Priceonomics is looking to hire an exceptionally talented writer to join our blog.
When we first started blogging, we published every two weeks about topics like product economics, our data, or things we found interesting. Blogging helped potential users discover our product and accelerated our growth.
About 7 months ago, we hired a full time writer. We currently publish daily blog posts and weekly longform articles. Now we’re looking to hire a second writer to join our team and help us build a great content platform in its own right.
Priceonomics is a data company. Our writers use economics, data, and good analysis to bring transparency to the world and reveal the hidden side of everything. Our engineers structure data for fun and profit. We write about data on the blog and have also started making money helping companies acquire and structure data that they really need. If we get this right, we could move journalism in a data-driven direction and prove that content is valuable.
You’ll be joining a talented team of hackers, data scientists, writers, and entrepreneurs. A common adage in Silicon Valley is to hire engineers “100x” more productive than the average engineer. We believe this principle applies to writing as well.
At Priceonomics you’ll be part of a fast growing startup funded by some of the best investors in the world. Your talent as a writer will be recognized and you’ll be a critical part of our team.
We’re based in the Mission District of San Francisco and you’ll work from our office with the rest of the team. We offer competitive salary, generous equity, healthcare, free snacks and lunches, a computer setup of your choice, and other fun startup benefits.
The Role
Your role will be to write great things that help bring transparency to the world. This could include making previously opaque prices well known, exploring the business model of a company or industry, or writing about the massive data sets that Priceonomics is building. An economics slant and data-driven analysis are your tools to tell important stories in novel ways.
The responsibility to come up with a perpetual stream of good story ideas comes with the freedom to pursue them. You could spend your time interviewing plastic surgeons, reading quirky behavioral economics research, or analyzing airports’ revenue streams.
You should be:
* Able to write clearly and with humor
* Skilled at synthesizing lots of information and explaining complicated concepts simply
* Proficient with basic statistics and microeconomics
* Have a fascination with writing about seemingly mundane topics like SkyMall magazine, the economics of living a van, how food trucks make money, and the economics of Girl Talk
* Be very good at coming up with interesting topics to write about. This might be the most important criteria.
We are interested in hearing from a wide range of applicants. Anyone that has good ideas and a desire to write great stories that engage millions of readers.
It’s also nice if you’re fairly active on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, or other platforms where awesome things spread. However, it’s more important that you can write well and have a nose for good stories.
How to Apply
Send an email to jobs@priceonomics.com with the following information:
1. What you consider to be your relevant resume information. That would probably be some links to your work, your Linkedin, your resume, etc.
2. Send along story ideas about things you’d like to write about. Check out our most popular posts to get a flavor of what kind of topics we’d like. Please include the angle you’d take rather than just a topic or headline – ie “market manipulations in the fine art market” rather than just “fine art is bullshit.”
3. Answer this question. If you could assemble any data set in the world to write about, what would it be? Please choose a data set that actually exists or could be created using engineering resources (examples: rent prices, Airbnb prices, or used cell phone prices) and explain how you would analyze it.
Show us your writing style and what kind of topics you want to explore. We’re looking forward to working with you.
We also have engineering positions available.