biggitybones

NYC, New York - Full stack developer - TeachBoost.

TeachBoost is a performance management platform in K-12 to help instructional leaders (principals, coaches) better support the educators they work with. We're VC backed and have had success where others haven't in edtech - we have hundreds of paying schools and districts throughout the country.

We're growing our development team and looking for developers passionate about their craft and helping one of the most important sectors get over their terrible addiction to bad enterprise software. We're a small team and you'll have tremendous influence and independence on our tools that thousands of educators use daily.

More details here: https://angel.co/teachboost/jobs/49950-php-javascript-develo...

Contact jason AT teachboost.com if you're interested!

TeachBoost - Support Engineer, NYC.

TeachBoost is looking for a full-time software developer for our New York, NY office who can manage support development, usability testing, and bug fixes as well as contribute to a number of internal and production projects. We're a fast-growing team and we need someone who can work closely with our support team to handle usability issues in real time and interface between our support and development teams. PHP experience and familiarity with the Unix environment are big pluses!

Importantly, we're an education startup and we love working with schools, teachers, and principals. You should be willing to work in our industry and handle the unique set of problems that come up with education and institutional clients (as well as going up against large institutional competitors!). You should have experience working on a small team with tight deadlines, and you should be familiar with OO concepts as well as design patterns. You should learn new languages and technologies quickly, be innovative, enjoy challenges, and have a great work ethic.

Please contact jason AT teachboost.com if interested; include a few things you've built that you're proud of.

For more detailed info, check out our posting on SO: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/72399/support-engineer...

TeachBoost - New York, NY https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/58426/front-end-devel...

TeachBoost is looking for a full-time web developer for our Brooklyn, NY office who can handle all aspects of front-end web application development. We're looking for someone to be a key member of the development team - so experience (or the ability to learn quickly) and attention to detail are massively important.

We're moving from a single-repo PHP legacy application towards a client-service, multi-repo application codebase. To do that we'll be slicing off features from the PHP legacy app and re-writing them into front-end, client applications, in Node.js.

TeachBoost is a performance management platform for education; we help educators improve by streamlining and improving the coaching/evaluation process, and using that data to better inform educator development/training. We're a growing team of passionate, mission driven people - and looking for more of the same!

Get in touch with jason AT teachboost.com if you're interested!

YES! Thank you so much - could not remember it for the life of me.

Are these run by the same company? The copy on Webyshot's FAQ is straight lifted from url2png on the 'Limit of One Domain' question.

edit: most of the FAQ, actually. Poor form.

I'm assuming the grandparent comment is sarcasm (if it's not, it should be).

Leverage this enthusiasm to build the MVP. If you don't know how or it's beyond your capabilities, there's plenty of resources available now to learn how. Get something in the hands of these early adopters and move on from there.

As per the first post (part 1), they're from Australia. Can't imagine it being too much $$ to go to NZ from there.

I think that's a pretty broad and unfair generalization about entrepreneurs in the education space. It's not exactly a common skillset to be well versed in the science of education and technology, so I won't back down from the unqualified statement. That being said, I've yet to meet these "shady" characters you claim are attracted to the space.

It's not brilliant in the sense that it's innovative, but rather because it's attention to detail that 95% of sites don't bother to touch.

Sometimes it's something ever so slight that makes the difference between a conversion and a bounce.

I was coming strictly from the standpoint of time being the scarcest factor and thus the most important; I completely agree with you on the intellectual satisfaction of developing native apps :)

The issue with fragmentation that ultimately leads to consolidation is the cost incurred by companies and developers to support all of these platforms.

I can't tell you how much it pains me as an android user to see an app only available for the iPhone. As a developer, it's magnitudes worse to have to send messages to my users saying "we'll be getting to an [x] platform app soon!" when realistically it just stunts our growth to develop the same thing 3 times.

I can't wait for the end of this native app nonsense.

I was at an event in NYC several months back where a mid-stage VC said the same thing (blanking on his name) but specifically regarding the NYC community. It was an angle I hadn't thought about and initially had the same negative reaction to as someone in the midst of an early stage company.

For later round investors it's undoubtedly in their interest to encourage these engineers to join larger firms rather than being on their own. In NYC it's especially competitive given the competition between more mature companies, early stage startups and the money wielding finance industry. The combination could lead to a 'glass ceiling' of sorts for larger companies because of the inability to attract talent; that is, until some of the smaller companies fail and these individual engineers likely end up at a larger spot.

It mirrors the consolidation of an industry. It just takes longer than some investors (like Parker) would prefer, which is the inspiration for statements like this.

First - the site: I love the simplicity. The concept is clear immediately.

Second - the service itself: it's a great angle. Kids love SMS messages and this embraces the use of technology/cell phones in a positive way. It creates a more personal connection between teachers and kids without breaching privacy. We had something similar, though far more basic, when we were working on an LMS and that was a highlight we often overlooked but got the most vibrant response.

Great work so far!

At the end of the day I don't think customers care whether it's a script, person or alien solving their problem. All that matters is a great experience and a resolved issue.

