Tuesday, 26th February 2008, 3 Comments »

Employer job ad

I’ve had so many versions of ‘that conversation’ with other web people over the years, here’s my answer to it, we’ll all pull together and put an ad in the paper for an employer.

Put a bunch of web geeks together, over coffee or drinks, and eventually you’ll end up in ‘that conversation’. The conversation usually entails that some combination of company politics, managers (project and otherwise), strategy and/or ‘respect for the art of web design’ is holding back the potential of the company, the individual or the industry as a whole.

So here’s my suggestion, perhaps next time you’re feeling unhappy about your current position and are considering a change don’t search the job ads, put your own ad in. Something along these lines:

Dear Sir or Madam,
We are a collection of extremely talented and dedicated web designers and developers, and we’re looking for the best place to work, could it be with you?

Ideally, we’re looking for a company that’s truly technology agonistic, that’s more interested than picking the right tools for our clients needs, rather than pushing an ideology or selling licenses. We are only interested in producing quality products, which means occasionally you have to say ‘no’ to clients, and that shouldn’t be a huge deal. We’ll work long hours and every so often weekends when we screw up or don’t feel stuff is up to snuff, but please don’t assume we’ll just do it because “it’s in the project plan”.

Occasionally, we’ll may have ideas about how to make the company run more smoothly or do things more efficiently, we only ask that you at least consider them and give us feedback on your decision.

We would love a place where the management trusts our judgement and stands behind our decisions. Sure we aren’t always right, but it’s a matter of trust and respect, plus it lets us know you like us. We believe company communication and decisions should be like chatting with friends and making sure everyone at least feels involved, its for the benefit of the company as a whole, after all we’re on the same team.

We really don’t really care about having a highly formalized project management methodology (waterfall, agile, etc) for every project, in fact, we’d much prefer adapting our approach based on the client and the project constraints. But what we do really, passionately care about is making the product as usable as possible. We love to work with clients that are as passionate about what they do, as we are about what we do.

Most of all, we’re looking for a company that will give us the space and freedom to do what we do best, making really great websites and web applications, not just for our clients, but our client’s clients.

If this sounds like you give us a call.

3 Comments to “Employer job ad”

Oooo, can I join ‘the collection’? Oh wait, I just saw where it says I’m supposed to be ‘extremely talented.’ Crap. ;-)

It’s a job ad, it’s allowed to lie a little ;)

Awwww… so cute!

Aidan