"Do you know that you're amongst the very best, but can't find a company that appreciates you or gives you the opportunity you deserve?" So begins Mahalo's come-on to developers. The bulldog-powered search engine just laid off a large chunk of its staff, including some developers. Why is it hiring more? We're sure Jason Calacanis, Mahalo's voluble CEO, has some entertaining spin, which we'll let him add it in the comments. But since his HR department didn't stamp the Craigslist posting with "DO NOT REPRINT," as Calacanis is known to do with his emails, we're republishing it below.

Only Tinseltown can match Silicon Valley in turning self-delusion into marketable products. We've always admired Frank Addante, the CEO and founder of an L.A.-based online-advertising startup, the Rubicon Project, for embodying the worst of both worlds — and thereby maximizing his commercial potential. Want to catch a ride in his SUV? Addante, in a recent message on LinkedIn, informed his contacts that he's "looking for ambitious mavericks, entrepreneurial winners and A++ people." Who are willing to work as his executive assistant. The job listing, if you believe that you can achieve your goals as an entrepreneur by booking travel and running errands (must have reliable transporation):

Another Facebook employee has managed to figure out how to get out from under Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's thumb — and he didn't even have to leave Facebook to do it! Christopher Cox, Facebook's director of human resources, has gotten a new job as the company's director of product. In April, told Fortune about Sandberg's entry into the company: "It was like Sheryl came and kicked everybody in the ass and said this is going to be hard. And then gave everybody a hug." Afterwards, Cox told colleagues he "felt sick after saying that," but that he had to because Sandberg had told him to. Putting an HR guy in charge of product sounds implausible, but Cox, before running HR, was an early engineer at the company and helped launch the site's crucial News Feed feature. It's not a promotion, but it must be a relief.

Street fashion always gets a nod in mainstream style magazines. But can it fill up an entire issue, month after month after month — and deliver the kind of returns venture capitalists expect? That's an experiment underway at 8020 Publishing, a San Francisco-based startup which publishes print magazines based on the contributions of Internet users. 8020's creative director, Mimi Dutta, recently sent around a note advertising jobs at the new fashion magazine. The company is backed by CNET founder Halsey Minor, but has struggled to expand from its original JPG title, a photography magazine created by the husband-and-wife team of Derek Powazek and Heather Champ and bought by 8020. In August, Everywhere, 8020's travel title, folded after only four issues. Travel seemed like a natural category to attract advertisers, and some involved with the project wondered whether it was given enough time to succeed. Adding to the project's costs, Everywhere's website was built with different technology than JPG's. And then there's 8020's management uproar.Paul Cloutier, the company's former CEO, has also left the company. Minor is famously erratic and distracted by his art collection and real-estate holdings. And 8020's current CEO, ex-Condé Nast executive Mitch Fox, commutes to the job from Long Island, despite telling the New York Post in March he'd be relocating immediately. For anyone brave enough to walk into the middle of this, here's Dutta's note about the jobs:

If your own company's future is as uncertain as Wachovia's, it's probably time to hook up with a few professional recruiters and go looking for work while you're still a hot (read: employed) property. The first thing you should know about tech headhunters is they're not tech people. The second thing you should know is that they're effective. The third is that #1 + #2 = #3: You'll hate them.Headhunters are paid a commission to find and lure experienced people into jobs they will probably do well at. Typically the contract is about 20 percent of a year of your new-job salary. But there's a penalty if you take the job, then leave before so many months. Their job is to identify someone better than what's in the stack of resumes, and sell that person on the job during the employer's screening and interview process. Culturally, headhunters are sales people, polar opposites to the techies they recruit. They'll feed your skills and qualifications into a process that's as opaque to you as XML is to them. But here's the surprise: It works. There are lamebrain headhunters, just as there are PHP-whackers who call themselves gurus. As a jobhunter, do unto recruiters as they do unto you:

Aviv Hadar, who writes about Apple at MacBlogz.com, got curious about how one joined Steve Jobs's elite priesthood — so he applied for a gig at the local Apple Store, and landed it. The interview process was revealing: According to the manager Hadar talked to, most of his current staff couldn't pass a test with 20 basic technical questions about Apple hardware and software. Some Geniuses! But Apple had set itself up for exactly this kind of comeuppance the day it labeled its stores' repair department the "Genius Bar." Here's the offer letter Hadar got:

