This article is more than 1 year old

Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers

Melbourne biz admits not every coder is a star, bans 'brogrammers'

Are you just scraping by coding in Ruby? Are you not prepared to pull infinite all-nighters? Are you less than amazingly fast?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, worry not: Melbourne, Australia, company Flippa has advertised for “Mediocre Ruby Devs”.

The ad is not entirely serious, as Flippa does want good developers. But the company finds it hard to hire Ruby experts in the busy Melbourne market and decided honesty would be the best policy.

“Our problem is not having too many applicants,” says Flippa's General Manager Dave Slutzkin. “It's having too few.” That's why the company's job ad explains:

Everyone's looking for great devs, and of course so are we. But aren't you sick of job listings which say "Kick-Ass" or "Ninja" or "Brilliant" or "Best of the Best"?

The ad also pulls few punches, stating:

Oh yeah, brogrammers, corporate types, and emacs users probably shouldn't bother applying.

Slutzkin, a former developer, thinks the ad's tone will quickly be understood by other programmers. It also speaks eloquently about Flippa's culture, which he thinks will help to find folks who fit in.

“When you recruit you want to cast the net as wide as possible and then narrow it yourself,” he told The Reg. “I don't think we'll get too many applicants who won't know what is expected.”

For what it is worth, while the ad does not mention the amount of currency on offer in exchange for your labour, Flippa gives you three days a month to work on your own projects, an annual week-long team retreat and promises the job's Melbourne location means you'll drink “the best coffee in the world.”

If only we didn't use emacs … ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like