phrasemix

Voxy | Software Engineer | New York, NY | https://boards.greenhouse.io/voxy/jobs/1043878?gh_src=jy1if5...

If you are a software engineer looking use your talent in an endeavour more noble than tricking consumers into buying a new widget or helping traders earn big bonuses, take a look at Voxy. Voxy software engineers will change the way millions of people around the world learn English by using sound science combined with innovative (and patented!) technology.

What You'll Do - Accelerate Voxy’s ability to automatically transform authentic content into lessons for our learners using NLP and advanced text/video processing - Build nicely-instrumented code that is testable and deployable without downtime - Evolve our big data pipeline to use real time feedback for an optimal platform for learners

What We’re Looking For - 5+ years of experience working as a commercial software developer - Curiosity and knowledge about technologies and architectural patterns of software engineering across the entire stack - Pragmatism in understanding when to build the solution that scales to 1 million users or works for 100 users - Build new data models that reflect the Voxy business using advanced SQL/NoSQL/ORM’s

What Would Be Nice To Have: - Modern front end javascript frameworks such as vue - Django - AWS and devops - B.S. or higher in computer science, science or engineering discipline or equivalent experience

This was the first thing that I thought of. Jason calls the idea "Memory Hole", which is both a much better and much worse name than "Hibou".

Voxy (http://www.voxy.com) | Manhattan, New York, NY

Voxy is an adaptive learning platform focused on teaching English as a second language. We've just entered a growth phase as our product takes off in Brazil and Mexico. We have a small tech team that needs to grow rapidly, and whoever we hire next can have a real impact on our engineering culture.

We practice XP and real Agile, and have a very respect-driven, peer-based culture. Our team believes in real engineering, not programming. Stack-wise, we use Python/Django, Backbone, Postrges and MongoDB and have native iOS and Android apps.

We believe in T-shaped generalists so if you're a Python engineer that'd like to learn what mobile development is all about, or the other way around, we'd love to hear from you.

More details at http://grnh.se/c7qald

I created a website for folks learning English as a foreign language: http://www.phrasemix.com

I've been running it for the last 5 years. The first 2 years, it was just a blog that I maintained for free. 3 years ago, I started selling access to audio recordings of the lessons as a subscription.

The site generates about $2K per month off of around 300K monthly visitors. It continues to grow but very slowly.

Techzing: http://techzinglive.com/

I recently moved back to Durham, North Carolina after 10 years of living in bigger cities (Tokyo, then NYC).

I expected that the rent would be cheaper but that I'd miss out in terms of culture, food, and the quality of people I met.

What I'm finding is 1) The culture that is available here is easier to appreciate and digest because there's less paradox of choice 2) The food is a little more limited but overall better 3) The people that I meet are just as smart and interesting. I often forget that I'm back in the South and not in Brooklyn.

I go back and forth on this. As someone who's taught English as a second language for many years, I can't help but alter the way that I speak. It does help a lot with people whose listening skills are weak.

But I sometimes think it does a disservice to students or people that I spend a lot of time with (like my wife, who's not a native English speaker). Yes, they understand me. But am I then making it harder to understand "real" English speakers who aren't as careful with their pronunciation?

This is a fantastic idea! Do you mind if I share that with my English students?

I really like the fact that Moot seems to handle both forum-style posts and on-page comments. As the owner of a content site, I really want both. I've even gone so far as to try to hack Disqus to work as a forum.

If there was an easy import feature for Disqus threads, I'd probably switch right over.

I started learning to code last year using Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It was actually a big part of me deciding to go with Ruby and Rails over any other language and framework.

I have spoken with many dozens of other beginners at local Ruby meetups. Basically EVERYONE learning Rails and Ruby (at least in NYC) uses this thing.

It might not be a bad idea to read through the Rails Tutorial, even if you're an experienced Rails developer, just to see what the baseline is for people starting out these days.

Very much appreciated, Michael!

Stick with coding. Reasons being:

- Most jobs are boring, especially after the first couple of years.

- Don't underestimate the importance of good pay.

- It doesn't sound like you have anything better in mind to do instead.

This sucks. I can't even open the pages of the comics!

"Like a mad Klingon"

I was just thinking the other day about terms like "ninja", "pirate", and "rockstar" that are so played out at this point they make me cringe whenever I hear them. Isn't there something fresh to convey the concept of being a badass? "Klingon" works pretty nicely. For now at least.

I was part of the team that put this together at Startup Weekend in NY. We were all about getting this up and out into the world before the end of the weekend. Putting up mostly static images allowed us to not worry about any CSS bullshit and focus all our efforts on the copy, design, and minimum viable functionality for the site.