This is a comprehensive role in our front office, Pink, that extends far
beyond Lett's core mission. (This is a U.S. only role restricted to resident
citizens. We work with government agencies, so this is a **hard**
requirement.)
### WTF? Why does an email app have a front office?
Lett is building AI fueled applications to reinvent email and calendar.
However, that's just our consumer facing product.
On our path to reinvent work, we built the beginnings of a platform that has
already yielded us $3MM in profit, with $8MM more on deck. Without showing our
hand, think of it similar to AWS: Amazon sells consumer goods, but they have a
web services company that is by far their most profitable segment.
As an ultra-lean startup, we've been working contracts with large enterprises
and SMEs alike, and we're now at the point where the demand for this platform
has far exceeded the capabilities of 2 founders.
So, we're making out first hire -- we want YOU as our very first hire to our
front office (Pink) to help us scale out this portion of our business.
As the first hire under Pink, you'll work directly under the CTO.
It's a very high-bar, fast-paced role. Our clients love us and pay us an
unbelievably high premium for quality, reliability, and long term savings.
That means expectations always ride high. We don't mean to be pretentious,
just upfront: this role is very different from anything else out there. We're
calling it Forward Deployed Engineer because that's the closest title we could
find, but this is really more like a "CTO in a box" position.
In most organizations, you're running miles on a treadmill. As you rise higher
in the org and further in your career, the treadmill moves faster. We like
running out in the open, though: our clients are largely non-technical and
that means you'll need to excel at delivering amazing business solutions,
amazing tech, and bridging the gap between the two. You'll go as far as you
can as fast as you can, but it's up to you to keep running.
### Worklife Balance
**We don 't want this to come off as a super demanding role with poor work-
life balance; it's actually the opposite**. We're pretty strong on leveling
expectations, pushing back where needed, and making sure you have a great WLB.
As a team of 2 founders we've been juggling 5 big projects at once, but still
building in time for life: sleep, relationships, food, travel, video games,
movies, binging TV shows, a full 12 yards. Moreover, if your work life balance
worsens, it's bad for everybody:
* Harder for you to work at your best and a big blow to motivation
* Sets unrealistic expectations with our clients
* Is a signal that we as the founders are doing a poor job in KTLO
So we want to be clear that WLB is a big part of this. There are lots of
levers you can use to control this at Lett and it's also a huge factor in how
we budget, bid, roadmap, and otherwise make decisions.
### So what am I actually going to do?
This question's tough to answer, it's like going to the bait shop and asking
for a can of worms (we think? we don't know how to fish).
As a core responsibility you'll spend most of your time _staffed towards_ or
_running_ contracts/projects for various clients. Each of these projects
varies wildly in requirements and approach, but overall it's about
**identifying what to build,** then planning out **how to build it** , and
actually going and **building it**.
If you've ever heard of "Fast / Good / Cheap, pick two"
([link](https://fastgood.cheap/)), the existence of Pink is a contradiction.
* We deliver solutions _very fast_ using our platform (secret sauce)
* These solutions scale, are super stable, fault-tolerant, and generally have world-class UX
* And they're crazy cheap to host: we've hosted major launches for celebrities on a $5.22 AWS bill
Testimonial from an enterprise customer switching to us from Palantir:
* "It's crazy what you're building. Foundry hasn't even cemented itself in the market, it feels like yesterday I was bringing it to procurement as this fancy shiny thing. And now you're here giving me something even better, clearly so much faster, and cutting my budget in half."
Another customer swapping to us from their internal team, anonymized:
* "That was crazy. [John Doe] is always the hellhound in these external meetings but you just laid [them] down to slaughter. Now all [they] can do is shut up or everyone will see [they're] just blocking the process."
* "Seriously guys that was amazing. So excited to get going"
A blockchain startup using us to build their entire technical stack, censored:
* "This is great guys. With a daily bill this low we can price out the market."
* "wait this bill is for the whole month????? [jinkies!]"
You'll be customer-facing from the get-go: our clients see us as experts
beyond experts, and you'll be positioned as an elite who is setting their
entire technical strategy. Sometimes it will be a startup building boring tech
but driving an insane margin. Sometimes it'll be Aespa, Guy Fieri, M&M's,
Dubai...
Generally you'll be working with our existing backend stack, which is almost
entirely TypeScript with a variety of prebuilt tooling, libraries and
frameworks. We've already built a ton of solutions with it, which means you'll
be able to quickly see "what works" and "what doesn't."
**But most importantly, you 'll be working with us to improve the platform,
build out new modules, and build "what works" right into the product.** We're
building an everything platform. It's going to take some time, but we're okay
with that -- we're profitable already. If we build it right, we've projected
billions in revenue over our first 5 years.
