tl;dr but man I totally thought you were being sarcastic with your first paragraph. I found that first job posting to be very unclear and bozoish.

Talking about corporate culture when you have no employees is stupid? And focusing on napping? In what you posted it doesn’t say if it’s a web app or a desktop app, what platform, what language, whether it’s a rich client or thin, what domain, how big the team is (there could be five founders for all we know), etc. I think there’s plenty unclear about what type of person they’re looking for.

While vapid waffle certainly has no value, restricting yourself to lay speech means restricting yourself to lay ideas. Jargon is more compact and precise than ‘plain talk’. Who knows, “driving innovative customer solutions” may just precisely mean filling out monthly forms 130-A through J in the process management jargon of [company]. That could be a good thing, right? OMG THEY HAVE TAKEN MY MIND

Scott,

It might help to read the whole post. I only include excerpts:

“Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus.”

And it’s never too early to care about culture. I know I’d want to work with people who have purpose and ideals.

Danilo,

I totally agree with Scott. I went through the first 20 lines trying to know when were you going to disclose the sarcasm. Honestly, I feel you just like the language more but there’s no more specificity in the examples you cite.

Otherwise, I totally agree with you. The world needs more straightforward clear speech.

Hi Cesar,

Huh, interesting. I’ll remember that for the future. It’s entirely possible I was won over by the clear language, despite the post not saying as much as it could about the problem domain.

rubbish, i understood your point exactly. good post; reminds me of the ad i replied to

I thought it was sarcasm too ;D

You knock the windows 7 release.. but compare it to “a magical and revolutionary device”

it didn’t come across as sarcastic to me, I was with ya the whole way there Danilo.

I have to admit, I also thought it was sarcasm. Two reasons – one, you gave a lot of praise to the first post, to the point where it gave strong overtones of sarcasm, and two, the content of the post itself communicated to me “We’re looking for someone who knows every programming language ever invented, and we’ll pay you twenty shiny dollars an hour.”

+1 for the sarcasm

another thing about the cited offer:

“Depending on the task, we program in Ruby (on Rails), Javascript (a lot of this), PHP, Python, Objective-C (iPhone), and Java (Android). Flexibility is a plus.”

so they want a dev who´s a pro in ruby, js, php, python, obj-C, and android development (which is not only java)?

i might be wrong, but i think the guys who do all of that propably won´t be really good in every language.

so they claim they´re so profitable and have a large user base and so on. but you´re the first employee. so who built their product? and why didn´t they hire this/these guy(s)?

as you say: a job offer tells a lot about a company. and if there´s something wrong with the offer, i wouldn´t apply.
martin

[...] Stop speaking in Bullshit http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/13/stop-speaking-in-bullshit/ [...]

Two things I hate:

-Companies that are unclear.
-Companies that expect too much.

“We are a world-wide leader in sales of with a highly dynamic and growing environment. We are looking for a to join our team of professionals to be responsible for . We have comparable benefits and wages, and 401K!”

I also initially took it as sarcasm. You rightly slag the ‘FE Architect’ posting – “What makes it innovative? What will they lead, what will they architect?” – but none of that is terribly clear in the HN posting either. It’s informal, it’s warm and fuzzy, it’s amongst peers, but it’s really just a different style of bullshit.

Strange. I thought it was the best job ad I’d ever read. I’m not joking. No BS, was clear that they need a lot of stuff done, some they know about, some they don’t.

Dead on. I couldn’t agree more with this. We see more and more crap being turned into “gold” everyday, by using fancy terms that no one actually knows what they really mean.

Take ads, for instance; how many can you point out that are actually good and make you feel good about the product they are trying to sell? What about online advertising? Who can seriously say that they have clicked one, just one, banner in a webpage (on purpose, of course ).

But i think it’s especially bad when it comes down to things you are actually looking for, like jobs. People should be dead explicit about what they want, not copying the way company X posts their job ads just because they are bigger.

When i eventually move to a new company (assuming i’m not creating my own) i’m definitely going to look for the first kind you posted.

Shit, I applied to that second job

It’s kind of like marketing. “I drive customer engagement”

Someone actually told me that was his job. I then said “what does that MEAN?”

It took him a little while to finally say “I write headlines for websites that we hope entice people to come back again”

I think people and organisations want to feel/look important and think they’ll reach that goal by using more complex/vague language. To me it’s evident in the academic world, the parts that I’ve seen anyway.

It’s actually harder to communicate clearly without using BS terms and phrasing. But ultimately it is rewarding because clear communication is simply more effective. The only exception being when you want to impress people. When I have an audience like that, I always think “do I really want this audience”?

I haven’t read it but William Strunk’s “Elements of Style” goes into this.

And great examples btw!

Nice post, Danilo. I agree with the others a bit, though, about how the first part came off.

When you write about avoiding bullshit and just expressing things clearly and simply, it hurts your case a bit when people are confused by your argument.

Overall, I think we can all agree that the “fluff” used on postings like these are harmful. It’s less about truly expressing what it’s like at the company and what is needed and more about making it sound like a big “professional” company.

