Game Closure | Engineer | SALARY: $120k - $220k | San Francisco Bay area (SF) | Tokyo, Japan | VISA REMOTE
Game Closure is building the world's most advanced javascript game technologies, including an engine, server infrastructure, analytics and marketing, among other cool products. We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game technology on small teams of 3-4 folks. Game Closure has raised more then $30M, and has more than 100M users supported by a small team of engineers <25
For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 100M+ players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6. There are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.
We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.
Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly. This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world, but we prefer to hire in Tokyo and Mountain View.
We are also actively looking for folks across range of leadership roles in product, engineering, and operations.
Please email linda@gameclosure.com
Subject: Game Closure Engineering: YOUR NAME HERE
Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!
I waited 21 days for my first reply from Game Closure after applying for this position 2 months ago. I proceeded to have three interviews, 2 of which were technical with a high level engineer and the CTO.
After being told the interviews went very well, I never heard back. After a couple of weeks I emailed Linda and Rachel to ask for a status update, and never received a response.
I interviewed with Game Closure for the engineering position. Passed 3 technical rounds with engineers and CEO, then was asked for reference. I agreed to provide my ex-boss's contact, they didn't call until more than 2 weeks later, then got a feedback that they received some "red flags" from the reference so they won't proceed. I couldn't believe it so I came to ask my ex-boss directly, whom I worked with for 2.5 years as lead developer and still maintain good relationship. He was shocked to hear that, and said he tried to give me the best feedback he could, then apologize and even tried to offer me some other gigs in exchange for the loss. Judging from the actions alone - GC had no desire to make the call until 2 weeks later and my boss trying to offer me jobs instead - I find it simply impossible to believe that GC had genuine interest in me and that my boss backstabbed me. If you don't want the candidate you should simply tell them, but if you can't find a good reason and decide to blame it on the reference despite the candidate's effort to provide whatever you need and risking their relationship, it tells a lot about you.
Blackstorm | Engineer | SALARY: $140k - $220k | San Francisco Bay area (SF) | Tokyo, Japan | VISA REMOTE
Blackstorm is building the world's most advanced javascript game engine, among other cool products like an IDE (js.io)
We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game engine on a small team of 3-4 folks. Blackstorm has raised more then $30M, and we have more than a million users per engineer at the company.
For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 10M+ active players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6. There are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.
We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.
Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly.
This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world.
We are also actively looking for folks across range of leadership roles in product, engineering, and operations.
Please email keela@blackstormlabs.com
Subject: Blackstorm Engineering: YOUR NAME HERE
Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!
I interviewed with you guys (when your name/site was weeby.co). You can rebrand yourself, it won't help with your image.
Don't waste your time interviewing there-- they claim $140k-$220k but dished out a completely shitty offer ($120k).
Wasted hours of my time when I made my requirements very clear to begin with. What a fucking joke, it was insulting.
To make it worse, they have awful responsiveness and they done a great number of interviews (one on-site, many with people on Skype). They also wanted me to go onsite for a "game jam" all day/night but I denied it.
edit:
I should note, when I pushed them on this they responded with a very convoluted explanation of their "salary".
It was something along the lines of, "Your salary begins at 120k, but each year you can decide between XX cash bonus or YY% raise, and after N years your salary _could_ be 140-220k".
What a bunch of bullshit-- Avoid them like the plague.
I knew they were trouble when I entered the office in the morning and everyone was there from the night before...
First, that sounds pretty bad — honestly I’m sorry. It’s good to hear direct feedback, as we obviously want to do better than this outcome right here.
On salary: We previously had a program where we gave significant monthly raises in effort to drive fair and aggressive compensation in an ongoing basis. The goal was to pay more, not less, by forcing a review and adjustment on a regular cadence. However, we decommissioned that system in favor of standard offers because we struggled for a lot of reasons you pointed out about complexity. Based on a few debriefing conversations with candidates, we learned and changed to a bog standard system; now all offers are in the range listed (or higher.)
Our interview process can be involved when we’re hiring for key roles; at minimum we require a discussion with 4-5 folks, which can take 2-3 weeks. Generally the process is that you send us an email, and we try to get you on the phone with the best hiring manager for the role. We often request a 3-hr work assignment, a couple of Skype calls, then move to an onsite if that makes sense for all involved.
I can see how you’d be bummed spending the time without the expected outcome. We’ve taken a lot of risks and made plenty of mistakes building this company, but we try to adapt and improve pretty quickly. The important thing is that we try to assemble a team of honest people with big ambitions and a lot of talent… and in broad strokes we’ve accomplished that. It’s led us to an enviable market position with some awesome technologies and unique challenges. If you’re curious, we were at Facebook's F8 two weeks ago on stage talking about specific innovations at Blackstorm: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/65620/blackstorm-labs-o...
