Owlspotting

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago to give his new project a link: Flame.ro. He asked not because millions of people are reading Owlspotting (they aren’t) but because Google is a fan of outgoing links. So I thought I’d do him one better and take a page out of the viral marketing playbook.

My friend runs a web solutions company operating out of two Romanian cities (one of which is my hometown) — one of those all emcompassing names for a company doing web programming, design, marketing and other assorted keyboard-driven things. Pretty standard stuff. But what is not standard are two ideas I praised him. They are worth — for their workplace-humor alone — actually paying the site a visit (gasp!)

1. In their job openings section they post 50 reasons (*.PDF) why you should join them. Actually, they say it’s “50 reasons why would you join us,” but I’ll let that one slide. Any company who can list 50 reasons you should work for them deserves a chance. Some of my favorite reasons: you would fit well in the team (and if not, they’ll make sure you do), confortable chairs (10 percent of the work experience, trust me), free oranges in the winter, free apples (summer) from the garden (Romanians love free shit and they love it even more when they can pick it from the garden) and powerful hardware/office tools (27/7 acces to drills and other manly power tools).

2. People sick of googling for “Romanian computer experts,” “hot Romanian programmers,” “Romanian geek porn,” or “CTRL+ALT+HOT Romania” can find everything they need in the About Flame page, which features mugs of hot men who can fix your computers and program the hell out of them along with the woman that keeps them focused.