other startup has ever faced. Seriously.

What do we offer? Put simply, The Life. As an early employee, you'll receive a
salary that will enable you to rent a condo in Palo Alto with 3 other startup
dude roommates, a huge equity stake that will be massively diluted as we raise
new rounds of funding from some of the most respected angels and VCs in the
Valley, and the ginormous confidence that comes with knowing you're changing
the world one unique visitor at a time.

If you're ready to take your awesomeness to the next level and think you have
what it takes to hang, send us an email at
socially.awkward.hipster.startup@gmail.com and tell us why we shouldn't laugh
at your Github account.

~~~
tibbon
What's funny is it took me a moment to figure out if you were being sarcastic,
or just reposting a real job :)

~~~
hasenj
I didn't realize at all it was stair until I read your comment.

I viewed it out of context, through the news:yc iPhone app, from "best
comments" page, and there's no link to 'parent' post (at least not that I'm
aware of).

I really thought it was a genuine job ad. I think this says a lot.

------
mindcrime
Heh, I agree, that second one is rubbish. It seems like they're trying _real_
hard to paint a picture of how young and energetic and fun they are... but
then didn't say the first word about the product they're building. I don't
know about the rest of you, but all the "young, hip, energetic, red-bull
drinking, prank pulling startup vibe" stuff isn't terribly interesting to me,
compared to knowing something about the actual, ya know, work.

As they say _"it's called work for a reason."_

Sure, we all (well, mostly all) want a fun, happy workplace... but if I'm
working on something that's mind-numbingly boring, I'm going to zone out and
not give a flip about the red-bull and the nerf fights and the after-work LAN
parties and all that B.S., in about 2 minutes.

~~~
pagekalisedown
Those types of job postings are like kryptonite to parents, aka, more
experienced engineers.

------
pg
My apologies on behalf of YC. I deleted that job post, and asked the companies
in this batch not to post this sort of thing anymore.

~~~
davelnewton
I kinda wanted to see it, though, so I had some context.

~~~
avree
It was a post titled "YC S11 Company Seeks Rails Architect". It began "We're
an exciting young explosive company. Our users are true evangelists—wearing
our gear, drinking from our shot glasses, and shouting cheers to our name..."
The rest was equally as vague and platitude-filled.

~~~
tibbon
I mis-read this as "We're an exciting young exploitative company". The things
my mind does some days. Thankfully, that's not at all what it said.

------
mtogo
This is how the second posting came across to me:

==================================================

Wassup broz.

We're an awesome new startup that totally kicks ass and we drink alot of beer
and stufzlol.

Anyway, we need a nodejs ninja rockstar bro to chill with us and write some
codez.

We aint gunna tell you what we do cuz thats not how we roll but email us at
throw.away@gmail.com ==================================================

------
bhousel
It would actually be clever if they are both for the same job and that company
is just split testing their job descriptions.

~~~
munaf
My company is currently doing this with job titles. :-)

------
rhizome
The cheerleaders are beginning to arrive on the scene. Everyone in the company
should be outgoing, fun, super-communicative and ready to party. You know:
nerds.

------
StyleOwner
In this hiring environment I'm not above the occasional shameless plug. Your
point about vagueness is well taken, but I'd have to write 3 pages to really
give you a detailed understanding and I'd rather just show it all to you over
a beer.

My company is hiring:

We do e-commerce where people can set up their own fashion boutique -- we have
a massive catalog full of top-tier designer products. We have made incredible
partnerships with brands, the fashion industry, etc. People who set up stores
facilitate social shopping via their store and make a small commission per
sale. If you don't get why this is cool b/c you wear sweatpants or the same
pair of jeans, that's OK, I have data to show you.

Our site, www.styleowner.com is solid on the backend but needs a lot of
frontend love. If you like backbone.js, web standards, etc., come join us and
help make it one of the best sites on the web. Backend developers wanted too
however. We use Ruby, Sinatra, DataMapper, Node, Redis and more. Interest in
IOS is also a plus.

We're hiring for 2-3 positions. We are looking to make some key hires right
now and the goal is a _superb_ team.

If you're in San Fran let me meet with you over coffee or beers and show you
our codebase, tell you in incredible detail what we're working on, etc. I'd
also like to see some of your code. The goal is to give you an idea if you
want to work on our app and what that would entail over at least the next few
months.

We're funded by Accel, have great investors, etc. The only challenge has been
in tech hiring b/c if you're good you probably already have a job you enjoy.
So give it a shot and meet us and see what you think.

Putting together an awesome engineering team is our #1 priority. We're in the
stage where we're making key hires and ramping up.

email matt@styleowner.com

~~~
rwolf
I was hoping this was a joke like the top non-pg comment. It's not, so why do
you think it's okay to post a job listing in this thread?

