MrMike

Quite possibly. Shoot me an email: mike@shift.com

SHIFT (http://www.shift.com) is hiring in our Santa Monica office.

1) Front End Developer (http://jobs.shift.com/apply/BWRv4y/Front-End-Developer.html)

We are looking for a Front-end developer that will be a pivotal member of our team. You will be working closely with our backend engineers & design team to help implement a fully AJAX/HTML5 driven application using AngularJS. A great fit for this role is someone who is always intrigued by new technology and is constantly finding better ways to write beautiful, shareable and solid code.

2) Back End Developer (http://jobs.shift.com/apply/bAVkng/Back-End-Engineer-Python....)

  - Extensive experience with Python 2.7
  - Experience with various DBs (We use MongoDB, Cassandra, and Redis)
  - Experience with architecting & optimizing code for performance and resource management
  - An understanding of how/when/why to use backgrounding via Celery tasks
  - Experience with or a desire to learn TDD
  - An understanding and love for the DRY principle.
  - A positive attitude and enjoy working in a team environment
  - Thorough knowledge of MVC frameworks (We use Flask; while experience with Flask is a plus, it’s not required)
  - Thorough knowledge of various debugging methods
  - A strong desire to keep learning (we move fast, use cutting-edge tech, and constantly have “ah-ha” moments solving complex problems)
  - A personality that balances humor, maturity, professionalism, motivation/drive and the ability to hang shot for shot when we drink (unless you really, really don’t want to)

Read about some of the awesomeness that we do here: http://tech.shift.com

> If you loose a server, we can deploy a new server in a matter of minutes and it will rebuild the RAID array from the last backup so we have a warm spare.

Unless you can't actually get a new server provisioned because the now-fragile API (like last night) is under such load from people trying to mitigate their downtime... We use rightscale, and rightscale won't solve this issue. If AWS is being clobbered by people trying to get new boxes up, using a third-party api abstraction service doesn't help.

Also, rightscale themselves were affected last night, throwing invalid alerts about servers being inaccessible when they were actually still operating normally.

Our front-end team did extensive research on this that wrapped up a just a couple days ago. They landed on angular and have been very happy. I'll see if I can get one (or more) of them to comment on their findings.

Glad it's working out for you... let me know if you want any changes

Or you can just ask me to make whatever changes you want...

This is amazing. Wonder if there is a commercial implementation yet?

Awesome idea. Will add it asap. Thanks!

The recent EC2 pricing change presents a compelling case for switching to reserved instances instead of on-demand instances. Provided you have the capital available to manage the upfront cost (and the confidence in your ability to pay for at least 1 year), the cost savings of switching to reserved instances are substantial. Hopefully this tool will help some of you save time when making the comparison.

There's a one-liner about it in here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tDpiI0wIzOkJ:...

It says: Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF) - Start, run, and retain workflow executions, as well as schedule tasks, add markers, receive signals, and start timers for those workflow executions.

But the uncached version of the PDF doesn't mention "workflow" at all.

The link in the PDF is not found on the amazon servers.

"swf" is not mentioned in any Amazon documentation: http://aws.amazon.com/search?searchPath=documentation&se...

Cool, thanks. I heard 15-25% of the first year salary and thought that would be abnormally high.

Same amount to each recipient each month?

If you're with a major bank (BOFA, WF, etc), you can schedule payments with your bank via their online banking.

The original question implied an API for outgoing payments, but since that doesn't exist (afaik), you can ease the burden. For payments that vary in amount, most major banks allow you to add a payee once, then whenever you know the amount/date a payment will be due, you can schedule it. Ideal? Probably not, but I find it much less painful than checks+stamps+USPS.

Didn't see this before I complained/wrote a PSA: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3127588

That's the only thing Sendgrid does. And, they do it quite well.

I don't have anything to contribute other than a thank you to the folks behind Stripe for trying to fix this seriously broken system.

Aye. Listen to this guy.

So, at first glance (sorry pressed for time right now), there are a couple of spelling/grammar issues you should tackle. More importantly, there is no description for what you currently do at Trinnovations. You list some of your specialties, which is great, but there's no context on how you use/used them in your previous/current jobs.

