# Writing Style — Jerome's hiring posts

The job of every post is to leave one impression in the reader's head:

> "Jerome is efficient. Jerome knows AI. If I need someone who knows AI, Jerome is a strong candidate."

Nothing in a post should work against that sentence.

## Who I'm writing for

- **Primary:** startup founders and CTOs. They hire fast, value shipping speed, and smell fluff instantly.
- **Secondary:** recruiters. They skim. They need the impact to be obvious without decoding jargon.

Write for the founder. The recruiter will follow if the value is clear and the numbers are concrete.

## Where it lives

- **Long-form blog post** on my personal blog — the canonical, complete version.
- **LinkedIn teaser** — a short hook that earns the click to the blog. Never paste the whole post; tease the result and the surprise, then link.

## Voice

- **Contrarian, but I challenge ideas — never people.** Attack hype, bad practices, and lazy defaults. Stay generous to the humans doing the work. Spicy take, kind tone.
- **Confident, not arrogant.** State things plainly. Back the claim, then move on. No hedging, no chest-beating.
- **Teacher first.** My edge is explaining hard AI clearly. If a smart non-expert can follow it, I've done the job — and clarity itself signals mastery.
- **Efficient.** The writing should *feel* like the thing it claims about me. Tight, fast, no wasted words.

## Hard rules

- **No emoji.** Clean text reads senior.
- **Short paragraphs.** One to three sentences. Lots of white space. Skimmable.
- **Concrete numbers over adjectives.** "Cut latency 40%", "shipped in a weekend", "200 lines" — not "much faster", "quickly", "small".
- **Every post ends with a takeaway or CTA.** A clear point to remember, or a soft invitation to reach out. Never end flat.
- **No fluff openers.** Kill "In today's fast-paced world", "As we all know", "AI is changing everything".

## Post types I write

1. **Build logs / showcases** — "I built X with AI in a weekend. Here's how, and what surprised me." Proves I ship.
2. **How-to / tutorials** — teach one concrete AI technique end to end. Proves I understand it deeply enough to make it simple.

Both should carry a contrarian hook, not just a recap. The build log isn't "look what I made" — it's "here's the thing everyone gets wrong, and what I did instead."

## Structure (long-form blog)

1. **Hook (1-2 lines).** A contrarian claim or a sharp result. Make them need the next line.
2. **The stake.** Why this matters to someone building a product right now.
3. **The body.** The build, or the how-to. Short sections. Concrete numbers. Show the work, not just the outcome.
4. **The turn.** The non-obvious lesson — the part that makes the reader think "I hadn't framed it that way."
5. **Takeaway + soft CTA.** One sentence they remember. Then a low-key "I'm building things like this — reach out if useful."

## LinkedIn teaser formula

- Line 1: the contrarian hook or the headline number.
- Line 2-3: the stake, plus one specific detail that proves it's real.
- Last line: "Full writeup → [link]".
- White space between every line. No emoji. No hashtag spam (0-2 max).

## Hiring signal — keep it subtle

Let the work do the selling. No "I'm looking for a job" banners. The competence is the pitch.

The only overt signal is the closing line: a calm note that I build this kind of thing and I'm open to the right AI work. One sentence. Confident, not needy.

## Openers — steal these shapes

- "Everyone's adding agents to their product. Most of them shouldn't."
- "I shipped [X] in a weekend. The hard part wasn't the AI."
- "The standard advice on [topic] is wrong, and it's costing teams weeks."
- "I cut [metric] by [N]% by removing code, not adding it."

## Do / Don't

| Do | Don't |
|----|-------|
| Lead with a result or a contrarian claim | Warm up with context nobody asked for |
| Give the real number | Say "significantly", "a lot", "fast" |
| Challenge the practice | Mock the people doing it |
| One idea per post | Cram three insights and dilute all of them |
| End with a takeaway | Trail off after the last technical point |
| Show the surprise / what I'd do differently | Write a flawless highlight reel |

## The gut check before publishing

1. Does the first line make a founder stop scrolling?
2. Is there at least one concrete number?
3. Could a recruiter restate the impact in one sentence?
4. Did I challenge an idea without punching down at anyone?
5. Does the close leave a clear takeaway — and a quiet door to reach out?
6. Cut it 20% shorter. Now does it read tighter?

If all six pass, ship it.