Edit: the OP added the statement about "not being above a shameless plug"
after I left this comment. It's still spam if the job market is tough.

~~~
StyleOwner
The posting generally complies with the OP's request for a lack of hyperbole.

The OP indicated that if the hyperbole were removed, he/she would potentially
be interested in finding a new job!

~~~
rwolf
The OP is interested in a lack of hyperbole in the sponsored YC.news links.
This is the comment section of hackernews, not the sponsored link section.

------
ajaimk
The top 3 things I look for when picking a job:

\- The people I'll be working with \- The product I'll be working on \- The
job I'll be doing

These posts are way to ambiguous to answer these real questions. The only
questions they do answer is that you were good enough to get into YC. If you
want someone to apply for the job just cause you are a YC company, tough luck
- the applicants are gonna suck big time.

~~~
syncretism
You should email us about that first post if we sound at all close to people
you might enjoy working with. We'll answer any question you have, up to and
including my shoe size.

At this stage, most employees are going to be working on a shared vision more
than anything, which comes down to how you feel about the people. The goal
with our description was to reflect the people and at least define the problem
space a little bit. "Non douchebags doing ads" might have been more direct.

------
sprovoost
That last link has the word "bptumblr" in their Amazon EC3 link. If you Google
that term, you get a bunch of porn sites. That might explain their popularity
in random bars and early profitability :-)

~~~
jarin
It's hard to imagine YC funding a porn company, but I will say from experience
that there are worse jobs than being a programmer at a porn company. Aside
from the fun parties and social work atmosphere, it can be very technically
challenging (scaling a Rails app up to 1,000,000+ uniques per day is pretty
fun if you've never done it before).

~~~
andrewcooke
why? pg is a prude?

my understanding was that they funded the people as much as the idea. i doubt
the fact that a bunch of smart people were doing something cool with - shock -
boobies would stop him.

~~~
jarin
I have no idea whether or not pg is a prude. What I meant was that it's a
hyper-competitive, highly saturated market and most porn companies these days
are "innovating" with traffic generation and content, and not with technology
or novel business models.

Believe me, I've worked in and with the industry for years and it is ripe for
a breakthrough. I actually was working on a project at a porn company that had
the potential to disrupt the porn industry but was abandoned due to internal
political reasons. If pg wanted me to build it again, I'd be all over it.

~~~
sprovoost
I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley don't want to touch it, because of
the stigma. Having that on your resume reduces your chances of getting a job
with high profile companies or government agencies.

------
BrentRitterbeck
I fully agree. I often wonder why the posts are something similar to the
following:

Young company looking for C++ programmers to help create a small fraction of
the functionality provided by a Bloomberg terminal for a small fraction of the
price of a Bloomberg terminal. Financial knowledge appreciated, but not
required.

NOTE: If I had more than a few hours a week to work on such a thing, and I
didn't have a large amount of student debt, then this would be a posting I
would eventually like to make. For now, the above is only meant to serve as an
example of how I think a job posting should read.

------
nlh
Allow me to ask what may be a silly question:

If you're looking to hire someone by posting a public job description, why are
you unwilling to say who you are?

The older and more experienced I get, the more the notion of "secret
companies" (aka stealth mode) seems absurd. The CIA might need to keep
secrets. A web technology company does not. Like another poster said, nobody's
suggesting that you have to reveal your deepest darkest technology special
sauce in your job posting.

But why not at least reveal the name and nature of your business? It's fairly
relevant.

------
feydr
I just don't understand why all these announcements say stuff like 'we have
150k users' -- but they won't even mention their name? I understand if you are
IN 'stealth mode' but if you have so hundreds of thousands of users -- that's
not exactly stealth anymore is it

~~~
swampthing
Only YC companies can make job postings on HN. The companies haven't announced
that they're YC-backed yet.

------
pagekalisedown
And spare me terms like "ninajas" and "rockstars".

~~~
syncretism
We're looking for pandas. Email us if you're a CoffeeScript drinking panda.

