Web 2.0
13+ Facebook Groups for Computer Programmers
Last week Boris was featured as a guest writer on Mashable, his post HOW TO: Use Facebook for Professional Networking received over 950 tweets. From reading the comments, I was surprised to find that there are many people who still have yet to capitalize on the professional benefits Facebook groups have to offer. By joining groups you have the opportunity to:
- Participate in group discussions
- Answer and ask questions
- Add and view links
- Send a message to the whole group
- Get information on upcoming events
- Learn about and connect with individuals in your industry
If you are curious as to what type of groups are available to join, specifically in the Software/Web Marketplace, I have put together a list of Facebook Groups to get you started:
- Join a Startup – Members: 8,159 The Join a Startup Group on Facebook is for those professionals in the
Software/Internet Marketplace who are looking to work for the next Google. It is also for startups that are looking for talented and driven individuals. On the group discussion board, startups post their open positions, the required qualifications and an introduction to their company. Those individuals interested in working for a startup can see the post, apply or post a brief summary of their background. Members of this group also share industry specific news, videos and events. - Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs – Members: 63,896 The Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs
Group is for all those techies, programmers, hackers, developers, designers, etc. who are interested in joining up with new startups. It is also for professionals who are dying to be part of the next web business boom. With links to venture companies, business resources, and access to over 60,000 movers and shakers in the industry, making contacts and hearing about potential career opportunities should easy. 
- .Net Programmers - Members: 12,244 One of the largest and growing communities of student and professional developers on Facebook. Powered by INETA, VWE, MICROSOFT & more. Join to discuss and attend educative talks and interactive presentations of interest to professional developers around the world.
- Lunch 2.0 – Members: 2,908 Lunch 2.0, it is a popular networking event devoted mainly to the Software
Industry. Each month a different software company hosts a lunch, they invite everyone in the marketplace to come in see their office and mingle with other professionals in the industry. Their Facebook Group is for those members who regularly attend the events in their area, and want
to network with members from different regions. Members have access to event updates, news articles posted by other members, photos/videos from past events. - The Web Designer Index – Members: 15,377 Out of all the groups listed in this post, I feel The Web Designer Index Group offers the most features to its group members. The Web Designer Index is a group for all web designers, developers, web programmers and animators to come together and discuss programming, graphic design, and anything else web-related. The group allows its members to post their personal websites, portfolios, favorite websites and tutorials. It also has a resource area on the page that links informational websites listed by topic. Members have the freedom to use the discussion board to announce when they are looking for a job, know of job openings or are referring someone for a position previously listed.
- Computer Programmers – Members: 11,018 The Computer Programmers Group on Facebook is one of the largest groups for computer programmers. It’s members work with or have worked with technologies such as C, Java, Pascal, Python, HTML, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Visual Basic, and others. This group doesn’t allow job postings or business advertisements, but it does have hundreds of posts on their discussion board where Computer Science professionals can go to give and read advice and tips. It is a excellent group to meet and build contacts with individuals who share the same professional skills
as you do. - Computer Programmers Global Resource Center – Members: 1,286 This group coins themselves as one of the oldest and growing community of programmers on Facebook. Members of this group discuss interesting programming topics with other developers. Most of the group members have a specialty in C, C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Prolog, Fortran. & more
- Web 3.0 – Members: 13,511 This group is for those interested in the next evolution on the web. Network with other Facebook members who want to stay on top of innovation and merge into the world of Web 3.0. Here you will get an idea of what Web 3.0 is and what those in the web space are doing to move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0
- Software Engineering – Members: 3,621 This group is for Software Engineers around the globe to connect and network with software or application developers, software architects, or senior systems analysts. They have an active discussion and wall where the members talk about current software trends, list jobs and post insightful links.
- Web Startups – Members: 2,359 This group is dedicated to all web entrepreneurs who want to share their new projects with a tech savvy community. Under the links section it lists a tons of startups and their websites. It is to make the tech community more aware of what is out there.
