Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#51

Post by mgarfias » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 3:56 AM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #47

shareme wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may sound unfair but in the USA broadband is not so good if you are not around major city hubs..which them being virtual might be their concern

I live in a US town of ~6k people, and currently get 6Mbps on the lowest tier plan available (50 Mbs is readily available, just a bit pricey for personal use). I don't buy this argument at all, as there are metro areas that will have worse connectivity than some rural areas within the US. I also wonder what the real reason is.

I live outside a town of 750 and have fiber to my freaking house.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#52

Post by mgarfias » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 3:58 AM UTC

Any sysadmin/ops positions? Er, *nix that is. I know next to nothing about windows these days.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#53

Post by kemayo » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 4:19 AM UTC

synnik wrote: post #48

kemayo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, yes. Developer team size is up to 23 now according to our about-us page. My estimate in that post was totally off.

Sorry, but this seems very odd to me that a developer would be almost 50% off in estimating their own team size, then post a second comment correcting it only halfway, and finally getting the correct answer by looking at your 'About Us' page? What kind of working environment do you have that in a team of less than 25, a member of that team can be that far off-base?

Lots of communication via Skype chats in which I don't pay attention to the count of people in the room, and developers split into a bunch of small product teams so I don't have personal dealings with most of them on a daily basis.

Also I'm bad at estimating these things apparently. :P

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#54

Post by akalsey » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 4:34 AM UTC

subway wrote: post #16

akalsey wrote: post #8

We're hiring Java wizards to work on the core of Tropo. http://tropo.com/ We're a distributed team (China, London, Orlando, Philly, Phoenix, and Bay Area) so we're adept at working remotely. Somewhere in the 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). Job description at http://www.…

Why the preferential treatment of folks from large cities and "technology hubs"? Seems to miss the point.

One reason is that we want our developers to be part of a technology community. Attending (and presenting at) industry events, meetups, bar camps, and local user groups. There's a lot more opportunity for that if you're located in certain parts of the country than others.

I'm sure that Buffalo, Oklahoma is a fantastic place to live, but we prefer you be somewhere you can hang out with, learn from, and teach other geeks.

That said, if you're unbelievably awesome, hit me up anyway. We like smart people regardless of their location.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#55

Post by kemayo » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 4:57 AM UTC

lfittl wrote: post #36

olalonde wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, you guys advertise this job post every month on HN. Hard to believe you haven't found the right candidate(s) yet...

Looks like they want to have only the best candidate, but for maintaining a horrible codebase. Obviously a position that's hard to fill.

I'm exaggerating the horribleness of the codebase for effect. Lots of it is in good shape, and we've been working on incremental rewrites to fix up the worst legacy spots. There are certainly bad bits, but they're also working bad bits, whose badness largely comes from being hard to bend to new use-cases.

However! I see a lot of developers who would have a hard time fixing a bug / making a small change in an area which has a lot of legacy cruft present without going and rewriting the whole thing. Now, they are right that rewriting it is probably the best course of action from a codebase-health viewpoint... but it's not necessarily the actual best use of their time. If code is working then it's not an urgent priority that it get rewritten.

To be slightly trite, "perfect is the enemy of good."

That's why we'd like to get developers who are okay with the idea of working on a codebase that contains legacy code. And that's why I'm a little bit over the top about it.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#56

Post by kemayo » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 4:58 AM UTC

tocomment wrote: post #39

shareme wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they do that with every job they advertise..I tend to not to believe them

Believe what?

Well, my claims about the working environment being filled with puppies and kittens are obviously a bit hard to stomach.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#57

Post by shafiqissani » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 6:49 AM UTC

nym wrote: post #46

I'm looking for a strong front-end developer (HTML/CSS/JS) for a 40/hr week contract position for three months with competitive pay.

http://shafiq.in/resume

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#58

Post by Andys » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 7:11 AM UTC

sconklin wrote: post #24

Canonical has a number of remote positions open: http://webapps.ubuntu.com/employment/

I am curious about learning what it is like to work for Canonical. eg, Linking to some blogs of people already on the team would help.

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#59

Post by vaidhy » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 12:50 PM UTC

spudlyo wrote: post #33

Blue Gecko (a remote DBA services company) is looking for intermediate to expert MySQL or PostgreSQL DBAs. Although our headquarters is in Seattle, many of our DBAs work at home full time, and our corporate culture is configured to accommodate remote workers. Since we operate 24/7 we need folks in every timezone. Drop me a line if you're interested, my email address is in my profile.

I am not able to see your email in the profile. Can you please update it?

Re: Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (January 2011 Edition)

#60

Post by chopsueyar » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 2:30 PM UTC

mgarfias wrote: post #51

_ea1k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a US town of ~6k people, and currently get 6Mbps on the lowest tier plan available (50 Mbs is readily available, just a bit pricey for personal use). I don't buy this argument at all, as there are metro areas that will have worse connectivity than some rural areas within the US. I also wonder what the real reason is.

I live outside a town of 750 and have fiber to my freaking house.

I live in an area with approx. 370,000 people and my only ISP choice is Comcast. Verizon will not provide FioS here or DSL, and the wireless ISP in our area says my neighbor's tree is too large and blocks LoS to their tower.