If you’re willing to have a quick discussion about this by following up with me over email (carter@blackstormlabs.com) I can do my best to listen carefully, and try to return the favor if you ever want advice on something I know well, like fundraising, engineering careers, or network programming.
> On salary: We previously had a program where we gave significant monthly raises in effort to drive fair and aggressive compensation in an ongoing basis. The goal was to pay more, not less, by forcing a review and adjustment on a regular cadence. However, we decommissioned that system in favor of standard offers because we struggled for a lot of reasons you pointed out about complexity. Based on a few debriefing conversations with candidates, we learned and changed to a bog standard system; now all offers are in the range listed (or higher.)
To be honest, this is a pretty bad answer to his claim. If you advertise 140 minimum, don't offer 120. This is unethical, you should edit your posting.
I believe the original commenter was referring to a previous compensation structure which was over specified almost to a fault before we changed it. We were quite public with how it worked, so you can read about it here: https://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-talent-wars-enginee...
From the article: "New hires get a base salary commensurate with their experience -- at least $100,000, and more than they were previously paid. They join with the promise, if they perform well, of automatic $10,000 monthly bumps until they hit $250,000."
We had attempted to find innovative and more fair compensation structures, but we abandoned the effort because those systems were hard to communicate effectively, which I believe is the root of the problem here.
Regardless, if my company advertised something and didn't follow through, I would put myself out there personally to follow up and make it right, as I've done here. I can say with 100% certainty that any offer from this post absolutely standard and falls within the range advertised.
Generally the process is that you send us an email, and we try to get you on the phone with the best hiring manager for the role. We often request a 3-hr work assignment, a couple of Skype calls, then move to an onsite if that makes sense for all involved.
Usually we can touch base in the first call to get on the same page. We operate a bit differently for management roles, or other key positions. Looking forward to your application if you're interested!
Blackstorm | Engineer | SALARY: $140k - $220k | San Francisco Bay area (SF) | Tokyo, Japan | VISA REMOTE
Blackstorm is building the world's most advanced javascript game engine, among other cool products like an IDE (js.io)
We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game engine on a small team of 3-4 folks. Blackstorm has raised more then $30M, and we have more than a million users per engineer at the company.
For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 7M+ active players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6. Th0ere are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.
We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.
Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly.
This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world.
Please email keela@blackstormlabs.com
Subject: Blackstorm Core Engineer: YOUR NAME HERE
Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!
Blackstorm | Engineer | $140k - $220k | San Francisco Bay area (SF, Mountain View) | Tokyo, Japan | REMOTE OK | VISA OK
Blackstorm is building the world's most advanced javascript game engine, among other cool products like an IDE (js.io)
We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game engine on a small team of 3-4 folks.
For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 5M+ active players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6; there are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.
We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.
Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly.
This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world.
Please email keela@blackstormlabs.com
Subject: Blackstorm Core Engineer
Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!
js.io | SF/bay (San Francisco, Mountain View)| Tokyo, Japan | REMOTE OK | VISA OK | $150k-$250k
js.io is a new IDE for HTML5 Apps / Games, AR, VR, Minecraft mods, Arduino, IoT, and more, targeting javascript as a common language. We provide developers their own persistent container, beautiful end-to-end development experiences, r remote-over-LTE/Internet debugging, one click publishing, and carefully polished community support. We value simple, frictionless experiences that cover every aspect of development, debugging, and deploying software.
Looking for front-end (javascript) and back-end (javascript, python, posix, containers), or ideally both.
Please email mc@js.io if you're interested, and include a personalized note with relevant interests and background. Please indicate your geo preferences in the subject line. Thanks!
Are you still looking for candidates? After last month's post saying that some emails were missed, I applied again (and then once more this month), but I have yet to receive a reply indicating my application was received.
js.io | $150k-$250k | JAPAN (TOKYO) | San Francisco, CA (SF) Mountain View, CA | REMOTE | HANOI or HO CHI MINH (VIETNAM) | VISA available for both japan or US
js.io is a new IDE for HTML5 Apps / Games, AR, VR, Minecraft mods, Arduino, IoT, and more, targeting javascript as a common language. We provide developers their own persistent container, a beautiful end-to-end development experiences, r remote-over-LTE debugging, one click publishing, and carefully polished community support. We value simple, frictionless experiences that cover every aspect of development, debugging, and deploying software.
Looking for front-end (javascript) and back-end (javascript, python, posix, containers), or ideally both. Please email mc@js.io if you're interested, and include a personalized note with relevant interests and background.
