rwhitman

Of course the daunting obstacle is changing the mindset of suburban planners and nimbys. The zoning ordinances that have dominated planning in the USA since the 50's ban this in large swaths of America..

New Urbanism made progress creating denser planning in the last 30 years, but focused too much on high density mixed use. Adding small shops to residential streets is definitely the one area that they've really failed on in my opinion. It's the reason older towns and cities still trounce the 'burbs on walkability and will for a long time.

But while we're at it we should also think about other human-scale improvements, like narrow streets. Worth a read for anyone interested in retrofitting the suburbs: https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130131.php#.Xxptm...

Met Brent at the BigCommerce partner summit a year or so ago. I can't think of a CEO I've met who is more open and accessible. He sat down at my table during the keynotes and asked for feedback during the breaks, went around the room and chatted about the product during lunch. Definitely fostered that culture with the full team, his exec leadership team all were equally inviting and open to feedback about the product and strategy. As SEC filings go, this one certainly makes me smile.

My team has worked with their API and had a lot of grievances with it.

Regarding API openness vs flat file.. we in the OMS space have our hands tied by the WMS, ERP and EDI world. Investment in an open API doesn't really have any ROI it's actually more of a money pit than anything. Most of the high value integrations are with antiquated systems where all of the connectivity is flat file CSV, XML, EDI type thing. It's awful.

There's also very very slim margins the shipping / fulfillment middleware market. It's incredibly costly to maintain these legacy proprietary connections, mission critical to the business so near constant customer service requests with complex "we're on fire" troubleshooting, and nobody wants another expense lumped onto their shipping costs so it's very hard to justify paying a premium.

Not surprised that any company in this space backed by VC is getting dumped by their investors like a hot pile of bricks. OMS is about consultation and pain endurance, not venture exits

Overall pretty shocking as they were pitching to be an ERP replacement for e-commerce. Anyone who was using Stitch Labs as an ERP-light is going to have a substantial amount of pain migrating in a hurry.

I've referred some of Stitch Labs biggest customers to their platform, so I feel particularly guilty about their being sunset in an acquihire like this.

If anyone needs advice about what to do, I'm well versed in the area of OMS & ERP migrations. Linkedin is in my profile

Fundamentally I see the web business from the lens of "data is the new oil". The internet industry is a utility and infrastructure business, period. Content is just one of many things that can be monetized through commodity web technology.

Streaming video for example has more or less stopped producing viable venture startups on the B2C side. Successful new ventures in streaming, the ones who will actually make money, are folks like Disney and Warner with IP. Their business advantage is horizontal integration, rent seeking for content with killer margins over company-controlled pipes. Disney Plus, HBO Max apps have zero notable tech innovations. The only criteria to the consumer is that the content is exclusive and the app stays in the background and doesn't fail. OTT video, as a vertical for consumer innovation, is over.

Same goes for SaaS, ecommerce, social networks, gaming, music, news etc. Maybe we'll get some standout disruptions from time to time as hardware evolves. But the tech is all about plumbing from here on out..

I used to agree with the idea that entertainment and tech are similar, but I've had a paradigm shift in my perspective over the last 2 years and it's helped quite a bit.. easy to forget that the internet business is in its infancy. It only feels like a hits-driven IP business right now because there is still room left for innovation and land-grabs. That won't last forever..

I'd imagine the inception of Quibi in the first place probably was a conversation like that?

This situation is emblematic of the fundamental conflict it would face. On the one side the desire to produce rapid cheap bite-size content to iterate on for a metrics-based tech company, on the other blowing all the cash for said content on the Hollywood tactic of putting star power on the red carpet

I've been a tech consultant in LA for more or less 15 years at this point.

A very large portion of well funded, early stage startups that crash and burn in LA are typically because media people have a hard time conceptualizing lean startup, and rapid iteration etc. Over the years I've accepted it's not so much hubris as it is entertainment is just a different industry with a different way of doing business and people who found success in entertainment think that method they achieved translates to tech startups, when it unfortunately doesn't.

