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Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (January 2011 Edition)

170 points by scorchin ↗ HN
As many have been posting about new beginnings and starting afresh, it's time for another Hiring thread.

Please lead with the location of the position and make it clear if working remotely is a possibility.

167 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] thread
tocomment
Gaithersburg, MD - A payment processing software company I used to work for is hiring an internal applications developer. You'd be working with Python, SQL Server, IIS and other technologies to automate internal processes.

They'd prefer someone local but working remotely might be ok.

Email me (in profile)

ccoop
I'm looking for a tech co-founder for an education software start-up. Location will be either Boulder or SF.

Interested in learning more?

Contact me: letsdobigthings [at] gmail

Andaith
Between Bath and Bristol, possibly relocating to Bath, England.

Looking for a PHP developer to join a small web design agency.

Email: andrew [AT] moresoda [DOT] co [DOT] uk

[deleted]
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gnubardt
Brightcove (an online video platform) is currently hiring in Cambridge, Seattle and London.

http://brightcove.com/careers

I work in Engineering and it's a blast! We're mostly using java and flex with python at times, but the scale we operate at means it's always interesting.

lkrubner
In New York City there are a lot of jobs. I went to 3 job interviews and got offers from 2. All 3 had tests of my programming skill, though the 3rd was ruthless about minor syntax errors. For instance, the guy talking to me asked me how to find all of the Apache servers running on a server. He just wanted the number. I typed:

ps aux | grep apache | wc -l

but this wrongly included the command I was typing. We were working on their dev server and I was typing the commands into the terminal. I got back 12 when the real answer was 11. He eventually showed me what I should have typed:

ps aux | grep apache | grep -v grep | wc -l

The grep -v screens out the line I had just typed which had "grep apache" in it. Of course, there are other ways to do this, but this was the first thing I thought of. Of my error, I thought that was somewhat minor, but this guy had recently been hired to clean up a sloppy programming department, so he was looking for programmers who were flawless.

The other 2 tests at the other 2 jobs covered the usual questions (write a JOIN statement, write a sub-query, what is the difference between GET and POST?). On one of the interviews, 2 programmers came in to talk to me and they gave me a short PHP script which was working but which was badly written. They asked me how I would re-write it. Easy enough.

My sense is there is a lot of hiring going on in New York City. Possibly not enough local talent to fill all the jobs, but the businesses are here for other reasons (other than programming talent) so I think eventually programming talent from elsewhere will get drawn to New York City. There are some cities in the USA that are in deep economic decline, and will probably remain so for the next 5 years, so perhaps some of the programmers from those cities will migrate to New York City.

cperciva
Completely off-topic, but...

  ps aux | grep apache | grep -v grep | wc -l
A more succinct, albeit less portable, alternative is 'pgrep apache | wc -l'. (Or 'pgrep httpd | wc -l', depending on your apache commandline.)
ericb
Email him this, which is more succinct and does the same:

ps aux | grep [a]pache | wc -l

(because you use the character class, it doesn't find itself as what it searches for is different than its text)

twp
Or just

pgrep httpd | wc -l

snorkel
Or just

pgrep -c apache

bch
kamloops$ pgrep -c apache

pgrep: unknown option -- c

Usage: pgrep [-filnvx] [-d delim] [-G gid] [-g pgrp] [-P ppid] [-s sid] [-t tty]

             [-U uid] [-u euid] pattern ...
kamloops$ uname -sr

NetBSD 5.99.42

kamloops$

edit: formatting.

Timothee
[OT] Wouldn't "ps aux | grep -c [a]pache" work the same way? Everyone seems to put "| wc -l|" but I have used the -c option to do that directly.
cd34
ps ax|grep -Ei '(apache|httpd)'|grep Ss|wc -l

lsof|grep TCP|grep -Ei '(apache|httpd)|cut -f 1 -d ' '|sort|uniq|wc -l

apache -S 2>&1|grep server|wc -l

apache2ctl -S 2>&1|grep server|wc -l

are processes/threads really servers? His question was a bit ambiguous. I wouldn't have accepted that job position either. :)

brentoids
Ambiguous questions are great to ask candidates. It helps to filter out those that neither realize the ambiguity nor ask clarifying questions. Questioning before compliance is a valuable important trait.
tocomment
I consider myself a good developer but that grep apache thing is something I would have to look up.

I only use grep once or twice a month on average. Why do employers expect you to have every possibly relevant thing memorized? I hate it. </rant>

BrandonM
I use grep several times a week. If the job is one that will leverage command line skills, it would make sense to understand grep. It's not like "grep [f]oo" is an alien command; it's basically a pattern.
tocomment
I do see your point but still if you have an otherwise good web developer I'm sure he can learn grep.

