Stop Speaking in Bullshit

http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/13/stop-speaking-in-bullshit/

by danilocampos • 16 years ago

206 69 16 years ago

blog.danilocampos.com

Good piece.

The second job description is written by a manager-type that only vaguely understands the technology. Actually, a place like that would be okay to work if they gave you high enough levels of authority. If you were to inquire about the position, you could say something like, "Hi, I'm interested in your posting, I fit your desired qualifications and skills quite well, but I was wondering who I'd directly report to and how much experience they have with technology?" Interview them a little. Then if (when) they say not much, you explain you'd be interested in the position so long as you get to do things your way. They give you the broad overview of what they want to achieve, you give them the timetable, resources required, and method you propose to achieve it. Working for a non-technical boss isn't actually always the horror it's made out to be, so long as he respects your talent and stays out of the way.

I've managed people with various skills I don't have, and it's actually not that hard - I explain what the high level objectives we want to achieve are, have those objectives repeated back to me in the person's own words, and then let them build a plan to get there from here and execute it. I'll do enough research into the field that I can ask a smart question or two and generally know what's going on, but then I try to just get good people and stay out of the way. If you can set that sort of thing up, it can be quite satisfying if you like self starting and autonomy.

gommm• 16 years ago

I can't agree more with that... As a software development company, my best customers have been people who didn't understand the technology. The best ones accepted that it was my job to understand it and take care of it for them and would stay out of the way...

Customers who understand a bit about technology (because they've programmed a small Visual Basic software to help them before) are the most micro-managing people I've had and are a hell to work with...

So, the simple thing is that in any working relationships, you need to respect the other otherwise you're not going to go anywhere. The same goes with business and technical cofounders (and way too many tecnical cofounders don't respect enough the amount of work needed on the business side of things).

mahmud• 16 years ago

There is no incentive for people to speak clearly[1] when their careers, environment and everyday interactions are highly hierarchical, and they're paid, and indeed retain their positions, by being obscure, in an attempt to sound "big". Sometimes they don't even mean it.

Getting clear answers from the Enterprise types is akin to the Socratic method, if not psycho-analysis. You would have to repeat the same question over and over again, until you can illicit the root answer from layers of vague reasons and non-goals. If you're a contractor, a good way is to not make eye-contact, and "delve" deeper into thinking as you listen to their answers (you're not really thinking, you're just encouraging them to think, by mimicking you.)

Of all the W-questions, "Why" is the most important. Keep asking why, why, why, until you hit a logical tera firma, something closest to reality, further down from their tower of froth, and woolly ideas.

[1] I was gonna say "clear spoken", O'oh! Then I remembered my Strunk & White.

raganwald• 16 years ago

Getting clear answers from the Enterprise types is akin to the Socratic method

Or to quote Bob:

    So what is it you DO here?

bherms• 16 years ago

This isn't just a characteristic of the tech community, but people in general. People who don't know or understand something, companies who aren't selling life improving substantial products, and those without confidence need to resort to the fine art of bullshit to make them feel more confident in whatever snake oil they're trying to sell. When you don't have the goods, it's much easier and beneficial to you to add the fluff. It sucks, but it isn't going away. :(

jolie• 16 years ago

As someone who reads scores of pitches a week from tech startups, I can't say how much I agree with this.

Most of the pitches I get these days force me to wade through swamps of buzzwords that have become absolutely meaningless. It's enough of a turn-off that I pretty much ignore those pitches -- I figure that if the company had something really exciting to tell me, they'd figure out a way to tell me so within a couple sentences without using endless strings of empty jargon.

In pitching (to journalists, or users, or potential employees), keep in mind the most basic rule of poetry: The fewer the words, the more powerful the statement. I.e., less is more.

redcap• 16 years ago

Completely agree - brevity of thought make for a punchy article that is better to read and more likely to have an impact.

The three main killers are (1) passive voice, (2) long words and (3) jargon.

If you can write something that avoids the above (except when necessary), you're on your way to reducing any waffle that your reader may have to wade through, and if polished enough can turn into prose that shines.

Looking at the Microsoft article I can't help but think that they've said nothing at all, but the Google article has just the facts ma'am and leaves you the better for it.

bdclimber14• 16 years ago

Here's another great bullshit speak piece by an entrepreneurship program at ASU called the "Venture Catalyst." Warning, there are more buzzwords here than a new employee handbook.

asuventurecatalyst.org

InfinityX0• 16 years ago

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them - not the latter one.

