15Sep24 Bad Job Bingo

In this issue:

• Get Hired

  • By The Audience

  • Green Means Go

  • Eh, It’s Probably Fine

  • Tread Carefully

  • BINGO

  • Seriously, Maybe Don’t

This week was very busy for me, so we have a light issue.

Now, normally, I rate about 15-20 jobs per issue, which means I have a more or less normal distribution of jobs and ratings to offer you.

This week, however, the distribution of jobs doesn’t resemble a bell curve so much as a very stark, very sheer cliff face.

And as we’re already operating in statistics, you should know that this issue involves our highest ratio of expletive-to-jobs that I think we’ve ever had, at 16:7.

Uh. Enjoy?

Get Hired

I play Bad Job Bingo with every job listing that appears in the Roundup and categorize them according to how well (or poorly, if I hit Bingo) they do in the game.

However, please remember that a job appearing in a positive category isn’t an endorsement of any role or company, and a job appearing in a negative category doesn't mean I think you shouldn't apply if it works for you. Bad Job Bingo is simply an effort to give you a shortcut to finding roles that may match your needs and values.

These and past contestants can be found at Support Human Jobs.

By The Audience

We have a new section this week! I had a hard time rating the job below, so I thought I’d leave it up to my subscribers to rate it this time. I’ll let voting continue for 72 hours, then set the job’s rating based on whichever gets the highest vote. If there’s a tie, I’ll choose the rating based on my best judgment as Supreme Bad Job Bingo Dictator.

If y’all dig it, maybe I’ll have y’all rate one job a week.

• Founding Support Engineer ($130k-$160k) at Mintlify (Onsite CA-San Francisco)

  • We build products that accelerate software development, and we could use your help. — Okay, I appreciate this humble beginning, which is somewhat unusual for a dev-focused software company.

  • Oh, that's-that's it. Okay.

  • Another somewhat unusual thing: the salary for this founding role is on par with the Full Stack Engineer role the company also has open. I could (and probably will later) make an argument that a founding Support Engineer is more in line with a Senior Engineer role and thus should be compensated as such, but I do think Mintlify should get credit for two things:

    • Showing salaries on the job opening page, which I can tell you from experience is very unusual;

    • Literally showing how they value support work by aligning it with other engineering compensation.

  • and setting a positive precedent for the rest of the team to follow. — So this is also unusual and interesting – it sounds like maybe the rest of the team is either reluctant to or inexperienced in providing direct support to customers, and they want this hire to build a customer-first culture. I like that they value it and are upfront about it!

  • Your work will bring us toward industry-leading response times and service levels, while building our internal customer feedback operations in an increasingly intricate space. You will play an integral role in building knowledge within the team and be part of strategic initiatives for organizational and process improvements. You will be crucial to the success of building a innovative, disruptive, and high-scale product. — This all makes total sense for a role like this, but it also means this should have a more senior title (and thus be compensated more appropriately). This is essentially a Director role with engineer duties, and right now, the salary is only compensating for one of those things.

  • Located in (or will relocate to) San Francisco and excited about working in-person — Oof, yeah, $130k-$160k isn't going to cut it for an in-person Director-level role in the Bay area, my friends. As the Bad Job Bingo Board of Directors pointed out, if they'd share more about their compensation policy or acknowledge that this is what they can afford at an early stage, I think this wouldn't be such a big deal, but they don't.

  • I like their values statements, although this one gives me pause:

    • 🔥 Having fun - Be unapologetically you! We love our game-nights, ping pong tournaments, bufo emojis, and cow jokes (the CEO knows over 100 of them and TechCrunch made fun of him for it).

    • On one hand, I love the personality. On the other, you know me and "fun" work environments: just value going home at the end of the day with a job well done! Also, ping-pong tables are so 2017.

  • The unlimited free mints bit in the Benefits section made me laugh. I guess I have to make a new rule: if the benefit is so obviously ridiculous and jokey that a reasonable person wouldn't consider it a real benefit, it gets a pass in BJB.

Green Means Go

No flags, or green flags only! A true unicorn.

• None this week.

Eh, It’s Probably Fine

A few flags popped up, but no serious ones.

• Unbelievably, none this week.

Tread Carefully

Didn’t quite hit bingo, but there were several yellow flags or more than one red flag.

• Even more unbelievably, none this week.

BINGO

Welp.

• Senior Customer Success Manager (Fixed Term Cover) (No comp given) at Oyster (Remote EMEA)

  • Careers page is pretty good – informative and with personality.

  • We are radically transparent. Transparency helps us grow. We value honest feedback, recognize hard work, and get any issues on the table as fast as possible. — Boy, I hope this means they have salary transparency for all roles.

  • Oh, for– I CALL BULLSHIT.

  • Not only is there not salary transparency, not only do they not even attempt to address it, but they ask for salary expectations in the applications.

  • If you're going to go on about "radical transparency" and "we value clarity, we strive to be exceptionally clear and encourage overcommunication," then you sure as fuck should AT LEAST talk about your compensation philosophy. This is fucking nonsense.

  • I don't even care what the rest of the job description says. I am invoking my power as Supreme Bad Job Bingo Dictator to automatically BINGO this company out.

• Customer Success Manager (No comp given) at Oyster (Remote EMEA)

  • See the Senior Customer Success Manager position for what Oyster did that pissed me off so much that I automatically BINGOed out this one too.

• Customer Support Advocate ($45k) at brightwheel (Remote US)

  • So, this one hit BINGO very quickly (and then some, actually, but compared to what's in Seriously, Maybe Don't at the moment...BINGO it is).

  • The main ones: Fast-paced environment, rapidly changing requirements, poorly-edited JD requires attention to detail, JD doesn't mention benefits at all, and salary for leadership roles is good but not for frontline roles.

