rwhitman

Well this is the classic NYC employer perspective - it's impossible for you to be inventing things "off the clock" because you will never have the opportunity to be "off the clock". In their mind, unless you are sleeping or dead, you should be working... Good luck.

Location: Los Angeles, California

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No.

About Me:

Technology manager / director and SAAS solutions & integrations consultant for e-commerce. 17 years in the business. Full-stack web developer for most of that. Startup founder, growth hacker and Product/UX for a moment too.

I have been a hiring manager, recruited and staffed up engineering teams and I know gobs of stuff about the technology business. Just wrapped up a year stint as a tech director at a digital agency in Los Angeles to return to consulting, though generally open minded to whatever opportunities should cross my desk.

Technologies: Python/Django, PHP, Javascript, HTML/CSS/SASS, Shopify/Liquid, MySQL, Wordpress, CRM/Salesforce, analytics and many many vendors (ask). A little NodeJS, some light devops, a smidge of React. Also dabbled with iOS, Unity & C# for VR.

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwhitman/ (email for full resume)

Email: ron+hn@rwds.co

SEEKING WORK | Los Angeles, California or Remote

Solutions and integrations consultant for web and e-commerce.

Also experienced as an engineering manager, in product/UX, and I have been a full-stack web developer for 17 years.

I'm getting back into consulting after a year working as a technology director for a digital agency in Los Angeles, where I managed and hired a number of full-stack and mobile developers and provided clients with solutions for web and e-commerce vendor integrations.

I've worked on crafting solutions for PHP, Django/Python, Shopify Plus, Wordpress, Magento, iOS, BigCommerce, CRM / Salesforce, ERP, marketing automation, fulfillment systems, internationalization, security, AWS, etc and have established partner relationships with many SAAS vendors. I can also handle coordinating platform and system migrations, e-commerce data migrations (ex Magento to Shopify).

My LinkedIn is relatively up to date: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronwhitman/

You can reach out at ron+hn@rwds.co

I know a designer that would be a killer fit but I didn't see the listing to forward to them

Funny, I've never seen a tech company based in Atwater Village before.. we're neighbors

I love Shopify and Shopify Plus, have worked with their team very closely on many large re-platform projects and I have to say for B2B it is getting there, very slowly, but still miles away from being B2B enterprise-ready without a significant amount of custom build work, hacks, apps and workarounds.

There are so many issues with Shopify Plus for B2B use cases that it's hard to recommend unless the store is very simplistic.

BigCommerce ships with a lot more features for B2B and enterprise out of the box, than Shopify.

To get a Shopify store configured to the B2B & enterprise features of BigCommerce you need a fair amount of 3rd party apps, bubblegum and duct tape

I'd argue that the industry tends to swing between larger venture startups to constellations of smaller 'lifestyle'/bootstrapped businesses as technology shifts, in cycles.

The VC capital flows in when there are hard and expensive problems to solve in emerging tech spaces that need a lot of innovation or heavy lifting and, hence, financial runway to survive.

When the tech in the space gets cheaper, the cow paths have been paved and the tech becomes more accessible, it becomes more viable to bootstrap your way into the market. The get rich quick gold rush starts and then everyone floods in to find niches in the market they can fill on their own.

Eventually the bootstrapped businesses fill all the niches they can, the market becomes saturated and it's no longer lucrative or easy to bootstrap in that space. And the cycle begins again

Live feed on CBS: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-respond-youtube-possible...

Isn't the entire history of communication archeology-hostile?

Circa 2009 I was hired to build a Facebook graph app that did just this, only for dating profiles. Thankfully it was acquired and buried by the shady sociopaths who hired me to build it, before it ever saw the light of day.

However, there were many, many apps that also did the same. A number of dating apps, companies like Zynga, business networks like BranchOut etc. They were just inhaling data wholesale, especially Likes which were fully exposed to all friends in your graph.

I could totally see how you could use that data circa 2014 to build psych profiles and resell it for sophisticated targeting years later.

There is an enormous risk of companies who rose and fell during the Zynga era to have resold or improperly disposed of FB profile data during their final liquidation. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The most fascinating spots are located near the equator, in the middle of the ocean, or the desert of North Africa.