- Web T.e. – Members: 2,249 This group is a spinoff of the Web 2.0 group listed above. Web T.e (T.e = Trust,
Ideas and Ethics) is a group where members who share those three attributes can freely share their ideas and get feedback. Members can talk with great programmers and people with web experience. They can form partnerships and find dedicated and enthusiastic people for help. It’s about “discussing and developing” with people you can trust. - Computer Science: Programming problems – Members: 2,757 This group brings together programmers
to discuss interesting problems and to find the most elegant algorithm, both effective and understandable. You can find links to training seminars, self help videos and have access to members that are more than willing to assist you with questions that pertain to programming - Specialized Programming Groups – When searching for groups, if you look in the category of Internet and Technology – Software there are many specialized groups. Examples are:
- PHP
- Ruby on Rails
- Ruby
- Rails
- Java
- LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP)
- C#
- .NET Programmers
- ASP.NET Developers
- Linux
- Perl
- OpenSource
- PytonDevelopers
Product Manager – Customer & Agent Experiences
Job ID: BE179958
Job Title: Product Manager – Customer & Agent Experiences
Salary: $90-130k
Location: Washington
Job Description:
Our client is seeking a talented product/program manager to lead the charge designing the best home-buying and home-selling experience on the planet. This PM will be responsible for all aspects of website interaction between millions of customers and hundreds of agents. He or she will work with the real estate operations team to define the service and process around how our client delights all customers with a fantastic real estate experience from start-to-finish.
Click to continue reading “Product Manager – Customer & Agent Experiences”
Software Engineering Manager, Products
Job ID: BE755695
Job Title: Software Engineering Manager, Products
Salary: 120k+
Location: Massachusetts
Job Description:
Our client’s software engineering team is looking for a passionate, talented, and resourceful engineering manager to lead the Products group. Their teams work in a rapid development environment, creating the exciting feel of a start-up with all the resources and perks of stable, rapidly growing global company. They know that their strongest resource is their team and we work hard to foster an environment that is fast paced, innovative and fun. To put it plainly, a career here means that the sky’s the limit.
Responsibilities:
· will be responsible for leading the team of engineers who develops, deploys, and maintains the consumer facing features of our client’s site. This includes user membership and user generated content such as reviews, forums, wiki, video, photos, as well as social networking features on the site and on third party networks
· will be in a unique position to help map the future of travel on the web
· will be leading a team of Web 2.0 enthusiasts who are passionate about developing web based products
Qualifications:
· must be smart, fun, and enjoyable to work with, love to “make things happen”, embrace change, and can thrive working in a very fast paced environment
· must have 5-10+ years total software engineering experience with a proven track record as an engineer building scalable publicly facing web sites
· must have strong people management skills, with at least 2+ years of managing a group of 3-8 engineers in a fast paced environment
· must be able to conduct code reviews and be able to review, analyze, and contribute to technical discussions
· must have an in-depth and hands on knowledge of Linux, Java and related open source technologies such as Apache, Tomcat, Lucene, and Postgres
· must have demonstrated success working in and promoting a rapidly changing, collaborative, and iterative product development environment
· must have proven success at an internet startup or early stage company
· must have strong interpersonal skills and ability to facilitate communication within and between engineering teams
· must have a sense of urgency
· must have a BS in Computer Science or equivalent degree
Company Culture:
· Company has a global presence and is expanding their markets
· Shaping the future of social networking meets consumer generated content
· Speed to market — they design, build and deploy new products VERY quickly
· Located near Boston, MA
To apply for this position please click here to send your resume
Senior Director of Engineering, Applications and Services
Job ID: BE756635
Job Title: Senior Director of Engineering, Applications and Services
Salary: 140k +
Location: Massachusetts
Job Description:
The ideal candidate will be passionate about working with talented engineering, business, and marketing professionals in an exciting and dynamic environment. You will be responsible for managing multiple teams of software engineers to deliver effective application and solutions that drive significant company revenue, as well as two high traffic consumer web sites. You will have 10 or more years of proven technical experience and solid managerial and leadership skills combined with excellent oral and written communications skills, and an ability to balance multiple projects and meticulous attention to detail. While this position is strictly a managerial (non-coding) position, candidates must have a proven track record of delivering highly scalable applications as a direct technical contributor. Candidates need to be smart, fun, and enjoyable to work with, love to “make things happen”, embrace change, and can thrive on working in a very fast paced environment.