In Hollywood you put all this time and money into one big event like a film, or an album or a pilot and people scoop it up due to marketing. They consume it, then they are done. If they like it they ask for more. So if you have the money you spend all of the money at once to make the best thing possible, put as much marketing and PR against it as possible and people will consume it anyway. Usually you make some of your money back. If consumers ask for more, that's a bonus. Then you go out and raise more for the sequel or the next album or whatever.

Of course tech is different - you can't put all that money into the first iteration and expect it to pay off. You need to stretch it out over many experiments and control burn over years. It's just a totally different financial model and business plan. There are so so many Quibis out there that never got past private alpha / beta. The execs spend YEARS crafting that perfect alpha, open it up privately to friends and family, it flops and then they throw in the towel just like that. I've seen it more times than I can count now

Biting the hand that feeds him. I think this is a strategic miscalculation.

Yea one of the ideas we're dabbling with is simply interviewing members of our team on various topics, and posting the interview transcript (our team is fairly camera shy)

So I recently started helping my team adopt a B2B content marketing strategy, after being kind of removed from the marketing world for a few years...

For a small bootstrapped business, with no writers in-house, fledgeling bare minimum resources starting from scratch with freelancers, the amount of catching up we need to do is staggering. So, so much money has been pumped into churning out articles, videos, webinars, etc etc by venture backed startups. Every conceivable genuinely valuable shareable topic has been sliced and diced a thousand ways into mush. Nothing we could possibly produce comes close to what other teams have already drafted, years ago now.

In my career people often bring me in as the creative "ideas" guy, but this task of coming up with content when there's so much noise to compete with... it's broken me. Never in my life had I stared at a blank canvas and felt so lost. Coming up with absolutely nothing.. every idea just feels like cheap regurgitated garbage.

That's a long way of saying, I think this marketing channel, for B2B at least, is kind of tapped out. Or maybe I'm tapped out. Probably the latter?

Sunrise Integration | Junior Growth Hacker / Marketing & Sales Intern | Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA | Part-time | Remote | https://www.sunriseintegration.com

We are SaaS app developers, specialized in enterprise data integrations for e-commerce and logistics but branching out a bit. Data integrations are our business, but we are truly a full-service dev shop and have a very nimble team, great developer-centric culture, with a high bar for engineering ability and creativity. We also own, develop and operate our own suite of enterprise SaaS products.

Sunrise Integration's sweet spot right now is developing Shopify applications & middleware layers for logistics companies and enterprise-focused SaaS startups. We have built solutions for FreshBooks, DHL, Live Nation, Pitney Bowes and incubated many startups.

This is a very informal one, as I don't have a job description to hire for these roles yet. (Going a bit rogue here and haven't fully cleared with my team..) We are beefing up our marketing and sales depts and could use some junior extra hands for market research, landing pages, A/B testing, content writing, ad tech, pitching in on bid proposals and other types of assistance for sales and marketing. Looking for junior talent or even an intern.

Our team is in Hollywood in Los Angeles. We are all on-site normally but obviously remote now. Need to be within a 3 hour time difference of USA Pacific time and can take phone calls during USA work hours.

Interested? Email me at ron@sunriseintegration.com

Please mention HN in your email subject and give me a resume or at least some details of who you are and what you are looking for.

SEEKING FREELANCER - Los Angeles, CA, remote ok

We are SaaS app developers, specialized in enterprise data integrations for e-commerce and logistics but branching out a bit. Data integrations are our business, but we are truly a full-service dev shop and have a very nimble team, great developer-centric culture, with a high bar for engineering ability and creativity. We also own, develop and operate our own suite of enterprise SaaS products.

Looking for a freelance business analyst / product person who can draft requirements and improve our process around preparing e-commerce data mapping and be a tech translator between our clients, PMs and engineering team.