I would set up an about.me page and link to your LI. Link out from LI to your about.me. Start blogging if you think you can fit it in. Even if it's filled with entries about what you learned/did/achieved/figured out that day or week. The more technical the better.

And, as was mentioned in another comment: You're close to a hot spot already. Close is stretching it considering the drive from IE to Santa Monica, but, do it anyway. Do it on a Saturday. Go to Coloft in the morning, get a day pass, and work on something. Take breaks and meet others. Not sure what to break the ice with? Try something like "Hey, so is coloft always this energetic (/vibrant/quiet/boring/lively/productive/whatever)". Ask what they're working on. Listen. They'll ask you the same.

Don't let yourself make up excuses. You're close enough to a really hot market where companies are climbing over each other for talent. If you want it, make it happen.

What kind of roles are you looking to fill? Developers - if so, what languages?

This is a bit too vague for me to refer people to...

Just happened to a few friends of mine. They were pretty "anti-social-media sites", but I convinced them to set up a LinkedIn profile (as public as I could get them to set the privacy settings) and an about.me page... and set up reciprocal links between the two. They fully fleshed out their profile on LI including the technologies in which they are well versed. They happened to live outside of a hot market, but were looking to move to one, and they set their location as the hot market. Within a few days, they had a few recruiters that had reached out and several job interviews lined up or in progress. All this happened within the span on a couple of weeks. I'm not saying it's a recipe for success for everyone; the people I'm talking about are seriously amazing developers, with skill sets that reach far beyond just writing code.

Edit: I'm not a recruiter, but I'd be happy to take a look at your LI/A.me pages if you decide to set them up and give you feedback.

Have you considered a Chargify Lite (or an HN discount =])... I'll be launching a SaaS product soon that will be $10/mo. Even your Launch and Start plans won't be usable since they'll suck away the early revenue (which curtails my ability to reinvest growing the user base).

* recurly.com

See also: Spreedly, CheddarGetter, Chargify, Vindicia, Zuora

Oops.. replied to this one level up. Sorry. In terms of the original company ceasing to exist, I'm not sure. Before dissolving, I do the Asset Purchase Agreement.

IANAL, but I use a pretty basic Asset Purchase Agreement between the old entity and the new to cover the IP. Again, since what I'm talking about is myself (and possibly one other person) as the shareholder, it's quite painless.

It's important to note that it's not just about the financial cost of keeping a service running. For example, I had one service that I built over several months. It got some attention, but ultimately fizzled out. It comfortably lived on some EC2 instances I already had running, sharing resources for the project I had shifted into. However, the support requests came in from the handful of users, and while I wasn't able to make it a financial success, it would've been more of a disservice to those folks to provide a partially functioning, unreliable service rather than give them the chance to migrate away to a competitor that could better serve their needs.

I share similar battle scars. As painful as these situations are, the ability to pick oneself up, dust oneself off, and get back into the game is, in my humble opinion, a great skill (as long as you take the knowledge of what worked, what didn't, etc. with you into the next endeavor).

Thanks. I should have been more clear: The resources I was hoping to find would be the intro to entrepreneurship - the crazy up and down world of startups - type of literature.

As jahmed said, it could be used as a learning experience. In other cases, it was a valiant (or not so) attempt at making something great, that didn't work out for a variety of reasons. Depending on the scenario, it might be something that I'd like someone else to pick up from and continue, to fulfill the "I want to use this." itch, but I don't have the time/resources to execute properly.

Certainly something to be conscious of. I should have made clear that for the most part, the code I'm talking about is from entities owned by myself and possibly one other person, a business partner I've worked with on multiple projects for many years. No outside investment or shareholders. This greatly simplifies the IP issues.

I typically tar it up and store it somewhere safe. On occasion, I'll work on a new project that could use a piece of code I know I've got stored away. Other times, it's something I stumble upon years later and laugh at myself for my coding style & quality, which continues to improve. "Omg I can't believe I tried to solve X that way... wow..."

I've seen a few people open source their code for failed projects. Hadn't really thought about that, but it's something I'll keep in mind should I have an interesting, failed project.

You've probably already researched it, but if not, look into leasing it with an option to buy. You might give up a sliver of equity, but you could keep the cash free and used for things which your angel/seed round investors (and you, pre-realizing-the-domain-was-available plans) had intended.