Zach Klein's List of Very Good Internet Jobs

Amit Gupta at Photojojo has six open positions including Product Buyer and Senior Web Developer

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:43:00 -0400

These jobs are worth a look especially if you’re an interesting person, but lack technical skills, or otherwise someone who wants to work from anywhere. Amit Gupta has a couple of positions to accomodate a wider range of candidates than others I typically post to this list. He needs plenty of technical people, too.

Photojojo is a very popular newsletter and store for photographers and DIY crafters (I just noticed that 560 people follow them on Svpply, plus they have 48,000 friends on FB). They’ve also published a book and invented a photo time capsule service.

Amit and I met 12 years ago when founded a service call The Daily Jolt which was the first community platform for college students — I organized the Wake Forest set of pages. I consider him one of the pioneers of the social Internet.

These jobs are special because Amit optimizes for lifestyle. You will be involved with avant-garde technology and design, though unusually, especially in these days of a new Internet klondike, in a relaxed and respectful environment that emphasizes the importance of a balanced schedule.

Interested? See these job descriptions and application details.

Folkert Gorter at Cargo is hiring a web developer in Los Angeles

Wed, 25 May 2011 14:06:00 -0400

Folkert Gorter co-founded SpaceCollective, an esoteric and superbly designed community, that I joined a couple of years back.

He’s now focused on Cargo, a web-publishing and community-building platform for creative people. In his words:

Cargo offers its members free standing personal websites, a wide variety of templates, and simple but sophisticated tools to control the way their content is displayed.

A personal network of their own creation allows members to follow the work of others, making themselves known by the artistic company they keep.

They’re hiring a web developer in Los Angeles and posted some details here.

I need three hires: Game Developer, AR Developer and 3D Modeler/Animator

Sun, 15 May 2011 19:58:00 -0400

I’m collaborating with Encyclopedia Pictura to develop an augmented reality app. EP will direct artwork and gameplay, so you can count on the experience to be a stunning complement to your work. We’ll release iOS first, then Android.

We need three more folks to get started. It would be best if everyone is based in or able to immediately relocate to the Bay Area, but we’ll make telecommuting work if absolutely necessary. These are contract positions with options to continue full-time should we all like each other and work productively.

I’m keeping the requirements thin because you already know who you are.

AR Developer
Expertise with various AR toolkits including PTAM libraries.

Game Developer
Ideally developed and published an app using Unity. Interest in developing AR, too, is a given.

3D Modeler/Animator
Generalist who can model, skin, rig, and animate in MAYA, 3DS Max, or XSI. Modeling and animation needed for various props and 1 character. Experience with video game development workflow a must.

Please share with me links to your work.

Ben Pieratt at Svpply is hiring several developers in New York

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:11:00 -0400

Ben Pieratt caught my eye with his Readymech flatpack toys, and then I couldn’t help myself when I saw his project Svpply early last year — I proposed that he and his creative partner Eric Jacobsen quit their freelance gigs and go full-time with it.

Ben is an accomplished print and web designer who boned up to pursue a career in entrepreneurship. He raised money late last year from Spark and Founder Collective and this month he’s moving the company to New York.

Svpply is mapping people to products they love and sharing these picks with friends and others with similar taste to create a highly-tailored shopping experience, all through his sharp and handsome interface that is often emulated.

Ben currently seeks six new co-workers, but most urgent are a set of developers of various levels of experience. More details, as well as links to apply, are available on the Svpply Jobs page.

Jason Putorti at Votizen is hiring a developer in Mountain View

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:43:00 -0400

I finally ran into Jason at SXSW11 after years of being encouraged to meet him. He is, afterall, the original designer of Mint and praised for his heartfelt devotion to his work. He lived up to the hype.

His passion for his new project, Votizen, is refreshing, especially in the context of this klondike startup atmosphere where so many entrepreneurs are focused on quick flips. It’s clear to me that Jason’s horizon for this project is long, I admire folks that commit so effortlessly.

Votizen is a platform to make policy, voting, and elected officials more accessible. With one-click, your voting history is retrieved, your representatives are identified, and you’re provided with simple tools to share your stance with them.

They’ve assembled a deck for prospective engineers to review before applying. Most pertinent information is there.

Kunal Shah at RentJuice is hiring a Web Developer and a Designer in San Francisco

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:55:00 -0400

Kunal Shah was the first technical hire at Connected Ventures, joining as Lead Developer, and ultimately rose to be VP of R&D managing 10 co-workers before he left a couple of years ago to found RentJuice in San Francisco with David Vivero. Their service makes it easy to list and rent apartments.

My favorite memory of Kunal occurred soon after he joined. Revved up by having another teammate, we set an aggressive deadline to rewrite, redesign and relaunch CollegeHumor in about 6 weeks. Halfway through, Kunal and I found ourselves staying later and later at the office, now knowing full well that the self-imposed deadline was too aggressive. Only half-kidding, he proposed a rule that for every day we exceeded the deadline, we should stay one hour later than the night before. I accepted and a week later we were at the point where we had to bring sleeping bags to our grungy little office, which inaugurated a tradition now known as “Killweek” which involves bunkering down and camping out in the office for a week of bonding over work. On this occasion, on the final night, we worked through until 7am. The sun was up, it was Saturday morning, and we drifted outside for something to eat. The streets were eerily empty and without agreeing to it we wandered to the Brooklyn Bridge. We kept walking until we were halfway over it, and I remember the orange glow of the morning and feeling so proud of what we had accomplished, and most importantly I know both of us were thinking, “What a amazing city.”