Also we have a possible opening for software engineers who are familiar with e-commerce systems data migrations and integrations. Bonus points for folks with some Microsoft experience (we're mostly a Linux shop) in MS SQL Server and Windows desktop software.

MUST be within a 5 hour time difference of USA Pacific time and available to take phone calls during business hours.

Interested? Email me at ron@sunriseintegration.com

Please include "HN Freelancer" in your email subject.

Sunrise Integration | Software Developers, Project Managers, Analysts | Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA | Full-time | Onsite & Remote | https://www.sunriseintegration.com

We are SaaS app developers, specialized in enterprise data integrations for e-commerce and logistics but branching out a bit. Data integrations are our business, but we are truly a full-service dev shop and have a very nimble team, great developer-centric culture, with a high bar for engineering ability and creativity. We also own, develop and operate our own suite of enterprise SaaS products.

Sunrise Integration's sweet spot right now is developing Shopify applications & middleware layers for logistics companies and enterprise-focused SaaS startups. We have built solutions for DHL, Live Nation, Pitney Bowes and incubated many startups.

Looking for well rounded developers with a pragmatic mindset, strong database skills, quick ability to pick up new APIs and a positive attitude. We use every platform under the sun.. points if you've worked with ERP, CRM, WMS, EDI, security compliance, can write multiple languages like Node, PHP, C++, Python, Golang etc and/or know DevOps, systems, solutions architecture, microservices and designing APIs. Biggest skill needs right now are React, Laravel and MS SQL Server.

Also looking for technical project managers on-site and a business analyst to help draft tech requirements. Bonus points if you know e-commerce.

Our team is in Hollywood in Los Angeles. We are all on-site but opening up to remote workers within a 3 hour time difference of USA Pacific time.

Interested? Email me at ron@sunriseintegration.com

Sunrise Integration | Project Manager for E-Commerce Software & Software Engineers | Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA | Full-time | ONSITE | https://www.sunriseintegration.com

We are SaaS app developers, specialized in enterprise data integrations for e-commerce and logistics but branching out a bit. Data integrations are our business, but we are truly a full-service dev shop and have a very nimble team, great developer-centric culture, with a high bar for engineering ability and creativity. We also own, develop and operate our own suite of enterprise SaaS products.

Sunrise Integration's sweet spot right now is developing Shopify applications & middleware layers for logistics companies and enterprise-focused SaaS startups. We have built solutions for DHL, Live Nation, Pitney Bowes and incubated many startups.

Looking for agile Project Managers primarily right now. But we also have openings for well rounded developers with a pragmatic mindset, strong database skills, quick ability to pick up new APIs and a positive attitude. We use every platform under the sun.. points if you've worked with ERP, CRM, WMS, EDI, security compliance, can write multiple languages like Node, PHP, C++, Python, Golang etc and/or know DevOps, systems, solutions architecture, microservices and designing APIs.

This is ON-SITE in Hollywood in Los Angeles. Project Managers especially will need to be able to work from our office.

Interested? Email me at ron@sunriseintegration.com

Sunrise Integration | Software Developers & Project Managers | Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA | Full-time | ONSITE | https://www.sunriseintegration.com

We are SaaS app developers, specialized in enterprise data integrations for e-commerce and logistics but branching out a bit. Data integrations are our business, but we are truly a full-service dev shop and have a very nimble team, great developer-centric culture, with a high bar for engineering ability and creativity. We also own, develop and operate our own suite of enterprise SaaS products.

Sunrise Integration's sweet spot right now is developing Shopify applications & middleware layers for logistics companies and enterprise-focused SaaS startups. We have built solutions for DHL, Live Nation, Pitney Bowes and incubated many startups.