I've been meaning to make a web comic where software companies end up with Exactly the employees they interview for. Eg the boss asks "why the does the guy we hired keep solving project Euler problems all day?"

sx
Pattern Insight is hiring in Mountain View CA. We are looking for software engineers, QA engineers and tech sales:

http://patterninsight.com/about/careers.php

We are building search products for semi-structured data.

We are cash flow positive and growing fast. Our customers are some of the biggest tech companies in the world. That said, we are still early and looking for people that want to be part of the core team and shape our future.

Contact us at: jobs@patterninsight.com

xlpz
We are looking for good hackers with experience in free software. We work on WebKit (maintainers of the GTK+ port), networking, multimedia, javascript, etc. Working remotely is perfectly possible.

The company is Igalia (http://www.igalia.com), and we have a sort of cooperative structure (no bosses, all major decisions taken democratically).

If it sounds like your kind of thing, the email is in my profile.

oscardelben
Your email is not visible to other users. Please put it in your about section.
xlpz
Fixed, thank you!
jeffbarr
The Amazon Web Services team is hiring for on-site positions in Seattle (WA), Luxembourg, Tokyo, Herndon (VA), and Cape Town (South Africa), Dublin (Ireland), and Slough (UK). We don't offer remote work, but some of the positions do include relocation assistance.

I've scraped our official job site and used the data to create a tag cloud of the jobs at http://awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/jobs/all_aws_jobs.html . I'm still working on the styling.

The official AWS job site is at Our official job site is http://aws.amazon.com/jobs .

There are too many types of jobs to list here. We need developers, business developers, managers, solutions architects, trainers, and technical support.

euroclydon
AWS seems to have more open positions than I would imagine they should. What are the turnover/pay/working conditions like there?
jeffbarr
I don't have an official turnover figure, but I've been there 8.5 years and counting.

As far as working conditions, people show up and they work. We don't have a whole lot of toys or frills at the office. We don't get free food or drinks, but we are paid well and can afford to buy our own. The focus is on meeting customer needs and on shipping stuff that works well and doesn't break as it scales or endures heavy loads. We ship often and run fast (see the AWS blog at http://aws.typepad.com to get an idea of how fast).

Teams are responsible for building and running services, and for fixing them when they break. Many teams measure the number of high-priority tickets generated by their services over the course of a year and set year-over-year goals to drive the number down. As a dev, you might get to carry a pager from time to time, and you will learn to build services that are so robust that they never wake you up :-).

We are really happy with the success of AWS to date, and that's why we are hiring.

As a new employee you'll be put to work right away on something that is of real and immediate value to the company. You'll learn on the job and you'll get to rub shoulders with really sharp people.

Pay is competitive by industry standards and is generally a mix of cash and stock grants. We also have a full suite of benefits.

euroclydon
Thanks for the great answer! It sounds very professional. I've read most of Steve Yegge's old blog posts, and was always struck by how Amazon's culture is one that values solid technical skills and experience.
jeffbarr
You are welcome. Will you be applying?
cperciva
There's a bug in your tag cloud: You're splitting on whitespace. The tag "venture capitalists", for example, really isn't the same as the tag "venture" plus the tag "capitalists"...
jeffbarr
That's a tough bug to fix. I use each word in the title and location, minus a list of stop words. There's no intelligence or built-in vocabulary.
cperciva
There's no intelligence or built-in vocabulary.

Have you tried automatically learning a vocabulary based on seeing which words go together often? I'm thinking e.g., if the word "Block" is followed by the word "Store" more than X% of the time, there should probably be an atomic "Block Store" tag.

Hmm, this sounds like a fun puzzle. Can you send me your dataset?

tocomment
I'd be interested to apply to the Herndon, VA location but are the interviews really bad? Would I have to study my data structures book before coming in?
jerdfelt
I've actually been looking at Amazon recently and found the number of positions available overwhelming. I think I would do well in dozens of the positions posted.

I don't know if I should be applying to a bunch of positions to get a better feel of which one is "best" or if I should approach it differently.

How would you suggest proceeding when so many positions seem to be relevant?

thinkcomp
Think Computer Corporation, Palo Alto, CA

http://www.facecash.com

We're looking for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry developers to continue developing our mobile payment system.

stanleydrew
Twilio is hiring. We've got a lot of interesting problems to solve and are looking for senior/junior/intern software engineers. We use php, python, java, nginx, twisted, mysql, redis, appengine, and a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. Check out http://www.twilio.com/jobs or email me at andrew@twilio.com.
dmor
We're also hiring for a developer evangelist and marketing manager to join my team, I can be reached directly at danielle@twilio.com
jamii
JobScore requires details such as an address and a US landline number. This is fairly unnecessary and also annoying if, like me, you have neither. Even selecting a country is problematic.
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daveambrose
Scoop St. in New York City is hiring sales and social media savvy folks who are passionate about discovering their city. We believe in the power of group buying online today and our team has been working in the space over the last two years, as things were really getting started.

