(last edited on September 20, 2014 at 2:27 pm)
A friend of mine forwarded me the online job posting for a new company/store called Material, saying it was right up my alley. And so I looked, and they caught my attention with the opening lines:
Dream Job Available: Entrepreneurial Bad-Ass Who Believes Work/Life Balance is a Crock Everyone talks about Work/Life balance. But they’ve got it all wrong. Work and life aren’t rivals. They’re best buds, inseparable partners, and both inherently good.
Points for opening by identifying life philosophy that speaks to me. Good to know I’m not alone in thinking this.
Anyway, Material is a new venture from the people who run PhotoJojo, an online store that stocks gadgets that photographers like to geek over. I’ve lost many an hour there myself, as it’s a fun place full of stuff that I’d love to have. Now, they want to do it for office supplies and stationery. That’s totally hot. If I didn’t want to make my OWN products for a living, I’d be all over it.
So check out the job page. It’s gorgeous, snappily written, and brimming with hunger for entrepreneurial excellence. That’s you, right? Go apply already at via mtrl.co.
4 Comments
I don’t know, Dave… I saw you post this and it seemed to be such an interesting opportunity for you. Move to San Francisco, get access to these interesting people and products, get to write about them, get PAID to learn about making products. Do that for a little while, and then move forward with your plans for world domination.
Or do both simultaneously.
Mark: Maybe my weird sense of ethics get in the way. I wouldn’t want to join a company knowing that I will take what I learn there and compete with them later. And, knowing myself, I wouldn’t enjoy working for someone else anymore.
Dave, this job does almost sound tailor made for you but I also empathize with your need for independence as well. Do what feels right.
That said though, I really like the wording of their job description, particularly the parts about doing work that feeds your soul and finding inspirational stories of new ways of working. This is very very similar to the research that I’ve been doing lately. In effect, trying to figure out new ways of working “naturally” that make you feel like a whole connected human at the of end of the day rather than a broken disconnected machine.
And strangely enough it ties into utilizing MMO gaming concepts to do so, since there is probably an entire MMO generation out there used to this way of “working” already. The tricky part though is figuring out the inspirational part. In effect, making the individual feel like they aren’t just a hero, capable of anything, within the game world but also a hero, capable of anything, within the real world. I’ve got some very radical but rough concepts right now that I’m “playing” with but nevertheless it feels very promising and right in some way.
That does sound like a dream job! But, man, I wouldn’t move to California now for anything.