  • But also: $45k is shitty pay for a non-entry-level role, especially when the company prefers the candidate to have experience in education and an undergraduate degree. I mean, seriously. What are all these companies on this week?

Seriously, Maybe Don’t

Don't say I didn't warn you.

• Head of Customer Success ($36k-$96k) at AltScore (Remote AR, BR, CL, EC, MX, US)

  • There's no Careers page as far as I can tell, just a Jobs page.

  • We are a meritocratic company where employees are recognized and rewarded for their contributions. — "Anything about the company being a meritocracy" got added as a new BJB entry because, as the wise Ashley Hayslett put it: "it rewards individualism in an environment where teamwork is necessary.”

  • Hands-On Execution: Actively engage with key customers to understand their needs, drive product adoption, and ensure they realize the full value of AltScore’s solutions. Lead by example, taking on direct account management responsibilities as needed. — Hmm, why, though? Staying close to the customer is a given, but I think they should explain why this requirement, in particular, is important enough to them to mention it multiple times in the job description.

  • Also, I'll take "What job description was written by AI?" for $400, Alex. (We have some repeating requirements in the duties section, and then there's the Summarizing Phrase: Wordy Bullet Point pattern.)

  • Base Salary: $3,000 - $8,000 USD per month, depending on experience.

    • *blinks*

    • *cleans glasses*

    • *reloads page*

    • Nope, that's...that's the salary. That's the real salary in reality.

  • Bilingual in Spanish and English, with strong communication skills in both languages, is a plus. — oh my god

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, or a related field; MBA or other advanced degrees are a plus. — OH MY GOD

  • Performance Bonus: Up to 10% of base salary, tied to individual and company performance. — Is that per month? Because that's the only way the salary could possibly make any goddamned sense.

  • Okay, then! This belongs in Seriously, Maybe Don't.

  • What the actual fuck.

• Head of Customer Support ($135k-$215k) at brightwheel (Remote US)

  • It's super patronizing that this JD includes info about their investors and the Customer Support Advocate role doesn't.

  • You thrive in fast-paced startup environments with very high performance expectations.

    • Oh wow, how unique brightwheel is! Because most startups move like molasses and expect their people to come in and fall on their asses immediately and repeatedly.

    • Also: no, thank you.

  • Develop and implement a multi-year strategy to maximize customer retention by focusing on delivering value for customers — A...multi-year strategy. Are you just not planning to respond to customer feedback or market trends at all for years? Are you never going to update the product again? The hell?

  • Set and achieve ambitious CSAT and risk/fraud goals — You're...setting goals for risk and fraud?

  • Lead the Payment Operations team which is responsible for risk and fraud

    • Well, sure. Someone needs to hit those ambitious goals for risk and fraud.

    • Also, this is software for preschools and daycares. What the hell is going on with this product?

  • Gain buy-in and drive action from cross-functional partners to improve the customer experience – Product Design & Engineering, Onboarding, Accounts, Growth — Ooohhh, that's a bad sign.

  • Build a deep bench of high-performing leaders on the Customer Support team — But, as we've already seen, don't pay them for that high performance or leadership!

  • Demonstrated excellence in all 8 brightwheel Leadership Principles — Okay, requiring "demonstrated excellence" in company-specific principles for a company for which a candidate's never worked is just ridiculous.

  • brightwheel is committed to internal pay equity and offers a competitive compensation package, including base salary, equity, and benefits. — For the second time this issue, I CALL BULLSHIT. You pay your advocates a third to a fifth of what you pay for this role, and your Advocate JD doesn't even mention benefits. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.

  • I cannot with these companies this week. I CANNOT.

• Customer Success Manager ($140k-$170k) at Bland AI (Onsite US-San Francisco, CA)

  • Wow, what a thing to name your company. Although I just know there was a conversation at some point where someone advised, "Just name it Bland AI! It'll seem less threatening!"

  • Unfortunately, the branding doesn't work. This product seems like a nightmare.

  • 02 Customer Support - Bland always has a great attitude, a perfect memory, and infinite patience. Never make customers wait on hold or deal with a b attitude again.

    • 1) I'm trying to come up with a response to this that isn't just telling them to go fuck themselves, but I can't. So this is me not telling them to go fuck themselves.

    • 2) Maybe don't have AI make your website without review.

    • 3) These guys are definitely going to require attention to detail, aren't they?

  • We are a start-up, and we need people who understand what that means. — Sure. What does that mean, Bland AI?

  • We aren't a super traditional team, but we are an extremely effective one. We love unique backgrounds, hardworkers, and intelligent people who take pride in everything they do. — They really are bland if they can't come up with something better than "we don't want witless malingerers."

  • You pay attention to small details — Bland and predictable.

  • If you don't have the perfect experience that is fine! We're a bunch of drop-outs and hackers — Because a bunch of drop-outs is who you want in control of an AI voice product that can be used to do little things like influence elections and defraud people.

  • Working at a start-up is really hard. — Where's that "Startups are hard!" Barbie when you need her?

  • We work a lot and we figure things out on the fly. — I get that this is BJB, and we're talking about jobs and hiring. I do. I really do. But I just--okay, I need a moment. For just this minute, can we stop and acknowledge that this is a perfect example of everything that is often wrong with Tech in general and how we approach AI specifically? Can we just acknowledge that generative AI is really fucking dangerous even in the hands of incredibly educated and careful people and that maybe it is recklessly, unforgivably irresponsible to allow 20-somethings who appear to have no professional experience before 2022 to be in charge of AI products that could destabilize democracies? COULD WE MAYBE JUST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT FOR A MILLISECOND OH MY FUCKING GOD–

  • I'm back. I'm fine. Everything's fine.

  • I'm putting this in Seriously, Maybe Don't purely because of how fucking terrifying it is.