Responsibilities:
· will be responsible on the engineering side for multiple areas of business
· will deal with Search Engine Marketing
· will develop automated bidding and campaign management strategies and tools for a database of 50,000,000 search phrases leveraging 15TB of historical visitor activity
· will operate in the world’s biggest auction market
· will use AdWords to analyze every Google search to determine which advertisers get sponsored links on every results page
· will manage multiple travel sites
· will help drive our business, SEO, SEM, and commerce strategies for these sites
· will deal with content distribution and partnerships
· will develop customized and self service solutions for content distribution
· will work with 10,000+ widgets and badges currently deployed web sites
· will work with content management
· will develop, support, and deploy infrastructure to manage and maintain content
· will work with sophisticated fraud detection and management
Qualifications:
· must have up to date and hands on expertise in Linux, Java, web technologies, and database
· must have demonstrated success in shipping significant product as an engineer in an individual contributor role in a fast paced startup or small company
· must have been an effective technical lead in delivering products in a fast paced startup or small company
· must have been an effective software engineering manager in a fast paced startup or small company
· must be able to add significant value in a direct and tangible way to code reviews, design reviews, and analyzing product specs
· must be effective at interviewing software engineers
· must be effective at partnering with multiple business owners
· must be comfortable getting in front of a whiteboard and discussing both high level architecture and low level coding/algorithms
· must have worked on a web product for a startup or very small company where you were the primary or one of the primary coders
· must have had your first management experience in a Web 2.0 company
· must have had your most interesting start-up experience and why it had a significant impact on the company
· must have at least 10 years of technical expertise including recent experience with high-performance consumer facing websites
· must have strong people management skills, with at least 3 years of managing technical teams
· must have a history of success in hiring, retaining, leading, motivating, and mentoring top-tier technical talent
· must have an in-depth and hands on knowledge of Linux, Java and related open source technologies such as Apache, Tomcat, Lucene, and Postgres
· must have demonstrated success working in and promoting a rapidly changing, collaborative, and iterative product development environment
· must have proven success at an internet startup or early stage company
· must have strong interpersonal skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally
· must have ability to serve as the focal point for other departments on project status and information
· must have ability to work hard and fast while maintaining attention to detail. Have a sense of urgency
· must have a BS in Computer Science or equivalent degree
Company Culture:
· Company has a global presence and is expanding their markets
· Shaping the future of social networking meets consumer generated content
· Speed to market — they design, build and deploy new products VERY quickly
· Located near Boston, MA
To apply for this position please click here to send your resume
Diggin for Dirt – 10 Employer Rating/Review Sites
Did you know Tommy Flanagan invented Rock and Roll? Or at least that’s what he wanted everyone to believe. Incase you aren’t familiar with old Saturday Night Live skits, Tommy Flanagan a.k.a. “The Pathological Liar” was a character played by John Lovitz, who told lies about his achievements and accomplishments in life as a way to make himself seem more important.
If you are a hiring manager you know how exhausting and tedious the interview process can be. First your inbox gets flooded with resumes that you have to mine through and find the ones that might be a match for your open position, and then you have to call all those candidates and either give them a phone screen or invite them in for an interview. Depending on your hiring process you go through 2-3 rounds of interviews to find the one who will be your next rockstar. Before you make the offer you call up their references and run a background check. It turns out your so-called “rockstar” created a fake resume and lied about his or her experience.
Click to continue reading “Diggin for Dirt – 10 Employer Rating/Review Sites”
What is Web 3.0?
Web 3.0 is supposed to be the next big thing – the smart web as some would call it. On October 17-18, 2008 Juniper Media Events hosted a Web 3.0 Conference in Santa Clara.
The goal of this conference was explore and make everyone aware of the strategies, tools, technologies and the big ideas necessary for building impactful, socially relevant, and profitable Web 3.0 products, services and companies.
The basic idea of Web 1.0 was the concept of web pages linking to web pages. Web 2.0 was an era of web applications and social networking sites. What Web 3.0 will be is hard to tell, because it is not yet fully here. According to the Web 3.0 Conference Web Page
The new web is moving beyond connecting pages to interconnecting data objects, concepts, and things. Ultimately Web 3.0 is really about creating technology that more accurately mirrors how we see and think about the world around us.
According to an article on InternetNews.com, the next generation of web technology will add a layer of functionality that will enrich the accessibility and relevancy of content. The example they give of Web 3.0 in use is by a company called SemantiNet. Their product is called Headup. It is a plug-in for Firefox that displays relevant, personalized, real-time data, highlighted by a “+” symbol next to related content on a page.
For example, when browsing a music CD on Amazon, Headup can show a variety of related data, like how many of your Facebook friends like the band; a link to hear the band’s latest music streamed via Pandora Internet radio; how many of your friends are using Twitter or Friendfeed to discuss the upcoming concert; and even find tickets for the band in your city.
It looks like Web 3.0 is going to be very complex, rather than linking from site to site as today’s Internet does, we will start to see the data from the sites we use daily integrated in the searches that we do. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out.
Post to TechZulu
Web 2.0 Bubble
I started noticing an interesting trend happening in the software/web marketplace as of the start of this year. Companies would begin announcing major rounds of funding well beyond the average for that given round. Companies who come to mind that received big rounds are ning (44Million), linkedin (53Million), rockyou (35Million), slide(50Million), facebook (300Million) obviously, and several others. I remember when Ning picked up their round, Marc Andressen went on record to say that he doesn’t need the 50mm nor does he plan to use that money to spurt any sort of abnormal growth – instead he said that ning is proven and here to stay and this money is to ensure we can weather any sort of storm that may hit over the next several years.