I'm not sure if anyone else caught Jessica trying to follow up about the serendipitous meetings of people like Sean Parker in the Valley. I think he's completely discounting some of the experiences and chance happenings that acted as a catalyst to Facebook's success.

It goes back to what PG said at YCNYC that apparently he caught a lot of flack for - these types of occurrences, while they happen, are just far too infrequent in other places with less vibrant tech communities.

The title is misleading. This is an article from 2008 on CEO pay and the issues in the banking system that's made its rounds several times.

It has a lot to do with the core issues of the unrest right now but it is by no means Mark Cuban's response to the movement itself.

wrong thread - see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060222 for freelance gigs.

I think this is a bit too cynical.

If I understand this right - not only do you avoid having to fill out the same address forms over and over for different services, you avoid the monumental task of making sure all of your information is up to date on major life events like moving, marriage, etc.

If I could avoid typing my shipping addresses in every online order form sourced from a trusted place (browser auto-fill is shit), I'd use the service in a heartbeat. Only updating one service when I move apartments? Sign me up.

As someone who's just reached their wit's end at a small startup (I put in my 2 weeks yesterday), I really want to send this article along as a helpful lesson on what not to do with the next guy.

As others have said, some of the points in the article are things I could feel but not articulate. Great lessons to be learned from it.

I've never considered the parallel between what you describe - I think it's valid and eloquent.

I find the application of technology to the social context fascinating and at the same time worrisome, given the impact it has on our psyche. Part of me wants to chalk it up to "resisting change", but I feel like altering the social fabric by increasing efficiencies in our social lives isn't going to help psychological illnesses like depression.

Ahh sorry about that - strong coffee this morning has my mind on overdrive and completely read that quote incorrectly.

"The thief has since returned the laptop, in hopes of clemency in the form of the YouTube video being pulled. Bao has indicated, though, that he's not interested in cutting a deal. Instead, he's content using backup service Backblaze—which syncs changes made to the laptop in the cloud—to find access the guy's Facebook page, dig up PhotoBooth pictures he took, and generally let him stew in his internet humiliation for a while." - http://gizmodo.com/#!5784633/laptop-thiefs-ridiculous-dance-...

Now he's just turned it into a plug for his startup. Smart guy.

I second this - 1 click signup is huge for a competitive market like project management apps.

I do something similar to Balsamiq for one of my apps - it keeps a high contrast "Save Progress" button at the top of the screen, and any time the user does one of a few set actions (for you, create a project or to do list) I pop up a modal to ask for their email and password to save their acct.

In addition to greasing the sign up process, it gives you an idea of your market fit - the data you collect around this "temp user" process is very insightful.

One thing unrelated to your app, but the design of your pricing table.

You point out the recommended plan - which jumps out - but it's very difficult to easily compare the plans. My two cents: use graphics (checks or bullets) for included features, leave out features that are the same across the board (like no setup fee), and reduce it to critical features only.

The rest of the site looks great, I love the design/UI.

Depends where the flight left from - a friend flight was kept on the ground for an extra few min to catch the launch. Or at least that was his assumption.

It's funny/interesting how trends emerge on HN. I feel like I've seen at least 5 of what I'd call "meta" projects/startups on the front page over the last week - sites that help a minor piece of the puzzle for a startup.

You're right - probably shouldn't have dismissed it as just being in the idea stage.

I still stand behind the other point though - the assumption behind their lawsuit is that they would have been able to do what Zuckerberg did - which is pure speculation. I'm of the opinion that their legal troubles and outcome end up making them substantially more than their idea would have anyway. So walk away with a boat load of money, lesson learned, and get your name behind some positive press instead of negative.

I love the inherent fact that they're essentially making a more solid and lucrative "exit" on an idea they probably only discussed at length and put no actual work into. Realistically they probably make out better from this (all things like time, effort etc considered) than if Zuckerberg never does Facebook.

I take that $20 mil in cash and $150 mil in stock, and if it's really not about the money like they say, I use it to be an angel investor or start other companies. This whole thing is getting tiresome.

I don't know any specifically, but the syllabus has required/suggested reading that would probably be a good place to start:

Required Text

Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle.

Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon.

Suggested Reading

Developing Online Games. Mulligan and Petrovsky.

Massively Multiplayer Game Development. Thor Alexander et al.

Synthetic Worlds. Edward Castronova.

Community Building on the Web. Amy Jo Kim

My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Julian Dibbell

A Theory of Fun. Raph Koster

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

But the main difference is the perception of the students. It may be the same underlying structure, but it's from a progression standpoint as opposed to the traditional back and forth of grading.

This TEDxUniPittsburgh talk speaks to this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tg55pdNMxw&feature=relat...

Quote: "This has a number of powerful psychological motivators. One of them is no matter what you do in the class, anything you do is forward motion. As opposed to a normal class, when you get a bad grade or something, it takes you back a step which is very demoralizing. Game designers would never put that in a game, because they know people hate it."