There are many seemingly "uninhabited" places in these remote equatorial areas that light up with clear tracks or circles, in areas that are obscured by clouds, blurred or look like brown dirt.

Coincidentally, Meetup's HQ is a very swanky bit of Manhattan real estate they've been sitting on forever, right between Broadway and Lafayette in NoHo, and would make for a nice WeWork space.

WeWork is 100% about real estate and that's all there is to it.

SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote, Los Angeles CA, or Lima Peru

ZehnerGroup http://www.zehnergroup.com/ is seeking a remote freelance Python/Flask + DevOps Engineer; Django / Python Engineers to work remote or in our Lima, Peru office; remote Magento 2 Engineers; and Web Developers with Shopify & Full-Stack PHP experience in Los Angeles, CA.

ZehnerGroup is a design / build agency in Los Angeles, California. We have an awesome team filled with smart, fun, creative people. Our client projects range from high-profile, complex systems running on tech such Django/Python, Flask, Node, React, Laravel, Docker, AWS, iOS/Swift, Android and more to start-up consumer fashion & lifestyle e-commerce in Shopify, Wordpress and Magento.

We have multiple opportunities for Django/Python developers in our new office in Lima, Peru or remote (within a 4 hr time difference of Los Angeles) and are actively looking for talented engineers with DevOps experience (AWS, Docker, Chef, Circle CI, Ansible), Magento 2 experience to work with us remotely.

If you are experienced in Shopify/Liquid, we'd love to talk to you as well.

To apply, you can reach out to me direct at rwhitman+hn@zehnergroup.com , please include "HN" in the subject, a resume, where you are located, some work samples and your rate.

I will not respond to one-liner emails, so please be considerate and include information about yourself. Thanks!

ZehnerGroup http://www.zehnergroup.com/ | Los Angeles, CA or Lima, Peru or Remote | Python/Flask + DevOps Engineer, Django / Python Engineer, Magento 2 Engineer, Full-stack & Shopify Web Developer | ONSITE/REMOTE

ZehnerGroup is a design / build agency in Los Angeles, California. We have an awesome team filled with smart, fun, creative people. Our client projects range from high-profile, complex systems running on tech such Django/Python, Flask, Node, React, Laravel, Docker, AWS, iOS/Swift, Android and more to start-up consumer fashion & lifestyle e-commerce in Shopify, Wordpress and Magento.

We have multiple opportunities for Django/Python developers in our new office in Lima, Peru or remote (within a 4 hr time difference of Los Angeles) and are actively looking for talented engineers with DevOps experience (AWS, Docker, Chef, Circle CI, Ansible), Magento 2 experience to work with us remotely.

Well-rounded developers in Los Angeles with pixel-perfect frontend and Shopify, or full-stack PHP skills are encouraged to reach out for full-time roles in our Culver City office.

For more info you can reach out to me direct at rwhitman+hn@zehnergroup.com . Or fill out an application here: http://zehnergroup.jazz.co/apply

So, I talked to an engineer for a neighboring SoCal city...

He said there's typically a grading and demolition permit needed, structural engineer needs to sign off on the integrity of the pit, earthquake assessment, Dig Alert for utilities etc. But because he's Musk, SpaceX likely gets fast tracked for permits from the city of Hawthorne.

Found some details on the nitty gritty of it: http://www.dailynews.com/business/20170130/elon-musks-tunnel...

I don't understand how he gets away with digging that big of a hole in the ground in Los Angeles County without some serious assessment and permit filing being done first. The rock is very soft and we have earthquakes here. It took decades to approve the subway line down Wilshire Blvd. I'm assuming SpaceX gets special permission to do anything it wants, but it's still very surprising that they can just start digging a giant hole in the parking lot without some opposition

Ah, the underground Mars colony. It was confusing to me as to why this was so relevant to SpaceX that they'd not only take away engineering resources from other projects, but also start ripping up their parking lot to experiment.

If you want to build a radiation-shielded settlement on Mars, the best bet is to dig. But how do you dig on Mars? Just as Tesla & SpaceX solve the question of electric power in space, this project starts to solves the underground colony question...

Good tip. Thanks ;)

Ditto. I think there are a lot of people interested in the online disinformation problem at the moment.

