We at Better Off are looking for a caring, reliable generalist to identify and lead efforts that improve our communication, coordination, and enjoyment to support our mission.
They must be interested in writing their own job description because frankly we need help with innumerable tiny things that need to move together in stride. Something like a designer-developer-writer-project-manager that loves using tools and systems to support people—but what do you even call that?
This person must be creative, good at listening, working collaboratively, and always advocating for customers and employees especially when we risk running afoul of our own aims. Bonus points for being weird and kind, with lots of strong opinions they’re eager to challenge and evolve.
This person must always keep business realities in mind, but strive to put people before profit, and humanity before process. Must also be a champion of details and stand up for what matters with humor and compassion.
Requirements
- A deep affinity for Markdown.
- Excellent written communication skills, even if you’re a word salad on a call.
- Fierce respect for peoples’ time and attention and not taking it for granted.
- Willingness to help others with their ideas, writing, and organizational efforts.
- Experience and enthusiasm for teaching in a classroom setting.
- BFA in Graphic Design for some reason.
- Writing samples that include documentation, topical exploration, and weird personal posts.
- Experience running a small agency and building web projects with clients.
- Passable competency with PHP, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Twig, Craft CMS, Laravel, Yii, vanilla JavaScript, Tailwind CSS, not Tailwind CSS, and in emergency situations Vue.js or React. Enthusiasm for Eleventy, Astro, and Kirby are a plus.
- Basic competency with web performance, SEO, and accessibility.
- Experience with Figma and the squishy area between design and development.
- Experience with modest devops: GitHub Actions, Buddy pipelines, Docker, Ubuntu server setup and project deployment, and wifi settings.
- Passion for design thinking and respect for hard-won simplicity.
- Experience using Storybook to document various front-end components.
- Experience working with owners, marketing teams, and design teams.
- Experience responding with timeliness and warmth to support requests.
- Owner mentality that takes responsibility for solving important problems that may not fall neatly into this role.
- Ability to self-manage and work independently toward critical objectives.
- Steady commitment to reducing complexity and technical debt over time.
- Interest in a vast number of nerd hobbies that can sometimes be useful for work efforts.
- Ability to unbregrudgingly own and fix mistakes.
- Pronounces GIF with a hard G.
- Nice to haves: interest in sketching, comedy writing, small aircraft piloting, and writing books even though we don’t see how those could possibly be relevant.
Example Tasks
- Writing and/or organizing internal materials to have employees feel welcome, confident, and up to speed with the best of our shared knowledge.
- Prototyping, developing, or supporting the development and maintenance of web projects and tools.
- Supporting meetings and asynchronous communication to make sure everyone’s working happily with the same goals and getting attention for anything that needs it.
- Spontaneously helping come up with ideas, take notes, or capture thoughts and carrying them into whatever form best encourages them to grow.
- Questioning anyone in any role about something that doesn’t seem right, and expecting the same from anyone else.
- Helping with tools, processes, documentation, and conventions that might help people work more easily together.
- Developing customer-facing materials that include writing, diagrams, illustration, video, etc.
- Researching products and technologies that might contribute to an effort.
- Conducting demos and conversations with customers to understand their needs and make sure they’re aware of anything our work can do for them.
- Absolutely random tasks we wouldn’t have anticipated that require learning, creative problem-solving, and probably something technical.
Structure & Compensation
Remote work from U.S. Pacific timezone, happy with occasional travel. Can be part time or full time.
Entry- to senior-level position depending on needs. Both, even?! 🤔
Reasonable compensation and time-off policy for said position. Ideally higher end of five figures to the lower end of six.
About Better Off
We’re a smallish- to mediumish-sized business or nonprofit that’s devoted to technology that enriches peoples’ lives, supports their curiosity and growth, and does good in the world. We strive to support artists, writers, creators, teachers, and/or scientists, and encourage everyone to get the help and encouragement they need and thrive as whole people—regardless of where they began their journey or what they may need along the way.
We also want to be a great place to work! Diverse, inclusive, compassionate, and encouraging people to do their best work, enjoy the journey together, and have thriving lives that balance their career efforts with ample time offline. We celebrate perspective, discussion, and collaboration and respect that everyone has different needs and interests, and we actively work to limit gatekeeping, ego, and unhealthy competition.
We are very funny, too. Everyone is really good at jokes.
We may use AI thoughtfully to support this mission, but with a searching and sincere emphasis on “thoughtfully” so that we do not, knowingly or unknowingly, betray the employees, customers, and fellow human beings we seek to support.
Does this sound like you? Please feel free to copy and paste this somewhere and I will rush to apply. Or send me an email. I’d love to work with you.