
Ask HN: What do you expect or hate to see in a job offer decription? - Cereal
Here is my list:
Pros
  - which kind of technologies are used
  - involvement in open source community 
  - description of a typical day of work<p>Cons
  - a low level description of the role
  - annual salary missing
======
cbanek
Pro: \- What tech you actually work with. Don't list equivalents. If the
people knew the area they would already know if they have equivalent skills.
\- Salary range and years of experience. \- What kind of actual real world
user problems are you solving?

Cons: \- Anything about culture (it's always bullshit), team player, or being
emotionally mature \- Useless fluff about "loving to work in a fast company",
or how you were #1 2012's disposable ezine of the week's company to work for.
\- Not saying what the job is, but just saying what tech you will be using, as
if that is enough. \- You can't tell the description is any different between
Intern/Junior/Senior/Architect level roles other than "years of experience"

~~~
TurboHaskal
Culture is always bullshit until you get rejected with a line such as
"unfortunately we don't see a good culture fit here"

~~~
wott
Note that it is still bullshit at that point.

------
peterhi
Pros: What the actual job is, the industry sector and the pay

Cons: Guru, Ninja, Rock Star and Passion. I am 55 with a shit pension and your
'Uber for salads' is not something I am passionate about. Never will be.

Complete put off: Other than the cons is reading the ad and not knowing what
the job or company is about. If you can't spell it out your are either
incompetent or deceitful.

~~~
TurboHaskal
Passion reads to me like "unpaid overtime"

------
brett40324
Pro: link to company career page with overview of hiring/onboarding process.

Exaggerated, but not by much is:

Con: Blanket requirements of conflicting language paradigms. Like, expert in
(enter no less than 6 JS frameworks and build tools), also python, ruby, C#,
and some Erlang is a plus. Oh, you also know AWS, and every RDMS and noSQL
technology, MS SQL Server experience a plus.

~~~
kyriakos
Not exaggerated at all. I've seen job ads including those and something
irrelevant like photoshop on top, i.e you might be needed to fill in for our
designers from time to time.

------
Mc_Big_G
Rock star. My boss writes job descriptions like this and it annoys the shit
out of me.

~~~
nicomfe
or ninja.. haha

~~~
softwarefounder
Or "Unicorn"

------
probinso
Pro:

software stack

policy about open source software

Salary Range (allowed to be wide)

Con:

If you are trying to hide the company name, I dislike this but understand you
are likely a recruiter working on commission.

In order to attract people who are passionate, you need to include the work
domain. If you don't post the work domain, then you are wasting my time.

~~~
avodonosov
> If you are trying to hide the company name, I dislike this but understand
> you are likely a recruiter working on commission.

Why is it bad?

~~~
supercoder
Because you don't know what company you're applying for?

~~~
kabdib
Yeah. I once had a recruiter tell me to show up at a company that made sewing
machines. Mechanical sewing machines. I don't think there was a single
computer on the premises. The recruiter and I had a good laugh, then I fired
him.

------
billyzs
Con: a Bachelor, Masters or PhD in {a specific field}.

Consider rephrasing to "PhD with publication record, or MSc with 3 years of
work experience, or BSc with 7 years of work experience, 3 of which at {a
specific advanced level}".

I understand if the job requires a certain minimum education background, but
how can you possibly consider holders of all three of the above degrees,
without stating the specifications for each degree? Can I still apply if I'm
just about to get a BSc, or would you require some amount of work experience?
Am I competing directly with PhDs? Confuses the hell out of me. I once applied
for a SWE I position that had that kind of degree requirement during my senior
year. Passed two phone screens, even handled questions about computer vision
and deep learning well during the on site round (answered beginner and
intermediate level questions well, was honest to admit my limits when asked
about advanced topics). Two days after the interview I went back to check the
job posting, and it was somehow changed to say Principle Computer Vision
Scientist then I was like "oh there goes my chance". Needless to say I wasn't
selected. It makes sense for them to select candidates with advanced degrees
if they are really looking for a Prin. Scientist. But please, spell out the
requirements so that candidates make informed decisions about whether to
apply. It saves both parties valuable time.

------
gorbachev
What really turns me off is acronyms about internal systems nobody outside of
the company offering the job knows about.

Additionally job descriptions full of filler text trying to make the job seem
more important than it is. The usual blabber about team players and
competitive compensation, etc.

------
fapjacks
"Remote" positions where you can work from home every other Friday. If a
position is under a butts-in-seats management style, the word "remote" should
not be found anywhere in the description. Some remote positions have
geographical limitations, which can be understandable from a tax perspective,
but I also don't like to see "remote" positions open only to people in a
specific timezone.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"I also don't like to see "remote" positions open only to people in a
specific timezone"

Isn't this also to do with working hours? If you want synchronous
communication with remote employees you'd probably want them to work similar
hours to local employees (unless you were a multinational company).

------
fapjacks
If a position's salary varies from what is typically expected in the industry
for an area (roughly different than the average salary found on Glassdoor,
just as an example), then the salary or a warning should be listed in the
description. Nothing pisses me off more than going through the motions only to
get a lowball offer by a company hoping to rip me off. It is super
demoralizing, even when I have other offers that are good.

------
drakenot
A "fast paced" and "dynamic" environment is a huge red flag for me.

------
softwarefounder
Having a requirement for knowing utility libraries. i.e. jQuery,
underscore.js, MooTools, etc.

I understand requiring frameworks (i.e. Anguar, React), but jQuery? Come on.

~~~
ZenoArrow
What's wrong with listing jQuery? If it heavily used somewhere it's natural to
want someone who's used it before.