Looking for well rounded developers with a pragmatic mindset, strong database skills, quick ability to pick up new APIs and a positive attitude. We use every platform under the sun.. points if you've worked with ERP, CRM, WMS, EDI, security compliance, can write multiple languages like Node, PHP, C++, Python, Golang etc and/or know DevOps, systems, solutions architecture, microservices and designing APIs.

Also looking for technical project managers.

This is ON-SITE in Hollywood in Los Angeles. Need to be able to work from our office.

Interested? Email me at ron@sunriseintegration.com

The paper that this article cites is a far more interesting read than the summary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1249KS8xtIDKb5SxgpeFI6AD-PSC...

One of the trends I find most disturbing in business over the last few years is the nonchalant passing of the buck on hard business problems, down the food chain to software engineers.

The Silicon Valley mantra of "software can change the world!" has infected every corner of our lives but frequently people misinterpret this as "software can solve anything! (so I don't have to)".

Software engineers also tend to eagerly say "yes" to solving every problem with code, when sometimes a problem just can't be solved with code. Thus compounding the issue.

I'd argue that many of the macro problems in our world right now stem from this cycle.

My PSA to all devs - if someone asks you to patch a major business problem with software, push back. Sometimes a puzzle to solve, isn't your puzzle to solve. Send it back up the food chain. You don't have to say yes to everything.

This interview should be held up as a definitive educational material for anyone working around social media platforms. Really shines an important spotlight on how bad actors manipulate digital information, and how to adjust business and mental models towards mitigating platform manipulation into the future.

Really pleased to hear how much research and thought is being done in this area now. Looking forward to hearing more from this team.

I started doing this, and the first stumbling block I hit was simply assessing at what level my math education falls apart and figuring out what courses I needed to refresh with, what materials I needed etc.

There's a market opportunity for building a math placement test product, or even better a fully automated math education platform with examinations at each stage, that takes you from K-12 refreshers all the way up to grad school. Something a bit more advanced than the existing online learning programs that are still very much based on the college lecture model.

There's a lot of products out there that do this for software development, but not for other subjects. I have noticed there are bits and pieces I can download as mobile apps, but they are designed to be supplements to certain college curriculum rather than an end-to-end education.

Obviously math is a subject where software is an optimal instructional tool, so much more could be done here

I've been curious if there are any creative financial or work/education balance strategies for a tech professional going back to school, that might not be obvious?

Networking with professors? Working at the university? Or finding an employer that subsidizes grad school? Haven't seen too much on my radar in this area but have heard there are unconventional ways to offset the cost or level up by leveraging my network & career.

(For context - I'm in my late 30's, ~17 years in tech though my degree is from a trade art school, and in an engineering management role these days in Los Angeles. I've been seriously considering grad school either for CS or MBA.)

Honestly "diversify" is not something I had ever considered before the last recession, and it runs contrary to most popular advice in consulting around finding a niche, but it becomes very apparent after you've weathered the ups and downs of the consulting business over a long time period.

If you look at any of the major consulting firms (ex: Accenture) that have lasted decades, you'll see that they have their fingers in many different unrelated areas and industries. "Niche" in the short term is a great way to build up clients, but stick narrowly to a niche over too long a time scale, and it becomes an anchor.

> Why can't we have some sort licensing board like a medical board so that you prove you can code, and then interviews aren't so time consuming.

That's a really interesting point. I think you may have just nailed why the software developer hiring process is so broken right now.

Our industry is about at the stage of maturity where civil engineering or medicine were circa the turn of the 20th century when state accreditation boards began licensing in those industries.

I actually don't have a CS degree at all and admittedly poor understanding of algorithms and data structures as I originally was educated in code at an art school. But after 16 years writing code, due to the increasing amount of gatekeeping being put up around CS fundamentals I'm actually going "back to school" right now, taking online courseware to gain at least some rudimentary online certificates in those CS areas just to demonstrate that I'm qualified to continue working in the industry.

It would actually be quite nice to have a real board certification in this stuff to study towards, rather than some BS online course certificate, or worse, having to re-do my entire undergrad 16 years into my career...

