WANTED: Design Apprentices
The Mary Sue
Are you a designer looking to get your foot in the door at an Internet company? Do you see brain-splittingly awful websites every day, shake your head, and think, “Eh. I could do better?”
Do you constantly hear from everyone that the Internet is killing the media business? Do you believe in your heart that that is just total crap?
If so, you desperately need to intern at The Mary Sue. Do not try to resist. It is inevitable.
“Hold on,” you say, darting your eyes about confusedly. “What’s a ‘Mary Sue?’”
The Mary Sue is the geeky woman arm (I dunno, maybe it’s got a Triforce tattoo?) of the shadowy, all-powerful Abrams Media collective. We’re seven sites reaching over 10 million people a month. We’re less than two years old. We’ve got big things ahead of us.
“But what will I do as an intern?” you ask, wringing your hands in anticipation, or possibly consternation.
You’ll join us in our offices (yeah, a loft in SoHo, exposed brick, no big thing), code, design, code, code some more, learn to be a Real Live Engineer (or Real Live Web Designer), etc.
“How can I get this wondrous gig?” you ululate, collapsing to the floor in paroxysms of excitement, perhaps foaming at the mouth a bit for effect.
It’s pretty simple.
HOW TO GET THE GIG
You’ll need to have 4-5 of the following skills. YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE ALL OF THEM. This is an internship, not a government super-soldier program.
- Knowledge of HTML/XHTML
- Familiarity with CSS and the border box model, with bonus points for knowing the little tricks needed to get IE to display things properly
- The ability to, given a Photoshop mockup of a site layout, write the HTML/CSS to actually implement it (And do it by hand; Dreamweaver is for quitters!)
- Knowledge of JavaScript: Ideally you know at least one framework. (Doesn’t really matter so much which one it is — we don’t want to start a jQuery/script.aculo.us/whatever flame war just yet!)
- The ability to work with raw JavaScript
- At least enough knowledge of PHP to competently edit WordPress template tags without triggering a parse error
- Knowledge of the LAMP stack: We don’t expect interns to recompile kernels or make SQL dumps; all we ask for is a passing familiarity with the guts behind the pages. As Kenny Rogers never said, “you’ve got to know when to chmod ‘em / know when to tail ‘em.” (If you don’t qualify on this one, at least know what LAMP stands for, please.)
- Graphic design skills: Not like, making an oil painting. Just enough skill to know what looks good, what looks bad, and how to make things look better.
- A desire to learn new frameworks, languages, and development tools. While we’re probably not going to rip everything up and rewrite it all in Python (not yet, anyway) we like people who can adapt and pick up new techniques if the need arises.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
If you turn out to be a clean coder with strong work habits, you’ll be given a chance to join our team full-time at the conclusion of your internship.
We’re less than two years old; who knows how far you’ll go?
HOW TO APPLY
Just email the following to interns@themarysue.com:
- A resume/CV
- A cover letter explaining why you are the ideal person for this position
- 3 portfolio works (if you’re a designer-y type) or code samples (Ideally, something that currently exists on a live, publicly-accessible site. But if all you have is that old Java battleship program you wrote in CS 101, we’ll take it, but please make sure it actually still compiles.)
Also, in your email, tell us what your favorite video game of all time is, and why. (This is mostly so you can prove that you actually read the posting. But who knows, maybe it can spark a lengthy conversation.)
Waiting profits you not at all. Apply now.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