Why It Pays to be in Software!
What a great and timely article. It’s about time the youth of America start hearing about the actual strength of the US software market and that despite the overall success of outsourcing and the tech boom in countries like India and China (the pie is big enough for them to have their bite to), there couldn’t be a greater time to earn a degree in CS (or anything technical for that matter) and jump into the frenzy that exists amongst US Software powerhouses like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and the thousands of startups competing for the same talent. Check out this post I write about what the market considers to be a top performer and start building yourself up to be that guy/girl. The US is an always will be the land of opportunity and for that ambitious top performing individual, the world literally is your oyster.
So if you are a college graduate and you are still debating which career you are going to pursue and which field you will enter, consider the fact that as hot as the software marketplace is right now, we are only at 2.0 in terms of its growth. That means we still have so much innovation left to go, you will have plenty of work to do and job opportunities to pursue and companies to build before you have to contemplate another major decision – what to do with your time once you retire. In what other fields can you join as high profile a company as Facebook or Microsoft, be asked to work on a product that is literally used by millions of people worldwide (you know the whole make a difference thing) and get paid top dollar while you are at it.
And speaking of salary, just 2 months ago we helped a CS graduate from UC Berkeley with no work experience earn a base salary of 115k from a startup. Although that is very high for a college graduate, this guy is brilliant and will help this company build software that will be worth of millions of dollars to them, so who’s to say they’re wrong for paying it. So these opportunities are out there – it’s just up to you to be as great as you can be and go out and get them. Like Nike famously said – just do it!!!
Bay Area AskBINC Event Recap
Boris Epstein’s Recap
So for our second ever askBINC event in history and our first event in the Bay Area, I could not be more pleased with the outcome. We had about 50 attendees in total including talent across all divisions of a software company. We had developers from Google and graduate students from Yale. We had Development Managers from Amazon and Venture Capitalists from Sand Hill. We were shooting Patron with 2 co-founders and were able to socialize with many other familiar names and faces. Overall the event was very casual with no real agenda besides to hang out and have a good time with good friendly people. We discussed a range of different topics (listed below):
Is the flow of money into the software marketplace beginning to decrease? No, the same amount of money is flowing in but the number of deals has definitely dropped and those companies getting funding are attracting larger amounts on average. We are clearly seeing the beginning of the divide between those companies who will make it and those will slowly wither away.
I am motivated to learn a new programming language – what do you recommend Ruby or PHP? Ruby hands down. It is way more marketable to know Ruby than PHP.
Is the national recession affecting your business and the software marketplace in general? Not as a whole, but high gas prices are affecting people’s willingness to commute to work (so companies’ not in central locations are having a tougher time drawing talent). The overall tone of a potential downturn in our market is causing investors to be choosier with their dollars and it is also forcing candidates to be choosier with their employment decisions. That means that only companies with sound business models will survive because of their ability to attract talent and money. But all in all the market is still strong, opportunity for innovation is through the roof and companies are still hiring like crazy.
What are the hottest sectors within the software marketplace? Search, Advertising, Video, Semantic Web, Distributed Data Processing (Hadoop, etc), Gaming,
The success of this event definitely motivated me to continue hosting similar events in the future on a much regular basis. Look for a follow up askBINC event in the Bay Area sometime in late August.
Georgina Paolino’s Recap
The askBINC Event – So the craziest thing for me was seeing what all of our candidates and clients look like!! Everyone that I pictured looked nothing like I pictured them. It was a good night overall. Boris and the co-founders shot patron, I shot a lemon drop.
As Boris mentioned, there was no real agenda to the event, besides hanging out and stirring up good conversation. I remember talking with 2 execs of a gaming company about whether or not there actually is such a thing as web 2.0?? if nobody talks about web 1.0 anymore, and people barely talk about web 3.0, then what is web 2.0??? … Every internet company out there!!! So then why label “.0’s” at all??? We each had very different opinions, and I cant remember if we actually came to an agreed conclusion! It was lots of fun, cant wait for the next one!!
Mel Condos’ Recap
To follow up on Boris’s recap – I found the event to be a great success – there was such a cross section of people 
looking for new opportunities, people looking to hire and those just putting in their 2 cents on the state of the market. The overall tone was – the market is great here in
candidates I submitted for jobs a year ago are now hiring teams of their own. Hiring managers from 6 months ago are ready to move on to the next new adventure. Make no enemies.
It was great to put a face to go with the voice on the phone – funny how conversation is so much easier over a drink and mini burger than having you whisper from your cube 
Let’s do this again soon.
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