I was a freelance dev contractor in the 2008/2009 financial crisis.

To what you said above, both can be true. But it depends on the client's business.

I got completely crushed last time. But my clients were primarily in travel and fashion/lifestyle which both got hit hard early. And I was trying to bootstrap a social media startup at the time, which was also in travel. So I got destroyed.

Typically agencies and freelancers are the first to feel a recession. Vendors are more expendable than W-2 employees so contracts get stalled out or cancelled as soon as the warning signs hit the board room.

However... I've known of some people who actually did quite well last time around. Generally they were offering lower rates than the competition and specialized in maintaining software that was essential to recession-proof businesses (like entertainment, education, government etc). They had long-term contracts where they were essential to these businesses, and they lowered their rates to be competitive. This was eventually how I recovered as well.

Basically my advice is - prepare to shift from quality to quantity for a bit, diversify your client portfolio and put effort into building long term clients where you're essential.

Amen, 100% this. Same methods here, same success rate.

I just had a long conversation this afternoon with a friend who manages a tech recruiter team and she was telling me how frustrating it is working for cash-strapped early stage startups who pass on perfectly talented & experienced candidates open to taking a salary hit - because they, in their inexperience, cannot fathom how to interview without subjecting candidates to a series of dehumanized and impossible puzzles that are only solvable by people who have dedicated themselves to puzzle solving.

Meanwhile established companies with deeper pockets, such as banks, scoop up these candidates to do humdrum back office software work because they use tried and true interviewing methods.. like talking to candidates.

I attribute most of the issue to inexperience on the hiring managers' part and pressure to hire only the "best of the best" from leadership. Coupled with developers' personal insecurities, lack of education on the fundamentals of management, echo chamber noise around code test culture and the incessant desire of engineers to abstract away any human elements of their work, the process has devolved into a toxic mess when it comes to recruitment and interviewing.

Hopefully the situation can be fixed at some point. But until then, I'll keep on scooping those 10xers by trading war stories over the phone, thank you very much...

SEEKING FREELANCER | USA East Coast | Remote

Looking for remote iOS, Android, Ruby, React Native, Angular Developers for a 1 year + contract.

I posted details in the "Who's Hiring" thread, but applicable here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17903465

UpTrending is a technologist-centric digital agency, originally founded in Silicon Valley to service the marketing and technology needs of venture-backed B2B software startups. Our clients include SAAS products, big data, AI and data security companies. We are experts in the marketing of B2B technology businesses, with our core service offering of strategy, website design, development and marketing integrations.

We have a longstanding software-focused non-profit client with need to build up their team. Looking for experienced devs interested in a 1 year+ 40/hr week contract with the possibility of renewal, for this client only to help augment their existing in-house team that is dozens strong. This team is very experienced and passionate about the community service mission that this software supports and is excited to work with smart, versatile people.

Looking for:

* iOS Developer (Swift, Objective-C, React Native a plus)

* Android Developer (React Native a plus)

* Ruby Developer (web frontend and API)

* Angular / React / Full-Stack Web Developer

Team will be all-remote, but you MUST be on USA Eastern time or within an hour time difference to be available for standup. USA and Canada OK.

Details here: https://uptrending.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk01cqw?source=HN

Or reach out to me at ron+hn@uptrending.com . Please if you email me, make sure to put "HN" + who you are in your subject, with a description of who you are and a resume & profile.

UpTrending | iOS, Android, Ruby, React Native, Angular Developers | USA | Full-Time Contract | Remote

UpTrending is a technologist-centric digital agency, originally founded in Silicon Valley to service the marketing and technology needs of venture-backed B2B software startups. Our clients include SAAS products, big data, AI and data security companies. We are experts in the marketing of B2B technology businesses, with our core service offering of strategy, website design, development and marketing integrations.

