Categories
Facebook

Dear Facebook Recruiters

I’m not a good enough developer to work for you.

Even if I were, I wouldn’t want to work for you. You’re a scumbag company and Zuck is a sociopath.

Thanks for asking.

Categories
Social

Instagram, Still Lean

Instagram Blog: “We’ve been able to do this with an incredibly small team — today just 35 people — who live and breathe Instagram, and we’re looking for folks who are just as passionate to join us.”

Instagram has come a long way since they flipped the switch on their little photo sharing service in October 2010.

On Wednesday, October 6, 2010, Instagram launched its mobile photo sharing service for iPhone. In six hours, the back-end operation, which was running off a single machine in Los Angeles, was completely overwhelmed. – Mashable

Categories
Life

Wanted: Lead Chef

Mukilteo Coffee RoastersMukilteo Coffee Roasters: “A unique opportunity with Mukilteo Coffee’s cafe cabuni’ in the woods as come up. We are looking for an experienced lead chef to join our team in our busy little cafe.”

Mukilteo Coffee is my favorite coffee roaster in the world. This would be a great place for Haileigh, if she was able to move.

Anywho, if you’re a Chef looking for work, this looks like a great opportunity.

Categories
Life

T.T.F.N LEVEL, I Still ♥ You

It’s true. Today is my last day with LEVEL Studios. It’s hard to say goodbye to a place like this, especially when you do love her and her people. It’s been a fun year, but it’s time for me to move on.

Why?

That’s the hard part to explain, because I really do love this company. It’s full of smart, energetic, people. It has a great company culture and fantastic leadership. The “problem” falls squarely with me.

They're bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun...Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the native client experience. I’ve had the honor to work with a team that created a new segment in Windows drawing applications and I’ve worked on native iOS applications and I LOVE that experience. I think User Experience, or UX, is so important and I believe the best way to provide that important experience is through native API’s provided by the platform vendor. So, yes, I’m going back to writing desktop software. No, it’s not on the Mac, or iOS, even though I’d love to do that. I’m going back to writing Windows software. That’s right, back to C++ and Windows! I can see my fellow LEVEL’ites rolling their eyes. That’s ok, I likes me some native clients. It’s in my blood.

Where?

Where is a great question. We’re staying in San Luis Obispo, we don’t plan on leaving this place. I’m going to work for a company called CygNet. They’re a product company. From the CygNet website.

CygNet Software provides enterprise software and industry solutions that collect, manage and distribute essential operations data. Robust, proven and evergreen, CygNet extends customer horizons with improved operational efficiency and increased market responsiveness

I’ll be working on products used to collect and analyze data from Oil and Gas Pipelines, and I get to work on UI again! Yes, I’m pretty stoked about it!

On the LEVEL

LEVEL is a definite powerhouse when it comes to the web. In fact I’d encourage young up-and-coming web developers or designers to consider LEVEL as a place to start your career. You’ll learn loads. LEVEL is chock full of great web developers, not to mention fantastic designers.

A wonderful boquet of flowers.Oh, yeah, and there’s this great group of folks, they keep in a dark room, that develop great, high performance, highly scalable, web services. One of our web services is serving near four million users worldwide, and growing every day. Yes, LEVEL can build these things. Shhhhhh, keep that under your hat, it’s a secret!

Would I work here again? Absolutely. That’s what made this decision so tough.

Epilog

I don’t believe in saying Goodbye, goodbye is forever. I’ll just say TTFN *Le Publetta.

*Le Publetta is a combination of LEVEL, Publicis, and Rosetta. I think it’s a strong name, don’t you?

Categories
Life

LEVEL’ing Up

Kim and I are becoming empty nesters. Yes, it’s true, our little girls are all grown up. Haileigh is just about to graduate culinary school, and Taylor has just finished her first year in college. When the reality of it all set in Kim and I started thinking what’s next?

Question is, where?

It wasn’t so much what’s next as it was where? We’d been discussing a move out of the great San Joaquin Valley. Lots and lots of places came up; Boulder, Ft. Collins, Seattle, Austin, just to name a few. Yeah, we were open to a big move. In the end we settled on San Luis Obispo as a destination.

Finding a way

How do we get there? Well, you gotta find a great place to work, right? Yes, of course you do. I started looking for work about a year ago. I spoke with four different companies, one I thought I had, the other three were small and didn’t work. So I started looking around the Twitterverse for folks in San Luis Obispo I could connect with and found a great design community, much like Fresno’s. I reached out and found the folks to be quite friendly and helpful. I shared my skill set and asked who in San Luis Obispo might be a good fit. I was given a name.

Hello LEVEL

LEVEL Studios. That was the recommendation. So I decided to check out their web site, and found they’re a bit mysterious. It was hard to tell what they were up to. I found that they work with folks like Apple, HP, and RIM. They also ship a CMS, Switch. Given that, I thought I might find something that fit, so I applied. Lo and behold, I got a call! After a couple of phone interviews I traveled to San Luis Obispo to meet them in person. I went into the interview not knowing what to expect, and was extremely excited about what I heard. These guys do some very serious work, no I’m not going to say what, suffice it to say I was sold, and hoped I’d get an offer. I did.

Tomorrow, Friday, May 28, is my last day with Pelco. It’s been an interesting five years. I’ve see a lot of change during that time; acquisition, layoffs, and re-orgs. Pelco is on the right track. They have strong technical leadership in place and are making bold moves to become an IP company rather that a metal bending company. I have no doubt they’ll be quite successful. I’ll miss the people I worked with on a daily basis, but isn’t it always like that? Onward!

Monday, June 7, is my first day with LEVEL Studios. I’m really looking forward to it. The folks I’ve interacted with are super bright and friendly. The company has that old Visio-family feel I’ve been missing, I can’t wait to experience it first hand. Oh, yeah, and I also get to work on cool stuff, it doesn’t get much better than that!

Hello LEVEL, it’s very nice to meet you.

Categories
Life

More on the new Pelco

Security Systems News: “Would Pelco be in the same place had Schneider never purchased it? Fages, who’s been with the company seven years, took some time to think. “Would it be the same? My answer would probably be, ‘no.’ I believe Schneider is probably better prepared to fight the downturn in the economy that we are facing today. I was in charge of Asia for the last four years. The previous ownership didn’t understand what it meant to manufacture in China. All of those changes we’ve made to get more international, Schneider has stronger experience with that. The previous ownership wouldn’t have been able to implement those changes quickly and to face the economic situation.” – This is the best article I’ve read on the changes at Pelco. It’s about becoming a stronger company, period. I like that, it’s truthful, and gets beyond all the bluster of “if the prior owners were here…” because the honest truth is this, if the prior owners had been in charge of Pelco in the face of the economic crisis I’m not certain the company would still be operating. The new Pelco answers to shareholders and that’s a good thing. We have a new direction, new leadership, and some very interesting work ahead of us. Becoming a stronger company, a more agile company, will help move us forward and allow us to build the products we need to build.

The new open Pelco is a better Pelco.