~~~
gregschlom
Pandas are cute, but they spend most of their day sleeping. Why don't you look
for people, instead?

~~~
davelnewton
Because people focused on sleeping will find more efficient ways to get their
awesomeness done. (Here, by "people", I mean "pandas".)

------
proexploit
I can understand the various arguments for a need to be somewhat secretive and
that's fine. That being said, there's some no-brainer concepts to include in a
job listing if you want it to be worth your time.

#1) Don't just say what the job title is, be clear on what it means to you.
I've had job interviews for a "frontend developer" be anything from a PSD-
slicer to a 95% backend coder.

#2) If you want a passionate employee (you do), you need to give enough
information about your company so they can tell if it interests them. I could
care less what cool technology you use if I don't know whether I'm reforming
healthcare or inventing new ways to impose banking fees. You can say what you
do without providing any sort of specific information.

#3) Sarcasm online can be very easily misinterpreted. I suggest being upfront
and professional in any job posting but if you must use some kind of sarcasm,
be sure to note it.

Note: This is by no means a complete list, simply some reoccurring issues I've
seen during my recent job search. Edit: Formatting.

------
dan_manges
I actually liked some things in the "YC S11 Company Seeks Rails Architect"
post. Not the hyperbole and fluff, but the details on growth, trajectory,
culture, current team, etc. I'd be more specific, but since the post was
deleted, I can't reference it.

The "Summer 2011 YC company seeks CoffeeScript drinking frontend engineer"
post seems very generic to me. It's nice that they mention the industry
they're working in, but otherwise, I didn't pick up on much differentiation in
the job description from other companies looking to fill a similar role (and
the post nearly admits that itself, at the end).

------
issa
I know rock stars. Rock stars are friends of mine. Programmers are not rock
stars.

Seriously though, whoever started the whole rockstar/ninja thing should be
punished. This is programming. Forget sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and throwing
stars. I want to work with people who always know where their towel is.

~~~
FreebytesSector
Ruby coders are rock stars. Perl hackers are sorcerers. PHP coders are ninjas.
This must be what they mean in their coded job descriptions.

------
Havoc
Clearly the company in the second example is making gigawidgets.

------
waterside81
Thank you for saying this more bluntly then I did:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659445>

I was trying to be a bit more diplomatic but my feeling was the same. It
serves no purpose to be so discrete all the time.

------
blockbeta
Agree 100%. Whether a job description, Web page, brochure or any other
vehicle, real communications say what they mean and don't use euphemisms.
These generic descriptions are probably copied and that's pure laziness.

------
brackin
I agree, they want to remain stealthy and keep the prying eyes of journalists
and rivals out but need to be able to convince potential employees to actually
contact them.

------
nirvana
Maybe it's just because I'm "old" or have been around the block, but hyperbole
in a job description really turns me off. The harder the sell, the less I
trust the seller. Actually this is true everywhere.

Further, you can tell us what the business is, and what is compelling about
it, without giving up the secret sauce. You can even mention the secret sauce
without giving up the secret.

EG, if your startup was google: We're building a revolutionary search engine
using the social proof inherent in the web to give people results that are far
more relevant than Yahoo and Inktomi. There, did I give away the page rank
algorithm? No, but I did reveal the compelling advantage that google had: they
figured out how to derive social proof from the web... which at the time was
unheard of.

Even if that's too revealing.... at least talk about your technology stack. If
you write a 500 word essay and the only mentions of technology is that you use
"rails/node.js" -- something at first blush seems like not a choice but a pair
of choices-- you're being evasive one something you have no reason to be
evasive on. "We're using rails to host the primary web app, and node.js to run
a really nice realtime updating system, blah blah blah."