We have a longstanding software-focused non-profit client with need to build up their team. Looking for experienced devs interested in a 1 year+ 40/hr week contract with the possibility of renewal, for this client only to help augment their existing in-house team that is dozens strong. This team is very experienced and passionate about the community service mission that this software supports and is excited to work with smart, versatile people.

Looking for:

* iOS Developer (Swift, Objective-C, React Native a plus)

* Android Developer (React Native a plus)

* Ruby Developer (web frontend and API)

* Angular / React / Full-Stack Web Developer

Team will be all-remote, but you MUST be on USA Eastern time or within an hour time difference to be available for standup. USA and Canada OK.

Details here: https://uptrending.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk01cqw?source=HN

Or reach out to me at ron+hn@uptrending.com . Please if you email me, make sure to put "HN" + who you are in your subject, with a description of who you are and a resume & profile.

UpTrending | Front-end and Sr. Full Stack PHP Developers | Westlake Village, Los Angeles, CA | Full-Time | Remote

UpTrending is a technologist-centric digital agency, originally founded in Silicon Valley to service the marketing needs of venture-backed B2B software startups. Our clients include SAAS products, big data, AI and data security companies. We are experts in the marketing of B2B technology businesses, with our core service offering of strategy, website design, development and marketing integrations.

UpTrending has been a globally distributed team for our entire history. Though our HQ is now planted in Southern California, we have core team members across the globe from engineering to leadership.

We are growing our expert team to support the increasingly complex needs of enterprise-scale clients, and incubating game-changing data products of our own.

We are looking for a full-time experienced Front-End Web Developer and a full-time Senior PHP (Wordpress) Developer, to work with our clients in building their web presence. This is primarily PHP Wordpress, HTML, CSS but also looking for strong skills in Marketing Automation / Integrations, Javascript, DevOps, Laravel, React, Vue, Angular devs as well.

Remote is OK as long as you are within a 5 hour time difference of USA Pacific timezone.

Details for Sr. Full-Stack Developer: https://uptrending.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk01pem?source=HN

Details for Front-End Web UI Developer: https://uptrending.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk01pef?source=HN

Also seeking to build out a bench of freelancers in PHP, frontend, Django, Python, Ruby on Rails, React and software architects / data engineers to work on our homegrown BI tools. Details here: https://uptrending.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk01peq?source=HN

Or reach out to me at ron+hn@uptrending.com .

Please if you email me, make sure to put "HN" + who you are in your subject, with a description of who you are and a resume & profile.

As someone who's done quite a bit of e-commerce solutions architecture for ecommerce businesses leveling up, I can say without a doubt the worst solution you could choose for a newly created store in 2018, would be roll out a home grown build.

You need to choose the solution that is best for your friend's business over the long term, not what is most interesting as a dev.

Use Shopify, as it's the most scalable over the long run, without a dev needed to keep the lights on. But even something like Etsy will do.

Do not go with Django / Python, and I say this as a Django dev myself. The second you get a higher priority project, your friend will be in a real jam. Maintenance with Django / Python is prohibitively expensive with freelancers, and needs a high level of engineering skill to keep up with business requirements over time.

Particularly things like packages & dependency upgrades, can lead to tech debt with cascading maintenance costs and increase likelihood of outages. Enough is changing in ecommerce around 3rd party vendor dependencies, security standards and regulations, that an un-patched Django site can get burned pretty quickly.

The cost of migrating to another ecommerce platform from something proprietary can become extremely expensive as well, so do your friend a favor and choose a scalable saas platform that will last. Good luck.

I'm curious if there are any unforeseen legal implications in having the world's largest software company acquiring the private repositories of a massive number of smaller software companies, including independent competitors to MS.

MS now has the capability to not only snoop on smaller competitors' IP but gain visibility into their dev team composition, work habits, pipeline etc.

This acquisition smells like something that could get litigated to hell and back, though I'd assume they've already prepared for that