[LRUG] [JOB] CTO and business partenership

[Andrew Premdas]

Of course Kevin got back to me, just before I posted this.  :)

Andrew



On 17 May 2012 12:45, Andrew Premdas <apremdas at gmail.com> wrote:

> I sent along reply to your previous advert, talking about addressing the
> development debt that you're clearly building and offering my services. I
> never received any reply whatsoever. If you are going to post job requests
> to the list it would be appreciated if you would reply to list members who
> take the time to respond and give some feedback
>
> All best
>
> Andrew
>
> On 17 May 2012 10:29, Kevin Monk <kevin at mangoswiss.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Rubyists,
>>
>> This is more than a job vacancy. I'm looking for a CTO/Senior Developer
>> who would like to partner up with me on my business.
>>
>> I posted an initial job opportunity back in late March for a £400/day
>> contractor and we had a good response. I've reposted the job advert below.
>> Apologies for the cut/paste but it was a very detailed description of the
>> job and my Pivotal Tracker velocity is dropping.
>>
>> Since the original job posting, things are looking even brighter and
>> we're now on the look out for a coder/businessman hybrid who wants a share
>> alongside a good salary. We're willing to offer a considerable equity share
>> of the business so that you can feel real ownership of the product and a
>> passion for it's success.
>>
>> Please let me know if you're interested.
>>
>> *Testimonial from one of our previous developers in response to our
>> advert*
>> *
>> *
>> *
>>
>> Ah "George I" - does that mean I get my own wikipedia page?!?  Just to
>> follow up on this I did this contract for 2 months to fill in a gap I had
>> from when my previous contract finished at christmas until a new one
>> started in March.  It was a real shame to leave but unfortunately I had
>> already signed the march contract back at the end of last year.
>>
>>
>> A little bit of info from my point of view: Kevin is a great guy to work
>> with and the project was really interesting on both the business and
>> technical level.  On the tech side of things it was great to do a full
>> project in Backbone and Mustache rather than just play with it on a
>> backburner idea (and especially as the project genuinely required such a
>> solution rather than "hey lets use it because it's new and cool").  It also
>> really helped having a member of NHS staff who would be using the system
>> each day available to speak to for any uncertainties/clarifications about
>> requirements.  On the business side I hope the project succeeds as it will
>> encourage the NHS to use small firms to provide IT systems rather than
>> default going for the large, expensive and poorly provided IT systems.  The
>> setup is such that the NHS owns more than half the company so the profits
>> go back into the NHS and all the other trusts get better IT systems than
>> they would have otherwise (+ at a cheaper price).  The response from the
>> trusts they had presented to whilst I was there was equally as impressive -
>> I think every single one was keen.  Anyone who knows people in the NHS will
>> know how poor a lot of their systems are so I for one would be quite happy
>> to see some of the current IT health companies go down the drain.
>>
>>
>> As a related aside this was the first contract I picked up in 3.5 years
>> of freelancing via the lrug mailing list so I stil find the job postings
>> useful as long as they are not recruiter spam.  It helps to keep an eye on
>> the market, where Ruby is used and by which companies, and with the new job
>> tag you can filter them straight out if you're not interested.  Long term I
>> do think a job board may be a better option though.
>>
>>
>> George
>>
>> *
>>
>> Here's the original job posting...
>>
>> *The Company*
>> Based in Crystal Palace, we *were *a very small company consisting of
>> myself and my sister-in-law; with occasional input from others. We've been
>> making RoR systems for an NHS Trust for about three years now. We're on our
>> third system and in autumn last year we were invited by our client to
>> demonstrate our SARD (Strengthened Appraisal and Revalidation Database)
>> product to a group of the most senior doctors in London. They were very
>> impressed. I honestly hadn't gone there to sell. I'd gone there to show
>> what can be achieved with a small budget and a lot of enthusiasm and
>> therefore I was really unprepared for the following question:
>>
>> "Thanks, Kevin. It looks great but the people sat around this table are
>> responsible for a budget of about £2.5 billiion. How big a company are you?"
>>
>> *Cough* *cough* *splutter* *splutter*
>>
>> "About, two. -ish.", I spluttered. "Well, one and a half really because
>> Barbara has two kids and she can only work when they're at school."
>>
>> That's now known as *the Dragon's Den meeting.*
>> *
>> *
>> I didn't really think much more about it until our client rings me up out
>> of the blue and says "Look, Kevin - we've been thinking. Everyone likes the
>> product, they want to buy it but they're concerned that you're too small a
>> company. Why don't we set up a joint venture? We give you the commercial
>> stability of a large organisation and a bridging loan to expand your
>> business and grow. The best of both worlds; a small dynamic company with
>> financial stability, the NHS get good software and then the majority of the
>> profits can be a revenue stream for funding doctors and nurses. How about
>> it?". In the business world, I think that's known as WIN-WIN-WIN. And so,
>> SARD JV was born.
>>
>> *And then the glorious reign of George I...*
>> In December, I posted on LRUG with the title "The best job you've never
>> had..." in the form of a cuke feature and got an excellent response (about
>> 10-15 candidates, a majority but not all from LRUG). An excellent LRUG
