
Things I wish people who write job postings would stop writing - littlestitious
- Random words to make me feel special: &#x27;guru&#x27;, &#x27;ninja&#x27;, &#x27;hacker&#x27;, etc.<p>- Random words that adds nothing: &#x27;professional&#x27;, &#x27;talented&#x27;, &#x27;passionate&#x27;, &#x27;awesome&#x27;. &quot;hmm, maybe I&#x27;m not awesome enough for this position&quot; - said nobody ever<p>- Describing your company like it just cured AIDS (if you company actually just cured AIDS, I will allow it). I only want to know what your company _actually_ does.<p>- Explicitly writing that the hired person will have to work a lot. &quot;let&#x27;s hire someone to do nothing most of the time&quot; - said no company ever<p>What you should write and you are (probably) not writing:<p>- What are some real tasks &#x2F; problems I might work with on a daily basis? I find it hard to be interested on positions that only mentions &quot;you&#x27;ll develop stuff&quot;. There&#x27;s a lot of stuff out there, please be clear.<p>- In case of remote positions, is the employee supposed to live near the company or can she be on the other side of the planet?
======
IvyMike
Postings that use phrases like "ninja", "rockstar", "crush code", etc, tell me
something very, very important about the company.

Specifically, that I'd probably hate to work there.

~~~
Retra
"But we have bean bag chairs!"

~~~
MichaelCrawford
I just looked at the Jobs page on the site of an actual employer - not a job
board post - where they had photos of them all getting drunk.

I have had some experiences with alcoholics I do not wish to repeat.

A recent employer was a raging alcoholic, I mean to the point that there were
hundreds of beer bottles in the recycling bin, one-liter bottles of expensive
hard liquor presented on display in the break room. The only room in the whole
office that wasn't totally trashed, held a pool table that no one ever
actually used, that had several of the kinds of mirrors that liquor
distributors give to bars.

I didn't clue in to this right away. However the guy bet the farm on a
technology without looking into whether that technology actually worked. When
I had not gotten it working after just two hours, he started raging at me
about how it was all my fault that it didn't work. This for a technology I'd
never heard of, and would not touch with a hot rock now that I have experience
with it.

I finally packed up my stuff, broadcast a terse, angry letter of resignation
to the entire company, to the effect that I don't work for alcoholics, then
walked out with no advance notice at all.

~~~
MrDom
> the guy bet the farm on a technology without looking into whether that
> technology actually worked.

> When I had not gotten it working after just two hours, he started raging at
> me about how it was all my fault that it didn't work.

This is how most mid-sized non-technology companies operate when it comes to
making technical decisions. If you have a couple of months to spare (the guy
is verbose), I recommend reading the Gervais Principle[0].

[0] [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-
principle/](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/)

------
cek
Best job description I ever wrote. This was while I was a Microsoft building a
new team.

    
    
        Are you a lazy program manager who could care less 
        about PCs, devices, networking, and other technologies 
        in the home? Have you always dreaded working on a 
        product that you would LOVE to use? Do you yearn to 
        work in a huge, lumbering, group working on the same 
        old stuff forever? If so, have we got a job for you!
    
        We are looking for a newbie program manager to hinder 
        us in building the next version of Windows Home Server. 
        Our team is ginormous, moves excruciatingly slowly and 
        indecisively, and we are thoroughly hating life. And we 
        need more PMs to suffer along with us! Interested?
    
        You will be a non-player helping to design and build 
        the 42nd version of a product that has been around 
        since before you were born. We are still in startup 
        mode, and as part of a startup, you’ll have to do one 
        task repeatedly over and over. You need to be ready and 
        willing to do whatever I say when I say it even if it 
        makes no sense whether that means screwing up features, 
        angering partners, ignoring the community, creating 
        bugs, and maybe even stealing a little code and hacking 
        into a bank. We are in need of Program Managers with 
        weak design skills; goof-offs who can take ownership of 
        a user scenario area, ignore requirements, design a 
        useless technology for technologies sake (forgetting 
        about the user experience), and work with dev, test, 
        UA, usability, etc… to cause them all to quit. And then 
        do it again.
    
        Candidates should have poor consumer empathy, a deep 
        dislike of cutting edge technology in the home, and the 
        ability to cause political issues in small team where 
        everything is already figured out and there’s nothing 
        really left to do.
    
        Candidates must have less than 4 days experience as a 
        program manager working on shipping products. 
        Experience doing customer research and designing 
        consumer UIs will immediately disqualify you. The less 
        technical knowledge you have of networking, storage, 
        and Windows server technologies the better. Candidates 
        should have a B.A. in Basket Weaving or equivalent and 
        should have been fired from their previous two jobs.