Note 1: We are also looking for a javascript game engineers, and app store / game & app portal engineers (python and javascript)
Note 2: Apologies to all who applied last month where I dropped the ball. We were not prepared for the flood of inbounds, though we did make 4 offers. We have a much better system in place this time, so feel free to re-apply if we somehow lost you.
Note 3: Remote available only for the best. We are also happy to arrange a mix of SF, Tokyo, and Remote. Full-time work in Tokyo is selective, and Japanese language is a huge plus.
js.io | SF/bay, Tokoyo, Remote | Full Time | $150k-$250k
js.io is a new IDE for HTML5 Apps / Games, AR, VR, Minecraft mods, Arduino, IoT, and more, targeting javascript as a common language. We provide developers their own persistent container, a beautiful end-to-end development experiences, r remote-over-LTE debugging, one click publishing, and carefully polished community support. We value simple, frictionless experiences that cover every aspect of development, debugging, and deploying software.
Looking for front-end (javascript) and back-end (javascript, python, posix, containers), or ideally both.
Please email mc@js.io if you're interested, and include a personalized note with relevant interests and background.
The thread actually represents a discussion between the most active maintainer (dougwilson) and various employees of IBM who now own and oversee the project, with a few confused third parties chiming in.
It looks like IBM is making some predictable mistakes, which have disillusioned dougwilson to some large extent. Simultaneously they are being fairly inflexible at fixing those mistakes and ultimately forcing abandonment, at least by dougwilson. My prediction:
1) IBM continues with the typical corporate policies which are probably not great for the sort of OSS project that involves independent contributors
2) dougwilson leaves permanently
3) the project sort of wallows a bit
4) IBM puts some resources on it, and claims it all worked out.
As to #4, they'll be sort of correct, assuming the goal was to see resources and progress on express. They'll be wrong if the goal was to properly maintain an open source community around the project.
NOTE: I don't know anything about this, but I've seen this play out many times before. I chimed in here because the other comments in this thread seem to be wildly off topic given the content of the github discussion.
This happened with node-inspector for a while: StrongLoop became the official sponsor, and basic stuff like 'var x = 1; console.log(x)' returning undefined was left unfixed for years while the company simultaneously used it as advertising for how great their node contributions were.
I've been frustrated with their code on a few occasions. We've seen breaking changes in patch versions on strong-remoting, PRs rebased out of patch releases with no explanation (and nobody could figure out why/how), and intentional abuse of npm's optionalDependencies to track users (https://github.com/strongloop/loopback/issues/1079).
This tracking is not only unethical but exceptionally dangerous, as the dependency is fetched over http, and as we know, npm modules essentially have full user access as they can spawn any command via the `postinstall` hook. So a mitm could pose as blip.strongloop.com and own any servers calling out to it.
I've ended up forking every strongloop package we use to trim this tracking abuse. I really shouldn't have to do that.
Here's some history, from what I've read. The original discussion of the transfer of the Express repo's ownership to Strongloop occurred here in June 2014:
Back then, many in the community were surprised by the sponsorship (sale?) of the project and called for the repo to be transferred to the Expressjs org instead. So the question of ownership has been a long-running issue.
Now the ownership/involvement seems to have passed from Strongloop to their acquirer IBM. We're just seeing Doug/the community reprise the same issue with the new owners.
Doug (and presumably other third-party contributors) naturally won't want to be the main contributors to a project owned by a company, so the IBM guys will probably have to take over development & maintenance no matter what. (Barring them giving the project back to the organisation.) Chance of a fork too.
I guess a shared governance model is needed here, to get all parties aligned again.
This is one of the pitfalls of contributing to an open source project, sooner or later (assuming the project gains traction) some company will acquire the project for what for them is peanuts and in the process they'll do what they can to keep the current project the one people will flock to.
That's why we have MariaDB and a whole raft of other projects that are technically closely related to the original and maintained by a number of people that were originally associated with the project but that moved on after an acquisition by forking the project.
Companies as a rule do not like the kind of autonomy that is associated with FOSS.
Maybe this is a solution in this case too, Doug could in theory fork it under a different name and just keep it running (unless his contract prevents him from doing that).
Game Closure is building the world's most advanced javascript game technologies, including an engine, server infrastructure, analytics and marketing, among other cool products. We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game technology on small teams of 3-4 folks. Game Closure has raised more then $30M, and has more than 100M users supported by a small team of engineers <25
For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 100M+ players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6. There are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.
We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.
Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly. This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world, but we prefer to hire in Tokyo and Mountain View.
We are also actively looking for folks across range of leadership roles in product, engineering, and operations.
Please email linda@gameclosure.com
Subject: Game Closure Engineering: YOUR NAME HERE
Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!