You can talk about that... and you are giving candidates an opportunity to
know what you're like based on your technology choices and how you talk about
technology.

~~~
syncretism
I am also old and have been around the block. There's a chance I hold the
record for having the most kids of any founder in a YC batch, which I think is
astonishingly cool...

I think it's rare that startups have anything as ground breaking as page rank,
and even rarer that it _seems_ ground breaking to anyone else at the time. If
we had some specific formula for growing environment saving bacteria from
leftover banana peels, we'd tell you for sure.

What we really have is a set of guiding principles, indicators that tell us
we're pointed roughly where we should be pointed, and lots of things we want
to try to get there.

The tech details weren't meant to be evasive as much as de-emphasized. They're
there because we think good candidates might find those specific technologies
interesting. We had variants on the description with many more specifics, but
none of them seemed entirely important at the time. I do like talking tech,
though, so here's an exhaustive look:

* We use CoffeeScript at several levels and happen to think it's pretty awesome. Anything that we could have done in JS has been done in CoffeeScript instead, this includes super tight ad serving javascript, the frontend code for our user facing apps, etc.

* We have two major classes of users, those who use our tools to do better advertising, and those who see ads. The "magic" for the first class is whatever the latest release candidate of Rails 3.1 is (rc5 maybe?), the second is the Node.js version that Heroku's Cedar stack supports (0.4.6 I think).

* Both apps feed copious amounts of information into a backend Mongo replica set, and the Node layer leans on Redis for some things.

* We've done limited data visualization with that d3 toolkit I mentioned. We feel that data viz is often underrated, but an extremely useful thing for us to devote resources to. If we could justify buying the entire New York Times data visualization team we'd do so.

~~~
nirvana
I agree that startups won't likely have something as ground breaking as page
rank. I only referred to that example because I knew everyone would know the
algo. I merely meant to illustrate "show us how you're doing a new take on X"
rather than "show us you've got something ground breaking". I also free that
something that is groundbreaking may not seem so at the time.

If my rails/node reference was to you, it wasn't meant personally. Just as an
example that struck me, and one of many.

The four bullet points are very useful, and more importantly they are genuine.
That's really good about them. They give me a good perspective on where your
business is at, and where you're thinking right and where I think you've made
a wrong choice.

I think I didn't mention that one of the more important piece of information
one can get form a job listing is whether the owners of the company have their
heads up their asses. Seeing that you made what I consider a "wrong" choice
reminds me of that. (And I don't think you have your heads up your asses, but
that's the kind of situation that developers really want to avoid... ad asks
for "rock stars" and mentioned cutting edge technologies and languages, and
then you find out you'r doing ASP programming.) Those four bullet points make
the company real in my head.. if that makes any sense.

------
jsavimbi
Agreed. #2 appears to be very concerned with interesting they see themselves
while #1 appears to understand that a) finding talent is hard and b) they need
to convince someone to work for them based on the interesting things they're
working on (or they're just savvy on what keywords to use).

You also have to consider that many of these YC companies are young, small and
inexperienced, regardless of their job descriptions, so take it with a grain
of salt before you commit to anyone. These guys could pivot at any given
moment, change technology stack on a dime (just happened to me), fire you
because you don't fit in, etc.

~~~
syncretism
You should definitely apply to that first job if having technology stacks
yanked out from under you sounds annoying. It sure sounds annoying to me.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I wrote the first job description.

~~~
byoung2
_FULL DISCLOSURE: I wrote the first job description._

You had me at "syncretic.sausage"! Please promise me that you'll make .sausage
a custom TLD someday!

------
logjam
I'm not looking for a job, but do occasionally see one here that may fit
someone I know, and I pass it on....but _only_ if I don't see (for the
10,000th time) vapid marketing-speak like "join a team of rock stars" or
"wanna rock with us?", or "rock our stars" or whatever. I have nothing against
actual rock stars (musicians), but if you're basically a bunch of marketing or
management suits, you're the farthest thing from a "rock star" imaginable.

------
chmike
This comment will probably cost me some karma but the "for the love of god"
makes me feel uncomfortable. I assume it is used as an expression and not as
proselytism or whatever.

Replace god in this expression by gays, Allah, children, science, music, bits
or whatever and you may experience the same feeling I had. And it doesn't
provide any useful and constructive information to the main point.

~~~
iqster
Actually, I had trouble figuring out what to say that's non-offending when
someone sneezes. I ended up picking "Gazuntite", which means health (pls.
don't ask why I need to say anything at all).

Also, there is a hilarious south park episode that delves into this issue.
Here's a clip for some yucks:
<http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/230805/science-help-us>

~~~
geuis
Why must you say anything at all? This is a centuries-old meme that serves no
purpose. It annoys me slightly anytime says it to me, and I don't say anything
to anyone else when they sneeze.

~~~
eropple
It's a behavior that we as a society have decided is polite. It hurts no one,
aside from maybe a few neckbeards who have entirely too much invested in Being
An Atheist (or the equivalent for your hair-splitting worldview of choice).

That you choose to get "annoyed" about such things is your problem, nobody
else's.