~~~
dsr_
I hadn't realized that Microsoft encouraged that degree of honesty or
introspection.

Did you actually post that anywhere?

~~~
cek
Yes, I posted this to several mailing lists that had thousands of people on
them. I got about 500 responses. Most were of the "LOL" variety. One said "I
found this to be in very poor taste."

I got 11 solid leads, and 2 of those turned into hires.

More here: [http://ceklog.kindel.com/2011/10/27/my-best-hiring-stunt-
to-...](http://ceklog.kindel.com/2011/10/27/my-best-hiring-stunt-to-date/)

~~~
MrDom
Were they quality hires? And are you still hiring at amazon? ;)

~~~
cek
Of course, and yes:
[http://www.amazon.jobs/results?searchStrings[]=alcc](http://www.amazon.jobs/results?searchStrings\[\]=alcc)

------
mountaineer
I've been tracking[1] the use of "passionate" in whoishiring threads, really
getting out of control. It's now become one of the 10 most frequent terms used
in posts.

[1] [http://www.ryan-williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-
trends/2014/...](http://www.ryan-williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-
trends/2014/december.html?compare1=passionate)

~~~
jdmichal
I noticed by looking at the top 50 that there's also "passion" as a separate
listing, and tracks almost perfectly [0].

[0] [http://www.ryan-williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-
trends/2014/...](http://www.ryan-williams.net/hacker-news-hiring-
trends/2014/december.html?compare1=passionate&compare2=passion&compare3=&compare4=)

~~~
mountaineer
Good catch, I forgot I had them broken out, makes it even more common perhaps,
but there could be overlap with posts using both terms.

------
mdm_
>"hmm, maybe I'm not awesome enough for this position" \- said nobody ever

I think you're underestimating the number of people who tell themselves things
like that.

------
zerotolerance
How about kitchen sink technology lists? These tell me two things about a
potential employer. First, their HR department uses keyword matching to filter
resumes. Second, the person writing the JD is inexperienced or has an
extremely low hiring bar.

~~~
vonmoltke
Low hiring bar? Kitchen sink "requirements" give me the impression that they
are looking for a magical unicorn.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Have a look at the ads wanting several years of experience coding in Swift.

(Apple has only supported it for about three months now.)

When MS first shipped C++ for windows, quite commonly the recruiters wanted
candidates with five years of windows C++ experience.

~~~
cratermoon
That sort of thing seems to happen when the folks writing the job posting
attempt to take the actual requirements from the hiring manager and rewrite
them to some standard format. A manager might want "someone who knows C++ for
Windows" and "someone who is intermediate in experience". The HR person will
look up "intermediate" and see "minimum 5 years" and then glue it onto the
technology.

Has anyone ever had a favorable experience working with a hiring company or
recruiter that is especially particular about how many years of experience a
candidate has in some technology? Exactly how much a programmers knows isn't
directly dependent on how long the programmer has been working with the tool.
There is such a thing as "1 year of experience 5 times".

------
davesailer
My favorite (from a long time ago now): "Experienced in Lotus 1, 2, and 3."

------
Mimu
In all honestly I don't think this is just jobs ads. Just look at this place
(hacker news) for example, everybody is using the term "hacker" to designate
anything.

Today putting lettuce and meat together to create a salad is hacking.

I agree that this is ridiculous though, also I currently work in a company
that was hiring a "Jedi angularJS developer", I had 2 days experience with the
framework when I signed (they knew, long story short they didn't want me, the
recruiter pass me a test that was not for me and I did way better than the
original guy).

------
coldcode
Unless you written code for a rockstar, you are not a rockstar coder anyway.
Why hire a Ninja, you won't see them come in to work or leave anyway.