Those first descriptions make me wonder if it's really OK to run the same startup template again and again, even if you say that it makes you "human". I expect to read that first job description amongst a million three-person startups - besides maybe the profitable part. Is that really who you are? The cool start-up?

The inability to show discernible qualities in this kind of company kinda worries me as it comes to differentiating yourself in product - are you also the same company that's the next Google that can do better SEO and just loves that Lean Startup philosophy? I mean, they're all real and we want to do them, but what does that mean? At least those automated, robotic startups aren't pretending to be something else. They're automated machines. But if your straightforward nap-centric job description is trying to adhere to a standard professed in this forum, I wonder about your true ability to imbue the unique competitive advantages that will ultimately make you successful.

danilocampos4• 16 years ago

They pretty much had me at profitable.

The way I read it: You're not a bozo, you know what you want your candidate to do, you make money. Pretty good to me. There isn't perfect clarity on the product, but they're keeping that under wraps for a reason.

That posting gives you a better idea for your prospective gig than 99% of posts for launched companies.

nostrademons3• 16 years ago

See, I read the "we're profitable" as "we make enough money to keep ourselves alive with ramen noodles and maybe hopefully pay rent". Perhaps I've just grown cynical in my old age...

cperciva5• 16 years ago

The strange thing about this article is I read the first patch of job descriptions and I thought you were poised to make fun of them

Me too. This bit could describe the local transit system: "We’re profitable, make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month, have a rapidly expanding user base, and napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture."

Maybe I'm unusual, but my idea of a perfect job posting is one which says something about the job. Don't write platitudes about how you're looking for people who think outside the box; say "we think the most exciting thing in the world is designing algorithms to target advertising better, and that's what you'll be doing if you get this job".

danilocampos4• 16 years ago

In fairness to the original posting, there are concrete examples of what you'd be doing (as their programming generalist) that I omitted in the original draft of the post:

"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."

Updated now.

mfukar• 16 years ago

I don't think it's unusual; it's very rare for job postings to say anything of substance about what the job/position really entails. From May to September, while I was looking for a job, I must've read a thousand or more of job descriptions, and none (OK, maybe a handful) would leave me confident that I knew what I'd be doing there, in case I got the job.

It was extremely frustrating and kind of scary to be in that state of uncertainty.

hasenj3• 16 years ago

I actually find it boring to apply for a job to "design algorithms to target advertising".

Think about it: do you want to do that for the next 10 years of your life? Do you want the next 10 years of your life to revolve around such a thing? Even if you don't mind it: is that what entices you to apply for the job?

I don't care what the work itself is. I care about the environment and the culture.

I'd rather design a spread-sheets application in a hacker-centric culture, than design hard-core search algorithms in a typical management-and-sales-centric culture.

kmfrk• 16 years ago

It'd be a problem if that is the entire posting, but I consider it better to have it in the text than not. Obviously, it's not going to be enough for the posting alone.

That a lot of people say the same about thinking out of the box doesn't mean that you can't mean it - and it gives you a chance to call their bluff at the interview to make sure you don't get a job you don't want.

I agree that the posting overall is too vague on what the actual job is about - you might just as well be required to mop the floor before you punch out.

They mention the skills required, the state of the business and the kind of people they'd like to work with, but leaving out what the startup is actually about and what your role will be breaks the deal. It makes it sound like they need a code monkey.

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

>This bit could describe the local transit system

You don't happen to live in Toronto, do you?

strebler2• 16 years ago

Agreed. After reading the first job description, I know almost nothing about the company or the product. I feel the opposite from his rant about that description.

The second job description (once you read the full thing) is actually quite reasonable. They describe their product, responsibilities, their financing, company size, languages in use, etc. It's not stellar, but it's far from bullshit.