>> developer arrived on the door step in January and made a great job of
>> getting our Backbone.js stuff in order as well as helping me to shape the
>> future development of the product. It was only a short term contract and he
>> had some commitments that he had to honour so he's gone off now. More's the
>> pity.
>>
>> *About Me*
>> I'm not a recruitment agent. I studied as an electronic engineer at
>> Southampton Uni and then worked in the defence industry for a number of
>> years before the big organisation bureaucracy and nonsense made me jump to
>> going it alone as a software developer. I've been doing that for about 6
>> years and never looked back. I'm not a rock star coder and yet we seem to
>> make stuff that people like and come back for more.
>>
>> *About Babs*
>> My sister-in-law. Before she had my niece and nephew she was a C++
>> developer for the Symbian OS Java API and a bloody good one. She was going
>> stir crazy as an intelligent stay at home mum and was keen to get back into
>> coding so I suggested that she learn Ruby. When the youngest was in primary
>> school she started coding with me and we've been doing that for about 2
>> years. She's living in Chenai for 6 months as my brother is setting up an
>> engineering team out there.
>>
>> *The Rest*
>> There are about 3 or 4 people from the NHS who have a part-time active
>> involvement on the project; including the Medical Director of the Trust. We
>> also have a full time seconded staff member. The NHS team are great to work
>> with and it makes the project a joy. You get to work directly with the
>> users of the product and get real feedback about what they require.
>> We have an excellent and experienced business consultant who acts as a
>> mentor for me a couple of days a month. Awesome. As an aside, don't
>> underestimate the importance of good business consultants.
>> My wife comes in 1 day a week to research the market, competition and
>> changes in the business landscape. She often wins "Employee of the Day".
>> My dad is our QA man.
>> Uncle Simon is the freelance graphic designer.
>> Uncle Tim runs his own Joomla based business upstairs.
>> I think that's enough family.
>>
>> *You*
>> Not quite the 'Eden' way but has elements of that. We need a senior
>> developer and someone who's a little more fully formed as a Rails developer
>> just because you'll need to hit the ground running. Having said that,
>> George was working on Backbone.js for a large part of his stay here and not
>> many people are that familiar with Backbone yet. He proved the oft made
>> point that a sharp mind, good work ethos and sound engineering principles
>> will trump prior knowledge.
>>
>> *The Atmosphere*
>> It's a hard thing to describe but Crystal Palace has a good atmosphere.
>> There's lots of friendly people around. Good restaurants, cafes and pubs.
>> People are friendly to you and you get introduced to all the locals and
>> made to feel part of the community. I imagine it's a little bit like
>> professional work used to be in the 1970s - a bit more laid back, inviting
>> and homely. Up to a couple of years ago, we worked in an office where a dog
>> used to roam about and people still smoked at their desk. But don't worry,
>> we don't do that any more; we stubbed out the cigarettes and had the dog
>> shot. There are no bean bags or giant exit slides but we do have an office
>> door, desks and chairs; which is convenient.
>>
>> *The Tech*
>> It's Rails 3.1, MongoDB and uses Backbone.js for some important pages.
>>
>> *Testing*
>> Ahem...
>> Test coverage is err.... *sketchy*. I know this may be a heretical thing
>> to say but in the early stages and with a *really small team,* the TDD
>> and BDD were interrupting the process of discovery and creativity when in
>> early development. We use Cucumber and RSpec but for our initial purposes
>> build came before test and we've been burnt before from an over
>> enthusiastic test coverage whilst the B in the BDD was still being hammered
>> out. To paraphrase, 'If it ain't broke, don't test it.". IMHO, the ultimate
>> MoFo of full stack testing is this..
>>
>> Given I have done some work for a client
>> When I go back to that client
>> Then they should want me to do more work for them
>>
>> Business Driven Development, distilled?
>>
>> Having said all that, this is not a recalcitrant position. The product
>> needs more test coverage now that it's rolling out as a Beta; partly for
>> the reason that we need some regression testing. You may wish to consider
>> this a technical challenge of the job. I'd genuinely welcome a dev that
>> will teach me the error of my ways and I'd be more than happy to bask in
>> the warm glow shining out of a GOOS TDD arse. It's cold out here. Show me
>> how TDD can make my life better.
>>
>> *Wonga.com, contract terms and all that*
>> £400 per day for a contractor. Minimum contract is 2 months but expect it
>> to be longer if you're enjoying it.
>> If you like the work, the environment and things are going well, then
>> over the longer term we're looking for a CTO with substantial equity and
>> the equivalent perm salary.
>>
>> We've spent the last two months presenting our product in the South East
>> and London. The mood is up. The game is on. Our order book is filling up,
>> we're self funding and we're keen to get out into the rest of the country
>> and my attention is being taken off the day to day coding. That's why we
>> need you.
>>
>>
>>    Kevin Monk
>> Technical Director
>>
>> Mango Swiss Ltd
>> Westow Hill Studios
>> 45 Westow Hill
>> Upper Norwood
>> London SE19 1TS
>>
>> E: kevin at mangoswiss.com
>> T: 020 8670 5461
>> M: 07736 066408
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------
> Andrew Premdas
> blog.andrew.premdas.org
>
>


-- 
------------------------
Andrew Premdas
blog.andrew.premdas.org
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