Month: July 2007

BYOCommunities

F—: I wanted to ask you about the the Ning network.

Welcome to Ning

Welcome to Ning
Ning, Palo Alto, California

 

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/80sec @ f/8, iso100, 17mm (25mm)

Me: Okay, but I’m not the person to ask, you should have you should have gone to Lunch 2.0 and asked Gina yourself.

F—: How does it compare to Facebook? Does it feel like you are creating more of a community?

Me: Facebook is best for personal social networking. (Among other things,) Ning is basically Yahoo! groups for Web 2.0 (…or they should head that direction). 🙂

F—: I see. Is there any other sites doing similar stuff?

Me: Yeah, I think there are a couple.

F—: Cool. Thanks.

Me: No problem.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Long live the Revolution!

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”
—Ernesto “Che” Guevara

I knew politically, I was getting left of center, but I didn’t realize I fell off the scale…

Che Chay

The irony here was my brother bought me a “People’s Republic of Berkeley” t-shirt when I was in grad school because I was such a conservative. 🙂

This Chay as Che eCard was sent to me by Michael Rowley.

Have a great Fri-Chay!

Posted on by tychay 1

PHP and front end job at Grayboxx

Today, I received another cold call for a contract-for-hire position in god-knows-where for god-knows-what. My resume—do you read?

In keeping with my new policy, here is another job spam in case anyone is interested:

Based on your experience with web applications and interface development, we believe these jobs may be of interest to you or someone you know.

“Lead Web Applications Engineer ~ Revolutionize Local Search”
Grayboxx
Saratoga, CA
Full job description

“JavaScript / CSS / HTML Programmer ~ Revolutionize Local Search”
Grayboxx
Saratoga, CA
Full job description

The web engineer job at Grayboxx is PHP, so score one for Accolo’s filters (how did I get on your mailing list though?)

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Sorry, my badoo!

Working for a social networking company means I have to test out all the social networks out there. I tested one out recently and their importers just e-mailed 25 random users from my Yahoo! address book (no UI to select, they just did it as soon). I never invite people unless they’re already on the network.

If you’re one of the 25. Sorry about that.

(I guess I know one of the reasons why badoo is growing so fast.)

Dicks.

Posted on by tychay 0

BrightRoll is hiring

BrightRoll’s logo

I know everyone thinks that I have the hate on Ruby, but “some of my best friends use Rails.” 🙂

Actually, I used to work with the CEO and CTO of BrightRoll and they have a killer product. BrightRoll is a preroll and postroll advertising platform with customers such as CBS, ABC, Fox News, Comcast, and ESPN. (Note to BrightRoll: The RealMedia full episode ads don’t deliver on CBS Mac Safari. Your problem?) Think of all of that revenue and product traction with only 10 employees! They currently work out of the Financial District in San Francisco right near Chinatown (good food) and very easy access to the BART. Sometimes we have lunch and shoot the shit.

(And yes, they use Ruby on Rails. Dru has put a lot of thought into his platform choice, including a lot of discussions with me. When I grow up, I want to be Dru.)

You can read about the job openings here, but here is a quick summary:

  • Ruby/Rails Engineer
  • Operations Engineer
  • Server/Back end Engineer
  • Senior Product Manager

The most important features they are looking for are:

  1. Intelligence / Skills
  2. Culture fit
  3. Experience

So either look them up and/or pop me an e-mail explaining why I should refer you. Disclaimer: I get $5k if I refer you so it’s probably better you have someone else who knows them refer you, since it’ll just go into my “piss on Rails” piggy bank.

As I like to say, in Web 2.0 there are basically only two products out there: search and social networking. And both of them are powered by advertising. No matter what happens with the internet video thing, one thing is certain, it’s going to be powered by advertising. And Brightroll will be there to ensure that deliverability.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 3

Job: PHP senior web developer and QA tester

Please see this post

Terrence,

Good morning! I’m writing in the hopes that you can help point me in the right direction with respect to my search for a Sr. Web Developer an/or QA Tester who has expertise with PHP 5, Zend, Ajax, LAMP, Web 2.0 technologies, and the like.

I will certainly pay a referral fee upon successful hire for anyone whom you can recommend, and would welcome any input you may have. Please contact me via email or at any of the numbers listed below for additional information.

Thanks, and have a great day!

contact: andrewp [at] this site

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Things are bubbly

When are you in a bubble?

I say you know you’re in a bubble when people stop talking about what they’re doing and start talking about money. In the last bubble you’d overhear so many conversations of going public, options vesting, and 16-month “exit strategies”—I used to get sick when I went out to eat at a decent restaurant.

Now it’s mostly about being bought out. I’ve been told by many people that it’s because Sarbanes-Oxley, but, since this is their territory, not mine, I have to accept that as the truth of it all—even if I suspect they have a strong libertarian streak. Or maybe this is the financial equivalent of “the troops” griping?

Another outcome of a bubble is getting slammed with requests for job offers. (During the last bubble they’d hire anyone and they’d like it.) I wish recruiters would take a moment to read my resume to realize that I’m either unqualified, overqualified, or simply have a better job. I used to forward this to my friends but the count has gotten so insane that I can’t keep up and respond politely anymore. So instead I’m creating a jobs section to this blog and posting them publicly. Don’t want your info posted publicly? Take the time to know me before you spam me.

(I’m not angry, I’m just an engineer and I have other things to be doing than trying to figure out which people might be interested or know someone who might be interested in the jobs you send me.)

As for what I think about the bubble, I think the e-mail address of bub.blicio.us says it best: dontpop [at] this place. 😀

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5