Our startup is currently developing an innovative web platform to “centralize the web” by means of incorporating a variety of advanced web features along with our signature web services to meet a significant need in the market for efficiency and productivity. It will be completely web based and will have a focus on the consumer/user experience. We are currently seeking to recruit individuals with experiences and skills in web development, both server-side and client-side familiar with a broad range of languages, however, preferably HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, XML, XSLT, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, etc.

If you’re interested in working in a very energetic and exciting internet startup venture and would like to be part of the development of a revolutionary and new beta platform, please send your resumé and a short cover letter…

There are 85 words in this job ad and 5 of them are “web”, WE GET IT. Also, I don’t think “centralize the web” is a thing that means what you think it means, nor is “efficiency and productivity” a market per se.  “Focus on the consumer/user experience” is more or less standard boilerplate for internet startups, and “beta platform” is kind of confusing. Is the idea for the product to be a platform that is in beta permanently? I cant wait to sign the NDA and find out that the plan here is to develop a link aggregation site, nay, a link aggregation site with venture capital! whatever. Call me when the office gets a ping pong table and I will happily drop out of school and work for no money.

What if the plan here is to just get applicants guessing and eventually one of those applicants will accidentaly think of a viable business idea in that process, then the “executive” is 4 hours of paperwork away from patent-trolldom?

Perhaps there is such an explosively good idea beneath this inky slick that even hinting at what it might actually be would cause me to aneurism. Maybe they are afraid that Sequoia might drop the fat paper TOO SOON the second the business plan is spoken aloud?

As usual, I am likely being too harsh. There is probably an actual idea with actual value behind this, but the tech industry, (or in this case, it’s live-in boyfreind, the pitch industry) has a very serious language problem.  I am looking for a job ad that reads:

Energetic tech startup seeking a liberal-arts graduate who can actually put into consequential language what we can actually promise the market place. Must be able to define the terms “product”, “service”, “competition”, and “value”. A familiarity with the back catalogue of Wired Magazine preferred BUT NOT NECESARRY.

P.S. we cannot rule out that this blurb is really a cryptic personal add, rabbit hole for an A.R.G., rouse for the purpose of sociological research, or an A+ assignment for a really quirky  creative writing teacher. Stranger things have happened.