ControlThink Forums

A quick note for those uber-engineers who frequent our forums: ControlThink has opened up a few software engineer positions.

Our engineers are among the best and brightest in the industry. And we work in New York City--which is fun, convenient, and provides for endless options of what to do on any given night.  We build a lot of products with a small team using dozens of technologies--and we thoroughly enjoy doing it.

Signs that you should apply to work at ControlThink:

• At the age most kids learn how to play an instrument, you were teaching yourself how to code
• You are regularly referred to as a guru by people who actually understand software
• You scored in the top two percent on the ACT, SAT, or similar exam
• In college, you were usually the first to complete and pass off lab projects
• You sometimes wish that you didn't have to sleep or eat because you're busy building software
• You thrive on challenges, and can solve hard problems both quickly and elegantly
• You like learning new technologies and working in a fast-paced, detail-oriented environment
• You believe that software is about quality craftsmanship in addition to excellent engineering
• You like the idea of working with peers who are really, really bright

For full details:
http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?3621

Chris

Chris,

I hope you find your golden boy/girl.  Perhaps someday you'll be needing humble reusers of other people's code and implementers of other people's ideas.

Also, I'm getting too old to sleep under my desk and eat cold pizza.  The more automated my home becomes, the more I want to be there, and the less I want to be at work.

You should consider hiring me as a FULL TIME alpha/beta tester/debugger. Although I do program I am not the genius programmer you are looking for. The one thing I do have is ambition and enthusiasm for home automation and Z-Wave and I don't have any problem reading other peoples code.

Squintz: you'd make an awesome alpha/beta testers/debugger. :)

Chris

Thanks! FYI, I forwarded the link to this thread to Eug from the cocoontech chat room and also to my father. Eug is probably exactly what you are looking for but I am not sure if he is willing to work in New York or if he is even looking for a Job at all. But he is very smart and has actually spent a ton of time helping me with my C# programming education. My father works for NCR (National Cash Register) and has all kids of programmers from all over the world working with him. I figured it would be worth a shot. You never know if one of them are planing to move to NY soon.

Chris,

Being much older than dirt, I can see through your teasing ploy. Going down the list, checking off in the positive, I realized what you were up to: the squeezing of highly focused grey matter...if you can get it harnessed that much in these exotic times...for a very worthy, and probably fun, cause. And, I forsee many fine egos out there who will nicely be challenged by it. But...New York City! (Do you know what would happen in New York City if they had a three day truckers strike? You'd run out of Z-Waves to eat.)

 P. S. I'm very happy that you put 'quality' and 'craftsmanship' in the same breath on item number 8. We need to get those items back on top of our list of priorities in this country...no more HAM-ing. You cannot have functional, user-friendly software if you HAM-it.

 (Half Ass Maintenance...or any other 'M' word you want to replace 'maintenance' with. As I said, I'm older than dirt, and my much older grandfather was a patternmaker, who made the wooden patterns that were used to create the molds that were used to make those beautiful old chrome hood ornaments for automobiles...he DID like the naked human female form. I used to watch him work when I was a kid. That old line: "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when do you think you'll have time to do it over" is worth considering. And he reminded me of it with his actions every day.)

This is a fun thread.

The problem with the particular breed of hot-shot in the description is that they won't sit still for longer than a couple of years, especially in New York.  They're always looking for a chance to get in on the ground floor of some new venture, so they can make a killing on the IPO (or sale of the company).  Then they move on.

I'm wondering how you would go about setting up a decent test bed for a Z-Wave network in an NYC high rise.  With paper-thin walls, evey device is going to think that every other device is its neighbor.  And all the RF noise in NYC might be a problem.  I'm thinking of the problems exhibitors have at C.E.S. when they get all those gadgets under the same tent.  I would expect NYC to be much worse.