Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2013)

CarWoo!, San Francisco Bay Area (YC S09)

We are looking for an awesome full stack Rails developer to help us take the online auto industry by storm. You'll join a great engineering and design team that's working hard to bring car-buying into the 21st century. The features you create will help turn the mostly terrible experience of buying a new car into a wonderful experience for our customers. Responsibilities

Work with David, Tommy, Erik, Scott, Rimas, Tim, Derek, Jeremy, Peter, Adam, Jon, Todd, Matt, and Patrick to create a world class set of products. We're a small team, but we work smart and get a lot done. Here's some of the cool stuff we're working on right now: a queuing system to optimize our operations across the country, mobile apps, application of game theory, and a lot of other great things we can talk about when we chat.

You'll get the chance to work on any or all of this stuff if you so choose.

Qualifications

- Deep knowledge of Rails and everything that goes along with it (MVC, REST, relational database design/SQL)

- Solid grasp on modern web application design using Javascript, HTML, CSS

- Extensive Javascript experience outside of JQuery (Backbone, node.js)

- Experience with version control systems (we use Git/Github)

- Solid testing methodologies and willingness to write comprehensive tests before release

You get extra bonus points for:

- Extensive Javascript experience outside of JQuery (e.g. Backbone)

- Ability to write complex SQL

- Understanding of good RDBMS design. Experience optimizing queries.

- Experience with memcached, sphinx, and nginx

- Story-driven development

- Web service/API development (REST)

- Ability to play ping-pong skillfully and/or drive a go-kart furiously

Perks

- Full Benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k)

- Unlimited PTO

- $5,000 to buy anything you want to get your work done (must include an Apple computer of some sort)

- Competitive salary and equity in the company

If you're interested, send an email with your résume and something interesting about yourself to scott@carwoo.com

We're based in Silicon Valley, but if you live outside the Valley, we still really want to talk to you (we'll pay for your flight, hotel, and meals when you come interview with us).

brian (if this is indeed the same brian d foy, I don't know since he always uses 'd' with his name, per his style guide: http://www252.pair.com/comdog/style.html), I'm rather surprised to see you writing this.

First, it should be clear that for obvious reasons, I can't identify the company in question. My wife and I are starting a company trying to help people live their dream of living in other countries and that's a very hard thing to do. You (if you're really brian) know that I write http://www.overseas-exile.com/ and I've been writing that for years trying to help people move abroad because I love being an expat. We created this company because now we have a chance to really help people do what I'm so passionate about, but when someone tears down our work it also threatens to take away another chance for people to experience life abroad. The fact that we're doing this with IT companies is almost incidental: it's our background and it's what we know best.

What we don't do is throw CVs at a company without telling the candidate what the location and the company are like because it's important for the candidate to decide for themselves, rather than simply rely on rumors. We get to know the companies we work with so we can make sure that the candidate is happy with the company and the company is happy with the candidate. Everyone we've helped move abroad has thanked us and I don't believe anyone has any illusions that we're promising them a gold-plated Ferrari and a personal masseuse.

Regarding your comments about Booking.com and my reasons for leaving, people have asked and I publicly stated my reasons at http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2011/12/moving-to-paris.htm.... However, I was very cagey about that because much of the reason was intensely personal and nobody's darned business, but since you're attacking me by saying it's a "sad" thing I'm doing, I'll say it now: my wife had just had a baby, was very tired, and wanted to move back to her home country. I love my wife very dearly and I would do anything to help her. So off to France we went. Making a decision to move to another country is very hard and there are always many factors that come into play, but that was the primary reason and I've already told a few people about it privately, but I didn't shout it from the rooftops because it's nobody's business that my wife was tired and wanted to go home. Did I gripe about other issues from time to time? Sure, everyone does. But my primary motivation was my wife and daughter and it worked: my wife is very happy.

There are still plenty of well-known senior Perl developers who are at Booking.com: Yves, Rafael, Ævar, and many others who are known by first name to much of the community. Booking.com isn't a good fit for everyone, and not everyone is good fit for Booking.com -- that describes every business on the planet.

I also see that you linked to that "truth about Booking.com" post. I've never publicly commented on that simply because people have strong feelings about that company and just like vi versus emacs, I saw no point in wading into the debate.

So I'll say this about that post: that was clearly an anonymous disgruntled employee and that should be a warning sign to anyone who read it. Whoever they are, they've never been willing to stand up and take responsibility for their words, though if they're still working there, I could understand why. Their post was a mixture of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. Plus, I felt there was a lot of lying by omission. Note how many Booking employees responded (all but one of whom I know personally). They were honest about the company and generally positive about it. Some people don't understand why so many extremely talented Perl developers are happy to work there, but that alone should give people pause.

By now most people probably know that Booking.com isn't a "modern Perl" shop, but they're not "treating their employees like dogs". They're extremely business-oriented and while I don't always agree with their decisions, the fact that they've managed to become one of the largest internet properties on the planet says something about what they're doing right. And if you work for them and do well, you'll get plenty of advancement opportunities if you want it. And I also know plenty of programmers working for them who have earned fantastic bonuses by producing great results. They pay a fair salary for Amsterdam, bonuses, and if you qualify for the Dutch 30% ruling, you get an extra several hundred euros a month.

TL;DR: They're not for everyone, but the rumor mill is just that: a rumor factory.

Full-time, anywhere in the world: If you're a great UX Designer with desktop / mobile app experience and you're interested in solving problems in an amazing way for developers on Windows, drop me a line - paul@github.com.

And if you're a great designer but that word "Windows" puts you off, Email me anyways and let me tell you why it's not what you might be imagining.

Birmingham dev here. This is so frustrating because I see your logo everywhere, have often read about your movements and I've often imagined you're a cool company to work for. But, I have no Java or Ruby experience... doh.

Transcriptic: Web Development, Electrical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering

Menlo Park, CA

Transcriptic is "Amazon Web Services" for the life sciences. Rather than carry out wet-lab experiments by hand, researchers can code up (or visually configure) their experimental protocols and then run them in Transcriptic's central, highly automated 'biocenter' in an on-demand way. Customers have no upfront capital costs and pay for only what they use. Life science research today is incredibly slow, error-prone, monotonous, and expensive with researchers spending many hours a day every day just moving small volumes of liquids from one place to another. We're building a long-term company to completely change the way life science research and development is done.

We're looking for people for three types of positions: web, EE, and ME.

On the web side, we're looking for a highly talented full-stack web developer. On top of our robotic workcells is a slew of internal services as well as a Rails app that acts as our lab information management system and customer-facing UI. Challenges range from building rich, interactive interfaces for composing protocols to presenting analytical data generated by the lab back to the user. We use d3, Backbone, and some CoffeeScript today, but you'd be free to choose your own tools and libraries.

On the hardware side, you'd be part of a small functional team (2-3 people) working on developing new hardware to solve specific problems. We have in-house rapid prototyping and you'd also work with outsourced manufacture, whether in Sunnyvale or China. Our MCAD is Solidworks-based; most people here use Eagle for electronics but that would be up to you. Include a portfolio of projects you've worked on before; experience in robotics a major plus. If you have HVAC experience, note the separately, too. PhD is a plus but definitely not necessary.

We're a small startup (you'd be #11), but well funded and have customers. You'd be able to work on interesting science and hard technology in a really small, all technical team with lots of freedom and resources.

A biology background is preferred but not strictly necessary for outstanding people.

max at transcriptic.com

https://www.transcriptic.com/