The first job description was as posting for a _person_.
The second job description was a posting for a _position_.

Big difference.

Er… I read this post in wonder. What kind of kool-aid are you drinking? That first excerpt is no less vague than the others. They write some kind of app that requires the ability to program for (I assume) a web environment, iPhone and Android. They’re looking for the first employee – that’s the first person who doesn’t make a billion when the product is bought out by Google. Do you wanna be that person? This is what that ad says to me:

“We’re striving to change the world. We’re all young and fresh out of school, so we’ve got no idea what we’re doing but have somehow managed to blag enough funds out of companies to make our startup profitable by appearing to solve a problem everyone told us couldn’t be solved. This means we can afford to actually pay you something. Plus, because you’re gonna be the first developer we’re gonna give you some equity too just to make it seem like you’ll get rich when we sell out, even though that’s probably not the case because you’re an employee – don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re like us.

The reason we’re needing a developer is that we need someone to actually deliver what we said we could and help avoid making complete arses of ourselves.

Our core application is a Ruby on Rails web app with iPhone and Android integration because that’s the path all the cool kids seem to be taking and we want to appear hip and trendy like them.

So if you’re the kind of developer that can help with that, we want to hear from you… quickly, before our investors realize that we have no idea how to deliver the vision we’ve already sold them.”

Here’s how I would’ve worded the ad:

“Hey, we’re a small [yes, there's 2 of us] *profitable* startup with a compelling vision and a long list of contacts from the porn industry my Mom knows – don’t ask. It’s been hard to find time between all the partying, but somehow we’ve managed to knuckle down and get enough work done to garner some respect from the development community [I know, I don't get it either]; deliver a couple of awesome products and everyone thinks you’re some kind of god… as if getting a decent product out of the door is rarity or something. Given that we’re both gods, you’d think we’d be capable of handling all the work ourselves. We tried, but somehow these idiotic things called keyboards just can’t keep up with this shit – I swear, that’s the God’s honest truth… really.

Anyway, because of this archaic input device, we’re gonna have to hire some lesser gods to help input teh codez…

We’ve got this pioneering Ruby on Rails web app you’re gonna love. It’s the first to solve a genuine problem for our “target market” that everybody else was too chicken to work on. The problem is, we’re short of a couple of pieces that we need you to handle for us:

iPhone and Android integration… and maybe Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry down the road… WP7… C#… shudder, doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Anyway, let’s not kill the mood just yet, we’ll get some other poor schmuck to handle that and spare you the indignity of having to work with C#.

Because we’re profitable, we’ve actually got a pretty well decked out office with a Starbucks next door – Next. Door?! Can you believe that shit?! Me either! Anyway, that means you won’t have to come over and work in my Mom’s unfinished basement and listen to her drunken friends getting it on upstairs or put up with Tank’s [he used to service tanks in the marines] over friendly and grossly overweight cat drooling all over your keyboard while you work.

You will have the freedom to choose the hardware and software build of your development box because we hate having that imposed on us, so we figure you’ll hate that too. We can also afford to pay you! Bonus, right? Pay you! Imagine that! That’s a pretty novel concept for a startup. As an addition to that we’re not above bribing you with some equity in the company which will be worth millions down the road.

So if you can put up with working in this ridiculous environment, please come along and help us out and we’ll hook you up ”

Danilo says: I’m hesitant even to approve this because Richard is attacking such a bizarre strawman around a subject I don’t think anyone here has touched. Of course, Ben did the same, so I guess I’ll go with the same “people who sign their real name get in even with nonsense” rule.

Wow Ben I dont think I could have said that better myself, in fact I know I couldnt. I dont find that first job posting any more vague than any of the other that were listed, and probably would be less apt to respond to it than the others.

I notice this a lot, people think if you work with anything Microsoft then you’re somehow a second rate developer, that the only ones who actually know anything work with Ruby, Clojues, Lisp, Android, and that if they’re making a job posting for those technologies then it’s ok to be as vague and full of crap as you wish, because, well because you’re one of the “cool” kids and use the “cool” languages.

But when it’s a company like Microsoft, advertising for a position working with something of theirs,s ay *gasp* .NET, then well if you dont say word for word, exactly to a T, what you’re looking for then you’re being super vague and speaking in bullshit, and to be honest I just dont get that mentality.

I hate to break it to these people but, here we go, one language is not better than the other, they all have their pros and cons and the best language is the one that best suits the particular task, not a language because it’s a cool kind language or something that sounds like a good buzzword. Let’s get real people.

@Richard McCutchen, I agree. I’m a C# dev by trade. I was kind of stoking the fire a bit with that dig both at the stereotype of what Ruby developers think of us.

I actually love C# and think it’s a very capable language. I haven’t programmed in RoR, but think given its traction in the community I’m inclined to think that it must be capable for the target environment or it wouldn’t be used at all. I’m not above programming in whatever language is the best for the task at hand.

