Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (First Edition, November 2010)
Similar to the "Who is Hiring" thread but, please, remote positions only.
Remote and co-lo'd work posts should be kept separate. Many of us who work remotely tend to work exclusively remotely.
91 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadSince 2006, SpiderOak provides an easy, consolidated free online backup, sync, sharing, access & storage solution for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with a zero-knowledge approach to customer privacy. We use Python, Django, web.py, WSGI, jQuery, PostgreSQL, nginx, and varnish, with some occasional heavy-lifting help from C and Erlang.
SpiderOak is a distributed, virtual company - we all set our own work schedule and work from home, coffee shops, or anywhere that can provide a stable Internet connection. We coordinate via Wikis, IRC, email, telepathy, and even face-to-face when possible. We don't bother with time sheets or other types of wage accounting -- we're a tight enough group that it would be obvious if someone wasn't doing her or his job.
We've noticed that some of the most accomplished people we know don't necessarily have polished or extensive resumes. As such, we don't care about formal education, age, gender, geographic location, resume, etc. We like smart people who love what they do and do it really well. Period.
The rest of the story is here: https://spideroak.com/blog/20101030125548-spideroak-is-growi...
Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but you may not want to list "age" and "gender" unless you're listing all the protected classes that you can't legally care about.
Even those categories are not protected in the vast majority of the world. Plus, we need some kind of flourish to express the idea that a business is committed to equal opportunity.
I like "equal opportunity employer" for that, but it's been watered down.
http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/
Front & Back End (PHP)
Email me - let's chat!
git experience preferred.
bonus if you're familiar with {fb platform, amazon simpledb}
send me an email if interested (kevin at rentmineonline)
See the full listing: http://bitzesty.theresumator.com/apply/uKDfa0/Ruby-On-Rails-...
We're looking for senior (team-lead) and regular developers. It's a PHP job, and we exclusively hire remote workers. We have about 16 developers at the moment, but we're expanding because we have a lot of projects on the backburner that we'd like to get started on.
We only hire people who can do everything. You have to be able to write backend PHP code, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and SQL. We don't want to have people employed who we can't just point at any problem that comes up. (People do tend to find their own niche, admittedly.)
...unless you're a great search developer, in which case we'll hire you anyway and lock you in a small room where you will never do anything but improve our search. <3 <3 <3
I will warn you that, no matter how awesome you are, everyone we hire spends their first 90 days in the small-projects and bugfixes silo. We think that it's a great way to make sure that everyone knows the code.
Also, it's a 10 year old PHP codebase; we predate almost every PHP framework. We're running an in-house framework. Understand that you will have to deal with varying levels of code. :)
http://deviantart.theresumator.com/apply
I'm not in need of a job right now, I am poking around because I'd like to have some side work for when I leave the country. Not mandatory by any means.
Just an idea, but you may want to get off your high horse and go do something useful other than criticizing people trying to discuss something.
Academically, he's trying to serve up a point. But he's potentially doing more damage to himself by doing so.
I don't need a job right now and as I mentioned elsewhere, this kind of thing usually takes a company out of the running for me anyway.
I know this sounds harsh, but I really feel compelled to type it.
That's not what I'm getting at. The resumator thing is annoying.
People make note of far less serious UI mea culpas on here all the time. But when they want a job, they're suddenly willing to tolerate anything.
The hypocrisy here is astounding.
I feel like it might be necessary to point out a bug in a product I've tried to use, as explanation for why I don't use that product (when the discussion is topical.)
I might be inclined to complain about the Resumator bug, if it so affected me, but only after I've used it to apply to the job I wanted, and definitely not instead of.
Regardless of exactly who is being hypocritical, the message you're sending is that the annoyance of using Resumator (a service that DeviantArt did not build) is greater than your desire for this job.
If I were the potential employer, I would assume that means one of a few things, all of which are harsh: - You're too lazy to submit your own resume, and would prefer someone contacted you in whatever manner most convenient to you - You're too good to submit your resume, and would prefer someone contacted you in whatever manner is most convenient to you - You don't like the job that much, but would definitely take a paycheck if someone who was willing to do the job for you would also pay you as though you'd done it - You're FAR too detail-oriented, refusing to lower yourself to the standards of a poorly designed resume submission method.
You can extrapolate out the rest if you like, as an exercise to the reader.
For what it's worth, I don't necessarily believe any of those things, but one of those is the impression I got reading your previous posts in this thread.
Yes, submitting for a job is an annoyance, and can be time consuming. It's part of the process.
Such cues would be carelessness, lack of attention to detail, poor handwriting, anything that suits the fancy of the person doing the observing really.
As someone who's doing some casual sniffing about, I do the same thing. If I see indications that the company isn't the kind of place I'd enjoy working for, I figure it's cheaper/easier for me to never even bother than to potentially get into a position that makes me unhappy.
That is, if I see a job posting rife with misspellings (not that this one was, just an example), that requires PDF/DOC resume uploading (guilty, in this case, which is surprising on HN), or that is asking for more years of experience in a language that hasn't existed that long.
