Want to work at Twitter? I can help you!

As of today, I’ve now been at Twitter for 10 months. Time for a check in. I gotta say I’m still sort of amazed that I get a back stage pass to be at the company building the Global Brain. There are days when I’m sitting with various higher-ups and we’re talking very seriously about strategy and vision and I squint my eyes a little and I see both the amazingly unique future-changing thing we’re building at a huge scale while also seeing the little dinky playful innocent idea behind it all. Those are my favorite moments.

I’m of course obsessed with data and with living publicly and with platforms and behavior change and therefore it’s pretty much the perfect place for me. Twitter is still small enough that they give everyone pretty much free reign to think about things at a visionary, strategic, or tactical level, wherever you feel comfortable.

I personally like to think about how this all relates to changing our daily lives. What do we take away from Twitter that changes us? What do we learn that is actionable? What does it open up for us that we can use?

I was on the Cards team that recently launched a bunch of new ways to build into Twitter (adding product data, or photo galleries, or deep app links, etc to your tweets). I’m now working on a new exciting team that I can’t wait to talk more about publicly.

Of course, a year ago when I was looking for places to work I was considering a lot of places (many of them really interesting in themselves). But Twitter stood out because of its unique position to make a truly unique difference in the future. Bringing things together.

Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
– Charles Eames

It’s the social soundtrack. The back channel to the world. The global town square. The power equalizer through truth magnifier and lie detector.

But really, honestly, the reason I really like working here is because the people are awesome.

Here are 15-ish people who I currently really like working with, and who you should follow, and talk to, and meet, because they’re up to really interesting things (both professionally and IRL):

@wm, my original boss, only guy at Twitter with a life-size cardboard cutout of himself giving everyone the bird and a bottle of $200 scotch on his desk (I would’ve guessed there would be more).

@raffi, VP of Platform Engineering, the first person I talked to at Twitter that I felt proved that Twitter was the company for me. My spirit animal.

@brianellin, PM of all things Syndication (tweet embeds, etc), one of the people I phone interviewed with when trying to convince them to hire me. I’ve seen photographic proof that he’s ridden in bike races wearing a banana costume.

@sippey, VP of Product, who I’ve known since his Six Apart days and (gasp) even before!

@mikeindustries, VP of Design, fellow ex-Seattle-ite, has a grudge against SF bread. I believe I met him in line in Seattle for the original iPhone.

@dkroy, from Bluefin, who did one of my favorite Ted Talks ever (birth of a word) and now doing amazing amazing things in Boston with Twitter and TV.

@chanian, on my team, poker player, sushi eater, clever dude. At one point we had exactly the same number of followers on Twitter, but he has since pulled way ahead… I think he cheated.

@rsarver, my mentor at Twitter in many ways who is sadly leaving soon but had to include him here since I admire him a ton.

@reeve, my boss, happened to go to highschool with my friends @fambai and Molly who isn’t on Twitter but should be.

@jeremysf, Director of Mobile now but I sat next to him for a bit when he first joined and had some of the craziest out there conversations about product that I’ve ever had… and they were all great ideas.

@emoore, designer on the rise, currently the only other Twitter employee that has visited my home.

@sm, company jester, also manages to ship a shit ton of product on a daily basis somehow.

@isaach, champion of one of the data sets that I am most interested in. Really nice dude too… sorry to hear about your broken thumb.

@benward, world-class web dude, maker of the longest most thoughtful emails about product.

@couch, somehow knows pretty much everyone in SF in some way or other.

@hoverbird, keeper of the 3D printer and the replicators email list. I like to overhear his conversations near my desk because they’re always interesting.

I have a bunch more but decided to arbitrarily cut it off. All lists like this are a terrible idea, but oh well.

I generally don’t like everyone that I meet. Twitter really is good people!

I just wanted to write this to put it out there and let you know that Twitter is hiring a lot of new people right now and it’s a crucial time for the company. They need to be good people. If you are good at what you do, and want to be part of something sort of epic and sort of ridiculous and all around interesting then this is what you should do:

  1. Find 1-3 job postings from here that you think you could do: https://twitter.com/jobs/positions
  2. Apply
  3. Email me (to: buster@twitter.com, subject: “I want to be a tweeterhead!”) with any questions you have about the position, about Twitter in general, and I’ll try to be as helpful as possible!

UPDATE: I previously had a more direct call to email me and I would help refer you, but I’ve found that it’s really more effective to apply directly and to use me as a resource to learn about Twitter. If you know me or I know you and we’ve worked together, then a referral from me will actually mean more to the process… in which case definitely reach out to me and we can talk about it.

Perhaps we’ll get to work together. That would be awesome.

 
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