4 ms·

Ask HN: anyone in SF need a kickass frontend developer?

42 points by geuis 18y ago

My current job is pissing me off. Most of the people I work with don't seem to have a clue as to what they are doing. I'm given a "must do next-day" priority, then the next day they change their mind and I'm off to work on whatever else they think is important today. We're a community-focused site and yet there's little care shown for site size, future extensibility, best practices, building for the future, etc. I have spent over a year trying to improve the situation, promoting better development practices, evangelizing community oriented features, and more. The other frontend developer and I are constantly ignored and major frontend decisions are being made by the lead of engineering who is a straight "Java expert". Frontend dev is a completely separate team with our own manager, and yet nothing is done to respect or even solicit our ideas and opinions. I'm just tired of regretting waking up each morning and slogging uphill through a mountain of mud and not having achieved anything at the end of the day. I want to work on something important, where we can build and iterate fast and where I can have a hand in shaping the future of what I'm working on. I do a lot of side experimental projects ranging from better CSS and javascript techniques to building around public APIs and experimenting with new languages. For example, I've been working pretty heavily for the last 2 months on implementing a server-side javascript environment based on V8 and got an API proxy working in Google App Engine 2 nights ago in a few hours. (I've never used nor touched Python before that). I released a Twitter promo tool on Google Code a couple weeks ago (http://code.google.com/p/fathomer/). I want to be in a place where if I am working on something cool on the side, there's a chance that it could be used and further adopted by the business.