It's something you can learn on the job, but requirements are there because
employers ideally want someone who can hit the ground running.

~~~
flukus
> but requirements are there because employers ideally want someone who can
> hit the ground running

This is the biggest con for me. Being able to hit the ground running depends
much more on the employer than the future employee. Without knowing details
about the state of the project (clean or spaghetti code) you can't possibly
say if you can hit the ground running or not.

They may as well say "we only hire liars".

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"They may as well say "we only hire liars"."

That bares no resemblance to reality.

Here's some free advice, if you don't know jQuery, and you keep seeing it in
job adverts, just learn to use it. Blaming recruiters for looking for it will
get you nowhere.

~~~
flukus
I was referring to the "hit the ground running" phrase, not jquery. Just
because I know jquery and they use jquery does not mean someone can hit the
ground running, there could be a lot of spaghetti code to untangle.

------
synicalx
Pro: Concise and to the point, no waffle or any of that new age "growth
hacking, rockstar" nonsense - don't try and dress a job up as something it's
not. Tell me roughly what salary range you're offering in, and tell me what
I'll be working with. I want to know about your product/s, and how the job I'm
looking at relates to it.

Cons: Babbling on and on about your 'culture' or how much coffee you all
consume. Being vague, and not actually describing the job. Not listing other
requirements like excessive travel, on call, the fact that your office is
200km away from civilisation etc.

Not relevant to me now, but in general - don't call something a 'Junior'
position and then ask for 5+ years of experience, and then don't follow that
up by saying "Oh but it's the most Junior role in our company". That's
bullshit, and you know it, you're just looking for an excuse to pay someone
less.

------
chris_7
Pros:

$ listed up front

Actual details on health insurance.

Cons:

Anything about dogs, beer, snacks, ping pong, or company outings on weekends
or after hours.

The word "startup".

------
swerner
Pro: a description of not only what work you expect me to do, but also who
I'll be doing it with. Team size, experience level of other team members, my
role in the team.

Con: Anything about fun company events and free drinks. I'm looking for work,
not booking a cruise.

~~~
lj3
This. Who my manager is and who I'm potentially going to be working with on a
daily basis is far more important to me than which version of Angular they use
or that they have a ping pong table. But, I've never seen that in a job ad. I
usually have to ask for names and even then it's a 50/50 shot whether they'll
tell me.

------
gigatexal
I have applied to a bunch of positions and I can pretty much tell what posts
are cookie cutter posts: a developer position opens up and the listed
languages to be proficient are all the popular ones with vaugaries at best on
the exact nature of the role.

------
Existenceblinks
Pros: Whatever tools, back-end lang/framework I like

Cons: Whatever tools, front-end lang/framework I hate. (Yes, React and
friends)

Not a joke, this is my real struggle. I love backend, and I love working with
ui designers, elegant elements, so love frontend.

------
czep
"Senior Software Engineer"... "2 years experience."

------
mud_dauber
"The applicant shall..." God, I hate that HR crap.

------
g0tham
[PRO] \- Detailed Job Description, including: Company Info + Role
Responsibilities + Salary + Benefits

[CON] \- Entry level salary requiring 3+ years of experience

------
amelius
Pro: Linux, scientific computing, not-for-profit organization, high-tech (if
it really is), contributing to open-source

Cons: OSX, Windows, advertisement industry, bank, legacy systems, COBOL,
calling the company "high-tech" when they mostly do what everybody else does,
e.g. writing CRUD systems or do elementary data plumbing.

------
wsc981
Sometimes in Dutch vacancies for freelance roles, I see the following remark
with regards to hourly rate:

    
    
      "scherp aanbieden" (=> "offer sharply"?) 
    

I see this reasonably often in mailings of recruitment agencies. I hate this
and I wouldn't be very tempted to apply.

~~~
twic
What does it mean?

~~~
drxzcl
"Don't ask for too much money"

------
angry_napkin
I hate almost everything relating to culture. I have bills to pay and I don't
particularly care that you have some flavor of Street Fighter II. Tell me what
stack you use, the pay, and if you'll pay for my gym membership.

------
kyriakos
Cons: jack of all trades positions. The ad generally lists technologies/skills
the company uses, might use in the distant future or the CTO has heard about
in the last conference he attended.

------
tuyguntn
Pros:

\- Stack

\- Salary range

\- Remote possibility

Cons:

\- Any kind of synonym for rockstar, ninja, hero

\- We are hiring (but actually not hiring, just wasting others time)

------
jamestimmins
Cons: Below market salary AND tiny stock options. If you're offering a Sr.
Engineer a $50k-$70k salary, then offering 0.1%-0.25% of the equity is
unacceptable.

------
Glyptodon
I despise seeing "salary - DOE" like nothing else.

Also hate it when ads describe the company ad nauseum and not much about what
the actual work or tools are.

------
PascLeRasc
When they try to hide that they want you to work for free with something like
"get in at the ground level of a rising star company"

------
new299
Spelling mistakes.

------
jwatte
Everybody are taking about job ads. A job offer is something else entirely
(and a legal document!)

------
tempw
Cons: Unrealistic and nonsense requirements e.g.

fullstack development or test eng.: MSc required

------
igitur
Con: "Preference will be given to EE Candidates"

~~~
kyriakos
What's EE?

~~~
igitur
"Employment Equity" \- [http://www.labourguide.co.za/employment-
equity](http://www.labourguide.co.za/employment-equity)

------
avg_dev
Pro: Salary, salary, salary

------
probinso
consensus: the word 'startup' is a swear word