~~~
valarauca1
A ninja could be potentially useful to _deal_ with competitors.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Perhaps I should show up to interviews carrying my father's sword?

It's not sharp on the edge but it _is_ pointy.

~~~
valarauca1
"Your father's laptop. This is the weapon of a hacker. Not as clumsy or random
as a tablet; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

------
twic
An apparently genuine job ad that came to my attention today (i think it's
currently sweeping Twitter), from Sportacam in Finland [1]:

    
    
        What we can offer:
    
        - Meeting and partying with international sports superstars
        - Drinking beer instead of Jolt-coke
        - Making it rain on them hoes
        - Salary and/or Equity
    
        Yes, this will all come true if you fit the criteria.
    
        We expect you to:
    
        - be totally gay for code
        - know how to build a robust back-end that can handle massive amounts of photos, videos and users
        - have at least 7-10 years experience in back-end development
        - be able to talk to other people
    

Well, at least the "be able to talk to other people" is good.

[1]
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5YIQ01r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5YIQ01rfgQUJ:www.arcticstartup.com/jobs/2349)

~~~
cafard
Clearly they need somebody who is able to talk to other people.

------
loteck
Is there enough attention being paid to how the language used in job ads is,
in the best case, subliminally advertising a company's culture of ageism?

I can hardly think of a better way to advertise that you only want young
people to apply than to advertise for a guru rockstar gamechanging ninja who
is _awesome_ and wants a vague job description.

------
davidgerard
Joblint is now available as a service!

[http://joblint.org/](http://joblint.org/) \- Test tech job specs for issues
with sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails.

Library source:
[https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint](https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint)

~~~
GeoffreyKr
Nice project :) (I just lint job spec and the analysis seems right)

------
fredgrott
I recently by mistake expressed interest in a startup on Angel.co found out
later tha its one of these fake social startups building a mobile app on top
of facebook and the founder is screaming about passion after 2 years going
with no funding showing..yeah right..way to kill any interest whatsoever.

~~~
EpicEng
In my experience, "passion" is (for some people) synonymous with "working a
ton of unpaid overtime."

------
benaston
My favorite job advert was one for a large-ish company (200 people) that
invited you to criticise their public-facing web application. The implication
was that not following the instructions on the advert to a T would result in
your application being ignored.

Clearly this was a lose-lose proposition.

Hilariously, I naively took them at their word and described amongst other
observations how their application used far too many HTTP requests (i.e. they
weren't using concatenation) and that the page size was phenomenally large.

Needless to say I got no response.

Another time an in-house recruiter for a company that creates a light-blue
VOIP client that everyone uses, mentioned that there were free soft drinks and
that the executive management were really down to earth. At which point I
moved the phone away from my mouth, took a breath and regained my composure.

------
matt6545
I would like for them to hire a professional writer. It seems more common to
cut and past.

~~~
pXMzR2A
> cut and past.

I cannot tell if that's a pun or typo..

~~~
nkantar
Well, at least it was seemingly written specifically for this occasion.

------
dpcan
What I learned earlier this year on HN in another thread is that saying
"ninja", etc, paints the picture of the company's culture. Keeping stick-in-
the-mud guys like me away :) It just saves everyone some time.

------
diafygi
Can you give an example of a good job posting? I try to make our postings as
real as possible[1], and would love feedback.

The level of detail goes both ways, though. The vast majority of people who
apply don't even submit a pgp resume, which gives the impression that they
didnt read the job description.