In the next year, Facebook plans to visit 20 universities and 5 business schools as it looks to staff up its already swelling operations. Students graduating from these institutions need to be prepared. In a post to announce the tour, Facebook recruiter Marcia Velencia writes that the company is "looking for people that are passionate," who, like Facebook, "value working hard, smart, and fast, and following that up with some good fun." Velencia and Facebook will almost certainly find these types of candidates and successfully lure them into the company. They will do so by allowing the candidates to believe — not explicitly promising them — that working at Facebook will make them rich, allow them to change the world, and put them on a fast track toward an exciting career in tech. Here's what graduating students entertaining a career at Facebook should actually expect.Facebook will not make you rich. On a job board for University candidates, Facebook says its hiring engineers, product managers and customer service reps. That means unless you're an engineer or you've started your own business during school, Facebook probably plans to hire you into customer service. Its where the company needs bodies as it staffs its ad sales operations and grows its user base. It's also the area Facebook COO and former Googler Sheryl Sandberg knows best. Working Facebook customer service will not make you rich. The job only pays $18.75 per hour. You are not going to change the world. At some point during the interview process, Velencia and Facebook HR will expect you to say that one reason you want to work for the company is that like Mark Zuckerberg, you want to change the world by connecting people. It's fine to say this in order to get the job. Just don't believe it. If you want to change the world go work for Teach for America. You will not be technically challenged. Code will not iterate quickly. I interviewed then Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo in 2006 and I asked him what he liked most about working there. He said he loved how fast the company moved, pushing new code and making changes to the site. D'Angelo is gone from Facebook now and soon, so will that ethos. The site redesign that's users are just now moving to in September? It was supposed to launch in April. Minion work at Facebook will be like minion work at Google — awful. Though it could turn you into a champion political in-fighter, which is a crucial talent for a career in tech. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg built Google's customer service operation. She will try to replicate it Facebook. Here is how one Google employee described her division:

A new CareerBuilder.com survey finds 22 percent of employers used social networks in the hiring process. Social networking consultants will spin this to mean that everyone but you is using social networks, ohmigod you have to act now! But the math says that nearly four out of five employers don't use social networks to vet applications. Only 1 in 15 of the 31,000 employers surveyed had bounced a candidate based on a social network entry. What's more interesting is what those who do look are looking for:

Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, is offering to pay the tuition for hackers who want to turn themselves into hacks. "Are you a skilled programmer or Web developer? Are you interested in applying your talents to the challenge of creating a better-informed society? Do you want to learn how to find, analyze and present socially relevant information that engages media audiences?" More to the point, is your startup running short on funding? The official deadline has passed, but the school takes late applications on a space-available basis. Quick, grab this alternative financing before Ted Dziuba, the supremely sarcastic Pressflip cofounder who has a column in The Register, snaps it up.

Company-review site Glassdoor says that according to employees at both companies, Apple's repair technicians — known as "geniuses," with the attitude to match — make $18.30 per hour and $36,000 per year on average. That's about 56 percent more than Best Buy's Geek Squad "agents," who earn $11.58 per hour and $23,000 per year. The reason for the difference? Apple's "geniuses" are tasked with repairing beautiful objects that restore your sense of childlike wonder, whilst their Best Buy counterparts open tickets on junk in black plastic cases. Right, Steve?

Are you a talented young go-getter anxious to make useful connections in the media? Or, alternately, are you a lazy young ignoramus anxious to build up enough connections in order to coast through the rest of your media career solely based on who you know? Either way, you'll need to know how to "Network" at "Media Events." PRNewser has an earnest guide to this invaluable practice today, full of tips on how to prepare your "elevator pitch" and "follow up" later to build strong working relationships. If you want to go that route, we salute you. If you're an awkward misanthrope like us, read on for five real tips on exploiting these media cattle calls to your advantage:

AppleInsider spotted a job posting from Microsoft looking for a product manager. The gig: Bring to market a widget directory for Windows Mobile similar to the iTunes App Store for the iPhone, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs said earned $30 million in revenues during its first month in business.Microsoft called the store "Skymarket" in the now-removed job posting, an unfortunate name which reminds us of 2004 flop Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and said the store will open sometime in 2009. There were few more details, mostly because it would be the new hire's responsibility to define "the product offering, pricing, business model and policies that will make the Windows Mobile marketplace 'the place to be' for developers wishing to distribute and monetize their Windows Mobile applications."

