I get about two recruiter emails a week, because I work in a bubble industry that’s getting fattened up for the inevitable slaughter. Once, they made me feel desired and capable. Then they were junk mail. Then they started finding my personal email addresses and they became obnoxious. I must a be a skeleton key considering how many companies think I’d be a great fit. Then you get annual trends when one clever recruiter’s original cold mailing makes it to reddit and all the rest fall in line. Sort of how half the panhandlers on the subway were raising money for their school at 10am on a weekday, then they were definitely not raising money for their school but just trying to stay off the streets and now they all have families.

But one day I realized recruiter emails were something else altogether: writing prompts. From a captive audience.

From: Mike Date: Nov 30 To: Peter Welch Subject: What does a nosey pepper do? Gets Jalapeno business. Hey Peter⁠, I saw you were at Seven Rooms⁠ and figured that given your experience, you might be the key ingredient we’re looking for on our Engineering and Technology team. We need experienced Engineers who are as passionate about building a great product as we are. We’ve got opportunities across our Engineering team, so if you’re interested, I’d want to learn more about your preferences first. Here are a few of the big things we’re working on (that I’m allowed to share publicly): A major expansion and redesign of our logistics and supply chain systems,

a revamp of our core site,

continuing to build full-featured mobile experiences for both iOS and Android, growing our eCommerce store and presence,

bringing our wine offering to all 50 states and building out that product. Our benefits are great (Health, Dental, Vision, 401k, Parking/Transit, laptops, technology, infrastructure) as is the equity. We have unlimited vacation days and PEOPLE ACTUALLY USE THEM. I was at a startup before that lacked life/work balance and I’m very happy to have personal time again. Our leadership team just won EY’s Entrepreneurs of the Year award and it really shows in how they’ve built the business and the quality of our hiring. We’re language agnostic, as we believe good Engineers can (and should) learn what they need to know. Any interest in a chat, if only to learn a bit more and connect? All the best,

Mike

From: Peter Welch Date: Nov 30 To: Mike Subject: RE: What does a nosey pepper do? Gets Jalapeno business. A friend of mine, as a prelude to asking me to write a blog for his company, once asked, “Are you passionate about home automation?” to which I had to reply, “Do you know what any of those words mean?” I mean, maybe I’m just old, but I don’t think my dad was really passionate about churning out antitrust casework. Anyone who consistently maintained an emotion that could even be mistaken for “passion” while fixing a near-stranger’s software is a little suspect. I guess there are people out there who find existential peace solving allocation errors, but they’re probably just as hard to date as classical musicians or career off-broadway actors. This girl I know is a fantastic actress, but seriously can’t leave the house for more than six hours without some ridiculous meltdown: she once screamed for 5 minutes in a restaurant before sweeping her drink off the table and storming out. I think she needs medication. But she’s got passion, I’ll give her that. My ex was passionate about a lot of stuff, most of all the children’s books she wrote, and attacking me with knives at 2 a.m. Anyway, my point is don’t date artists without day jobs.

From: John Date: Aug 2 To: Peter Welch Subject: Hey Peter I’m working with ________ to expand their NYC development team and we’re looking for full stack folks who enjoy working with a variety of languages - wanted to see how things were going at Seven Rooms and if this might be a good time to consider something new. The stack at ________ includes Ruby, Scala, Clojure, and React. So figured there would be some great learning opportunities as well as the chance to work on a product people love. Would you be open to a conversation or is all still good on your end at Seven Rooms?

From: Peter Welch Date: Aug 2 To: John Subject: RE: Hey Peter Gah! Ruby! Ew ew ew ew ew ew!

From: Katharina Date: Mar 30 To: Peter Welch Subject: How’s everything at Seven Rooms Hey Peter, it’s been a while since you were in touch with my colleague, things still great at Seven Rooms? I’ve got a company on it’s way to becoming the Nielsen of the internet. They closed their series C at $50 million last week. I’m also working __________ looking for both a principal and a fullstack engineer (they’re a Python shop). Are you interested in ad analytics or are you going to stick around at Seven Rooms for a bit longer? Kat

