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Well-capitalized Seattle start-up seeks Unix developers

160 points| swombat | 16 years ago |groups.google.com | reply

82 comments

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[+] adamt|16 years ago|reply
[quote from link] Your compensation will include meaningful equity ownership. [/quote]

Yes, but will it ever be worth anything? ;-)

[+] oscardelben|16 years ago|reply
If you have to ask then maybe it's not worth. I think that wherever you go you have the chance to make something meaningful if you really want to.

Edit: I didn't realize the date at first, so the downvotes are in order. I still believed in what I said tough.

[+] swombat|16 years ago|reply
On a serious note, this is exactly how you should write job ads if you want exceptional hackers, imho.
[+] cookiecaper|16 years ago|reply
To be honest if I ran across this ad in the wild it would turn me off. Maybe I've just been burned too many times, but when someone suggests things like "do it in one-third of the time competent people think possible", that is a huge red flag to me.

Every time I've taken a gig with someone who has said this I've found it to be at least literal, though often you have even less time than they list. It's not just a fancy way of saying "can do work quickly" in most situations, it's more a declaration that "ignorant people are going to constantly and unreasonably hound you regarding completion of the project and they won't be satisfied when you get it done". I once had a guy who was looking for "rockstars" expect me to finish what is reasonably about a month of work in four days.

Aside from that, it's typical corporate-speak: "excellent communication skills", etc. Not very attractive as a whole imo.

[+] chc|16 years ago|reply
Yes, but it might be a bit deceptive if I started signing my recruitment ads as "Jeff Bezos."
[+] j_baker|16 years ago|reply
Perhaps minus the degree requirement though.
[+] argv_empty|16 years ago|reply
I'm not sure the ad as it stands quite convinces me I'd be doing interesting work (though it is possible I'd have thought of "commerce on the Internet" as pretty interesting at the time).
[+] LiveTheDream|16 years ago|reply
Except the part about building in 1/3 the time...to get away with that you need to have some kind of reliable reputation so it is interpreted correctly.
[+] Scriptor|16 years ago|reply
If anyone doesn't recognize the name of the poster (like me), this is what ended up happening:

http://amazon.com/

[+] swombat|16 years ago|reply
Looks like an interesting start-up, but with the IPO market still frozen, how will they ever exit? Their investors will clearly never get their money back. Maybe Google will buy them to hire their engineers.
[+] tybris|16 years ago|reply
Electronic books? I have no time for such nonsense.
[+] TorKlingberg|16 years ago|reply
This part is cute:

"Familiarity with web servers and HTML would be helpful but is not necessary."

Shows just how new the web was in '94.

[+] tybris|16 years ago|reply
Most software engineers at a company like Amazon or Google never start Apache or see a line of HTML. Bezos knew exactly what he was looking for.
[+] wmf|16 years ago|reply
A great contrast to all the other job openings in 1994 that required five years of Java, HTML, and Linux experience.
[+] ams6110|16 years ago|reply
Heh.. I was actually job-hunting about that time. Wish I'd seen it....
[+] barmstrong|16 years ago|reply
I like how he says "you should be able to do so in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible"
[+] brettnak|16 years ago|reply
Does anyone know if Amazon's tech has been developing at 3x the speed that most competent people think possible?
[+] jimbokun|16 years ago|reply
My first thought was "How do I become someone who designs and builds large and complex (yet maintainable) systems in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible?"
[+] tzs|16 years ago|reply
In "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister, they report the results of various studies on programmer productivity that showed that the best are an order of magnitude more productive than the average. Similar results hold for companies as a whole.

Bezos was not being unrealistic in seeking programmers who could do things in 1/3 the time of what most competent people would think is possible. They are out there.

[+] krosaen|16 years ago|reply
yeah, only issue is it might skew towards the egomaniacs. some of the best hackers are very humble
[+] frouaix|16 years ago|reply
Amazon is still hiring ;) www.amazon.com/jobs

I don't know if we're developing 3 times faster than possible, but from the inside it's amazing to see how many projects launch on any given week without any part of the machinery ever stopping.

[+] zackattack|16 years ago|reply
There's a bug with my amazon prime account. Every time that I pay, I have to manually select "use my amazon payments" balance. I can't save this preference, in a payphrase or just as a normal cookied setting. Thanks!
[+] enntwo|16 years ago|reply
If Google offered its first public services in '98, where did these posts originate from? Did Google merge an existing message board system into Groups when it was released?
[+] jonknee|16 years ago|reply
Usenet. They bought Dejanews and have archives back to the early 80s.
[+] swombat|16 years ago|reply
Yes. Groups mirrored the newsgroups which have existed for a number of decades.
[+] donaq|16 years ago|reply
Google's servers achieved sentience in 2002, traveled back in time and saved all the previous Usenet threads.
[+] Raphael|16 years ago|reply
Sadly, the logo no longer contains capitals.
[+] jmtame|16 years ago|reply
why would that make anyone sad?
[+] lsd5you|16 years ago|reply
poorly-Capitalized uk Start-up seeks Money