Yahoo programmer Isaac Schlueter is gunning for a spot in our hearts. His cranky resume demands $400,000 a year up front, non-negotiable. Not that he's going to land that high a salary — Schlueter's real goal is to chase off recruiters who won't leave him alone. Those who bother to read his online CV are greeted with a nasty blowoff:

No one will shed tears for Dany Levy. The Daily Candy founder made close to $25 million, by our calculations, on the sale of her email shopping newsletter to Comcast. But former AOL honcho Bob Pittman's Pilot Group took the lion's share of the $125 million windfall, after paying Levy and her family investors just $3.5 million for the privilege five years ago. Pittman's incredible return on investment has helped rehabilitate his tarnished image. But, despite her cheery public pronouncements, Levy must lose some sleep wondering whether she could have driven a harder bargain in the dark post-dot-com days of 2003. Perhaps, one tipster wonders, her thoughts turn to Andy Russell, Pittman's junior partner at Pilot Group, and the "close family friend of Dany since childhood" who is said to have advised her on the $3.5 million valuation.

In a post hypothesizing who will be next to leave Facebook, commenter MrMedia, wonders out loud about the job climate at the high-flying social network:

Social media is one of the hottest buzzwords in tech circles. But can you actually get paid to play with Facebook at the office? Don't show your boss this Mashable article written by Ben Parr asking if social media jobs are here to stay. It only validates the lack of any hard evidence. Parr says social media roles — either a single person or small team who comment on blogs, send and receive Twitter messages, maintain fan pages on Facebook, and use other similar Web tools — are capable of increasing reach, users, traffic, and revenue. Examples? None. Numbers? Zero.

It is one of the wonders of America, that business celebrities like junk-bond salesman Michael Milken can be disgraced and then redeemed, often within the span of a decade. Tarnished former media mogul and social climber, Bob Pittman, has secured the first big payday of his new career as an internet investor: his Daily Candy, the email newsletter for women who buy handbags, has sold to cable giant Comcast for $125m, according to Silicon Alley Insider. That's more than had been rumored, and way more than Pittman in 2003 paid for his stake: $3.5m.

After EMI hired paisley-shirted IT exec Douglas Merrill away from Google to run the record label's digital business, other music groups have been on the hunt for a digital savior. Sony BMG, we hear, has been trying to fill an EVP position to run its digital music ventures. But after dangling a $700,000 salary in front of prospects for 8 months, its search firm, Korn/Ferry, still hasn't been able to fill the job. What this tells us: No one wants the job. One requirement: The candidate must "have a keen eye to find money on opportunities at hand." That graspingness is precisely why the record labels are so unpopular with musicians, their fans, and the the technologists creating the online tools through which people are increasingly stealing — sorry, "discovering" — music. The industry's in such a pathetic state, we thought we'd help Sony BMG and Korn/Ferry by airing the confidential job listing:

No olds allowed. That's the unspoken HR mantra of Web startups — but the noisomely discriminatory practice seems to be spreading to some of the Valley's largest companies. Valley engineers are clucking over a job listing posted to a list run by the Software Development Forum. In it, an Oracle recruiter advertised a laundry list of required technical skills — but then noted that only "fresh grads" could apply, due to what seems to be an unofficial policy at Oracle: "We have multiple openings for our newly formed EBS Integrations group at Oracle but we have a restriction to hire only fresh graduates from outside." Companies from Microsoft and Google regularly make a practice of hiring engineers right out of college. They are younger, healthier, and more pliable — less costly in every way. But can Oracle legally advertise a job, but then reject a qualified applicant because they're not a "fresh grad"? It seems unlikely, but I'd welcome thoughts from HR experts in the comments. Oracle's job listing:

"Over the last year, employment for IT pros is up 10 percent. But of 456 IT pros surveyed, 59 percent said they believe there were fewer jobs available." [WSJ] (Image from Sysadmin of the Year contest)