Industrial Designer @ Fun Ecom Co | Great People & Flexible Hours [CLOSED]

- Do you get a kick out of making things look pretty?

- Do you nerd out on clever product packaging solutions?

- 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 80ish 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 (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - we’re a pretty big deal):

http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that it’s not just the founder’s mother who says we’re cool.

--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 (https://amz.run/5Eya)

- Cable Tie Mounts (https://amz.run/5EyY)

- K2-D3 Capsules (https://amz.run/5EyZ)

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 get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.

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.

11. Self-Funded So We Can Do What’s Right for Us. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.

--What are your company’s values?--

See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

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.

--OK, so I’ve read like 8 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--

No.

--Wait... What?--

OK fine.

--So, what will I actually be doing?--

Super short version:

Helping our product development/engineering team make their products more consumer friendly, in terms of the product itself, and how the customer receives the product (packaging).

Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:

- Ideate with the product developers/engineers on what problems the product should solve and what features are worth including

- Sketch out designs for making the product look like it wasn’t designed solely by math-nerd engineers

- Lay out art and design for the packaging

- Work with the team to come up with packaging solutions that are cost effective and present the product in the best possible light

- Overall just help with the product development process (everyone on the team is a generalist and you’ll need to be one too)

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.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You just need to be awesome.

--How big is the team?--

We have 4 full time product developers/engineers and 4 full time art/graphic designers.

--Why packaging AND industrial design?--

Definitely fair. The reason is that we really don’t have full time work in either role by itself. Like, we need packaging design work, and we need industrial design work, but we don’t need 40 hours of each every week. Some weeks, there will be 30 hours of industrial design work work, and 10 hours of packaging work, and sometimes it’ll be the opposite.

We’re crossing our fingers and hoping we can find someone who is great at least one of those things, and pretty good at the other, or at least able to learn rapidly.

--What kind of products are you developing?--

We give people pretty free reign to pursue things. Some things we’re working on currently are:

- Candy bar making kit

- Stackable steak weights

- Butter spreader

- Fart machine

- Nutritional supplement line

A lot of different stuff, which means that every day will be different.

--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--

Haha - you sound like the tax authorities!

--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--

Please submit your information on the following page to apply. 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 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