silicon milkroundabout impressions

The Masabi team were out in full force on Sunday to attend the hugely popular Silicon Milkroundabout recruitment event and talk to all manner of developers, testers and other startup job hunters about the great opportunities we have on offer. From a company’s perspective, the event was hugely successful. Finding technically skilled people is an incredible challenge in a job market that is dominated by often overly aggressive recruitment companies, who seem to be the sole gatekeepers to a large development community.

Many startups can scarcely afford outrageous recruiter fees, so it was positively rejuvenating to go down to SMR on Sunday and meet face-to-face with developers who want to work at a startup on their own initiative, and do something amazing as a job. Here are some of our overall impressions of the event and why we’re pushing to have another one as soon as possible.

the venue

The Truman Brewery on Brick Lane was excellent location to hold the event, boasting both great transport links and a sizeable exhibition hall. The first SMR event – held in a bar – was awesome, but slightly suffered from its own popularity as there was barely enough room to move. This time the organisers got it spot on, booking a large space to maximise the amount of people and startups attending, while making sure the event was bustling and thriving without being jam-packed.

the organisation

Top marks to Anais Conijn and the rest of Songkick for their excellent organisation of the whole event. The regular email updates, use of Google Docs to collectively organise time schedules, and the pitch selection process were all fantastically managed and ensured that everyone felt that they were not only in good hands, but also being treated fairly. Bonus points were also scored for making sure recruiters were strictly kept out to prevent candidates being poached – one of the main drivers for the event in the first place.

From the attendees side, it was refreshing to see a conference that was obviously well-run and had good facilities but was not at all formal or stuffy. Everyone there was very friendly and casual, and this quite appropriately meant that job hunters could have a good chin-wag with the companies on the stands without the fear that they were under scrutiny from sharp-suited ‘company representatives’.

the companies

Over 100 tech startups came from all over London to showcase what great places they are to work and to prove that there is an alternative to the daily hum-drum of your average office.

The key advantages of working at startups rather than large companies are their game-changing products and services, innovative business models and the fact that they are really, really cool places to work. These were mirrored in the whacky and wonderful pitches on display and brought to life by the enthusiasm and animation of the teams exhibiting on them.

It would have been an amazing event to get to know some of the other startups, only we were all too busy talking to new recruits! (Incidentally, this is why we’ve only got a handful of photos, taken just before the action kicked off.)

the hype

The event couldn’t have been such a huge success without the coverage it received from mainstream media outlets such as WIRED, the Evening Standard, the FT and others. Indeed, the community did sterling work in getting to word out to an army of journalists, bloggers and tweeters, which raised the profile of an already buzzing event and demonstrated that the startup community has a powerful collective voice that says – “We want you to work for us!”

The twittersphere in particular proved instrumental for generating hype in the community at large, providing a public platform for anyone to share related thoughts, opinions, articles and blogs. It was also great to talk to people who had read our blog post about startup job hunting and had taken our advice to heart.

random cool stuff

There was loads of really awesome stuff to keep people entertained and emulate the fun, informal working environment that many startups have to offer. Big thanks go to Graze.com for providing a ton of free snack boxes; Shazam for providing complimentary drinks at the bar; Twilio for sponsoring the chill-out area, where there were bean bags, arcade games etc.; StackOverflow for curating the stage and AV for the video pitches (and providing free job listings); and, finally, SkillsMatter for giving out free copies of Open Source Journal. Special mention also goes to whoever brought the friendly dog that was running around all day. I’m also told that one company brought a pet snake.

the people

Above all else, the success of this event depended on awesome people to attend it. It was unprecedented to see so many skilled developers gathered in one place, all eager to look for new opportunities and learn about startup life. For both the companies and the recruits, there was a real value in being able to meet each other face-to-face and test the water before (rather than after) going through the formal hiring process.

The Masabi stand was overwhelmed by talented prospects looking for their next big challenge, and we hope to follow up with as many of these people as possible in the next few days and make some offers! Lastly, we’d like to thank everyone who got stuck into the startup spirit and came down on the day to make the event such a great success.

overall

It was the perfect event to bring the startup community together and create some awesome opportunities for motivated developers and companies alike.

Recruitment is one of the most resource-hungry but necessary activities that startups must engage in to build a strong team and make their visions a reality. Half of building a successful company is finding the right people to work there, and Silicon Milkroundabout will have done a great job if we manage to find even one bright spark (though we’re confident we’ll get many more). The Masabi team sincerely hopes that the event is made into a regular calendar fixture because there are loads of fast growing companies out there – including us – who are always in need of talented recruits!


Meet us at Silicon Milkroundabout and interested in following up?

We’d love to hear from you!


P.S. Word from the Silicon Milkroundabout site is that the next event should be dropping around May 2012 – so register with them to stay tuned for more info!

Related posts:

1. Recruitment Special: If you want a startup job, think like an entrepreneur and ask for one
2. Masabi’s Role in Open Source and the Wider Community
3. Interesting Blackberry Factoids for Developers

If you want a startup job, think like an entrepreneur and ask for one

As Masabi looks forward to the upcoming startup recruitment event Silicon Milkroundabout – being held this Sunday 30^th October at the Old Truman Brewery – I was encouraged by Ben, our CEO, to share my experiences of startup job hunting, and offer my thoughts on an effective approach to finding meaningful employment in the flourishing London tech industry.

