I am the Director of Product Engineering at SOFware. We are a fully remote, small and profitable software company founded by a retired Navy SEAL turned Ruby on Rails dev. We serve the most elite units in Special Operations and Law Enforcement communities. We have a SaaS product for Assessment and Selection and Talent Management, (e.g. software for the selectors who decide who gets to be an operator plus ongoing measurement of individual performance once selected). We also staff and run traditional butts-in-seats DoD contracts for a few government-owned apps that we created, run and maintain.
If you're an experienced Ruby on Rails developer interested in working on hard, important technical problems for special operations and other military units we'd love to talk. If you're not so experienced but have a background in any of these communities please reach out anyway!
For the past 10 years we’ve helped in the selection and assessment of candidates involved in Elite Special Operations Forces and Federal Law Enforcement. We help deep select the best and put them in positions of leadership faster.
Our core team consists of Engineers and Former Operators. Some are both!
Our main technology stack is Ruby/Rails with some front end pieces built in React or Stimulus depending on the lift.
We believe in the strong link between developer productivity and happiness. So we encourage building tools to prevent mind numbing tasks: DSLs, Generators, and Scripts. We’re also big on collaborating. If you tend to be “married to your code” this role isn’t for you.
We work strictly remote but do sometimes send our developers onsite to interact with our analysts and users. We want to be sure everyone is understanding/building what the user needs.
Other benefits:
— Medical/Dental/yadda yadda
— Disability
— Life insurance
— 401(k) after three months of employment
— Company-provided laptop and home office allowance
— Federal holidays plus liberal PTO policy
This role would require you to get a SECRET security clearance which we would sponsor.
You can check out our website but it’s dated and built to target DoD offices.
https://sofwarellc.com/
Contact us at hn@sofwarellc.com
This position requires proof of vaccination to be provided by the date of hire, unless an accommodation request has been provided and granted pursuant to federal law.
This book is awesome! Really glad to see someone mentioned it. It has just enough about design so you can make something that doesn't look terrible. :-)
Been lurking on HN forever, this is my first Show HN. This is my second product, the first was a book for web designers.
I used to run a meetup group for developers with side projects. We were all there for the same reason: we love programming and our jobs were not a great outlet for creativity or challenge.
This is basically a reaction to the fact that most of us never actually finished a side project, and most of us are still stuck in the same situation at work. :-(
This looks really cool, and I signed up for the list.
That said, I'm very curious how accessible the videos will be. Screencasts are cool, but since I'm deaf, they're not always ideal for me since many of them aren't captioned and I never know if what they're showing on-screen is accompanied with a voice over to the effect of "You may see it done this way, and it's terrible, please don't do this." :)
Usually these "lessons learned" posts are very hand-wavy and hard to relate to. But this post has some great tips and the author sounds like me, just a regular person trying to sell a product.
I also think that building something beyond your authority is a really common failure pattern more people should be aware of.
Congrats Jaana on the launch and the transparency you're showing here!
I agree about the last lesson indeed (not having enough authority). Also, something that was discussed on the 30x500 alumni list, was that the trust you have to inspire to your followers in order to sell a product at $300 is much higher than if you sell a $20 ebook. Hence, all other things being equal, it's better to start with a lower priced first product.
You first need to build trust with free stuff, then cheap education products, then more and more expensive products or services (in the case of the book's author, 1-to-1 coaching). Very few people are going to buy something expensive from you if they don't know you. Most often they'll consume the free stuff first, then move on to your cheap product, etc.
I had some extra challenges on authority all along since I didn't pick an audience that I'd belong in myself. I just couldn't see myself writing technical tutorials for Java developers - and I didn't want to pick accountants either.
And I did a huge amount of little mistakes! I consider myself lucky in that I eventually reached the launch goal at all.
And I did a huge amount of little mistakes! I consider myself lucky in that I eventually reached the launch goal at all.
It's not luck, it's because you got the core thing right: You are killing a real pain people with money have. :) If you get that core right, you can make tons of mistakes and still help people and make money. It buys you the chance to improve and fix and grow.
Agree 100%. This is so concise and rich in actionable intel. I Evernoted for a reread prior to going live. Great to see a product that was in your head get built by you, distributed by you and give value to your customers. That is impressive...congrats!
Well, My book will not be low-quality. And it will be evident after I've written some high-quality sample content and guest blog posts. So the landing page is just the final step in the funnel.
That said I don't mean for it to look low-quality. That could just be a side-effect of my lack of design skills. :-)
The funny thing is I agree, but I don't think I'll do it. The old version is just so bad I feel like I'd be throwing away money. I'm not internet famous so traffic is hard for me to come by. Can I justify a split test?
So the question becomes do I trust the experts? I do. Therefore this landing page is my new baseline -- I'll split test from here.
Given that it's a lead gen page, you could get some solid split-test data off $100 or so of spend on the advertising platform of your choice. However, I don't know if that's something you could afford. If it is, I'd definitely recommend it, but I can certainly see why you'd be inclined to trust the experts.
FWIW, looking over the "after" page myself, I'd agree that it's a much more solid longish-form sales page. You'll probably be fine using that as your baseline!
Not yet. I have some posts in the works for web designers so I'll see how they convert compared to the old page. I'm ignoring all stats while this article is on HN. This isn't exactly the target audience for my book.
I am the Director of Product Engineering at SOFware. We are a fully remote, small and profitable software company founded by a retired Navy SEAL turned Ruby on Rails dev. We serve the most elite units in Special Operations and Law Enforcement communities. We have a SaaS product for Assessment and Selection and Talent Management, (e.g. software for the selectors who decide who gets to be an operator plus ongoing measurement of individual performance once selected). We also staff and run traditional butts-in-seats DoD contracts for a few government-owned apps that we created, run and maintain.
If you're an experienced Ruby on Rails developer interested in working on hard, important technical problems for special operations and other military units we'd love to talk. If you're not so experienced but have a background in any of these communities please reach out anyway!
We are currently hiring for one position for a senior Ruby on Rails dev, details are here: https://sofwarellc.com/careers.html
If you have any questions I'm sean.fioritto at our domain.