As an overview:
* Work with clients directly, either as an expert or as an embedded **fractional CTO** to figure out what they need to build and what will most positively impact their organization.
* Plan and architect out how to build it. This includes pricing and planning timelines that are reasonably achievable while still riding far below market.
* Participating in partnership calls, investor meetings, and more as the client's **technical expertise.**
* Provisioning necessary materials: decks, demos, proposals, enterprise evaluations, etc.
* Leading the charge on the build: either solo or with a staff of contractors.
### Talk Perks to Me
Outside from the amazing work environment and opportunity to work with major
clientele, there are several perks you'll be hard pressed to find as a combo
anywhere else.
* **100% remote**
* Hyper-flexible hours
* Laid back culture
* Loose policies: **BYOD, unlimited PTO** , no internal bureaucracy, no KPIs or sprint planning
* Ability to work several projects with several clients simultaneously
* **Leadership positions (fCTO!)** early on in your career that you won't get anywhere else
* If you perform well, **high exposure to the books**
**Exposure. To. The. Books!**
(We offer a pretty competitive salary as well.)
(We also offer bonuses if you drum up new business.)
### So, are we a match?
We're looking for someone specific:
* 2+ YoE in TypeScript with illustrated depth of knowledge
* Vue.js (3) background on very real applications
* Development ideologies that match ours, we're building a dev platform after all!
* Well spoken and comfortable being thrown to the wolves, ready to stand tall
* Relevant experience moving smoothly in a high stress environment
* Strong personal edge. Similar to but not the same as a personal brand
* U.S.-based citizen
In terms of raw experience, we look for **4 Equivalencies of Experience**
(EoE).
4 EoE is roughly:
* 4 Years of Experience, OR
* 10 open source/hobbyist projects, OR
* 4 self-launches, OR
* Ex-Founder
It's a plus if you're open to pursuing and maintaining a security clearance
(up to TS/SCI), but not required. **However, you must be U.S. based.** This is
a hard requirement from clients.
What does this mean? **We don 't care if you're fresh out of college if you
have demonstrable experience.** (Broadly speaking we don't care whether you
went to college either.)
If you think you're a good fit, please apply :)
Our interview process goes like this:
* Extremely very super easy OA to check your familiarity
* Quick initial low stakes get-to-know-you
* Constraint Design Interview (45 + 10 format)
* Mock Murderboard (60min, weird format)
* Crunch Testing (45 + 15 format)
**Please don 't study for our interviews.**
* They're like nothing else out there, and we're not "just saying that."
* They are meant to be taken cold to see how you fare.
* We make them up from real world problems. You won't find them online.
* They are chaotic and meant to be fun.
* Prepping stresses people out, then they don't perform their best.
If it helps, we've used the same hiring process to hire contractors at
companies we fCTO at, and no one who's prepped has ever come close to passing.
Don't stress and just try to have some fun!
Apparently word on the street is our interviews are like "case interviews for
engineers." This is false, please please **please** don't use a casing
framework.
### What do my next few years look like if I get the job?
Few scenarios.
* You end up on the "exposure to the books" front office of Pink, fCTO for big names, and lead others. We're growing an indelible team and trying to apply the same "elite law firm" concept to tech. All that's between you and fortune is execution.
* You leave us after a year, having served multiple big clients, booking millions in revenue, and having a slew of high exposure projects + high title positions to throw on your resume. You join up with a "big company" at an incredibly high role early on.
* You decide you like the platform better. No problem, still incredibly lucrative with the same exposure to the books as you build for clients. The platform you're building is targeted to launch mid-2025 and will rock the boat. The only comparable solutions have hit double-digit billion dollar market caps, are worse in every aspect, and haven't even begun to capitalize the market.
* Realizing the platform you're building lowers the barrier of execution for any vertical to the ground, you decide to spin off your own startup. We'll be the first money in, let you use the platform, and give you low rates on Pink engineers so you can scale quickly (and so we can get returns on our investment!)
* Disillusioned by tech culture you abandon the big city, move into your grandpa's old farm in the rural countryside, and start working on living off the land while interacting with the curious ~NPCs~ inhabitants of the local town. No, seriously, we can't rule this out as a possibility right?
Lett focuses on SaaS, Artificial Intelligence, and Software. Their company has
offices in United States. They have a small team that's between 1-10
employees.
You can view their website at <https://lett.ai> or find them on
[Twitter](twitter.com/https://x.com/lettmail),
[Facebook](https://facebook.com/lettmail), and
[LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/company/lettmail).