MrIncognito5• 16 years ago

Eh, it's hard to talk loudly about something secret.

danielnicollet• 16 years ago

Same here. Pardon my French (I can say that, I am French ;-) but there is also a lot of bullshit, predictable and lame developer's jobs in the world of hot startups too. How many devs join a young hot startup thinking they are going get a chance to create a great new product or improve on one, and find themselves working out the quirks of old core code, or regressing boring bugs all day long? or worse: find themselves without a job 3 months later because the startup ran out of cash? I think this article is full of "clichés".

nostrademons3• 16 years ago

Ever notice how much easier it is to talk straight when what you've done is legitimately impressive? Google's press release is held up as an example. I bet that press release would be every bit as interesting if they just said "Oh, umm, hi, yeah...look at this!" followed by a video or in-person demonstration of the cars driving themselves.

As my 3rd grade teacher always said - actions speak louder than words.

dasil003• 16 years ago

That job posting stood out to me as well, and I think for startups this is great advice. However, the elephant in the room is what a pitch for Windows Mobile actually should look like?

It seems like acknowledging the shitty past would be a huge gamble, because you would be reminding customers of how bad Windows Mobile was in general, which makes the customer question how much it really could have improved. Granted, everyone appreciates straight talk in theory, but they also have to weigh how many people will correctly interpret a straight message versus how many would be sucked in by the BS. Of course it would have been much easier if they had something truly interesting to offer, but let's face it, most products are not world-changing, and for a company with the kind of political overhead Microsoft has, it's already a major success to ship something that brings them up to par with other market players.

olefoo• 16 years ago

But speaking bullshit is so comforting, it makes you feel safe.

When you're synergizing your core competencies dynamically, nobody understands what you meant and nobody is going to challenge you. You have the power. You must be important, people are paying attention to you, or at least doing a good job of faking it.

Besides baffling them with bullshit is what makes meetings work, and meetings are where things get done! (aren't they?)

//Gur nobir jnf fngver

Devilboy• 16 years ago

The great thing about bullshit is I don't have to know what I'm talking about at all!

hasenj3• 16 years ago

This reminds me of: http://37signals.com/02

Unfortunately many people think that bullshitting is required and it is the secret to marketing and making money.

ryanwaggoner• 16 years ago

In all fairness to Microsoft, telling people why they should be excited about a smartphone in a crowded market is a lot harder than explaining why you should care about autonomous vehicles.

The elevator pitch for cars that drive themselves is: "These cars drive themselves."

awakeasleep• 16 years ago

I don't even think this phenomenon is limited to technical communication. Have you ever noticed yourself resorting to cliches when speaking to your friends or loved ones? I have.

Cliches are uttered as if they were abstract nuggets of knowledge/feeling we use with precision and understand.

But when I look at myself they're actually vague scabs covering topics I haven't actually thought about, am scared to think about, or am purposefully trying to avoid.

anigbrowl• 16 years ago

I think the problem is that some people want the abstraction and the strategic plan, some want a quick idea they can make a snap decision about. A seller doesn't know in advance which sort of buyer he's going to meet, but there's a good chance they tried out a 30 second pitch on a bank manager once, only to be asked a bunch of complex questions for which they didn't have an answer.

It's like job hunting, or dating. Every so often there's instant chemistry, but most people fall back on the laundry list.

davidnelson• 16 years ago

awesome

edanm2• 16 years ago

Just a curiosity: I wonder if there was a sentence to read my mother over the phone when the iPhone came out which would have made her understand what it is. I doubt it, yet Apple is considered the masters of this field.

In other words, I think the Google Car thing is an unusual and extreme example. Most tech products, including smart phones and including almost every web app I use, don't have a "killer sentence" which will make everyone understand why it's good.

danilocampos4• 16 years ago

I think there was, though. Apple's release read:

“Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone”

So you can easily convey the goal. Then:

"Apple® today introduced iPhone, combining three products—a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod® with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps—into one small and lightweight handheld device."

Some puffery but reasonably clear what's going on.

edanm2• 16 years ago

The first sentence doesn't describe what it does, really.

And the paragraph, while reasonably clear to me and you, probably means nothing to "most people". The idea of "touch controls" was practically unheard-of before the iPhone.

alain94040• 16 years ago

"a phone so simple a 3-year old can use it"

Really, you don't need to say more than that. You don't want to get into the details of what touch is and how it works The point is that it's the first phone that anyone can pick up and just have fun with.

djhworld• 16 years ago

There's a filter happening here and it's systematic of large companies. Job advertisements are usually managed by HR departments rather than directly by managers themselves.

