Headquarters: Charlotte, NC
URL: http://JLSTradingCo.com/careers
- Do you see crappy products everywhere and think "I could make that so much better"?
- Does your brain refuse to stop solving problems, even when you're supposed to be relaxing?
- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?
If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.
We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees = happy customers = happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.
--Is this a real job ad?--
Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 70ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.
Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - we’re a pretty big deal):
http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/
And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that it’s not just the founder’s mother who says we’re cool.
--What do you guys do?--
We do a lot of different things these days including selling awesome consumer products (these are just a small sampling):
- Bad Parking Cards (https://amz.run/5Eya)
- Beverage Barricades (https://amz.run/6kip)
- Child Chucker (https://amz.run/9EUz)
Running this Amazon Pay-Per-Click agency: PPCFarm.com (we’re really, really good at PPC)
And we will soon be launching a SaaS product for inventory management.
We are doing our best to grow rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.
--What is your company like?--
1. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO (highly encouraged), and no one will think anything of it. You don't have to dress up, or use formal language, or pretend to be something you're not - you can just be you.
2. Major Opportunities For Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.
3. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or 6 hours a day and catch up over the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.
4. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.
5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.
6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.
7. No Toxic/Incompetent People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean or stupid people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. You will never have to interact with someone who is an obvious idiot or straight up malicious. No toxic or incompetent people at work - could it really be? [Yes]
8. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.
9. Lots Of Raises. We do our absolute best to get ahead of things and give raises preemptively, so you don't have to ask for one. It's not unusual at all for someone to receive 2+ raises per year.
10. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.
11. 4-6+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.
12. Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave. We’ve even started letting people skip meetings during labor!
13. Self-Funded So We Can Do What’s Right For Us. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.
--What are your company’s values?--
See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/
Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.
--OK, so I’ve read like 8 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--
No.
--Wait... What?--
OK fine. Super short version:
Inventing remarkable consumer products - taking concepts from "this should exist" to "holy shit, why didn't this exist before" - in the kitchen and household space.
Bulleted Responsibilities:
Take product concepts and figure out how to make them work elegantly
Design products in CAD (we use SolidWorks, but we're flexible on software)
Prototype heavily in-house (3D printing, testing, breaking, improving, repeat)
Iterate relentlessly until the product hits our "remarkable" quality threshold
Collaborate with our supply chain team on Design for Manufacturing and sourcing decisions
Deliver production-ready CAD files and specifications for manufacturing
Solve hard problems that don't have obvious solutions (this is like 80% of the job)
To give you an idea of what we make: Beverage Barricades (the magnetic drink guard), CrocoDicer, and various kitchen gadgets that make people's lives meaningfully better. We're not making generic private label crap - we're inventing things that are genuinely novel and patentable.
Fair warning: this is slow, deliberate work. A single product might take 6-36 months from concept to launch. We are quality-obsessed and refuse to ship mediocre products. If you need the dopamine hit of shipping something every week, you will be miserable here.
Like everyone else in the company, you will also need to innovate regularly - which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed.
It is challenging, but fun work that’s going to require a lot of time and task management, problem-solving, and a reasonable amount of people skills.
--Do I need a college degree?--
You just need to be awesome.
--Are there any geographic restrictions?--
As long as you are in a country that doesn’t have active sanctions from the US government, we are interested. Our founder isn’t known for respecting the government much, but they have all the guns, so…
--Do I need an engineering degree?--
Nope. Our current product engineer is largely self-taught and didn't go to engineering school. We don't care about credentials - we care about whether you can actually invent great products. If you can demonstrate strong CAD skills and a track record of making things, that matters way more than a diploma.
--What CAD software do you use?--
We currently use SolidWorks, but we're not religious about it. What matters is that you can produce production-ready 3D models. If you're proficient in Fusion 360, AutoCAD, or similar - that's fine. Just know that you'll need to come in with strong 3D modeling skills; we're not training from zero.
--How many products will I work on at once?--
Typically 1-2 at a time. This is deep focus work, not juggling a dozen things. You'll spend months on a single product, iterating until it's genuinely great.
--What if I've never worked in consumer products before?--
That's fine, as long as you have demonstrated ability to design and prototype physical products. Whether that came from industrial design, mechanical engineering, or just being a maker who builds stuff in your garage - we care about the skill, not the pedigree.
--Do I need to deal with manufacturers directly?--
You'll collaborate with our supply chain team on Design for Manufacturing and be involved in sourcing decisions, but you won't own the vendor relationships. Supply chain handles the day-to-day communication with factories. Your job is to design products that can actually be manufactured.
--What does a typical day look like?--
Variable as hell. Some days you're deep in CAD. Some days you're running prototype tests. Some days you're researching materials or competitor products. Very few meetings. Basically no bureaucracy. What's consistent is working independently, solving hard problems, and pushing toward "remarkable."
--6-36 months per product? Really?--
Really. We iterate until it's genuinely great. We'd rather take 2 years to launch something remarkable than rush out something mediocre in 3 months. If that timeline makes you anxious, this probably isn't the role for you.
--What types of products will I be working on?--
Primarily kitchen and household products. Things that solve real problems people have. We're especially interested in products that can be patented and are hard for competitors to copy. Generally, we want to either radically improve a product in its category (like 200% better) or invent a new category.
--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--
You sound just like the tax authorities!
--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--
Please submit your information on the following page to apply. We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.
There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.
Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).
Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!
