

Beg HN: Rethink your job posting strategy - wedtm
http://wedtm.com/post/32676463296/beg-hn-rethink-your-job-posting-strategy

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alooPotato
@wedtm co-founder of streak.com here, we apologize that the job posting came
off as offensive - as you said in your post it was totally unintentional.

We would love some constructive discussion on where we went wrong and how we
can improve. Re-reading the job post again (deleted but we have a copy) using
your comments as a lens, I can see how the title may come off as abrasive.
However, in our actual post - we use competitors as a way to contrast and
illustrate what our beliefs are - not to belittle them.

We actually disagree with posting requirements for our positions, mainly
because there aren't any fast and easy rules that would make someone a good
fit vs. not a good fit. That's mostly determined by meeting and talking - all
we can really do is try to attract people who are interested in our space and
beliefs.

Your other point on posting the actual salary we are offering is a tough one.
Its not tough because we don't want to be transparent, rather, we're such a
young company that we don't have a set role, skill set or persona we are
hiring for. Compensation is LARGELY dependent on the applicants personal
situation (young with high risk tolerance implies more equity, less
compensation vs someone older with family and mortgage). We're totally
transparent with all of our applicants once they've contacted us.

We are totally open to your help on figuring out a better way to do job
postings given the above constraints. We've been a part of the HN community
for a while and definitely don't want to offend others here.

[edit] Happy to chat over email too: aleem at streak

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pc86
Glad to see a response. I didn't catch the original job posting before it was
taken down, but I have to wonder: why was it taken down in the first place?

Regardless, Streak seems like an interesting product.

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vanni
Google caught it for you:

 _«Help takedown Salesforce - join the team at Streak.com (YC S11). Salesforce
is a hugely profitable company but they make a low rate product. The vast
majority of their users hate the product that they're forced to use. At Streak
- we're building a product that people love to use. Even though we sell to
“businesses”, we aren't an enterprise company - we're a technology company
maniacally focused on a great product.»_

Thumbs down.

~~~
alooPotato
Here's the full content:
[https://plus.google.com/117773536965491876803/posts/X51N6Bsx...](https://plus.google.com/117773536965491876803/posts/X51N6Bsxhir)

~~~
vanni
I appreciate your move.

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cliftonmckinney
There have certainly been worse offenders in the annals of job posts on HN
than Streak, but I see the point here (mostly).

However, job boards are classified ads, and oftentimes the controversial ones
get the most eyeballs. Think about it from Streak's perspective: "okay, we're
a young, relatively unknown company, and we're trying to hire the best
engineers we can. Also, ideally, we want to screen for people who actually
find our challenge interesting."

Through that lens it makes perfect sense that they call out an entrenched,
better known enemy. It's controversial enough to be memorable--especially for
people who aren't big fans of Salesforce (exactly the types they're looking
for).

The problem is that those first few words is often all they have to get your
attention. The forum's all wrong, and job posts in general are terrible places
to tell people about your culture.

I'm just happy that folks have mostly weeded out the "rockstar" and "ninja"
job posts. Those were god awful...

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tylermenezes
I think no matter what the job postings look like, someone is always going to
be offended, because they're advertisements, and the readership has no control
over them.

If you're offended by the job post, that's more of an indicator that you're
not a good culture fit, rather than _wrong_. Sure, there are some things (like
not listing requirements) which are generally considered a bad thing, but it's
not a terrible shame to just ignore advertisements you don't like.

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zeddie
The premise of the job posting, "Salesforce is a hugely profitable company..."
is also completely false.

Salesforce had negative earnings for fiscal year 2012, losing millions of
dollars. The projections for 2013 call for much larger losses. It is unclear
when, if ever, Salesforce will be profitable again. The company has recently
been hiding their huge losses by trumpeting bogus financial numbers using non-
standard (non-GAAP) accounting practices.

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lessnonymous
In many cases I'd agree. But this one has a little bit of historical context.
This is how Salesforce marketed themselves. Benioff's book "Behind the cloud"
talks about doing exactly this to disrupt the status quo.

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jemka
>If your requirements are “The best hacker on the planet, must have at least
83 PhD’s from Harvard”, you’ve just alienated a majority of the workforce.

The above sentence appears twice.

~~~
wedtm
Ah, good catch. Fixed.

