

Beautiful Job Description: Intrinsically Motivated Full Stack Product Hacker - pumainmotion
http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2012/06/15/intrinsically-motivated-full-stack-product-hacker/

======
simonsarris
Cute, but maybe a little _too_ out cute.

> You are prone to quixotic behavior.

They are looking for people who are prone to irrational, unrealistic behavior?
It makes for nice prose but I have a feeling that some of the personality
disorders that could be described by their phrasing wouldn't be particularly
welcome.

> Full-stack.

What stack?

No really, you're hiring me for the full stack. _What is the stack?_

Would I ever be writing a line of CSS? Or JavaScript? Or Ruby? SQL?

At least they say "Largely PHP" a little bit later, but that makes me wonder
just what their definition of full-stack is.

I appreciate pleasant writing for the sake of it, but there's a lot of
information they could have imparted but chose not to. I wonder if they'd
respond favorably if I actually replied in kind. Do they really want quixotic
behavior? Is being scant on technical details an OK thing for a technical job
posting?

I'm tempted to send a cover letter talking about how the best CSS (would I be
writing CSS?) is made with oil paint and that I wear a tea cozy for a hat. I
could claim to have independently discovered punctuation and talk about how I
navigate code by wind chime.

~~~
asm
re Quixotic Behavior: We want people who are comfortable taking a stand on an
issue and going off on a mission to solve the problem. Not every great idea
seems reasonable before people see it working.

re Full-Stack: We're looking for people who design and build full systems from
low to high levels. Some have made their career working just as a front- or
back-end hacker. We want to meet people who wouldn't dream of letting someone
else take half their work or who would be comfortable throwing part of the
problem over the fence. People that are a good fit probably don't care that
much about what the stack is beyond some reasonable constraints.

If you end up sending that cover letter there's a chance that we'd all be
amused enough to read your resume.

~~~
simonsarris
At the risk of being rude, that additional description leaves it just as open-
ended and confusing.

Is everyone at Etsy amazing all every part of your stack?

Suppose I've done most everything except zero database work in my life, should
I apply? Or is that not full stack enough?

What if I've done everything but high level design work? Not full stack
enough?

What if I've done everything including design work but realized I'm not that
good at it, so I hired out design for my projects? What if I determined the
reverse with low level database stuff?

What if I have written the full-stack of a few webapps but always used Rails,
and haven't ever touched any of the low level bits?

What if I've done only database and web design and have never really touched
PHP? Or did PHP but never did any JavaScript? Good enough?

I know what your reply to me is going to be, you'll say by all means, apply,
etc. But that's not what I'm trying to point out here. I think that your
listing and subsequent clarification might suggest to many that all of the
above are inadequate, and I imagine you may be turning off several (very good)
candidates that doubt their own full-stack-worthiness, merely on account of
the term here being so nebulous.

In other words, to any given pair of eyes that fall upon the ad, all they know
is that you want everything.

~~~
akkartik
Full-stack here seems to be about mindset not skill set.

I have a different criticism: it's hard to own the stack without being
empowered to change it, to make wholesale changes. And that's hard to do as
software grows and ossifies, as deployment gets more uncertain. To do full
stack right you need to limit team size, I think.

------
alinajaf
Question for HN, how do you generally feel about the 'Intrinsically Motivated'
requirement?

I'm deeply motivated about a great many things that are important to me, but
helping to implement or maintain someone elses idea isn't one of them.

For a price I'd be happy to turn up and give you eight hours of hard work per
day. I take pride in my work, am passionate about improving my skills and
would do my best to translate them into tangible benefits for your
organization.

But my motivation for doing so would be mostly based on a financial
arrangement, in other words, extrinsic. Does that someone like me shouldn't
apply for a job posting like this or am I misunderstanding?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Recently I saw a post that quoted

    
    
      Derive your self-worth from the process not the output.
       

The first you control, code quality, integrity, professional communication
with team mates etc. The second is not entirely within your control and should
not lead to anxiety.

Anyway, I would want to hire someone like that - more intrinsically motivated,
than someone who is focused on building Facebook for dogs for an IPO.

I would pay good money, but not expect commitment to the mission, just
commitment to intrinsically good code and practises.

That's my take

------
x1
On a side note, now I understand why HN doesn't allow comments on job
postings. This is a tough crowd.

~~~
droithomme
It's not a tough crowd at all, the comments are all extremely reasonable and
should be insightful to the job lister.

HN really should allow such comments, it would often help companies get
feedback about why they are not finding the people they think they need.

------
ziel
Well, I enjoyed the classics references. Had to look up Manichaeism
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism>)

------
anuraj
If I am intrinsically motivated, why would I work for somebody?

~~~
wpietri
Because you can get behind what they do.

I like making things for people. At Etsy, for example, I like that the sell
side of their audience are independent makers. I could easily imagine doing
some user interviews, discovering something in their experience that can be
improved, and then going out and making it happen.

Working with others can be preferable to working alone in that it's a lot
easier to release something that helps a large audience. Because I'm not an
idiot I would insist they pay me fairly, but my primary motivation would still
be helping the users.

------
jph
Etsy is a terrific company for development, especially for continuous delivery
and how to build great systems. Their tech blog is excellent:
<http://codeascraft.etsy.com/>

------
wissler
Yes, a beautiful job description. However, for me these two statements are
inherently contradictory:

"You consider critical thinking to be among your core competencies."

"But technology is a means and not the ends for you, and you don’t flinch at
the idea of writing largely PHP for a living."

I interpret this as "think critically, but don't criticize the technology
choices we have already made."

Yes, technology is a means, but that does not mean that it's something to just
mindlessly accept. This is particularly true in the realm of software where
there are so many technological possibilities to choose from.

~~~
StavrosK
Well, they've ostensibly put tens of man-years into their architecture. I
don't think any amount of critical thinking can change it significantly...

~~~
wissler
I'd never preemptively judge what could be done with an architecture without
looking at it first. There are always creative possibilities, so if their is
something wrong with their technology choice (not saying there is), then I
wouldn't preemptively rule out being able to do something about it.

Of course, maybe sarcastic presumptuousness is what they are after? Why not
send in your resume?

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize my estimation was binding.

You saw a job posting and assumed that they treat their technology choices as
unassailable and immutable, and I pointed out that it may not be economic for
them to change their entire codebase. You seem to have turned this discussion
into an argument about their codebase having a problem and requiring action.
Who's being presumptuous?

~~~
wissler
"You seem to have turned this discussion into an argument about their codebase
having a problem and requiring action. Who's being presumptuous?"

You are, and in a very ironic way. I never said their codebase had a problem.
I don't know anything about their codebase. It might be just peachy.

Look at it this way. What if someone was hiring you to build pyramids by
lifting each stone using only the narrowly prescribed box of using your own
power (since "that's how we've always done it" say), they might also say that
your focus on horses and pulleys was a wasteful obsession about means instead
of ends and that you shouldn't flinch about dragging each stone yourself all
day every day. They might think you are just wasting your time tinkering when
you should be moving stones instead, but the truth is that your means are the
only human way to reach those ends.

But again, their codebase might be perfectly fine. The thing is, I don't like
to be told that I have to accept that it is before I've looked at it myself.
They can have a really good hacker who will keep his head down, pump out code,
and not question past decisions, or they can have critical thinking, but not
both.