NYC metro preferred but remote positions for social media is possible. See http://www.scoopst.com/jobs or email dave@scoopst.com

troels
Copenhagen, Denmark. Remote not possible and we can't help with relocation.

I've just been hired as CTO for a well-funded startup, Greenwire. We recycle used consumer electronics (Primarily mobile phones) and send them for refurbishment and resale.

I'm looking for a developer to help me build the IT infrastructure. We'll be working on LAMP technology, probably PHP.

Have a read at http://greenwiregroup.com/

softbuilder
Just a bit of feedback here: When you can't help with relocation (which definitely can be costly, don't get me wrong) you contradict the notion that you're a well-funded startup.
troels
Thanks for the heads up. The problem is more a practical concern than a financial one. If you have a work permit (EU citizen), then we we would consider you, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn't prefer a local candidate.
tudorg
Berlin, Germany. No telecommuting but we can help with relocation. At IPTEGO we're a bunch of HNers that would like to meet you.

We're a well funded company doing an analytics and troubleshooting product for next generation networks (NGNs). We use C/C++, python and javascript. Please email jobs@iptego.com and mention HN somewhere.

sharms
Just sent my resume your way, looking forward to hearing from you
gommm
I'm hiring Rails programmers in Shanghai.. Also looking for interns.

Email is in my profile

ricosroughnecks
Hey, I'm a dev in Tokyo, looking to move to Shanghai. I would have preferred to email you, but the email in your profile is quite difficult to parse. My email is in my profile ;-).
hebejebelus
I'm pretty sure that "squiggly sign" refers to @. :)
gommm
Oh, hadn't realized that it wouldn't be obvious :-)
gommm
Cool, I used to live in Kyoto before moving to Shanghai...

Your email is not in your profile (the email field is kept private, you need to add your email to your about section...)

Squiggly sign means @.. Just want to prevent spammers from harvesting my email...

akalsey
We're hiring Java wizards to work on the core of Tropo. http://tropo.com/

Bay Area preferred, but we'd also love to talk to you if you're located near any other large US city or technology hub (Seattle, Boulder, Austin, Chicago, Boston, NYC, Philly, etc). We're already a distributed team (China, London, Orlando, Philly, Phoenix, and Bay Area) so we're adept at working remotely.

Job description at http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?...

We're also looking for a NOC engineer in Las Vegas. http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?...

bretpiatt
San Francisco Bay Area, CA / Austin, TX / San Antonio, TX

I'm hiring devops integration consultants that want to work on OpenStack helping enterprises and service providers deploy solutions based on it (it is posted as only San Antonio on the job listing but all 3 locations are great, Bay Area would actually be ideal).

http://jobs.rackspace.com/job/San-Antonio-Linux-Cloud-Integr...

Rackspace is also hiring for many positions: http://jobs.rackspace.com/content/map/

btipling
These listings include positions at Cloudkick. So please apply! We need good JavaScript and Django developers. :)
c4urself
Changer is small and growing company and is hiring in Leidschendam, Netherlands. Contact us at http://www.changer.nl. We're looking for someone who loves building web applications. We use Python/Django and .NET/MVC.
jobsatraptr
Location: Mountain View, CA (a couple blocks from 101)

Remote: Sorry, no remote work

Raptr is hiring for frontend web, backend web, and desktop client application software engineer positions.

http://raptr.com/

We help people get more out of their (video) games. (Finding games, tracking playtime & achievements across multiple platforms, etc.)

We're looking for folks with a solid CS background, and a good top to bottom understanding of large scale web applications.

Backend web positions work on scaling, data, and providing apis to the frontend team (80% PHP, some Python, a tiny bit of legacy Perl). Frontend web team writes html, javascript, and view layer php code using backend apis. Client Application team writes a python + QT application for chat + friends + gameplay tracking.

Take a look at the job descriptions at http://raptr.com/info/jobs, and email me (chris-jobs@raptr.com) with resume for quick consideration if you're interested.

dogas
PipelineDeals (http://www.pipelinedeals.com) is looking for a full-time senior sysadmin to maintain our production stack, hosted on amazon ec2.

If load balancing, Mysql clustering, maintaining dozens of servers, working with a great group of smart guys, and having an endless supply of fun and interesting projects to work on sounds like your cup of tea, drop me a line.

grant@pipelinedealsco.com

PipelineDeals is 5 years old, bootstrapped, quite profitable, and steadily growing. We are based in Seattle and Philadelphia. Remote applicants no problem!