Hipster baits job applicants with $10,000 & free beer. But PBR?
on 10/06/11 at 7:30 am
Booze News
Here’s how tight the Silicon Valley battle for tech talent has gotten: If you can fill an open engineering position at Hipster, the startup will reward you with $10,000 in cash and a year’s supply of PBR beer.
The San Francisco company is looking for three or four local engineers with experience in building Web software and mobile apps — the exact same skill set hundreds of other tech companies are also seeking. Posting the openings on traditional job sites didn’t lead to any promising applicants. Then Hipster co-founder Doug Ludlow wondered, “What if we gave a year’s worth of PBR? And it snowballed from there.”
Hipster received around 500 job applicants in the week since it posted the irreverent job ad. Ludlow says about 10% of the applicants are top-tier candidates. Many are even current employees at Facebook and Google.
These aren’t easy jobs to fill: Ludlow likened their target applicants to skilled surgeons, and plans to pay accordingly. The engineering jobs come with salaries running anywhere from $90,000 to $150,000 a year, plus generous benefits and stock options.
Founded in 2010, Hipster is a “stealth mode” startup — meaning they’re not saying much yet about what they’re doing — that is working on a way to help users find hidden information and content about local real-world locations. Several big venture capitalists are funding the company, including Google Ventures, Lightbank and 500 Startups.
Pulling together the right team is critical for startups: “90% is the people, 10% is the idea,” said Ludlow.
[…] No matter what bar you’re in or store that sells beer, you will always find a hearty supply of PBR, usually in cans. Even Whole Foods sells 30 racks of PBR while only selling 6 packs of everything else. Of course, being SF, startups have gotten into the game as well with recruiting pitches including a “year’s supply of PBR”: […]
[…] No matter what bar you’re in or store that sells beer, you will always find a hearty supply of PBR, usually in cans. Even Whole Foods sells 30 racks of PBR while only selling 6 packs of everything else. Of course, being SF, startups have gotten into the game as well with recruiting pitches including a “year’s supply of PBR”: […]
[…] No matter what bar you’re in or store that sells beer, you will always find a hearty supply of PBR, usually in cans. Even Whole Foods sells 30 racks of PBR while only selling 6 packs of everything else. Of course, being SF, startups have gotten into the game as well with recruiting pitches including a “year’s supply of PBR”: […]