In essence, I do with the original post and that is that these marketing companies need to stop speaking in marketing-ese and get down to brass tacks.

Tell me what I need to know and that is this:

- Who are you? This includes the company name, website, a bit of background about the team I’ll be working with. I want specifics, perhaps links where I can read a bit about each person on the team. Ultimately, I wanna know who they are, what they do, what their background in technology is, how awesome they are, where they stand in the community.

- Why should I care about what it is you’re doing? I want to know what your vision is, who your target market is, why you’re passionate about it and consequently why I should believe in it too. Forget your marketing department, write it as if you’re a novelist setting the stage for the next New York Times best seller.

- What do you want me to do for you, specifically? I don’t want any of your fluffy marketing BS; if you must use that, save it for your brochures, even then, I’d advise against it. People don’t want fluffy crap, they want real candid relationships, that includes business relationships as well as when looking for a job. I think hard enough every day, without having to read between the lines and figure out exactly what it is you’re trying to tell me: “One of the members of our team who helps write the iPhone application has gone off to do his own startup leaving us short a player, we need someone to replace him.” or “Our team, awesome as they are have never written an iPhone application and they’re too swamped with other things to learn, so we need someone with that skillset to come onboard and get things kickstarted.”

- What are you prepared to give me in return for doing that for you? “Our salary budget is pretty tight; We do believe in the value of our people though, so we’ll bend over backwards to give you whatever else we can to help you feel great about working for us: You can choose your computer hardware, monitors, software set up, chair, desk, cubicle dressings, we’ll send you on any training courses and to conferences you need to attend.”

Danilo,

Are you sure you didn’t accidentally mix up the first two job postings?

My bullshit detector went off on the first job description when it said “make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month” and “we like people who don’t put themselves in a box” while the second was quite clear and succinct with zero bullshit in my opinion.

Danilo says: That’s… the most insane thing I’ve ever read in my life. The second job post communicated nothing.

Unless this was an attempt at sarcasm, I thoroughly disagree with your analysis, Danilo.

Okay.

Oh. Dear god. Of course. They’ve gotten to you, too. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

Google cars, for relative values of We and Our; the cars are paid for by Google, developed by a team at Stanford – the same team that were in the DARPA grand challenge. Perhaps you could call Google out for being misleading there? And while I hold no brief to defend Microsoft and that’s a press release that’s as fluffy and amorphous as any other, wouldn’t it be a fairer comparison to use either a Google press release on Android or a Microsoft blog post on, say, World Wide Telescope or double-ended batteries so it’s not so much apples to oranges?

Danilo says: Yeah, it’s a completely unfair comparison, which is why I chose it to advance the narrative I was constructing. Microsoft has nothing that can touch the wow factor of self-driving cars. That’s kind of the point. All that’s left to them is bullshit. I don’t know what a double-ended battery is, but its obscurity already proves it can’t touch a car that drives itself.

I don’t think the wow-factor of what a company has to offer is really an important part of the argument. I mean, if it takes a car that drives itself to impress you (the universal you, not a dig at anyone in particular), then you’re going to be pretty disappointed with wherever you work.

That being said, the quote from Google is quite obviously the clearest and most impressive. Not because of the content, but because it IS very straightforward and my mom could understand it even if it was read verbatim. I had trouble understanding what the others wanted (even the first one).

Breaking: different people see different things as bullshit. Film at 11!

I also was completely turned off by the first job offering. I don’t want to work for a company that isn’t bothered by starting off with a cliche. But then again, maybe I’m not the kind of person they’re trying to hire.

One of the things we did at Qworky was to ask the kind of people we wanted to hire to review our job description. So when we were looking for a system adminstrator candidate we asked several good sysadmins “is this the kind of job you’d apply for? how can we make it a clearer and more appealing job description?” lo and behold our JD got much better in a hurry and we found a couple of great candidates.

very unclear first line, i thought it was sarcasm too! maybe adding another sentence at the start with a more thorough introduction would help.

I think both of the descriptions could a bit more direct, but first one is better. I totally get the name of the post, there is place and a time when covering meaning with clever marketing works – but hiring people, especially for stat-ups is just not one of those places. You are playing with people’s life and future, who trust you with it.

Hey Danilo, check this out:
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/

Corpbonics. They start speaking it, I run.

It’s a good suggestion, but you should go further:
http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2008/04/25/tips-for-hiring-new-engineers/

Disagree with Scott. Would love to work at first place and the others would be things I immediately glazed over.

Thank you so much for this, Danilo. I love this. It is so good to see that other people see through all of the bullshit. I have always felt that people who cannot state their intended purpose/message in plain English have something to hide: usually incompetence, lack of intelligence or a lackluster, banal, sub-par product/service. And they are usually snotty to boot. It’s a dishonest use of language by dishonest people who are trying to artificially elevate themselves, their status, their companies and their products. Have you see the movie Idiocracy? Brilliant. http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Idiocracy/Utilize …. essential, integral asset… lol. Vapid waffle, indeed.