TooMuchNick 18y ago
I'm a co-founder at a startup called Boffery, a visual diary for people's sex lives. (Think Geni.com for sex.) The sex angle alone doesn't sound terribly important, but our long-term plan is to license the technology to other social networks -- or, and this is terribly unlikely but obviously tempting, become a large-scale general-interest social network on our own. We have a spec, an early prototype built by our one developer, a forthcoming angel investment, a thousand people on our beta-tester waiting list, and a plan for getting to revenue (but not profit) by the end of the year. If you're interested, I can introduce you to our project manager. E-mail me at nick@toomuchnick.com.
jwesley 18y ago
I've been in a situation similar to this, where management just did not get it. They would ask for our input, but then never act on it. You are on the right track by looking for a way out. The company is doomed. I left and it has worked out great.
dreamz 18y ago
startup may be one of your option, join one or start one and be ready for low pay, high fun and may be some equity ... :-)
- bkbleikamp 18y ago
  Start ups do not necessarily mean low pay. I am work at one and we are all paid at or above market rates - it is worth it to pay for good people.
mmmurf 18y ago
Are you interested in a low pay situation? My startup doesn't have the revenue at present to pay you much, but you'd have a big hand in shaping the direction of the product and a friendly, happy atmosphere. And obviously we expect some revenue soon. Shoot me an email at gmail if you want to discuss.
- khangtoh 18y ago
  ok dude, what's your email
abyssknight 18y ago
If you are seriously looking to go to SF you should have no problem. I was looking for positions last year and the east coast just kept calling. That said, you will be working for a start up given your requirements which lends itself to the very condition you are describing. You'll have a ton of fun, learn a lot, but eventually the mess will hit the fan and you'll have unrealistic timetables and a grab bag of management woes. Building the future is an excellent goal and something to strive for, but if you want stability and dependable management I'd head for corporate America. They have the capital to hire decent managers, train you for free, and give you realistic deadlines. Couple that with realistic hours, and maybe you'll have more time to experiment. Zed Shaw put it perfectly, "Fight your hardest not to be a corporate coder: your life as a geek or a coder should be all about exploring some new domain that no one else gets -- you can only go to conferences and talk to other geeks about what you do. A corporate coder works only on the stuff he's supposed to on one language, and never touches code otherwise. You should go home and do something fun with technology." http://vimeo.com/2723800 http://vimeo.com/2723800 A disclaimer, I work for a giant corporation. I work on things that I think don't matter, but to the people on the ground building our products, the tools I help build and deploy mean a lot. They prevent accidents, environmental hazards, and close calls. Then I go home and hack on Python, PHP, .NET, and Arduino. And play Rockband.
- geuis 18y ago
  I already live in SF.
danielha 18y ago
Disqus is looking for one. We're in SOMA (2nd & Howard) - shoot me an email: daniel@disqus.com
- geuis 18y ago
  Daniel, you and I have spoken before. Thanks for the heads up, I'll email you during lunch.
daveambrose 18y ago
Upvoted to help you out. Good luck!
- geuis 18y ago
  Thank you Dave!
steveplace 18y ago
Are you a "code ninja"?
gibsonf1 18y ago
StreamFocus.com is looking for one. We just got a new CEO and are planning a major UI redesign. Our backend is all in Lisp, but the frontend is going increasingly toward javascript and ajax. Let me know if you're interested: fred@streamfocus.com
briansugar 18y ago
Sugar Inc (popsugar.com, shopstyle.com, etc) is looking for a kickass frontend developer to help make 50 women editors happy. We are at 111 Sutter. brian@sugarinc.com
- redorb 18y ago
  making 1 happy is damn near impossible ;) jk
- phil_collins 18y ago
  He said he wanted to work on something important.
  - arnorhs 18y ago
    LOL :-)
- bjclark 18y ago
  Insert some slightly sexist comment hahaha, j/k ;) And people wonder why more women aren't in tech.
kehunt 18y ago
If you're not happy at work, do whatever you have to do to change it -- even if you need to quit and build up a portfolio for a few months. I left a stable but miserable existence at IBM a couple years ago, and now enjoy every single day I'm working with my startup colleagues. Life's too short to be miserable. We are looking for another top-notch front end dev here at Zivity. Feel free to email me at kevin@kev.in if you want to grab a beer at 21A some evening.
geuis 18y ago
Thank you to everyone who has contacted me, commented here, and started following me on Twitter. I REALLY appreciate the outpouring of support from the HN community. I will be getting in touch with everyone who has contacted me ASAP!
theklub 18y ago
I'm looking for a co-founder on a project I've been working on for some time. If your interested shoot me an email. Mine's jklub at live.com
callmeed 18y ago
Are you interested in telecommuting from home for an OR-based company?
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
experiment with drastically reducing your productivity. if no one notices great, you now have time to spend on personal projects and get paid. If people notice look for a new job. I don't understand why everyone doesn't do this at jobs they dislike.
- mikebo 18y ago
  Not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll respond anyway. I'll give two reasons: 1) it's dishonest 2) if your mgmt does notice, this will burn bridges with both mgmt and your coworkers who have to pick up the slack.
  - pageman 18y ago
    didn't Zed Shaw have a step-by-step how-to on this at CUSEC 2008? :)
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    I find that the "burn bridges" argument rarely applies in real life unless it's a small community.
raganwald 18y ago
I know of an unadvertised opportunity with an extremely interesting team for a talented front-end developer/designer. HN folks can Send an email to reg@braythwayt.com for details, it isn't up on their web site yet so I'd prefer to keep the name off the web until it is public. And in the mean time, HN readers get a head start on the opening :-)
- blader 18y ago
  Reg, shot you an email yesterday about a job. Still on the market? =)
sutro 18y ago
I'll consider you, but first you'll have to prove your claim that you can "kick ass" -- fight club style.
- pageman 18y ago
  The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club :)
blader 18y ago
geuis: My social games company is always on the lookout for good engineers. Why don't you shoot me an email at siqi[at the domain]seriousbusiness.com. We're a pretty small team of < 20 guys, two technical co-founders (I was in YC for a week or so) with a team of really smart engineers (some ex-Powerset, some ex-Google), and we've got an awesome casual but focused culture. We are metrics driven, and iterate extremely quickly (we deploy dozens of times in any given day). I think you'll like it here if you're frustrated at where you are because your voice isn't getting heard and you aren't moving fast enough.
regs 18y ago
Take a look at Palantir Technologies: http://www.palantirtech.com/ http://www.palantirtech.com/ We're doing some world-changing stuff: http://blog.palantirtech.com/2009/01/22/tarp/ http://blog.palantirtech.com/2009/01/22/tarp/ We need as many kickass frontend-devs as we can find! (we're down in Palo Alto, but very CalTrain-able)
indigoviolet 18y ago
If you're interested in interviewing at Facebook (some of the most cutting edge frontend stuff on the web, changing how social communication works, some of the best developers anywhere, fantastic place to work), drop me a message at indigoviolet@gmail.com
thinkcomp 18y ago
Think is looking for programmers, front-end and back-end. Send stuff to jobs at thinkcomputer.com, and mention YC or Hacker News.
alexjmann 18y ago
Hey man. I'm looking for a developer for my web startup as well. I'd be happy to discuss details if you could email me at alexjmann@gmail.com
quellhorst 18y ago
I could use some help, but I don't need someone in a specific place, and don't need a full-timer.