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".

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.

Besides, the "next 10 years of your life" argument is a strawman. If you don't want to be working on the same, hard micro-problem forever, pick a smaller company, where your work will vary wildly. Sure, not all of it is going to be solving super hardcore problems, but I'd want evidence in the job description that there are interesting challenges ahead.

> pick a smaller company, where your work will vary wildly

Exactly!

Even with good environment and culture you still have to do the work. Every day. For the next few years. So, I think it would be a good idea to know if you like to do what they want you to do.

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

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

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.

"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.

I'd rather solve interesting problems in a language I hated than solve boring problems in a language I loved.

And you're right, I spent a lot less time telling you what's great about the company than I did on trying to make it obvious who we're not looking for. That's because we're looking for a very specific breed of person.

In this startup, you will not only be doing engineering, but also answering customer emails and chat messages. You will likely be an important part of strategy discussions, and you may have to write the odd press release. You may even need to go door to door and figure out what our customers want. Not every engineer is interested in that stuff, and I wanted to make sure those people didn't apply.

You will basically a cofounder-level person coming in at a stage where a lot of the risk is removed.

As far as some of the interesting challenges...

Heavy image processing, data processing, and analytics. Primarily client-side web application with client side data processing. Very heavy database loads with poor potential cacheability. Data synchronization across multiple clients. Near duplicate document detection. Graph problems which need to be precomputed to varying degrees to make the application very responsive. Spam detection.

What do you think you gain by keeping it secret?

Personally, I would care tremendously about what I am doing, and not just which tools I'd be allowed to use. The fact that you respond positively to it means that it's serving its purpose as an advertisement, but I'm not sure that means it's any more or less clear as to the job description.

So while I'd probably prefer being part of this mystery company to being a "Front-End Architect" in a cubicle, I still have no idea what the job would be and the ad doesn't offer enough specifics to make me excited in the abstract.

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.

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.

It seems to me that the literary criticism in this thread is getting kind of thick. The job posting is like a resume in reverse, and a resume is not designed to be a window into someone's immortal soul. It's a teaser.

A job posting is a telegraphic commercial that's designed to describe the job in the broadest possible terms, so that the obviously unsuitable might be discouraged while the potentially suitable might be prompted to waste a few minutes on an email cover letter. That is why they use the same jargon, that is why they deal in cliches and fashionable labels ("Lean Startup", "Fortune 500 company", "lifestyle company" -- these terms may not be highly specific but they tell you important basic things about the company's outlook, just as the words "SWF, thirtysomething, seeks SM with LTR potential" tells you boring but crucial basic facts about your potential first date.

Don't expect Tolstoy. If you want to learn what a company is really like you're going to have to pick up the phone or start an email discussion.