Only The Dopest Need Apply
I was scrolling through my timeline this morning, and I saw a few posts approvingly forwarding a job description from a hot new startup*:
I’ll be honest, my first response when I read this ad was despair. Despair at what the tech industry has become, despair at the endless struggle against hype and BS, despair that tech will ever be a welcoming place for different kinds of people. Because the subtext of this job description is unmistakable: “we have poor, inexperienced managers, and you are only welcome here if you are like us.”
I really want this sort of behavior to stop, so I’d like to do what my English TAs would have called a “close read” of the text, from the perspective of a hypothetical experienced iOS developer thinking about applying for this job. Here we go:
<uncapitalized redacted app name> is an app for young people to meet new people and have fun/interesting conversations.
iOS Developer: Hey, that sounds pretty cool. I like new people and fun/interesting conversations. Weird that they didn’t capitalize the first word of the sentence in what should be a professional communication, but maybe their app name branding is always lowercase?
we launched 12 weeks ago and our community has already done over 120,000,000 calls. we’re currently #8 in social networking on the US App Store and in the top charts in 30 other countries.
iOS Developer: Sounds like they have good traction, which is hard to get in the App Store these days, so that’s cool! But I guess it wasn’t just the app name; looks like they are committed to that all-lowercase-no-grammar thing. That doesn’t exactly bode well for my desire to work in a professional workplace… but maybe that’s just me shaking my cane at the kids these days? Let’s read on.
we’re looking to add a dope iOS engineer in NYC to our team.
iOS Developer: Well, huh.
What… what does it mean to be a “dope” engineer? I have a record of success and five years of experience as an iOS engineer, but how do I know if I’m dope? What kind of scope of work and experience is required to attain dopeness? Is there a DopeKit I’m unaware of?
Or: could it be that asking for a “dope” engineer is asking not for experiences or qualifications at all, but rather for someone who shares your slang, your music tastes, and your sense of what’s cool? In that case, perhaps it’s most efficient to just consider “dope” to be a synonym for “folks I have an unconscious bias towards” and move on. What’s next?
✨ bring dope vibes to the HQ
iOS Developer: Hey, they’re using emojis instead of bullet points; that’s neat!
But wait a sec, because this is where things start to get really weird. This job is “iOS engineer”, which presumably means I’m being hired to write iOS software, but the first, most important job requirement is the “dope vibes” I bring to the office.
Huh.
So, I guess I should assume that my actual, you know, job skills and performance aren’t going to be how success is measured. Instead, it’s going to be all about the dopeness of my vibes. I should probably work on that.
(And again: how do I know if I’m dope in the first place?**)
👨💻 be dedicated and hungry af
iOS Developer: So the second requirement (after dopeness, natch) is how dedicated and hungry I am.
A few years back, I probably would have seen that as innocuous or even exciting, but after a few years in the industry I know how to translate this into English: “we have no familiarity with research that shows that working more than about 50 hours a week leads to negative output, and you will be evaluated based on the hours you put in, not on what you produce. And if you’re older than us and have a family or personal obligations outside of work, you suck.” Awesome!
Oh, and look at that: the emoji they used to illustrate this is a man at a computer! Pro tip: if you want women and not-awful men to apply to your engineering job, don’t literally put a picture of a guy in the list of job requirements.
And again with the strained, cringeworthy attempt to convey cool via Internet slang (“af”). Who are these people?
🙉 believe in our vision
iOS Developer: And the third thing they want from me is belief in their vision. But they haven’t told me what their vision is, so it’s kinda hard to know if I believe in it.
Maybe they’re really more interested in folks who have the capacity to unquestioningly believe in what the founders say? If so, that’s a red flag right there; all my best jobs have been surrounded not by believers, but by folks who were good at constructively questioning the company’s vision. True believers go down together; doubters keep each other afloat.
And if I’m looking for reassurance that this is a team that is looking for dissent, that emoji doesn’t exactly deliver. Do they have any idea that it’s the “hear no evil” monkey, which in Western cultures is literally used to represent ignoring what other people say? Doesn’t inspire confidence that this is a team that welcomes divergent opinions, or even one that pays the slightest attention to the meaning of what they write. With the care they put into this JD, I bet they’ll take any complaints of harassment, discrimination, or misconduct super seriously and by the book…
⚒ build shit fast
iOS Developer: Hey, they decided to sneak in one requirement that has something to do with the actual work they want me to do! That’s neat.
But: the only quality they care about enough to put here is speed. Nothing about quality, nothing about engineering practices, nothing about customers, and nothing about building the right product. In this job, I should expect to only be evaluated by the number of releases, not by what is in them. Got it.
Alternately, perhaps they’re just continuing the whole “shun punctuation” thing, and they’re missing a comma: “build shit, fast”.
if you want to have an impact on millions of people’s lives and control your own destiny hit me up — kanye@<redacted>.cool
iOS Developer: Sigh. Please tell me that the actual name of the founder is “Kanye”. Please, please, please, please. Please, just this once, tell me that it’s not some white guy who thinks that talented Black people are only useful as an ironic punchline in a job description. Please.
<Googles images of the founder>
Goddammit.
*I’ve redacted the name because I don’t want to pile on and I think the problem is a broad, industry-wide one, though I know folks can find it through the Googles.
**One guesses that Fats Waller has it right here: “if you got to ask, you ain’t got it.”
