We’ve got some cool programmer art. We could really use someone to help us translate our static back-end website into a beautiful, responsive portal that end-users will enjoy logging in to. Is it really a website if we don’t have a fun game on our 404 page?‍

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You can...

• Make our internal administration web tools look and perform great
• Make our customer-facing web tools look and perform great
• Produce charts, graphs, and other data visualizations for application/billing use
• Work closely with our Art Director and Server Admins and combine their powers like Captain Planet‍

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You have…

• Experience with React / Node.js
• Experience with the Google Cloud ecosystem
• A portfolio of prior work

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We are currently still in Alpha and are looking for a contractor to fill this role. As the product grows, this role could scale with it - to a permanent full-time position, if you are interested!

We are a fully remote organization and, as such, this a REMOTE position. Anyone in the EST, CDT or PST time zone is encouraged to apply!

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‍What it’s like to work at a:j?‍

Are you considering working at a:j? How delightful— thanks for thinking of us! We are looking for new friends!

We’re currently developing Tangle, a remote collaboration app in service to making remote communication more joyful! We’ve written a bit on our core tenets and what’s meaningful about what we make on our About Us page that might give you some insight.

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Remote Work

We all work from home/work from anywhere! absurd:joy was founded on the premise that people should be able to live the life they want, where they want. However, we are also deep and frequent collaborators, so we’ve created a structure that accommodates both these things!

• Our team hangs out in similar time zones (EDT to PDT / Americas) which ensures we overlap with each other’s work schedules.
• We have a few core hours Monday through Thursday that we all hang out for, and then allow broad flexibility outside of those hours.
• Whenever we are at work, we also log on to a video chat software to simulate the office.  
• Though cameras are usually off, we do turn them on for active discussions, meetings, and brainstorming.
• And in non-COVID-times, we have multiple physical gatherings a year, in various locations across the time zones to make sure everyone gets a chance to travel (or not).

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Our Team

absurd:joy is prototyping remote culture as well as cool new tech so it’s worth talking about how we operate and what kind of studio we are. We are currently a small team of games industry and app development veterans. We’ve spent a lot of time in *weird new tech* so our brains are often geared around natural human interaction with technology. How people want to use technology and making sure we meet them there, and not making people contort themselves to the tech. (And hopefully delighting them in the process!)

And humans must include everyone. Accessibility and inclusion is intrinsic to our designs in order to provide an experience that is easy and joyful.

So though our team is small, we include a wide range of humans, including various genders, sexualities, upbringings, and beliefs/creeds. We are, however, predominately ethnically homogeneous. This is part of a systemic problem within the technology industry, but also something that we are complicit in. Many of us have personally benefited from the system, though it quite tangibly makes our company and our products weaker. We fundamentally believe that easy joyful experiences that are truly built for everyone cannot be made without a team of diverse humans bringing their own unique experiences, backgrounds, lives, and energy to what we're making.

Internally, we take steps to work with external specialists to address our own biases. Externally, we share resources, information, and learnings freely and publicly to try and provide assistance to those who have less access to them due to the systemic and institutional discrimination that occurs in this industry. absurd:joy considers this work to be fundamental to the company, and provides resources to employees who take this on.  

It is important for us to communicate this to anyone who is considering working with us, because this philosophy of diversity and inclusion is something that is very important to our company, but is also an area in which we need to do work and make improvements.

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Our Culture

We’re an emotionally communicative team. We are deeply mindful and considerate of each other, as well as our own boundaries and needs. Work should be a place we feel safe to dive deep into creativity and cool problem solving and that requires team trust. And bonus— it makes our jokes better and more insightful!

Hanging out with us, you can expect normalization around concepts like:

• Mindful recall and attribution of others’ contributions in conversations
• Productivity not being the end-all-be-all of metrics
• Speaking openly about mental health and encouraging rest days
• Company financial assistance with gear to help any physical accommodations needed
• Asking questions about topics you’re unsure of without being shamed for it
• Always learning and developing our own culture to be EVEN BETTER
• 32 hour work weeks and cultivating a culture that discourages overwork
  • And that, of course, means no crunch, ever.
• And more!

We're all tech industry veterans who have had our share of toxic, hurtful workplaces and have strived very hard to build a place of healing, growth, and creativity in spite of those experiences. We believe it's possible -and crucial- to treat each other with humanity and kindness while still making great products. We'd love to share that with you, so let's talk!

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‍How to Apply:

If you meet most of the criteria for the job listing, we still want to hear from you! We believe in fostering talent and growing/training our team as we believe great human beings come first and building skillsets can happen over time with great humans. Also, if your industry calls the stated role something else, that’s ok too!

Complete this form to apply to this position!

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absurd:joy is an equal opportunity employer committed to celebrating diversity and providing employment opportunities without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexuality, pregnancy, age, national origin, religion, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or any protected status in accordance with applicable law. We do not do background checks and will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.