Would you get tattooed just to interview at a 7-days-a-week AI startup?
Would you get tattooed just to interview at a 7-days-a-week AI startup?
你会为了获得一家“每周七天无休”AI初创公司的面试机会而去纹身吗？
Everyone knows that great gimmicks are the key to hiring top developers for your startup. That’s why small AI startup LemonLime—which “optimizes your existing data to work with AI”—has so many of them. Want a job interview? Score a perfect 7/7 on the company’s own “Is it a Lemon or a Lime?” game. Or—hear me out—get something permanently tattooed on your flesh. 众所周知，搞噱头是初创公司招聘顶尖开发者的关键。正因如此，小型AI初创公司LemonLime（其业务是“优化现有数据以适配AI”）才会有这么多花招。想要面试机会？在公司自制的“这是柠檬还是青柠？”游戏中拿到7分满分。或者——听我说——在你的皮肤上纹点什么永久性的东西。
LemonLime has tried both tactics in the past few weeks. The tattoo stunt generated the most publicity, of course, much of it negative. According to a writeup in Inc., seven people took the deal and got tattooed with the LemonLime logo during a party. Backlash was immediate, and CEO Jordan Zietz has now copped to “poor judgement,” saying he “messed up” and got a little “carried away.” 过去几周，LemonLime尝试了上述两种策略。当然，纹身噱头引发了最大的关注，其中大部分是负面的。据《Inc.》杂志报道，有七人在派对上接受了这一提议，并纹上了LemonLime的标志。舆论反弹随之而来，首席执行官Jordan Zietz现已承认自己“判断失误”，称自己“搞砸了”，并且有点“得意忘形”了。
7 days a week 每周七天无休
LemonLime is a small company with a grindset mentality. If you think you’re going to work there and, say, “have free weekends,” you are fooling yourself. The “entire team shows up to the office 7 days a week,” Zietz wrote in a LinkedIn post two weeks ago. “Over a dozen applicants thus far have withdrawn after stating that they do not work past 5 pm or on weekends,” he added. “Lol.” LemonLime是一家崇尚“拼命三郎”精神的小公司。如果你认为在那里工作可以“拥有周末”，那你就太天真了。Zietz在两周前的一篇LinkedIn帖子中写道：“整个团队每周七天都会出现在办公室。”他补充说：“到目前为止，已经有十几名申请者在表示自己不愿在下午5点后或周末工作后退出了。哈哈。”
What you will be doing instead is pushing “critical product features to production while watching Pitch Perfect Sing-Along Edition at 1 a.m. on a Saturday.” The company does not care about your grades; Zietz notes that his “freshman year GPA was a 2.3.” But LemonLime does require that you be a good hang. Zietz said that the company hires “people we want to be friends with,” since “changing the world is easier with friends. It should be fun.” 你真正要做的是“在周六凌晨1点一边看《完美音调》合唱版，一边将关键产品功能推送到生产环境”。公司不在乎你的成绩；Zietz提到他“大一时的GPA只有2.3”。但LemonLime确实要求你是一个好相处的人。Zietz表示，公司招聘的是“我们想与之成为朋友的人”，因为“和朋友一起改变世界更容易。这应该是一件有趣的事。”
Zietz concluded his post by promising an “instant interview” to anyone who dropped their email address into the comments and who also scored perfectly on the lemon-or-lime game. (I tried it and scored 0/7, suggesting that I am completely unsuitable for shipping code at 1 am on a Saturday while watching Pitch Perfect Sing-Along Edition. This is true.) Zietz在帖子的结尾承诺，任何在评论区留下邮箱地址并在“柠檬还是青柠”游戏中获得满分的人，都能获得“即时面试”机会。（我试了一下，得了0分，这说明我完全不适合在周六凌晨1点一边看《完美音调》合唱版一边发布代码。事实确实如此。）
Zietz soon moved on to tattoos. LemonLime hosted a San Francisco afterparty on July 25 following Y Combinator’s Startup School event. Named the “Calling All Crazy Builders Afterparty,” the event targeted the “most unhinged builders looking to change the world.” At the party, Zietz brought in a tattoo artist and promised instant job interviews to anyone willing to get inked. The goal was to find “unhinged” people willing to take risks. Zietz很快又转向了纹身。7月25日，在Y Combinator的创业学校活动结束后，LemonLime在旧金山举办了一场会后派对。这场名为“召唤所有疯狂建设者”的派对，目标群体是那些“渴望改变世界、最疯狂的建设者”。在派对上，Zietz请来了一位纹身师，并承诺任何愿意纹身的人都能获得即时面试机会。其目的是寻找愿意冒险的“疯狂”人才。
Seven people got a tattoo of the LemonLime corporate logo. (Zietz says that the logo was not required; other people chose different images.) The predictable social media explosion eventually reached traditional news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal. Zietz apologized for the tattoo stunt on July 30, writing: 七个人纹上了LemonLime的公司标志。（Zietz称，纹标志并非强制要求；其他人选择了不同的图案。）社交媒体上可预见的舆论爆发最终引起了包括《华尔街日报》在内的传统新闻媒体的关注。7月30日，Zietz为纹身噱头道歉，写道：
“We offered free tattoos and said we’d be happy to interview anyone who got one. What I thought would be a fun, memorable way to meet people was, in reality, reckless, and instead came across as tying a permanent tattoo to job opportunity, which showed poor judgement. Even though participants chose their own tattoos and no one was asked to get our logo, I should have understood the pressure and power dynamic created by connecting tattoos to hiring. Regardless of said intent, turning a celebration of personalized art into a company stunt was poorly exercised judgement.” “我们提供了免费纹身，并表示很乐意面试任何纹身的人。我本以为这是一种有趣且令人难忘的结识方式，但实际上却很鲁莽，反而让人觉得是将永久性纹身与工作机会挂钩，这表现出判断失误。尽管参与者选择了自己的纹身，没有人被要求纹上我们的标志，但我本应意识到将纹身与招聘联系起来所产生的压力和权力动态。无论初衷如何，将个性化艺术的庆祝活动变成公司噱头，都是一种糟糕的判断。”
He added that the company will “cover associated removal costs with anyone facing any delayed regret” about their tattoos—though that regret might be even stronger after Zietz said that “interviews were available to everyone regardless.” 他补充说，公司将“为任何事后感到后悔的人承担相关的纹身清除费用”——尽管在Zietz表示“面试机会其实对所有人开放，无论是否纹身”之后，这种后悔感可能会更加强烈。