Are there any resources out there for tech folks that might be interested in working full-time for a non-profit, backed by YC or not?

I have a strong interest in these areas but not really in the zone for building a team to apply for YC. Increasingly interested in a career pivot towards working with an organization in these areas however. Where should I look?

The history of America is a series of migrations from rural/suburban to city centers and back again.

Businesses and good jobs start to concentrate in urban downtowns, then the city gets too dense or polluted or expensive, people migrate for a better life to raise kids in a commutable distance based on the tech available (street cars, railways, cars), they go too far for the kids to find a job nearby when they are of working age, and then the kids move back to the city.. and the cycle restarts anew.

Any advice for someone looking to work in the NFP space?

Personally I would love to work with non-profits right now, regardless of pay implications. Recent macro events have really awoken my desire to do good in the course of my work. I'd like to think there are others with a similar outlook right now, but maybe I'm an outlier in this industry...

Agreed. Though personally I believe Silicon Valley shares a responsibility - tech companies should encourage more remote work and smaller hub offices in less dense urban areas. It would save them money and help distribute economic gains outside of just the major urban centers.

This was a root cause of Brexit in my opinion as well - all of the UK's best jobs are stuffed into London and London only.

If you do a root cause analysis of this election's result, much of it points back to Silicon Valley in one way or another.

Workforce automation created millions of unemployed people in places far away from economic hubs, with no hope of employment in their hometowns or re-skilling for the new roles, leaving them desperate. Proliferation of mobile apps lead to an explosion in use of social media. The wild popularity of this democratic social media encouraged a culture that allowed misinformation to flourish without a lot of consequences.

Bad actors took advantage of this, and reinforced distorted false narratives. Desperate people latched onto the messages presented to them, that gave them solutions repeatedly reinforced by social media, and many took an enormous risk - they voted against their best interests in order to solve their problems with the information they had available. And that is how we got here today.

You'll find out very soon.

OMG, that's what I thought too! But no, no, no. Chrome became her BIGGEST vector for malware! She was installing Chrome plugins, and they in turn installed a modded copy of Chromium with all kinds of toolbars and spyware, which set itself as the default. Chrome became a total disaster, worse than IE ever was. I think recent security patches have helped a bit though

My mom has had various Windows PCs since the late 90's. About every 3 to 6 months or so I get a call that it's "stopped working" and has either locked up completely or is moving at a crawl.

Nearly every time it takes me hours if not days to do a bunch of scans, install updates and purge whatever garbage has been installed by various malware that she's somehow managed to find. I've done more than a few clean wipes, bought her new machines and yet still she figures out how to kill it again. Most of the time it's caused by her playing some silly online puzzle game, or clicking a link in an email or some sort of fake notification... or AOL, which she refuses to ditch even though it's a huge vector.

It's been decades and she still hasn't learned how to avoid this stuff correctly. I've tried every malware scanner & notification software on the market, and each one of them is eventually bypassed by clever malware or in some cases like AVG or Norton, BECOMES the friggin problem.

Basically, my conclusion is if your parent has a problem like this the only solution is refuse to help them anymore if they insist on using Windows as their primary web device and make them get a Mac and/or an iPad, maybe a Chromebook as others suggested. Then get rid of the Windows PC or simply tell them not to use it for anything other than printing / scanning etc. There is no winning otherwise. Windows for some folks is just plain bad news

People tend to forget that many of the most effective public transit systems were originally built out by private companies and then acquired by governments after the private company went bankrupt. A good chunk of the public transit systems on the East Coast at least are the result of the railroad boom & bust at the turn of the 20th century. Transportation at scale, is not all that profitable in the long run. Yet people still depend on it. That's why government is involved in the first place.

It's probably not a bad pattern - let private companies innovate and rapidly build up the new networks and then have public administrators step in when the private sector fails to turn a profit.

Reading a related article, about "super commuters" who use the Megabus to commute to NYC from Philadelphia ( http://www.villagevoice.com/news/meet-phillys-super-commuter... ) - it's another example of a private company filling in a gap in public transit infrastructure, albeit less high-tech. Might lead to improvements of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor at some point, or dedicated BRT lanes on I-95, who knows. Either way it's a private business demonstrating increased demand, and the public sector will eventually catch up.