From: Peter Welch Date: Mar 30 To: Katharina Subject: RE: How’s everything at Seven Rooms I once went to a “party” in Maine, which was one 27-year-old guy’s rental room in one of the crap houses of Ellsworth, where you paid Motel 8 rent to have a bed with a naked lightbulb hanging from a water-damaged ceiling next to an optional closet and a bathroom shared between four other rooms. We late teens and early twenty-somethings piled into this laughable living situation because he supposedly had weed, and if we listened to him for long enough, maybe we would get some too. Happily, nobody got raped that evening, and we started to make that first, tentative realization that we were hanging around a chronic loser who sold drugs to teenagers. It’s a hard realization to accept when you’re the teenager in need of drugs, and lack the world experience to realize that you might not want to be around drug dealers in their late twenties living in closets. But he’s not the guy I want to talk about. Once I had the epiphany that none of us should be in this guy’s room, I gradually rallied an exodus, and we all walked out. Before we left, one of the other one-room rentals’ tenants had come home, and left his door open. He was a hard late thirties at best, because there was no way he was a healthy forty. I saw his room for maybe two seconds. There were two fold-out tables in the room. One held a fifteen-inch TV, showing Cops at full volume. This was the only light in the room, and it was enough to illuminate the other table, which supported the Budweiser and the TV dinner being consumed by the room’s occupant, who was staring blankly at the TV after coming home at 11pm from whatever awful job Ellsworth had to offer its pitiable citizens. He took no notice of our band of exiting teenagers, which is why I wasn’t shamed into looking away before I saw the back of his room. The room was maybe ten by sixteen. The front ten feet of the sixteen-foot axis contained the tableau of defeated worker. The back six contained trash. Five feet high where it met the wall, it was a mountain of discarded takeout food and microwave dinners and soda cans and half finished beer. There was no bed in the room; he could only have slept on the floor, because it was TV table, eating table, trash mountain. This is one of the memories that kept me in college. This is one of the memories that made me understand why people kill themselves. I would rather be that guy’s boyfriend than work in the ad industry again.

From: Adam Date: Apr 5 To: Peter Welch Subject: Interesting Work, Great Perks - Software Engineering Opportunity Hi Peter, I was impressed with your background and wanted to reach out about a front end engineering role with a client of mine called ________. If you’re not familiar with them, ________ is the leading marketplace for stock digital content and one of NYC’s best established engineering teams. Offering royalty free image, video, music, and editorial content, ________ has clients in over 150 countries and a database of 40+ million images. With multiple products supporting their clients’ workflow, ________ breaks its engineering team down into small cross functional groups that own features and work directly off of user feedback. In this position ________ is looking for an adaptable engineer who can write elegant solutions and sleek interfaces for a variety of products used by millions of users. They use multiple technologies including Node.js, D3, React.js as well as authoring an in-house visualization framework called Rickshaw. If you’re looking for a company with an experienced team, well established processes, great perks and work life balance, let’s chat. Best,

Adam

From: Peter Welch Date: Apr 5 To: Adam Subject: RE: Interesting Work, Great Perks - Software Engineering Opportunity It was four a.m. when we arrived in the lot, just when’s night’s black gave way to the pre-dawn blue that illuminates the depth of the darkness. I let him fall out of the trunk onto the ground. I pulled him up onto his knees and yanked the hood off his head. I wanted him to see me. You don’t need to cock guns anymore. The trigger does it for you. But I liked the sound. I liked him hearing the sound. “Say it again.” “Please… I have a wife and two children…” “Why is it always ‘a wife and two children’?” “What?” “It’s always a wife and two children. Nobody has a wife and one kid, or an ex-wife and a couple of dogs. Though I guess that’s not much of a family anymore. Why two? Are you planning on a third?” He blinked at me. “I… we…” “Forget it. Anyway. Say it.” “Please don’t make me…” I let off a couple of rounds in front of his knees. Once he stopped screaming, I didn’t bother to ask the question. “I… I… want you to… handle this api module change.” I fired another shot into the ground. “That’s not what you said.” “Please!” “Say it!” “I want you to OWN this api module change! Please God I’M SORRY I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” I was back in Yonkers by noon. I left his body for the dogs.

From: Jordan Date: Nov 29 To: Peter Welch Subject: the possibilities Hey Peter, Here at __________, we work with those on the cutting edge of NYC’s tech startup community. Since I haven’t heard back from you, that tells me one of three things: You’re fighting an intergalactic war to protect the future of mankind

You can’t respond because you are in the middle of an awesome vacation

You have over 8000 unread emails. Regardless, I’d love to connect — even if it’s to build a relationship/talk about future opportunities. Perhaps you a couple minutes to chat next week? Worst case scenario, it’s a great networking experience. Could you let me know which is closest to the truth?