[1]:
[http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=66c8368e9c756e78](http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=66c8368e9c756e78)

~~~
aswerty
I liked the job posting but thought the list of requirements is very specific.
JavaScript, Python, and Linux are the only things on that list that look like
they should be a deal breaker for you. Everything else can be covered in a
soft requirements list such as "have experience with web development (client
and server side), relational databases, and queueing/caching". This gives
people who have experience with the core of your stack an indication that they
fit your main requirements. Of course you might only want people who fit your
requirements 100% but I think you're getting into Unicorn territory at that
point.

------
francesca
I think the reason why it sucks is because engineers don't write job specs --
recruiters do. And a lot of recruiters don't take the time to really learn
about how and why engineers move from company to company. Often they don't
attract the highest quality talent because they attract talent that is "just
right" and they don't try harder to make their recruiting better.

------
yuncun
Agreed. On the other hand, my favorite line to read is

\- 'Interested? Email me at ted@coolstartup.com, include hackernews in subject
line'

------
EpicEng
Hey, one just popped up:
[http://www.jobscore.com/jobs2/simplyinsured/software-
develop...](http://www.jobscore.com/jobs2/simplyinsured/software-
developer/d9IZfSd10r46BliGakhP3Q?detail=Hacker+News&remail=&rfirst=&rlast=&sid=161)

------
wmkn
You are going to hate everything about this requirement page then:
[https://www.bunq.com/nl/en/job/](https://www.bunq.com/nl/en/job/)

Actually it improved a little bit. Until a few weeks ago you had to sign an
NDA to learn what the company actually does.

------
drinchev
I totally agree. Ironically I think current economical situation flips the
coin. Companies are fighting for developers rather than employees applying for
jobs. In rare cases ( google, facebook, twitter, etc. ) these writing actually
doesn't exist.

------
theaccordance
No arguments from me regarding the first set of words, but the second set?
Those do hold benefit when used properly to communicate context, especially
with differentiating between a presumed core skill requirement and
supplemental nice-to-have.

~~~
nkantar
Really?

"Professional" strikes me as an overall requirement. I can't imagine companies
are looking for _unprofessional_ employees.

"Talented" is rather vague, and isn't the presumption that the candidate is
talented anyway?

"Passionate" could be applied to a specific thing (e.g., technology, like
"passionate about SPAs"), so that one makes sense.

"Awesome" is in the same category as the first group, I think.

Do you have any examples of how "professional", "talented", and "awesome" can
be genuinely useful?

------
ably
Ads that use language like that often go on to say suspicious things like
"build great exposure for your work" and then finally come right out and say
"unpaid role".

------
GeoffreyKr
Ninja was cool the first time it was used, not it's a stupid word telling :
"you won't get paid much but you'll work on a mac book pro"

------
duderific
"Gamechanger" is the new "rockstar"

~~~
nkantar
Mazda revealed the new 3 as a #GAMECHANGER [sic]. Now that I have one, does
that mean my car is a better prospective employee than me, since I'm merely a
programmer/coder/developer/engineer?

~~~
duderific
The recruiting email I got noted that from my resume, she could tell I was
clearly a gamechanger, but challenged me to question whether I was surrounded
by other gamechangers. Because, you know, it's lonely being the only
gamechanger at a company replete with non-gamechangers.

------
mszyndel
Actually a lot of people _can_ feel like they are not awesome enough.

------
JCJoverTCP
"rockstar"

~~~
littlestitious
write some code, destroy the office, drink some coffee, do a little debugging,
bite a pigeons head off, deploy

~~~
angersock
"Crazy Train" actually predicted the rise of ruby on rails

ozzy osbourne basically was holding out for rails 3

------
jasonnerothin
those are key words for young coders, nothing more

------
MichaelCrawford
What I'd really like to see, is a recruiter who actually looked at my resume
from beginning to end before contacting me.

Finally, just a few minutes ago, I put a vacation response in my gmail
account:

    
    
       Dear Friend,
    
       Thank you for writing, I'll get back to you soon.
    
       If you are an agency recruiter seeking to place me in a
       job or contract position, please be advised that I find
       my own work.  Please take me off your mailing list.
       Please delete my resume from your records as well.
    
