Job ad warns of boss who 'will incite anger and frustration'

Devs offered grey walls to crush creativity, coffee mule duties and no functional spec

Hey, software developers: been out of work for a while?

We may have found a gig for you with Melbourne, Australia, IT recruitment outfit Milestone Technology as a front end web developer.

To score the gig you'll need to know HTML 5, CSS 3, responsive web design, Javascript plus “Adobe photoshop and absolutely no illustrator.”

Your boss sounds like a fine fellow, as the ad warns he “... is a little difficult to work with, and at times, will incite anger and frustration.”

Little wonder; the ad goes on to say you'll be “Working within a constantly rapid development environment, there is little chance that the functional specifications will ever remain set and as such you will find yourself changing direction rapidly.” Despite those exigencies, you'll be “Responsible for the front end stuff, making things look funky and respectable and taking care of all things front end related.”

“You'll also have little figurines that you'll place along side your Mac notebook. Please understand, most will be stolen, misplaced or vandalised and as part of your employment agreement you will be expected to indemnify us accordingly.”

The company has also decided to “... paint our walls grey, so as to ensure your imagination is never ignited beyond the point of concentrating on your role.”

Things get worse:

“When there is little work to be done, or development is going through UAT (something we hope one day to actually do), you'll probably be tasked with going to get coffee, milkshakes, or custard tarts for the development team. Please note, sometimes it may take up to 4 days before you are reimbursed, if at all.”

The good news is, you do get weekends off although the company classifies this as “Saturday and Sunday as unpaid holidays” and says “this is a benefit we begrudgingly offer.”

There's some upside: once a week “a model comes to provide you with a massage.” A human model, presumably.

The ad is, of course, a gag. And as is often the case with such ads, the company's decided to go for comedy because it's learned that having a bit of fun with a job ad gets results.

Such good results that Milestone's general manager Miles Tranp says this is the second time the firm has used the ad.

“People see the humour and are more engaging,” he says. The ad also acts as a filter to find people with a decent sense of humour, something Tranp says Milestone values.

If you decide to go for the job, the real benefits include cable TV, an X-box and Daytona car console. ®

Bootnote: A hat tip to Tweeter @dawnstarau who spotted the ad. ®