Managers just tell HR they need X,Y and Z to meet the their needs and HR pad out the description with stuff they vaguely understand.

sown• 16 years ago

I've gotten so used to the later kinds of job postings that I didn't really know how to react when I applied for the former job posting.

I sort of locked up and thought for about 10 minutes before I just mailed off my resume and a link to some stuff I've done without a really good letter.

I guess the author of this blog post is right: it was a rare job posting and I discovered I didn't know how to react.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

Hmm, well.

I would consider the first job posting another version of a) a bad job posting and b) the modern form of "bullshit"

I agree with the rest of what he is saying, but I think the first example was poor and derailed the point.

How would I have done the advert? Try:

We're an unannounced YC company, but you may have heard of us (millions have). We're profitable, and we're looking to hire a smart all-around programmer as our first hire. 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.

We like pragmatic people who get things done. We're looking for someone relaxed and with the ability to think about the product as a whole and their impact on it.

You don't have to be world class at everything, but you should be willing to get your hands dirty with everything from database design to javascript to system administration to customer support and customer development.

We're profitable, have hundreds of thousands of users and a rapidly expanding user base. We are a relaxed company run by programmers, so no corporate nonsense.

You will be the first employee of a small successful startup; with a paycheck and equity. It you are interested and live in Silicon Valley, send email about yourself to recycledthrowaway@gmail.com.

There, bullshit removed. Clean, simple, descriptive.

The problem with the original is that the company is not announced, so any "exciting" description is just bullshit and unhelpful. The job ad in this case is there to say what they want and what roughly they are offering, it is to filter out some basic candidates. And at that point you can turn on the charm when it makes more sense to the potential employee

Never try to sound cool in a job ad.. it backfires. Go for friendly but offhand professionalism :)

jdp23• 16 years ago

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 neither of us are the kind of person they're trying to hire.

In the rewrite, it's a great opening line if you're shooting for somebody in the YC universe. If not, starting with an acronym that people don't know is a turn off. At least to me, it gives the impression of wanting a utility player (rather than somebody with deep skills at anything in particular) who wants to work in a relaxed programmer-friendly environment (as opposed to somebody who's passionate about whatever it is they'll be working on or is looking to join a business-focused company). If that's what they're looking for, great. Especially in this day and age I probably would move the bit about being profitable to the very front because it establishes legitimacy.

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 wound up with great candidates.

MrIncognito5• 16 years ago

I figured most people who read HN know what YC is (the post was on HN).

This comment thread has been pretty helpful in figuring out future revisions. Thanks for the tip.

csallen• 16 years ago

As a programmer who has perused hundreds of job postings in the past, I'm inclined to agree with the author that the HN post was a good one. Yes, some of it is bullshit (the napping part), but most of it is great. It's quite specific and does a good job differentiating itself from many other postings. Here's what I think when I read it:

> "we’re looking to hire a smart all-around programmer"

Looks like I'm gonna have to be a jack-of-all trades rather than a master of one. That's good, definitely my style.

> "as our first hire."

A lot will be expected of me. I'll have to be self-motivated and self-organized. No slacking. Long hours. This is a legitimate startup job.

> "It’s a cliche, but we want people who like tackling complicated problems."

Yep, cliche. I like that you point it out though, makes me take this requirement more seriously. I happen to enjoy working through complicated problems, no reservations here.

> "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."

Great, specifics. Once again, focusing on the jack-of-all trades thing. They're clearly at a point where they can't (and probably shouldn't) hire specialists.

> "we like people who don’t put themselves in a box. You should be comfortable thinking about the product as a whole, and how changes are going to impact the hundreds of thousands of people who use it regularly."

In other words, this is a startup, we don't want stereotypical big company guys. I can't just blend in. I'll have a lot of responsibility, and I'll be making a lot of real decisions. I'm basically a co-founder who's a little late to the game.

> "make the lives of hundreds of thousands of people better every month"

Hmmm, they seem to care about the social impact of their product. Probably a good thing, but could be a bad/annoying thing if taken to an extreme.

> "napping is an encouraged part of our corporate culture."

Probably bullshit. I don't have any real desire to nap on the job, but I'll definitely ask for details out of curiosity.