Our friendship grew out of that week and I consider it one of my favorite experiences associated with moving to NYC and starting a company.

Since then, he has proven to be brilliant, rational, obsessively committed to his responsibilities, down to earth, and big hearted. He was so popular at Connected Ventures that the company planned a roast in his honor, the first and only for a departing employee.

You’d be fortunate to work with him and here’s your chance: RentJuice seeks a Web Developer and a Designer, both to based in San Francisco.

If you’d like me to pass along your interest, please send me a letter to share with Kunal.

Jonathan Marcus at HiiDef needs a Senior or Lead Python Developer anywhere in US

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:26:00 -0400

Jonathan Marcus was Vimeo’s first GM and is responsible for helping Jakob Lodwick and I recruit most of the talent that was the original Vimeo team. He taught me critical lessons in organizational scaling and he continues to impress me with the success of his pragmatic approach to team-building, which boils down to letting your co-workers decide how and where they’ll be most effective, as simple as the computer they prefer you to buy them to the hours and place they work.

Following his stint at Vimeo, Jonathan founded HiiDef with several partners including his brother David and Jack Zerby, another Vimeo alum. It’s a sort of incubator that continuously rolls out polished products, the most well-know being Flavors.me, but also Goodsie, Dashboard, and Superkix. There are nearly a dozen people involved and they work from all over and telecommute without any central office.

He’s now looking for a developer with an extremely thorough understanding of Python / Django, Javascript / JQuery and *NIX server / cloud administration. The ideal candidate, Jonathan said, has excellent communications skills, a good sense of humor and a calming, down-to-earth personality.

Competitive pay + health benefits.

To apply, email me a letter of introduction and code samples to pass along.

Perry Chen at Kickstarter needs a graphic designer and a frontend developer

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:51:00 -0400

Perry Chen is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s just one of those dudes who’s magnetic and attracts thoughtful and kind people — like his co-founder Yancey Strickler — and he’s looking for more people to join his startup Kickstarter.

He sent me over some job descriptions:

Front-end developer to work on advanced UI components — photo/video upload & management, live/faceted search, maps, data visualization, and others. We need someone who has strong experience with client/server interactions and an aptitude for user experience. Someone who knows unobtrusive javascript, can select the most appropriate method for an asynchronous process (polling, comet etc.), and will keep the DOM consistent when an ajax call in one place affects the display of information in another. We work in jquery and ruby/rails (haml, sass, compass). Naturally, experience optimizing for performance and browser compatibility is also important. You’ll work with others in design, product, and engineering to build and maintain UIs of the highest quality and consistency.

Graphic designer to further refine our identity and communicate our brand. Responsibilities would include the design of marketing materials and branded assets to be used both online and off. With that said, skills & experience ranging from print and web, including a strong technical understanding of both mediums. An ability to code isn’t critical, but a very big plus. Candidates should bring a strong typographic style to their work, along with a sense of wit and smarts. An appreciation for grids, simplicity and minimalist styling are a must.

Both w/ competitive start-up pay, equity. no telecommuting.

To apply, email me your letter of introduction to pass along.

Carter Cleveland at Art.sy needs a Web Developer with good design instincts

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:36:00 -0400

Carter Cleveland founded Art.sy, a marketplace for art. It’s intended for any artist with a piece to sell, no matter their expertise, or anybody wanting something unique to hang in their office or home. It’s fun to think about a world where generic wall posters are made obsolete by a long-tail of artwork. I’m especially bullish on companies that enable people to supplement their incomes by doing something they love.

It’s still in private beta, but I’ve seen a sneak preview and I was surprised by the quality of the design and UX. It’s one of my favorite startups in NYC, actually.

They run a LAMP stack and he’s looking for a Web Developer with good design instincts. Carter told me it’s a plus if you’re passionate about art of any kind.

To apply, email me your letter of introduction to pass along.

Chris Hughes at Jumo needs a frontend developer and a web app developer

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:14:00 -0400

Chris Hughes co-founded Facebook and was the coordinator of online organizing for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He’s also my neighbor in the East Village.

His newest project is Jumo, an online platform for non-profits to organize. Jumo is a non-profit itself.

Even though we are a 501(c)3, we have a compensation package that I believe rivals what engineers at this level would receive at a for-profit company.

Chris looking for a Front End Web Developer and a Web Application Developer. He’s offering a $5,000 bonus to the person that refers him a candidate he hires. If I should cause you to be hired, I’ll donate the bonus to my brother Noel’s sled hockey team to support athletic programs for disabled people in my hometown Fort Wayne, IN.

To apply, email me your letter of introduction to pass along.