Ryan Bigg

⟵ Posts

Job Offer Dissection

31 Jul 2008

I used to do these when I didn’t have a job, and since then I’ve been looking a lot less (read: not at all) for a new job. This, however, was accidentally clicked on in Apple Mail and I was tempted to dissect yet another one.

From: ryanbrogan@gmail.com

This is what made me cringe the most. If you’re a recruiter sending out recruitment emails, why do it from a gmail address? Why not use your own?

One of my top clients and an incredible place to work...

Who? It helps to list names. Names attract people. If I told you I was going to buy you a beer you’d get all excited. Then I would reveal it would be a Fosters, and you wouldn’t be so excited.

secure two developers for staff positions paying 75-95k.

With / without tax? Numbers are great, but more information is definitely needed here.

Email me @ ryan [at] magnetagency.net

Ah! There it is!

or ryanbrogan [at] gmail.com

No really?

1000.00 referral fee if someone you refer gets the position.

Rupees? Zimbabwean Dollars? Kroner? Helps to specify a currency… but I guess American is inferred. Also, “fee”? Do we owe you money if we refer our friends to you?

We know you'd send your pals for free, but that's how we roll :)

Ah, a smiley face. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Also, respect goes out to the use of non-professional language here, makes it feel much better.

We have an aggressive product list comprised of social, personalization, user-generated, and content publishing features planned for the site

“Aggressive product list”? What are we talking here? A few robberies with a weapon? Rape? Murder? Genocidal maniac?

and we're looking for a self-motivated developer to join the team.

The team should motivate the developer, but it does help to be self-motivated too. Each member of the team should feed off each other’s energy.

If you're interested in working in a fast-paced,

Running makes me sweaty. How fast are we talking?

energetic environment

Pepsi Max and a proper sleep cycle gives me all the energy I need

come work for us.

Rather not, I hear the commute from here to there is about 22 hours!

Core Requirements:

As compared to the other kind of requirements?

* You're passionate about the craft of software engineering and love building cool Web applications

So, say, an aspiring Trolley Pusher wouldn’t be the right kind of person for this job then?

* You're familiar with Test/Behavior Driven Development and agile software development

We spent long nights together in an orgy of code. There were files flying all over the place! A few commits took place, but nothing serious.

* You have production Ruby on Rail experience

Ruby’s going monorail now, huh?

including deployment

Inferred from last statement

with Mongrel

ditto

* You're comfortable with semantic XHTML and CSS (not necessarily design)

Uh oh, -1 point for chucking in “semantic” in there. Big words make people sad. “Well-structured” is what I would put there.

* You're familiar with Javascript and AJAX

I have nothing witty to say about this.

* Ongoing application development

Well, given that the position seems to be a Software Engineer-like position, this is pretty much a given. All application development is “ongoing”

* Production support and ticket management

Ah, so the position is now more of a Software Engineer meet Tech Support meet Project Manager position now? Cool. Probably a bit overwhelming for one person (we have this in three separate roles @ NetFox)

* Deployment management

Easy enough with Capistrano, which most Ruby on Rails developers worth their salt should know.

Overall, a fairly good job advertisement. Still struggling to come up with a reason for posting from Gmail, but I’m sure there’s a fairly good one behind it. Thanks for not using buzzwords (apart from the iffy “semantic”)! It takes me so long to pick them all out and decipher them… I once saw “increases business continuity” on a website and I’m still trying to figure out what it means.