AI startup founder unhappy after Bengaluru hiring post goes viral

The relatively high salary mentioned, as well as the low-experience criteria, meant that many were willing to apply, leading to the post going viral. The post continued to trend on X, which led to problems for Kamath, who wrote on Tuesday, that his inbox was being flooded with applications. As such, he is planning to utilise AI to filter the candidates.

An AI start-up founder was left unhappy after his Bengaluru job hiring post went viral on X, leading to him receiving a very large number of applications.

On February 24, Sudarshan Kamath, the founder of Smallest AI, which works on hyper-realistic voice AI platforms, posted a hiring ad on the social media platform X, stating that the company was looking for a full-stack engineer with 0-2 years of experience, who is ready to join immediately and work from office 5 days a week in Indranagar, Bengaluru.

They offered a salary of Rs 40 LPA, with 15-25 LPA base and 10-15 LPA ESOPs. There were no resume requirements, but a short 100-word introduction was sought.

His post said, "We are looking to hire a cracked full-stack engineer at @smallest_AI

Salary CTC - 40 LPA

Salary Base - 15-25 LPA

Salary ESOPs - 10-15 LPA

Joining - Immediate

Location - Bangalore (Indiranagar)

Experience - 0-2 years

Work from Office - 5 days a week

College - Does not matter

Resume - Not needed

Send a small 100-word text introducing yourself + links to your best work to [e-mail]"

"Cracked engineers" is a term used to describe highly capable and talented software engineers who are not afraid of change or new ideas. The relatively high salary mentioned, as well as the low-experience criteria meant that many were willing to apply, leading to the post going viral.

When it blew up, Kamath wrote, "Just FYI.

This is how we have always hired. Not sure why this one blew up.

Most of our team doesn’t have a tier 1 college background. But they’re some of the smartest folks I have ever met.

We also have college dropouts, ex-entrepreneurs in the team.

Brilliance can come from anywhere."

The post continued to trend on X, which led to problems for Kamath, who wrote on Tuesday, that his inbox was being flooded with applications. As such, he is planning to utilise AI to filter the candidates.

"While typically I would be happy when a post goes viral, this time I think the purpose for posting this has been defeated.

Since the time I put this post, to now, we receive 5-6 resumes every single minute."

"This inbox has become a spam inbox. I plan to run an LLM on it so I can filter out the good ones.

Let’s see", he said.