       If you'd like to know why, please read this:
    
          Market Yourself: Tips for High-Tech Consultants
          http://www.warplife.com/tips/business/market-yourself.html
    
       Regards,
    
       Michael David Crawford, Consulting Software Engineer
       Solving the Software Problem
       mdcrawford@gmail.com
    
          Local Jobs, Local Candidates
          The Global Computer Employer Index
          http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/

~~~
davidgerard
Did it have any effect whatsoever on the flow of spam?

(I was nominally responsible for a Clearcase installation for six months in
2001. I mentioned it on my CV in 2002. I _still_ get the occasional ping from
those last, last few Clearcase shops, desperate for someone who will admit to
ever having touched it.)

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I learned this the hard way as well.

If you've worked with some technology or product, but don't ever want to work
with it again, don't mention it in your resume.

I mentioned doing some ColdFusion work because, well, that's what I did as
part of a previous job, but when I started looking for a new job, I quickly
found I wanted to take that out.

Of course, if word gets out you're a software developer looking for work,
there are a whole slew of recruiters that will spam you for anything that even
remotely involves computers. It's been 2-1/2 years since I was looking for
work and I still get a couple e-mails a week spamming for jobs like a Linux
Admin in Detroit or a Data Analyst in St. Louis (I live in Virginia and never
had any intention of moving).

~~~
MichaelCrawford
I'm looking for work in Portland, Oregon.

The recruiters seem to be catching my drift in a rather oblique way, in that
just since yesterday, they've been sending me inquiries about jobs in
Portland, Maine.

~~~
RogerL
You match 50% of the requirements, that's better than the usual recruiter
spam.

------
MichaelCrawford
Among my pet peeves is that when I search for telecommute jobs at Craigslist -
which is often the case, as I am a consultant - it gets me posts that say "no
telecommuting".

It is quite cruel that the name of the employer is usually not provided: "We
are a hot startup in the cloudspace" rather than "Example.com is a hot startup
in the cloudspace". This has the result that I apply to a lot more companies
than I otherwise would, because there is no way I can learn more about the
company _before_ apply.

See if you can find a recording of the original Apple Computer radio ad. It
was on their very first developer CD - "You can change the world!"

Well I expect Apple did, but now everyone says they're going to.

I've gotten to the point that when I see an ad seeking a "rockstar coder" I
just don't apply.

How about a job posting that's looking for someone with more than ten years
experience?

Someone whose products got reviews in the trade press, or sold well?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> It is quite cruel that the name of the employer is usually not provided: "We
> are a hot startup in the cloudspace" rather than "Example.com is a hot
> startup in the cloudspace". This has the result that I apply to a lot more
> companies than I otherwise would, because there is no way I can learn more
> about the company _before_ apply.

There's a workaround for this. Take a few sentences from the job description -
some of the non-standard ones - and google for them. Frequently, you'll see
the company's job page in the results as the first hit. From there, you can
usually even contact them directly, and skip the recruiter middleman.

In my (a few years out of date) experience, it got me hits about 50% of the
time.

~~~
turar
I wonder how effective that is vs going through the middleman. I'd guess if
the "end company" is small enough without the bloated HR structure, it's more
effective to get in the door by contacting them directly. On the other hand,
if it's a behemoth like GE or similar, it might be more effective to go
through a middleman to get past clueless HR.

I'm struggling with these decisions currently, as I see the same position
posted by multiple middle men, as well as the "final client" directly, and
sometimes it's difficult to figure out the best way to handle it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Does going through a recruiter typically mean that you bypass HR? I always
assumed that HR would be involved regardless.

I've only worked for one company large enough to have a dedicated HR team, and
they don't seem clueless to me so far.

~~~
turar
My understanding is that some (most?) recruiters work directly with hiring
managers.

------
MichaelCrawford
I'm looking for the kind of job where I can stare out the window all day long,
but then write one single subroutine that just works the very first time, and
that not only is compliant to spec, but exceeds expectation.

Rock stars blow their royalties and ticket sales up their noses, sleep with
groupies, trash hotel rooms and die young.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
back in the day, some clueless manager posted to usenet that he was looking
for a coder who could - I swear I'm not making this up! - "write 1000 lines of
code per day".

I'm sure you can visualize all the responses that were posted.

~~~
davidgerard
Now, if they could average _minus_ 1000 lines per day ...

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Yes, for almost every existing project I've ever worked on, I had a net
negative line of code count per day, and boy did that feel good.

