Q is building an OS for physical spaces, backed by a comprehensive technology and service platform. We believe that creating good jobs is fundamental to our success. We treat all of our employees well — from software engineers to office cleaners. We know that 5-star service comes from talented, motivated people.
Our stack is Python (Django and Flask), MySQL, RabbitMQ, React, Flux/Redux, all wrapped in Docker but we welcome excellent engineers of all backgrounds. We value both those who want to specialize in a particular area and those who like to work across the stack.
We're currently focused on senior-level candidates (4-10 years of experience) who like to get their hands dirty and want to work as individual contributors. Potential to move into leadership roles in the future.
Q was founded a year ago. We’re creating smart solutions for office management, and we’re growing at an insane pace. We’re a small team so there’s huge impact. And we’re making a difference in the lives of our field operators (cleaners and handymen) and the communities we serve.
Our stack includes AWS, Django, MySQL, Node, React, iOS, Android. We’re hiring frontend engineers, backend engineers, mobile engineers, product designers, product managers / leads, and a CTO / SVP Engineering.
Q was founded a year ago. We’re creating smart solutions for office management, and we’re growing at an insane pace. We’re a small team so there’s huge impact. And we’re making a difference in the lives of our field operators (cleaners and handymen) and the communities we serve.
Our stack includes Django, React, MySQL, Node, iOS, Android. We’re hiring frontend engineers, backend engineers, mobile engineers, product designers, product managers / leads, and a CTO / SVP Engineering.
Hey, I'm Dave, one of the developers on next.data.gov. We're totally stoked by the great community response that we received for the launch of next.data.gov (even if we did have to fire up a few more servers to handle the hug!). Thank you for caring about the open data mission, for checking out our site, for providing feedback and, I hope, for getting involved with this and other government open-data initiatives.
I'd prefer to have all the comments located in a single location (e.g. ~/.comments or ~/Dropbox/comments-<hostname>) rather than litter hidden files all over the place because I could (1) easily back them up, (2) share them (even across different platforms), and (3) allow multiple users to set local and global (shared) comments.
This is one of my favourite things to do. I love connecting with strangers to pick their brains - and sometimes it becomes a friendship or mentorship. I've learned and experienced a lot as a result of this habit, so I want to outline how insanely simple this approach is.
For Mentorship:
1. Figure out what you want to do.
2. Find people who have achieved this.
3. Contact them (rules in a moment).
4. Create a good back and forth dynamic.
For Interest:
1. Identify something interesting about the person you want to learn more about
2. Contact them to ask a simple, non-overwhelming question
3. Keep the conversation going if relevant, or let it die naturally. Don't force shit.
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CONTACTING PEOPLE WHO ARE AWESOME: A PRIMER
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The following is a hierarchy for contacting people with respect to effectiveness and long term benefit.
1. WITH AN INTRODUCTION
- Face to face by third party
- Face to face with third party introduction prior
- Phone by third party
- Phone with third party introduction prior
- Email by third party
- Email with third party introduction prior
2. WITHOUT AN INTRODUCTION
- Non face to face, with an easy (and, hopefully unexpected yet interesting) question. This is actually how I contacted Derek the first time. Email is good if you can write well (do a copywriting course), and a phone is good if you can wrestle past gatekeepers (not that hard).
- Face to face
That's it. This stuff is not hard - in fact, it's easy. Don't stalk, be cool, pay it forward wherever you can.
- R
P.S. Can't get people to respond? They're busy, or you aren't interesting enough. Adjust your tact.
P.P.S. Contact details are easily found with Google - old blogs, personal blogs, deep enough on the website, whatever.
Find driven people. Go to conferences and other such events where the really passionate people are. Now? Just copy them!
It might not be a one on one coaching, but seeing how much others do while slacking of on the couch and reading about all their doings on Twitter should make you more productive.
I've known people who are perfectly willing and capable mentors, but never got asked. Ironically, they were surrounded by people who were looking for mentors, but were afraid to ask. I happened to know both sides and made the connection, but I'm sure many others fall through the cracks just because they didn't ask someone to be their mentor.
