We're hiring a lead interface designer+developer

Here's a little about &yet.

Our team loves to do great things and get stuff done. We know that doing good work is how you get to do more of what you're passionate about, so we always aim to go above and beyond.

We build products like And Bang, our team collaboration app—and, in doing so, create new tools and techniques that help others do new and innovative work in their products. Disqus, for example, uses Thoonk as a critical piece of its realtime commenting architecture.

We build things and provide consulting for clients, including companies whose names we can't mention but who nonetheless you know well and whose products you're almost certainly attached to all day long.

We put on conferences, including the Keeping it Realtime Conference (now in its second year).

We invest massively in our local community. We founded our area's first design/developer community (doctype society) and helped its first coworking space get going. (Really awesome people run it who are not us, we're just lead cheerleaders.)

&yet is completely bootstrapped, self-funded, and has no plans of selling out to anyone. We've grown from one to 18 in four and a half years. Nearly every new member of our team was individually and specifically invited—we had these people in our sights as the best at what they do and wanted to add them and only them—some we even waited up to three years to add. This job posting is a rare, rare, time where we're actually opening up a position.

What's it like to work at &yet? All of our team calls this the best job they've ever had.

Here's what our newest hire said three weeks in:

"Do you all still realize how awesome this team is? Maybe you've forgotten cause you're getting used to it and incorrectly think every other company has this kind of team. They don't."

And here's what another wrote a year and a half in.

Our four longest tenured team members are still thrilled every week we still get to do this awesome &yet thing together—and blown away by how far it's run in its first four years.

Even still, we feel like we're just getting started and that this next year is going to be the most significant one we've ever had—by miles.

So enough about us. Let's talk about you.

You—you, my friend—would play a huge role on our team right out of the gates if you had these qualifications:

  1. You're a leader—first of yourself. You help drive projects in quality and completeness. You can't stand being blocked from getting things done and you know how to get unblocked. You strongly prefer not to be managed.

  2. You're willing to ask questions, look dumb, be wrong, take risks, and fail. You like the idea of committing to a project that means you'll need to learn a number of new skills along the way and do things you've never done before.

  3. You take way more of your share of blame and give way more than your share of credit.

  4. You're not an Awesome Rock Star Ninja Superstar. When you think about it, you're happy with how much better you are today than you were yesterday. You're good but painfully humble about it because you know how much you have to grow and how much you can learn from those around you.

  5. You're a good communicator and play well with others, recognizing conflict is a creative force when handled correctly.

  6. You're opinionated and you know how to state your position without being offensive and argue your point without being defensive. (And, when you do get defensive, you know how to own up to it and revisit the conversation with a fresh attitude.)

  7. You accept criticism of your work and take it well. It may hurt because you care about your work and put your heart into it, but you value the result of being able to make several great iterations based on feedback.

  8. You're a great student and teacher. You don't ever want to "arrive"--you just want to keep growing. You use Twitter to connect with and learn from people at the top of our industry.

  9. You love finding ways to make things better—your work, others' work, and your collaboration together.

  10. Reading this list makes your heart pound at least a little bit.

Oh, skills? Right. Those are important, too.

  1. Your designs look great and people you respect tell you so.

  2. You love building interfaces. So much. And what you love to build is simple and clear design that works well and is visually minimalistic.

  3. You love designing in the browser with CSS. You're constantly reading and discovering the latest methods and sharing them. You know how to build with responsive design methods. You use and love a preprocessor (like Sass, Less, or Stylus).

  4. Your HTML is carefully considered because (1) doing so informs the logical structure of the site and (2) good markup is great supporting documentation.

  5. You're very at home with front-end Javascript, comfortable with clientside MVC (a la Backbone or Ember), and you've built something with Node.js.

  6. You know the basics of Git and you've worked in a web framwork of some sort—Rails, Node.js, or Django.

  7. You're a strong copywriter and understand basic marketing. Your witty, engaging, and clear writing knows its audience, cuts to the point, and demonstrates you know how to sell without sounding like a salesman.

Here's what you get for being part of our team.

  • Competitive salary
  • Awesome benefits:

    • Flexible hours
    • 401(k)
    • Vacation / sick leave / sick kid leave
    • Health insurance
    • High-end hardware
    • Cell phone + data plan
    • All-you-can-read Kindle account
    • Travel opportunities
    • Bonuses

Here's what you should do next.

  1. Write us something to introduce yourself.
  2. Go item by item through the two lists above and responding to them—honestly—about yourself. Give yourself a 1-10 rating and add your comments for each.
  3. Send us examples of your work and links to where you're at online (twitter, github, personal site).

Send everything to apply@andyet.net. Show us you're a great fit by going above and beyond the requirements for what's listed above.

We're looking forward to hearing from you!

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