Consumer Product Developer / Engineer @ Fun Ecom Co | Great People &Flexible Hours - remote

JLS Trading Co.
Posted 3 years ago
- Can you not stop trying to improve things?
- Do you get off on making new stuff from scratch?
- 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 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 launching around 10-20 new products every single month. A small sampling:

- Bad Parking Cards (http://amzn.com/B01HLGZRCQ)
- Cable Tie Mounts (http://amzn.com/B06XNBS6TG)
- K2-D3 Capsules (http://amzn.com/B07C451MZ9)

We want to launch as many products as we can. Our business is growing rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.

--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 improving some our currently crappy products and then by launching totally new, high-quality products in a potentially wide variety of niches

Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:

- Identity a niche/product category that is going to be potentially profitable
- Research the competition to determine how we can successfully compete
- Concept out a new product 
- Iterate until you have a great final result
- Make sure we can actually sell this thing profitably at the target price point
- Identify suppliers (with our sourcing team’s help) who can actually make it for us
- Work with a graphic designer to create packaging
- Manage the myriad details involved in getting the project over the finish line

This is very much a “Full-Stack” kinda job - you’re not just gonna be doing one or two stages of the process;at least at the start, you’re gonna have to do it all. We do intend to invest heavily into this department down the road though.

Like everyone else in the company, you will also need to innovate regularly - which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed.

It is challenging, but fun work that’s going to require a lot of time and task management, problem-solving, and a reasonable amount of people skills.

--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 most of these things.

--Do I need a college degree?--
You just need to be awesome.

--What types of products will I be working on?--
Here is our full catalog. We sell a ton of different things in different categories. A lot of it will be up to you, though it will be constrained to things inside our existing brands for the most part.

It will all be consumer products, generally in the $10-30 price range, though there are no hard constraints there.

--What’s an example of a product that needs to be improved?--
TVSoundScoopz. Check the reviews. There is some clear low-hanging fruit there, but we don’t have anyone with the bandwidth to actually fix it.

--How fancy are you looking to get with product development?--
I just want you to basically make the iphone, but I’ll only give you $10k to do it.

We probably are gonna be on the simpler side - probably no electronics unless it’s off the shelf or products that have dozens of different components. I don’t want to launch crap products, but I also don’t want to invest $100k just in the development of the product.

It would be safe to say that we like boring, unsexy niches that just make money, compared to flashy, chique niches that are hyper competitive.

--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/q4DoKQmqVH/Consumer-Product-Developer-Engineer-Fun-Ecom-Co-Great-People-FT-Remote

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