Dumb Job Ads: Code Ninja & DBAs Needed at IZEA

Izea, the newly formed “cover” company for Ted Murphy’s controversial PayPerPost posted this little ditty (repeated below) on Craigslist yesterday. The company continues to denigrate the very people that work for them by their use of such terms like “code ninja” and speaking down to them as if they are all GeekSquad, World of Warcraft players in need of some righteous job. Previously, they’ve referred to their workers as “code monkeys”. Apparently, the one thing you can never be at PayPerPost is a “developer” or “software engineer”. Nope. Monkey and Ninja is it. Expect to be paid like a monkey and treated like one, too.

Although I’ve already had my own run-in with the toadies who run PayPerPost, it’s fairly clear that this company is dead-set on using their self-appointed “coolness” factor as their chief recruiting model. Not their business model which, by most standards, is inherently flawed (at best).

The sad fact about this company, like so many others, is that young people will sign up - for all the wrong reason - and spend, quite possibly, the best years of their life coding for a doomed venture. It would be like painting a Picasso for a blind man. He’ll never be able to appreciate it.

Code Ninja & DBAs Needed at IZEA

We are an Orlando-based Internet company that creates innovative and disruptive social media applications. You may have read about us in the last two issues of WIRED.

We are currently seeking visionary developers, dbas and architects to join our existing 14 person web development team. We are venture backed by the same firm that backed Skype, Feedburner, Technorati, Hotmail and Glam to name a few. We offer the typical health, vision, dental and 401k plans… but we also offer stock options in a ground breaking company with huge growth plans. You choose your hours…start at 7,8,9 or 10am. You choose your rig… macoxs, windows or linux.

This is your opportunity to own a piece of what will become the Google of the east.

If you are wicked smart, like a challenge and thrive in open, creative startup environments drop me a line. I can guarantee you have never worked for a company like this.

-Ted

Yes, he actually compared his little Orlando-based startup to Google, claiming you’ll get to own a piece of that kind of future. Could he be held to account for those sorts of predictions? Probably not, since all Ted would have to do would be to point to his history of reckless public statements and stunts to show that no one could have taken him seriously.

But when he guarantees you’ll have never worked for a company like Izea, I think that is probably the most honest thing in the whole ad.

Oddly, I subscribe to Wired magazine and don’t remember a word about anything about Murphy’s shenanigans in there. I’ll check the online edition. Oops! I guess I missed this largely critical blurb in January 2008. Why would Murphy brag about that? Like the snake oil salesman of yesterday, Murphy excels at throwing out facts that he thinks no one will check - all to boost his own credibility. Two Wired stories? Sounds impressive. Until you read one. Or the other one.

Final Note: I didn’t link to PayPerPost or Izea directly here due to their history of creating controversy for the single point of getting inbound links (it seems). That tactic, for those who don’t know, is commonly known as linkbaiting. But you can read TechCrunch’s profile of PayPerPost to get an overall view of the company.

Humorously, the church in which I’m typing this post uses a wifi filter called Websense Enterprise that blocks PayPerPost’s URL for the reason reason that “The Websense category ‘Pay-to-Surf’ is filtered.”

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