Ask HN: Jobs & Startups in Seattle (urgentish)

29 points by singleserving1 15y ago ↗ HN

Urgency is relative - and this is a single serving account just for this question.

I live in NYC and my wife just got an offer for her dream job in Seattle. While I love my work here she put her carrier on-hold a long time so I could pursue mine. Long story short: me+her+kid are moving in 4 weeks or so to sunny tropical Seattle.

So I'm a developer (JS, CSS, PHP, 'HTML5', various CMSs, 3rd party API (Google, Twitter, FB, Bitly, Chartbeat, etc) browser plugins, PhoneGap and so on) with 7+ years experience who recently moved more into Product (ideas, prototyping, pitching, building, launching). All this on a web site with millions of pageviews a day. I know how to look for a 'developer' job but clueless as to product/developer roles.

We both need jobs for this move to be viable (she is in the culinary world) so I'd appreciate any tips on:

- large and small companies in Seattle that deal with the web that you'd recommend

- recommendations on job sites for (other than indeed.com - more like jobs.37signals.com)

- anything else you think could help!

I'll be at SXSW Interactive in a few days so if you know of any Seattle companies that will be there please respond too.

In many ways Amazon might be a good fit since I also come from a publishing/media company but I can't filter through their job listings enough to know what's a good fit or not... anyone from Amazon care to talk?

Thank you.

15 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] thread

aaronbrethorst 15y ago ↗

Joining the Seattle Tech Startups mailing list can't hurt. You'll meet some interesting folks on there, and should be able to get some leads on jobs.

tarr11 15y ago ↗

+1 on the STS list

FWIW - I did this exact thing in 2004 - I am one of the founders of PayScale (www.payscale.com). We (wife+3-month-old) moved from NYC to Seattle after we got funded. The 3 month old is now 6.5 and PayScale is doing pretty well :)

There is a pretty active startup community here. http://www.seattle20.com/ is a good place to start.

There are a lot of startup events going on in Seattle. You can view http://www.seattletechcalendar.com/ to see some of them.

BarkMore 15y ago ↗

You mentioned Amazon. Some other large companies are: Google (Fremont, Kirkland), Microsoft (Redmond, Bellevue), Facebook (near the Market).

anchoivy 15y ago ↗

Seattle 2.0 is pretty involved in the Seattle startup scene. You can check out their job board here at: http://www.seattle20.com/jobs/

Also, I know some TechStars Seattle companies are hiring. These jobs aren't listed on a particular website, but you can check out all the companies that launched in Seattle here: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/techstars-launches-ten-new-... If there is a company you're interested in, I can connect you to the founders as I am friends with alot of those TechStars folks.

TechFlash(http://techflash.com) is a good source that blogs about Seattle tech startups. You can keep an eye on that blog to see which companies received funding. I know BigTip.com just raised $500,000 and they are looking for a "hardcore web dev person".

Founders Co-op is an early stage investment group/incubator. Andy Sack(@andysack), the managing director of Founders Co-op and TechStars Seattle, has a list of his portfolio companies here http://founderscoop.com/portfolio.php. Some of them are hiring as well. You want to follow Andy Sack if you want to get on the ball with the Seattle startup scene. his blog is http://asack.typepad.com.

Hope any of this helps. I'll get back to you if I think of some more.

christiancoomer 15y ago ↗

If you're willing to learn Rails, Whitepages.com is in Seattle and is hiring engineers. I used to work there and left only to pursue my own passions, but there's a great team there and it was a fun job.

https://whitepagesinc.tms.hrdepartment.com/jobs/208/Software...

ronnier 15y ago ↗

Email me. I'm at amazon.

jasonallen 15y ago ↗

I'm an engineering director at Zynga's new Seattle office. Your skill set matches our open job reqs. Email me if you're interested.

jdp23 15y ago ↗

Great recommendations everybody. One more:

Once you're in Seattle, NWEN events are also great places for networking with startups. http://www.nwen.org/

gnubardt 15y ago ↗

We've got a few open positions in Seattle at Brightcove: http://www.brightcove.com/en/company/careers

flippyhead 15y ago ↗

Heh, it's funny, I'm about to do almost this exact same thing. We're in the Bay Area and my wife-like-person / girlfriend got a job at Microsoft in Redmond so to Seattle we go. My company is actually based there and is hiring: http://pathable.com/hiring-front-end-back-end-developer/. Might be a good fit.

scottporad 15y ago ↗

So, how do I get in touch with you? I'm the CTO at Cheezburger and we're looking for people just like you...http://jobs.cheezburger.com.

I'll be at SXSW if you'd like to meet in person. My contact info is on my blog: http://scottporad.com/contact.

niallsmart 15y ago ↗

Hey, let's get in touch. I'm working on a cool early stage product that's just about perfect for a product/developer guy. Small focused team, consumer web, interesting product. I'll be at SXSW - hopefully we can meet for a beer and a demo.

(plus - if it turns out this isn't gig for you, happy to intro you to a friend at Amazon - etc).

singleserving1 15y ago ↗

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, help, and direct info - this is much more than I imagined. I'll follow up directly with those who posted contact info tomorrow - I'll get my resume dusted and up to date first.

I've added an e-mail address to my profile. Spoiler alert: single.serving.hn@gmail.com

randfish 15y ago ↗

We just launched a recruiting promotion at SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/dp/engineer-page) and would love to have you apply! If you know or bump into other dev friends at SXSW or in Seattle, feel free to send some of those folks over too :-)

You're gonna love Seattle - it's an awesome town, and the opportunities for engineers are incredibly right now.

rwhitney 15y ago ↗

Check out substantial - http://substantial.com/ - I think they have some guys who will be at SXSW.

Also, check out opscode (opscode.com) - Both are promising startups.