Detailed job (hunt) specs

Job

  • Main focus on systems and process improvement
  • Deep dive into one of these areas: operations, product development, research, organizational design
  • Chance to improve on giving candid 1-on-1 feedback, measuring cause-and-effect relationships, and building structures that enable teams to have an outsized impact compared to their peers
  • Clear area of responsibility, with a direct manager and peers I can trust and respect

People

  • Bright, systematic, “generalist-specialists”
  • Great written communicators, who appreciate good documentation
  • Experienced colleagues who would be able to act as mentors
  • High-achievers, but only for 40 hours a week

Company

  • High integrity, transparency and a sense of fairness (FIT)
  • Fully remote or established ways to support working 100% remote (I’m based in Vienna, Austria)
  • High degree of personal autonomy, trust and accountability
  • Top-down injection of culture, values and principles (leadership walks the talk)

Some areas of interest

  • Enable people to make better decisions (personal and professional, individually and together)
  • Create a more equal digital playing field for people with disabilities
  • Positively influence the state of public discourse
  • Increase the living standards/opportunities of the 67%
  • Create tools for ordinary people to prevent themselves falling into dark design patterns online (e.g. mobile game in-app purchases, recurring opt-out subscriptions, gambling)
  • Reduce social loneliness
  • Help kindergarten and school teachers stay sane while providing great education

Collaboration possibilities

  • Short-term projects: 3,240 €/week (30 hours, VAT 0%)
  • Full-time job: 82,000-115,000 €/yearly gross (w/o equity)
  • Co-founding a company solving meaningful “ordinary people” problems
  • Pro bono or “pay what you want” consulting for good+interesting causes

Some project ideas

  • Internal communication and documentation practices
  • Data strategy and implementation project lead
  • Business and operations modelling (e.g. growth model, flywheel, cause-effect)
  • Product development lead
  • Implementing development cycles (or similar ways of focused working)
  • Customer development (interviews, surveys, requirements)
  • Internal tooling (selecting services, integrating them together, automating as much as possible)
  • Running recruitment back-office processes, from job ad to candidate feedback (reduce your workload by 50-80%)

No-nos for successful collaboration

  • The company leadership is not FIT: I will constantly bug the leadership about the issue(s) and/or eventually end up leaving the company one way or another
  • Mainly detail-oriented responsibilities: there are better people than me to look at the fine print
  • Output-oriented working culture: I get frustrated and leave under micro-management (check the boxes!), whereas I thrive under more outcome-oriented approach (reach the goals!)
  • Lack of written documentation and transparent communication: If decisions are not written down and communicated openly, it leads to misalignment, inefficiency and workplace gossip (in my experience). No thanks.