Note: Not everyone has the time, willingness, or ability to be a mentor. But I still don't think it hurts to ask. The worst you can get is no mentor, which is what you started out with anyways.
For jazz guitar I find teachers with online videos that resonate. Then I manage to contact them and pay for direct Skype chats/lessons. It doesn't have to be a formal college setting IMO.
A few weeks ago I was listening to a show on NPR about how to get into programming (I believe one of the founders of Codecademy was a guest) and one of the guests said something that has been running through my head since:
5-10 years from now, entry/junior-level programming will be blue collar job.
Think back to 1992. 20 years ago. Using the 'web'. Well, Gopher sites, and veronica searches. Then fast forward to 2002. How much changed? How much was new, and how well did the signal hold up to the noise? We went from pure text, which was mostly well-written, to a heavily graphical environment. Pages didn't render so hot but some of the crazier websites were just about to do some really impressive things. Webmail was becoming a cute way to check your mail real quick when you weren't at your regular computer.
Now you're in 2002 and are warping to the present day. Now how much was new? Somewhere in between it got fast and diverse enough to replace television. Browsers got real good at all rendering the same thing. The client side code started getting robust. The noise level is at an all time high. Advertising runs rampant. Fraud is prolific and all sorts of infrastructure is integrated and allows all sorts of use and misuse. Add to this the upcoming significance of mobile computing.
Now with this cadence of the imagination, pole-vault yourself into 2022. It's ten years from now. How is the signal compared to the noise? How is the 'web' doing? How are the programmers that created it? Their upcoming replacements have never known a webless world. Few were trained in college, nor vocational centers, but simply picked the skills up as part of the natural landscape of growing up. Programming has had another 10 years of abstraction. Graphical environments allow programmers to metaphorically build entire program flows the same way a call center employee reads a script. Creativity within these environments is stifled, undesired, expensive. But it pays the bills and keeps the net flowing back at home.
The blue collar programmer of 2022 goes home from their job, fatigued from a day of pointing their fingers at 4 foot glass displays. They feel a relief when they get home to an 8 foot display, where they can run some white collar's program for the remainder of the night. The program is a mix of video games and social networking. It's how a person from 2012 might have felt hanging out at a cheap bar with a few ipads and college buddies. The experience keeps its user distracted and content, the perfectly designed program to contain the 8.3 billion people ever expanding for space and resources.
It was my understanding that most CS programs include a course covering formal languages and grammars. At my school it was called (creatively) Theoretical Computer Science.
Learning to break apart a regex and rebuild it as a state machine is where the real magic happens.
Any decent CS program should contain such a course, sure, but it is probably not in the required curriculum, and it's probably not taken by very many students.
As for names, at SFU (my alma mater) it's called "Formal Languages and Automata". Well, actually, there are actually about half a dozen courses covering parts of this material, but that's the most-perfect match for what you described.
Learning to break apart a regex and rebuild
it as a state machine is where the real magic happens.
That's useful for sure, but modern regex libraries have facilities that can only be translated into a pushdown automaton and you end up using those facilities a lot, even if you don't realize it.
Checking the rules for array initialization in Harbison & Steele, this does indeed seem to be invalid. I'm surprised, I actually thought that was valid...
Q is building an OS for physical spaces, backed by a comprehensive technology and service platform. We believe that creating good jobs is fundamental to our success. We treat all of our employees well — from software engineers to office cleaners. We know that 5-star service comes from talented, motivated people.
Our stack is Python (Django and Flask), MySQL, RabbitMQ, React, Flux/Redux, all wrapped in Docker but we welcome excellent engineers of all backgrounds. We value both those who want to specialize in a particular area and those who like to work across the stack.
We're currently focused on senior-level candidates (4-10 years of experience) who like to get their hands dirty and want to work as individual contributors. Potential to move into leadership roles in the future.
NYT: http://nyti.ms/1LflK5J (15m read)
TechCrunch: http://tcrn.ch/25Baw2D (1m read)
Devpost: http://devpost.com/teams/managed-by-q (5m read)
Reach out to Tyler, tyler@managedbyq.com, with any interest.
*Keywords: javascript js react aws nyc new york full-stack frontend backend python