> We’re profitable ... have a rapidly expanding user base

That's cool, but I'd like to know more. Ramen profitable or Rolls Royce profitable? 500 new users a day or 5000 users a day? They seem to be trying to sell me on this point, so if I get an interview I'm going to find out more specifics. It's good that they care about profits though, I do too.

> Basically, you’ll get to be the first employee of a small successful startup, while getting a paycheck and equity

Cool. Always good to list what I'll be getting. Will ask about benefits, not expecting any though.

> and feeling good about the impact you’re having on the world.

Another reference to social impact. I have to ask myself, am I the kind of person who would consider "being a do-gooder" more than a negligible part of the recompense for the long, stressful hours of startup life? Not a lot of people will stay up coding til 3AM Saturday night and say, "Hey, at least I did some good for someone out there."

MrIncognito5• 16 years ago

You basically nailed every point. Cofounder who is late to the game is exactly the job description I was going for. I probably should have just said that :-)

Napping at work is something that people get nervous about, so we want to lead by example by napping mid-day to show it's cool.

Social impact is pretty important, not just in the doing good sense, but also in the making the economy more efficient sense. This is taking a huge market and shrinking it.

djm• 16 years ago

Job postings are a great window into a company. They show you just how much clear thinking is demanded along with how well people communicate.

That line stuck out for me. Writing is window into the minds of the people you might hire as well as the company doing the hiring though.

I was thinking the other day about the tests companies give prospective employees to do pre-interview. One idea I came up with in addition to giving them the usual fizzbuzz programming problems was to test their writing ability by:

(1) Giving them a page of simple code with comments removed and asking them to add comment headers to each function, and

(2) Asking them to write a description in plain english of how a moderately complex function works (make it a function that implements an algorithm rather than something that processes data).

I'm not in a position to do any hiring and try this myself but I think it would add a lot of value for the employer in filtering applicants. If I were looking for a job seeing an employer doing this would give me a lot more confidence in them also.

lhnz• 16 years ago

I didn't like either job advert.

I didn't like the first because they couldn't give me even the slightest inkling about what they do, and that is important to me.

The second was bad because it attempted to describe pretty basic things in a way that made them seem more exciting than they really are. It also gave me the impression they were trying to actively mislead me; I don't like that.

Having said that, I think the OP made it seem like the second was completely impossible to understand and it wasn't: it was just obviously created to sway and mislead.

malbiniak• 16 years ago

Can we call this what it is?

  Need help with an iOS project? Let's talk, I'm great with both UX and code.
  If I can help you out with a project you’re working on, let’s talk.

I think it's great that companies are finally starting to recognize the value of their workforce (eg Zappos, 37signals, Groupon, JetBlue, Google). If the original job post didn't have YC associated with it, would any of you have taken it seriously?

Danilo, I hope you get the chance to work with these guys, but stop speaking bullshit.

danilocampos4• 16 years ago

Damn, that could have been a great angle. Not really my skillset, though. Besides, I have a job. And other plans.

Please, though -- my name is Danilo, not Dan.

Tycho• 16 years ago

I find reading job adverts makes me feel empty inside, seriously. It's like an infinite regression of pre-emptive bullshitting.

known• 16 years ago

There are 3 types of interviewers

   HR rant
   Those who can *recommend* to hire
   Those who can *actually* hire

mannicken• 16 years ago

>What does it mean to drive an innovative consumer app?

I know, I know!

Let's say we have a car named 'app'. Now, what we need is someone with a driver license who can drive it in a new way (e.g. stoned). The car also needs to consume large quantities of gasoline, so perhaps it will be a bus or a truck.

So what they need is a stoned truck driver. How can they be more clearer?

badmonkey0001• 16 years ago

"Things Users Really Want to Do" == "TURWD" == the word "turd" as said by Elmer Fudd?

jonhendry• 16 years ago

Lucy Kellaway, a journalist with the Financial Times who also turns up on the BBC World Service business show, is good on this. She regularly roasts executives for nonsensical empty verbage.

She recently had two columns praising Apple and Steve Jobs for being straightforward.

1) Regarding Apple's plain-spoken iPhone app guidelines http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6770a2b8-c2a1-11df-956e-00144feab4...

2) Regarding Steve Jobs' curt response to the college girl seeking a response for a school paper story http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77c8e4cc-c823-11df-ae3a-00144feab4...

Stop Speaking in Bullshit

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