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[Groupon Employee Speaking] Bingo. It's hard to put into words how fast the business is moving. One of the things mentioned in the press release is investing

[Groupon Employee Speaking] Bingo. It's hard to put into words how fast the business is moving. One of the things mentioned in the press release is investing in technology. We have trouble keeping up with the traffic we have, and we're expecting [redacted]00% growth over the next year. We're in the middle of two big projects now: 1) rearchitecting to handle the aforementioned growth 2) hiring 100 developers or more by September. That kind of stuff costs money - #1 involves a couple dozen developers for 3-6 months, and #2 means ~doubling the size of the dev team. (shameless plug: Groupon is an awesome place to be a dev - highly appreciated, crucial to the company, exciting new projects, etc. Email peterc@groupon.com or go to http://groupon.com/jobs http://groupon.com/jobs . Chicago or Palo Alto.)

sachinag 16y ago
I can't speak to everyone there, but Peter is an exceptional engineer. Their head of affiliates is exceptional. Andrew is clearly exceptional. Their copy is exceptional. Go work at Groupon.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  <blushing/>
moe 16y ago
hiring 100 developers or more by September 11 new devs per month? So no development this year, only training? shameless plug: Groupon is an awesome place to be a dev [...] crucial to the company Honestly, I'd be very wary of this statement in combination with the above.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  We're not lowering the bar on who we hire. Process + skill = lots gets done. I was up and running my first day and released code my first week. Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page. The only change to our hiring expectations is to open up to great developers that don't already have Ruby/Rails skills. Aside from that, we are working on the big hiring push as a creative engineering problem. I'm on the team doing the push and we've been given lots of freedom, resources (both time and money), and responsibility. And there are many. Ore initiatives that promise the same opportunity.
  - moe 16y ago
    I'll call bullshit, even though that will score me downvotes. We're not lowering the bar on who we hire. Good luck hiring 100 top guys in 8 Months. Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page. That's so detached from reality, sometimes I wonder if there's some parallel universe where phrases like that make any sense. What these hiring frenzies really do is they transform any company from being (possibly) productive straight into eBay-mode. They're also usually a surefire indicator that the last person with a clue (alt: the last person who gave a shit) has just left the company.
    - pchristensen 16y ago
      Feel free to follow up with me on that in October. I'll definitely write a retrospective.
querulous 16y ago
What kind of developers are you hiring? I may misunderstand what Groupon does (though I have both offered coupons and consumed coupons via Groupon) but apart from tooling for your sales staff, what kind of 'rearchitecting' needs to be done? Wouldn't expanding the sales staff be a better investment?
- pchristensen 16y ago
  Typical high traffic stuff. Expected traffic growth is a big number and we've already had availability problems. We're also consolidating all of the overseas deals onto the main platform, and that alone will double-ish our traffic. If you're good at or want to work on Big Huge Websites, this is a good place to be. There's also the problem of targeting based on preferences, deal performance, purchase history. Think personalized searxh results. The team in Palo Alto is doing a lot of that stuff. Of course, we aren't spending the whole billion on technology. Lots of sales people will be hired :)

sachinag 16y ago

I can't speak to everyone there, but Peter is an exceptional engineer. Their head of affiliates is exceptional. Andrew is clearly exceptional. Their copy is exceptional. Go work at Groupon.

pchristensen 16y ago
<blushing/>

moe 16y ago

hiring 100 developers or more by September 11 new devs per month? So no development this year, only training? shameless plug: Groupon is an awesome place to be a dev [...] crucial to the company Honestly, I'd be very wary of this statement in combination with the above.

pchristensen 16y ago
We're not lowering the bar on who we hire. Process + skill = lots gets done. I was up and running my first day and released code my first week. Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page. The only change to our hiring expectations is to open up to great developers that don't already have Ruby/Rails skills. Aside from that, we are working on the big hiring push as a creative engineering problem. I'm on the team doing the push and we've been given lots of freedom, resources (both time and money), and responsibility. And there are many. Ore initiatives that promise the same opportunity.
- moe 16y ago
  I'll call bullshit, even though that will score me downvotes. We're not lowering the bar on who we hire. Good luck hiring 100 top guys in 8 Months. Work and requirements are decomposed and estimated as a team so when it's time to code it flows quickly and everybody is on the same page. That's so detached from reality, sometimes I wonder if there's some parallel universe where phrases like that make any sense. What these hiring frenzies really do is they transform any company from being (possibly) productive straight into eBay-mode. They're also usually a surefire indicator that the last person with a clue (alt: the last person who gave a shit) has just left the company.
  - pchristensen 16y ago
    Feel free to follow up with me on that in October. I'll definitely write a retrospective.

querulous 16y ago

What kind of developers are you hiring? I may misunderstand what Groupon does (though I have both offered coupons and consumed coupons via Groupon) but apart from tooling for your sales staff, what kind of 'rearchitecting' needs to be done? Wouldn't expanding the sales staff be a better investment?

pchristensen 16y ago
Typical high traffic stuff. Expected traffic growth is a big number and we've already had availability problems. We're also consolidating all of the overseas deals onto the main platform, and that alone will double-ish our traffic. If you're good at or want to work on Big Huge Websites, this is a good place to be. There's also the problem of targeting based on preferences, deal performance, purchase history. Think personalized searxh results. The team in Palo Alto is doing a lot of that stuff. Of course, we aren't spending the whole billion on technology. Lots of sales people will be hired :)