Assembly / Manufacturing Engineer / Manager

– Do you get off on making processes and systems run butter-smooth?
– Do you love teaching and training your employees to be better?
– 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 have pretty 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 30+ employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons – we’re big time, people.

What do you guys do?
Our business involves taking random products and then marketing the heck out of them, primarily on Amazon. We have hundreds of SKUs at the moment and are launching around 10-20 new products every single month. A small sampling:

– Bad Parking Cards (http://amzn.com/B01HLGZRCQ)
– Cable Tie Mounts (http://amzn.com/B06XNBS6TG)
– K2-D3 Capsules (http://amzn.com/B07C451MZ9)

We want to launch as many products as we can. Our business is growing 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. We Love Our People. We want everyone in our company to be happy and successful, and will go out of our way to make that a reality (as much as humanly possible at least).

2. 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.

3. 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, and no one will think anything of it.

4. 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.

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. 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.

8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work – how nice would that be?

9. 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.

10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.

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.

What will I actually be doing?
Managing our processing/manufacturing department to make sure that product is flowing smoothly and efficiently. It’s a somewhat complex system with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of room for improvement. It will be your job to improve processes and systems while keeping the day-to-day working smoothly.

Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:
• Engineer better processes and systems so that everyone/everything flows as smoothly as possible
• Innovate regularly – which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed
• Make sure every line has the resources it needs to complete the work
• Constantly evaluate the lines to see if they need more or fewer staff
• Move workers around to other jobs to maximize efficiency
• Set the example of what hard work looks like
• Train line leads to manage a lot of the day-to-day for you so you can focus on engineering better systems
• Fix equipment on occasion (light troubleshooting)
• Answer questions as they come up (and then create procedures and resources so that question never gets asked again)
• Proactively identify and address problems
• Give people feedback on how to improve
• Ensure all employees know where they stand, know what they need to do to improve, and are overall happy and productive

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 experience?
This is probably not an entry-level position, but you also don’t need 10 years of experience to be successful. I would say that there is a chance that the right junior engineer could step into this role, but that that person is probably rare.

Manufacturing experience is a plus, but we’re really looking for somebody with a demonstrated track record of building awesome systems and processes and we understand that can come from a wide array of industries.

Do I need a college degree?
You just need to be awesome.

Is this an engineering role or a management role?
We expect all managers in the company to be both. You are responsible for getting units out the door, but you are also responsible for building better systems so that everything is continually getting better. It will probably start out mostly as a management role, and will transition into mostly an engineering role (if you’re good at delegation and training).

Is this on-site or remote?
Most of our knowledge-worker jobs are remote, but this job needs to be done physically in our warehouse in Charlotte, NC.

How big is your manufacturing system?
There are about 20 people working directly in the system in some form or fashion. It’s responsible for producing everything that we sell on Amazon and on other sales channels. It’s currently in about 5,000 square feet in a warehouse of 30,000 square feet and produces over 80,000 units of product per month.

What kind of manufacturing are we talking about?
Very light manufacturing/assembly. It’s mostly just counting and shrink wrapping products, but we have over 1,000 products and each one requires a different process, though each individual process isn’t that complex.

Am I just managing or am I doing the physical work too?
There will definitely be times where you need to gap-fill on a line, and while you’re learning, you’ll definitely be processing a lot, but long-term, you should only be directing/training others.

This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.
You and the IRS both!

That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?
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