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Well, actually, I think they want me and/or 500 other people…

I got a surprising email yesterday from one of the project managers at LinkedIn. For those of you who do not know what LinkedIn is, think social networking web app for professionals; it’s Facebook plus Monster. LinkedIn apparently is hiring and needs to develop a whole new aspect of their site and decided the best way to market for this job was to email their users with project manager and software development experience on their profile. It is pretty nice when you have 21 million users to choose from.

Although I was flattered to receive my first bulk job offer, I am going to have to pass.

Here is the email if anybody is interested in moving to Mountain View:

Hi Dustin,

I’m a Product Manager at LinkedIn and I just came across your profile. I think you’d be a great fit for one of our new engineering teams (details below).

We’re located in Mountain View, California–about 30 miles south of San Francisco–and relocation assistance is available.

You’d work in a small team (which you’d help build) with a few other great engineers (who you’d help hire) to solve interesting problems and create important products.

I’ve attached some more details about the position below, but if you’re interested, please email me (reply with) a copy of your resume and I’ll get the ball rolling. And if you have any friends or former colleagues that might be interested, feel free to forward this email to them.

Best,

Jack
http://www.linkedin.com/in/smallchou

Be challenged at LinkedIn:
We’re looking for superb software engineers of all levels to start a new team that will build some of the most innovative products at LinkedIn.

This is a unique opportunity to help define and build a new engineering team within a mid-sized (280 employees), globally-recognized, energetic, ambitious, and profitable pre-IPO startup. Since this is a new team, you’ll play an integral role in hiring (choosing) the people you’ll be working with.

Projects:
Currently, there’s no easy way to find the best PR firms in San Francisco or the top nonprofits in Boston. Information like this is extremely valuable, but not something you can just Google. We’re building a system that leverages our network of 21 million professionals to help users identify the best products, businesses, and employers.

LinkedIn is also in a unique position to influence how businesses reach 21 million global professionals. In addition to contextual and behavioral targeting, LinkedIn’s profile-targeted advertising products provide a new degree of relevance, which delivers significant value to both our users and our advertisers. We’re working on the next generation of our profile-targeting advertising platform.

Why work at LinkedIn?

* Challenging work that matters
* LinkedIn is actually useful. Every day, people use LinkedIn to hire, find contacts, stay in touch, and manage their professional brand.
* Weekly releases mean your code will help someone find their dream job or former colleague right away
* “We tackle world-class engineering problems (of scale, performance, and security) with innovative architectural solutions” — Ruslan Belkin, Director of Engineering.

Rapidly growing business

* 21 million interconnected, elite professionals (that’s more people than live in Sweden)
* 1 million new users every month (that’s like Fiji or Rhode Island)
* Profitable in 2007 ($75M-$100M expected in 2008)

Benefits

* Pre-IPO stock options
* 18 vacation days per year plus 8 company holidays
* Free catered lunches every day and a fully stocked kitchen
* Shuttles from San Francisco and CalTrain
* Onsite Gym
* Beautiful Mac workstations with 23″ monitors
* Great colleagues to play Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Four Square with.

Interested?

We’re looking for smart software engineers who get things done:

* A B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or equivalent
* A demonstrated habit of producing beautiful code (Java preferred) to solve complex problems
* We have openings at all levels, including engineer, senior engineer, principal/lead engineer, and management (to director level). To be competitive for a management position, you should have managed a team of engineers who wrote beautiful code to solve complex problems.
* Excitement about creating a product from the ground up with a team that you help build
* Background in online advertising, auction/pricing theory, predictive models, and analytics-driven solutions a plus

I just noticed there is a declaimer at the bottom to ‘unsubscribe’ to future job offers like this. Well, gosh, you mean I have a choice.

Some of the guys at work have been working double time to redesign the Formos website. Take a look. What do you think?

Fred Wilson wrote a post earlier on his blog, A VC, called Powerpoint vs Working Code?. In this post he mentions a small study which shows how Venture Capitalist would rather see a demonstration of your software than a silly Powerpoint presentation.

Early in the fund raising process, it might be hard to get large amounts of a web application completed on the budget provided from seed funding. For reasons like this, web frameworks (tools to make creating web applications easier) have started to build into their ‘toolkit’ prototype like functionality.

My favorite is Tapestry 5. With T5 I would be able to create, say, a registration form in less time than it will take to write this post. Now, this form might not be in the final visual state I would like it, but it gives me a chance to quickly get something working.

If you are a developer and are interested in how this works, you can see a screen cast for this form. If you would like to see what a prototype would look like with this method, this screen cast will show this too.

If you have not heard by now, Vancouver, USA was hit with a fancy tornado two days ago. You will be happy (I hope) to know I faired very nicely. Other than my mother calling me 15 seconds after work was over wondering if my apartment was still standing, I would not have known it was even close to my place.

In summary, I would not have really known there was a tornado if it wasn’t for the news or all my family members calling me to see if I was still alive.

Well, except one of my co-workers was not so lucky. That is right, I know a celebrity. The tornado decided with an all-knowing, divine like decision to go through his backyard. As you can expect, there was damage: no more truck and no more shed. He also came out with some trash that was not his and he did not have to pay for. Luck him.

Also luck him that he works for Formos, a place which will take a serious situation like this (or getting hit by a boat) and keep it light. He has a new nickname of Dorthy. He also logged his time for the rest of the day on Thursday under ‘Dealing with a tornado’ which is not a metaphor for writing software.

Today at work one of my coworkers asked if I was an owner of a specific company and what I thought about the company. I told him I was, and we talked for quite a while giving our thoughts on its qualities and failures as a stock. While talking to him I was trying to decide whether or not his question was too personal.

Is telling somebody the securities in your portfolio at the same level of invasion of privacy as telling them how much money you make? Or your age? Your shoe size? I have actually been trying to decide if sharing this information was out of my comfort level for quite some time. I guess since I continue to answer these questions means I am ok with it for now. I refuse to answer what my purchase price was or how large of a stake I own though. Where do I draw the line?

These questions are some what hard to answer since I love personal finance and investing oh so much. I would love to sit down and talk out these issues with somebody and learn more about them, their securities, their methods, their successes, and their failures. For now, I guess I must make my decision.

I was also thinking if there was a point where a person should be morally responsible for sharing this information. For example, if one was a Senator or running for Senate (state or federal), would it be advantages to reveal this information publicly? Doing so or not has many implications. I am fairly certain American Presidents and candidates have to do so by law. What about senior exec for corporations? Would this information reveal their loyalty to the shareholders? What about a fiance?

What about all of you?