web2.0

Mashery is Hiring

Mashery, the company I recently co-founded with Oren Michels, is looking to add a multi-talented PHP developer to its engineering team. The job description is below. The posting hasn't gone out widely yet, as I figure the really good people read the Planet PHP feed that picks up my posts in this category.

So, hop on this now if you're interested, before it goes out to the teeming hordes.

Stellar PHP Developer

We're looking for a kick-ass PHP developer. Someone who's done a lot, and seen even more.

Someone who's intimately familiar with PHP 5 OOP practices (we require PHP 5 E_STRICT clean code internally). Someone who doesn't necessarily love writing unit tests, but loves what unit tests provide. Someone who strives to produce better code every day, and who's open to new ways of doing just that.

Our ideal candidate will be someone familiar with the pros and cons of SOAP vs XML-RPC vs REST. Someone who knows what JSON stands for, and why it's cool. Someone who's a Savant, not a Smarty. Someone who cares about documenting their source carefully, and believes in decent commit messages (at least 85% of the time).

We think that a good fit for our team is someone who can (and does) compile their own builds of PHP for local development.

We're looking for more than just a code guru, though. We're looking for someone who can work well with others. Someone who understands that "perfect" can't get in the way of "pretty damn good." Someone who can accept suggestions for improvements from team members without getting defensive. Someone who understands that we're a business--so we have to ship to generate revenue.

Our person is someone who realizes that what goes into production must fail gracefully on the rare occasions that it fails.

Our person is also very likely an open source contributor -- someone who may already know the PHP community people we have on the team now.

Our person is someone well versed in a wide variety of tools and techniques, but is someone who's had experience with Prototype and script.aculo.us, and has spent some time basking in the rays of the Solar PHP 5 framework. Our person probably even has some C and/or Python chops stashed in the closet.

Finally, our person is someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Are you our someone?

If so -- and you know who you are -- introduce yourself to us at jobs [@] mashery dot com.

The perfect Web 2.0 company name

In looking at 1000tags, 360yahoo, 301url, 180news, 43deals, 43folders, 43places, 43things, 37signals, 30boxes, 30daytags, 30gigs, 24eyes, 24sevenoffice, 23hq, 16bugs, 9rules, 8by1, 4shared, 3bubbles, there are some real opportunities for a new startup being overlooked.

What to do, what to do? Well ...

First of all, shoot for the teens. Not teens as in MySpace teens; just look how crowded it is in the 40s, 30s and single-digit company space. 16Bugs just launched today, so there's plenty of room left there.

Second, astounding as it may seem, these companies are all using ".com" domains. I know, I couldn't believe it either. So there's plenty of opportunity to differentiate with a name that's a play on integrating the TLD extension into the company name itself.

Finally, again with the exception of 16Bugs, there is zero representation of the animal kingdom. (Zillow is worth mentioning here, since they represent the animal kingdom as shown on the Z page of Dr. Seuss's ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! ... but alas, no numbers in their name, so they don't really count.)

So in the spirit of sharing that drives Web 2.0, I offer this name for the taking: 19em.us

Not only does it include the correct plural spelling of emu, but an emu graces the cover of Learning Perl/Tk, a language combo that does not yet have an overhyped framework associated with it. We're talking about double-golden opportunity here.

Finally, it picks up some prime real estate in the teens. Who wouldn't want to be nestled into the love sandwich of 37signals on top, and 9rules on the bottom?

The only restriction I place on my contribution of this kick-ass company name to the community is a 5% equity stake so that when you flip it, I'll get my piece of the action. Thanks to the Web 2.0 Generator, all we need now is a product. (And hey, given that the emu is a flightless bird, there's nothing saying that 19em.us can't be a productless company! We'd be in good company there.)

Well, there you go. The domain's available--run, don't walk!