(I'm looking forward to the MINIMUM 5 YEARS OF CLOJURE EXPERIENCE posts)
They tripped a wire. I gave them a chance to explain/correct/laugh-with-me. None happened, instead I trigger the hypocritical and self-righteous horde of hackerne.ws
So the employer is allowed to have standards but I am not. Yeah, I see how it is.
I'd rather start my own company than deal with people who can retain that magnitude of cognitive dissonance and remain outwardly functional.
Either you consider the job worthy of the annoyance of applying, or you don't. Given the latter, I see little point in bitching about the process while still soliciting employment.
Call me old-fashioned.
I agree that requiring a PDF/DOC/etc. is annoying and horrible UI and probably drives off some brilliant prospective employees.
And I have also had the experience you're having now, where it seems like everyone has agreed to ignore the point and belabour ad nauseum some other, tangentially related issue.
Front-end web dev (HTML/CSS/JS/jQuery/WordPress/Joomla/PHP/MySQL guy).
See http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/careers for job listings, and check my profile for contact info if you have any questions.
Looking for senior C developers (with a good background in security)
and
Looking for people with a Linux sys admin background, strong security foundation and also proficient with scripting languages (shell, perl, php). Mainly to help us automate, update, manage and clean up infected sites running Wordpress, Joomla, etc ,etc.
Email me dd@sucuri.net for more details.
But I use oDesk.
Our 12 year old codebase is mostly in TCL/AOLServer. TCL isn't that bad and can be learned in a couple of days. Big plus if we find someone strong in Javascript/jQuery and front-end design.
Almost all of Ruby Lane's staff is distributed with just a couple of regular workers in our SF office.
Code samples, Github URLs, or a good cover letter are just as important as a nice resume.
OKFN (http://okfn.org) is a non-profit organization promoting open knowledge: any kind of information – sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata – that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed.
In particular we're working on an open source data catalogue, CKAN (http://ckan.net) which is used by various governments (including the UK's http://data.gov.uk) as an open data registry. Other projects include WhereDoesMyMoneyGo.org, an interactive state spending visualization site, OpenShakespeare.org, WeavingHistory.org and many other sites.
Most of our projects are based on Python, Pylons, SQLAlchemy (although we're looking to go NoSQL mid-term). We also look for people who are good at JavaScript, in particular Protovis and other visualization toolkits.
If you're interested, ping me at friedrich.lindenberg@....org
Extra bonus ifyou can code on Rails
This is for remote, short-term gigs. You can set your hours. The only requirement is that you kick ass and add value from day one.
Email your resume and/or github URL to joseph at metaoptimize dot com
We are looking for generalists and specialists:
* Hardcore programmers who learn new technologies and APIs quickly. * People with backgrounds in machine learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, and/or search. Medium experience is fine, you don't have to have a PhD.
* Visualization programmers
Did I miss you? Send me an email anyway, and explain how you kick ass and are a self-starter.
Example things you might work on:
* Take this Python/Java program that operates in batch over textfiles, and convert it into a webservice (REST+JSON or XML-RPC or whatever) that operates real-time online (one document at a time).
* I have a NLP tool but the output is dirty. Build these simple text processing components to clean it up, e.g. by discarding low freq terms.
* Exploratory statistical analysis over data sets, to see if there are any interesting patterns. (More open ended)
* Take this code for a neural network, and write scripts that batch invoke the NN with different hyperparameters to do model selection.
Do you mind elaborating your process of hiring remote workers for short term gigs? Do you make them sign NDA agreements?
How do you make sure they are not abusing the code that you give them?
Thanks
Depending upon whether I think they can take a leading role, I will ask them some hard open-ended NLP or ML puzzles over email. I will also do a skype screen going over a breadth of technical questions.
If I do want to work with someone, I send them a standard contractor agreement. It include a variety of clauses, including an NDA, as well as terms governing ownership of the code and IP developed, the payment schedule, etc. The NDA is extended to cover all NDAs that I sign on behalf of MetaOptimize, i.e. if MetaOptimize is working for client Foo, and you're working for MetaOptimize, then you are also bound by the Foo NDA agreement.
But a contract is only as good as the parties signing it, so to a certain extent I have to rely upon references and my gut to see if I trust the worker.
Does that answer your question?
We are a small agency (2 people currently) and we just have too much work, most of what I'm willing to share is small business websites, testing, documentation. I also have some work around managing our deployment that I'd like done.
You can find us online (http://eldarion.com/) or on twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/eldarion_team).
Our team is entirely distributed and we communicate primarily via IRC. If you're interested email James Tauber (jtauber at eldarion dot com), and if you have any questions you can email me (alex.gaynor@gmail.com).
PS: We're big fans of Lord of the Rings, I think company policy requires that you've seen it.
Blue Gecko (a managed database services company) is looking for a intermediate to advanced MySQL DBA. If you're a seasoned PostgreSQL DBA we'd also love to talk to you.
We're a smallish (< 50 folks) company who has been in this space since 2001. Our corporate culture is very remote-work friendly and flexible. Currently we have three folks who are 100% remote workers, and many others who do it at least two days a week.
We've previously hired an HN reader, and he's worked out great!
Questions? mikeh<whirlpool>bluegecko.net