Working at LoveMachine: Destroy the ego, free the mind

We’ve got some ideas here you’ve probably never encountered on a jobs page before. Read on – at the very least it will make you think. Never fear, the stuff you need to work for us is in here too.

Challenging Conventions
We believe that most companies, and software companies in particular, are very poorly organized: First, they are much more structured and planned than is optimal for the very rapidly changing world of today – there is an egotistical belief that the future can be known, which dates back to a long-gone era of stable industrial production. Second, they too frequently tell people what to, against their will or best judgment, in return for a regular paycheck. When building products where there are millions of ways to do things badly, motivations and intention end up counting for almost everything. A beginner who passionately wants to do something great will drastically outperform a seasoned expert who doesn’t believe in her manager or in the direction of the company. There are dozens of books written about those last few sentences. But those books aren’t creating change in the status quo, at least not yet. But eventually, things are going to change. And we believe that a company started with a very different set of principles can be both an extremely rewarding place to work, and also a much higher performing enterprise than most others – certainly sufficient to make a really great living for us all! If these basic thoughts resonate, read on.

Don’t Interview, Do!
Getting started with LoveMachine is different: You don’t get a title or a salary or a business card. Instead, you start by doing different jobs for us, and charging us what you think is appropriate. If you do these things well, fast, and for a reasonable price we’ll ask you to do more. Additionally, we will periodically distribute extra compensation to team members using a unique mechanism that is actually also one of the first products we hope to build and sell. Whenever possible, these jobs (and certainly the larger ones) will be open to competitive bidding. To get started, check out the public worklist. Do something on it for us.  And/or jump into the live workroom and chat to us.

Open Needs
Right now we need people with these general skills:
Legal, Testing, Admin, Engineering/Development, Product Design
. You’ll generally need one or more of these capabilities to take on the jobs we’ve got that need to be done.

The Runners
In this sort of company structure, we imagine there will be end up being two types of LoveMachine team members, with the difference being whether you are also able to substantially influence the direction of the company by creating new jobs that need to be done – being trusted to risk substantial money and expected to capably describe and manage the jobs you create. From our earliest few contracts on building SendLove, Ryan and I have been calling ourselves ‘runners’, because the visceral feel of speed and agility in building something by simultaneously handling a number of tasks being done by a bunch of different people in a free market. We’re thinking that to become a runner you will have done great work on jobs, and also will need to be sponsored by an existing runner. All runners are also subject to a periodic collective, anonymous stay/go vote from all other runners. This means everyone, including of course our fearless founders. As the company becomes profitable, the runners will split up a substantial portion of our net income by using a process where each runner is entrusted to distribute an equal portion of profits in whatever way they choose to other team members. So, at a high level, the central core of the company will be a group of peers who create and evangelize a rapidly evolving set of jobs in a larger open market of participants. Let’s see if that can work!