- Are you tired of not being able to express yourself through the medium of dick jokes?
- Do you like creating something from nothing, especially if it’ll make someone laugh?
- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?
If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.
We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees = happy customers = happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.
--Is this a real job ad?--
Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 50ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.
Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are:
http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/
--What do you guys do?--
Our main business involves taking random products and then marketing the heck out of them, primarily on Amazon. We have hundreds of SKUs at the moment and are aiming to launch around 10-20 new products every single month. A reasonable portion of our business is in ridiculous gag gifts and pranks like these:
We want to launch a ton more gag gifts like these, and we need your help to do it. I don’t want to say that we’re doing God’s work, but I’m not not saying it either.
--What is your company like?--
1. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or want to catch up on the weekend. So long as you put your hours in and get your work done, we’re happy.
2. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.
3. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO, and no one will think anything of it.
4. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.
5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.
6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.
7. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.
8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work - how nice would that be?
9. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.
10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.
--What are your company’s values?--
Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.
--What will I actually be doing?--
Super short version:
Making us more money by developing from scratch as many high-quality gag gifts/pranks as you can, without getting us put onto any (more) watch lists.
Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:
- Develop a concept for a funny gag gift or prank
- Do market research to get an idea of its potential
- Rough out the concept/design/jokes
- Write jokes for the packaging
- Communicate with a graphic designer to finalize the product
- Work with our sourcing team to find a vendor for actually making it
- Manage all the details of getting the product made and into our warehouse
- Provide jokes for the marketing materials
It’s fun work, but it’s not all just jokes - you have to produce, and find ways to automate/delegate so that you can get more efficient. We want to launch hundreds of gag gifts per year (eventually), and you’re gonna be at the ground floor of making that happen.
We’ll be able to help you with a lot of this FYI
--Do I need experience?--
Speaking frankly, it will definitely help you, but no you technically don’t as long as you have a high base-rate of competency and can learn very, very quickly. We’ll train you how to do all these things. Though, we probably can’t train you to be funny unfortunately.
--Do I need a college degree?--
We only care about working with awesome people, no matter their background.
--What are some example products you want to have made?--
We’ll definitely help you with concepts, and you’ll eventually be doing things that you came up with, but to give you some examples, here are some things already in development:
- Extra small condoms (a box filled with rubber thimbles with a bunch of jokes on the packaging)
- A greeting card that plays “adult” sounds when you open it, but you can’t shut it off
- Joke packaging like the things found
here
--Do I need to live in the US?--
We are a worldwide remote company, with nearly half our employees living in other countries, so no, you can live wherever.
--Does everything have to be a dick joke?--
First, you sound like my ex on our wedding day. Second, definitely not. We have a long list of dick-free ideas, and I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with plenty of other things. Such as:
- Anti-self help books/pamphlets (How to Start Smoking or How to Be a Social Bath Salts User)
- Fat/chonky animals calendar
- Funny political signs like
this
--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--
You and the IRS both!
--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--
Please complete the following survey:
https://jlstradingco.applytojob.com/apply/dxzDQ9a1iQ/Gag-Gift-Prank-Product-Developer-Fun-Ecom-Co--Great-People-Flexible-Hours
We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.
There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and (a) paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.
Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).
Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!
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JLS Trading Co. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, JLS Trading Co. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.
JLS Trading Co. expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of JLS Trading Co.’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge