your future boss just dropped 100+ jobs (+ tea on hiring red flags) ☕
A chat with Jamie Hodari of Industrious + a SURGE hiring alert
Bonjour mes beautés!
…I hope Google translate didn’t do me dirty on that one. Ngl - I don’t speak french.
Today’s newsletter includes an interview with a non-tech founder who needed techies to grow his business. Plus junior engineering roles and a startup with 100+ open jobs!
Interview with a founder
Jamie Hodari is one of the brains behind Industrious, a rare brick-and-mortar startup that blew up. (Why yes, they are hiring!) Industrious was acquired by corporate real estate giant CBRE in January 2025—but they kept Jamie because he’s a smarty pants (in a good way).
Four years in, Jamie needed engineers. The first tech hires in a non-tech company get a lot of autonomy, a lot of freedom, and a lot of trust. A pretty swish set up.
Your first engineers were building …
We provide workplaces, so we needed a website to convert leads and we needed an internal employee platform.
But thennnnnnnn … for people to actually physically navigate the space, they need an amazing app that knows where they are and knows what rooms are available and knows what they’re about to book. You have this moment where you’re like, technology isn’t an enabler of the product. It is a fundamental part of the product.
It was an exciting time!
When you’re not a native technology company, it’s like, Holy shit. We can get to something we’re really excited with from two months of testing on the digital side, when it might take two years of testing on the physical side.
What did you need to hear from your first engineers?
You just know you’re vulnerable going in as the non-technical CEO. They can tell you, I’m so sorry, but this thing is going to take a year and a half. But you have a relatively limited ability to call bullshit.
Having absolute ironclad trust that the person’s not going to bullshit you and that their motivations are going to come from the right place is really important.
Yeah but how do you, like … know know?
I recall certain impressive technology-leader types, where every story they told me was how their boss was an idiot and they were the hero who saved the day. It was so important to have people who are like, I really fucked this up, or, there’s stuff I’m better at than the average engineer, but here’s stuff I’m way worse at.
When people BS you, it’s not purely trickery and obfuscation. It’s that they don’t have the self-awareness to understand what they’re good and bad at. I needed to detect honestly and self-awareness.
Company spotlight: Anterior
Last week I told all y’all entry-level and junior engineers to not panic. Gentle folx of the jury, I present more receipts in this petite company spotlight.
Meet Anterior, the company using AI to streamline healthcare admin and making life easier for providers. They’re hiring at their NYC HQ, btw.
This is what they have to say:
We’re hiring from infra to frontend, there is room all the way up and down the stack. Come share your proudest firefighting story with us in an interview, bring your GitHub, and let’s see if we’re a good fit.
If you’re a junior passionate about coding and hacking: it’s always ok to apply, shoot us a link to some of your work and let’s talk anyway.
SEEEEE! I told you. Now go get ’em.
Open j.o.b.s. for y.o.u.
Collaborative code editor Zed is looking for Rust engineers and open source engineers for remote jobs in U.S. or EU time zones.
Healthcare infrastructure platform Junction is hiring REMOTE engineers (including a head of engineering). Check out their open jobs + their 2025 hiring plan to see what’s coming up. They also publish the stages of their recruiting process on their site.
Ambrook, backed by a $26.1 million series A, is building financial tools for indie and small businesses—our economic backbone! The demand is definitely there. See their open jobs. They’re HYBRID and based in NYC, Denver, or SF. Clear role expectations are spelled out here. A huge plus.
🤖 ROBOTS! Matic makes a de ouf-as-hell robotic floor cleaner, named by WIRED as the best automatic robot vacuum they’ve tested. Stylé! Or, should I say, vrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm. All open jobs are based in their Mountain View, CA, office.
Ivo is making contract negotiation less headache-y on an enterprise scale. With their $16 million series A, Ivo is hiring engineers at their SF HQ.
Dev tools startup Trunk is looking for a full stack engineer (on site in SF) and a DevRel engineer (remote). Fun fact: Trunk likes to minimize meetings so you actually have time to code.
Power, which connects patients with new therapies and treatments via clinical trials, is hiring for a bunch of cool positions, like engineers (of all stripes), data leads, and product designers.
Basic Capital is building a 401(k) for the modern world. They need a full stack backend and a full stack frontend. Both are $180K–$200K + equity.
🚨 SURGE HIRING ALERT. Biz financial ops platform Ramp has 100+ open jobs right now. Holy Baloney. I see … data! I see product design! Backend! Frontend! GTM! Mobile! Infrastructure! I see remote! I see hybrid! I see you … thriving!
SPEEDRUN JOBS!
Austin Chen (Berkeley, Apple, TikTok, SPC), founder of Marlo (SR004), says “Marlo is a small but mighty team working in person to reshape how the creator economy operates.” He’s hiring engineers for their SF office.
The team over at Sonatic (SR005) went viral earlier this week with this post - they’re offering generous startup salaries, housing, and a free Raya subscription to boot. They’re also offering a “$20k-$25k” referral bonus. They also work 7 days a week. You can reach cofounder Kinjal via kinjal@sonatic.co
Tabish Ahmed (Google, Youtube, Meta), founder of Playroom (SR003), is searching for someone who is terminally online, plugged into creator culture, and who can lead their influencer marketing efforts. You can email Tabish via tabish@joinplayroom.com
The team at Bins (SR005), led by Akshay Raj (Rice, Anduril, Susquehanna), is working on a new social shopping experience. They’re looking for founding software + growth engineers. Email them via team@joinbins.com if you’re interested.
The Darwin team, led by Sanjit Juneja (UT Austin), is “building a new generation of AI-native UGC media platforms — starting with Wayve, our flagship AI video remixing platform.” They’re hiring ML engineers, a Chief Scientist, an iOS eng, and a few others based in their SF office.
Crater Studios (SR002) wants to “reimagine how AAA games are built… by combining a world-class team with deeply integrated AI workflows.” They’re hiring for several remote roles.
Founders Anthony Azrak + Jai Mansukhani of OpenSesame are building the “LUI” - the language user interface to modernize antiquated SaaS apps. They’re also hiring a founding AI engineer based in Toronto.
Brian Yun, founder of Endo Health (SR003), has a crystalline vision: “building voice AI to increase human lifespan by at least a year.” He’s the right guy to do it - he is, after all, a medical doctor with a CS degree. He’s looking for TikTok growth wizards and smart builders to join him at his SF office - you can reach him via brian@endohealth.ai
🚨 Don’t forget: This newsletter isn’t the only place you can find très cool tech jobs in the world’s sexiest startups. Apply to the a16z talent network and let me be your matchmaker.
That’s it for this issue… see ya next week!
Bises et xoxo,
Jordan