Having just graduated from university with no clear career path in front of me, I decided very early on to forego the annual churn of the graduate recruitment scheme and do something different. Even though I didn’t know where I was going, this was a step in the right direction: what startups lack in formal training, they make up for in hands-on, practical exposure to all aspects of business and the working world. Kick-starting your career in this way is perfect for anyone with enough entrepreneurial drive and enthusiasm to get stuck in and learn things by doing them first-hand. More importantly, it gives you a raw, powerful hunger to succeed that many of your contemporaries in the big banks and consultancy firms simply will not share.

To help anyone thinking about working at a startup, but struggling to find an opportunity, I’ve prepared a list of 10 things that I’ve learned on my year-long journey from startup job hunter to fully fledged Masabist.

1. Get yourself into a position where you can learn more about yourself

Graduating from university can be quite daunting, especially if you have little or no work experience and don’t want to jump onto the corporate assembly line. For anyone that doesn’t know what they want to do, or even what they’re good at, working for a startup can be one of the most rewarding and enlightening experiences you can have, providing insights into both the working world and your own character. The sheer variety of work means you’ll be exposed to a wealth of areas that you previously had no idea existed – you may do things you won’t like, but equally, you may do things you will love, and will want to pursue further. Moreover, if you want to get involved in an area of interest, you can get stuck in straight away. Job roles are often more flexible in the startup world – use this to your advantage and challenge yourself.

2. “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Any frustrated job hunter should take these words from Winston Churchill to heart. You’ll get rejected and worse – ignored – over and over, but perseverance always pays off in the end. If you’ve got talent there will always be something out there for you. I wrote letters to more than 30 startup companies before I received my first reply.

3. Don’t be a sheep – be smart and create your own opportunities

Any entrepreneur will tell you that you make your own luck. Don’t go for the advertised jobs. The best jobs out there are created for you and by you – and best of all, you’ll have no competition! These jobs are not advertised and in all likelihood don’t even exist yet, so write to companies and ask them to give you a chance. Companies like Masabi will always hire bright prospects, so get in touch on your own initiative!

My method for getting a startup job was writing speculative internship applications to every company that announced funding (these are usually covered by Techcrunch and their Twitter feed is an excellent way to keep track). Companies getting investment are invariably looking to expand and are more willing to take people on. This eventually paid off for me and landed me an initial internship at Masabi.

Startups are made by entrepreneurs who are looking for like-minded people to work with them. Show an enterprising, entrepreneurial approach and you’ll get the attention of someone who values these qualities.

4. Make your own decisions

To build on that last point: don’t rely on recruiters. In fact, it’s better to avoid them altogether. It suggests a laissez-faire attitude and even if you’re good, the debilitating recruiter fees that small companies have to pay to hire you will often be enough to put them off.

More fundamentally, if you really care about where you work, don’t leave that decision to someone else. A recruiter’s only remit is to find you jobs with the highest salary so that they can trouser a healthy comission. If that’s your only motivation too, you’re looking for a job in the wrong place. Startups want people that are motivated by things other than a paycheck, so ditch the recruiters and take control of your own life.

5. Make it personal

Startups want people, not just worker bees. Having seen both sides of the startup recruitment process, it’s acutely obvious that being personal in your application gives you a big chance of getting noticed. Startups get riddled with emails from recruiters and candidates trawling for any old job, so show a genuine interest in the company and the position. Be selective and target individually, rather than firing off a million stock emails. In your covering letter, show them you’ve read about and understand the company and what it’s trying to achieve, then explain what you can offer them to help them attain this. Tailored letters attract instant attention and are much more likely to get you noticed by the right people.

6. Keep it to the point

Startups are often busy environments without a dedicated HR department – people usually have their regular job to do on top of recruitment, so make things easy for them. In your initial approach, your only objective is to get an interview, so get their attention with a short, punchy cover letter and some decent CV headlines to make them want to learn more about you and meet in person. Also, if you really want to work somewhere and you feel they may have forgotten about you, don’t be afraid to call them up.

7. It’s their interview too

An interview works both ways, i.e. you’re also interviewing the company to see if they are good people to work with. Ask questions: enquire about the business model; what the team is like; what it’s like to work there; etc. If they can’t adequately explain the basics or the people don’t seem like a good fit, you’re probably not at the right place. If you’re applying for an internship, whether or not it is a paid position can also be a good indicator of how much the company values their people. Unfortunately, there are many small companies who find it too hard to resist taking on an intern unpaid, so always make sure to establish how they are willing to compensate you. Masabi internships are always paid and we’re always looking for talented recruits, so send me a CV if you’re interested!

One more thing: if you’re not sure what the dress code is, it never hurts to dress smart and look professional.

8. Internships are a great foot in the door

Internships are basically an extended job interview, so work hard, get stuck in and get things done – it will make you indispensable to the company. A valued part of any small team is impossible to let go of and your internship will be much more likely to be followed up by a permanent job offer. My internship with Masabi turned into a permanent job after two months.

9. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Sometimes you need to overstep the line a little bit to find out where that line actually is. Any startup company worth its salt will value someone that might go too far sometimes on their own initiative, but always learns from their mistakes.

10. It’s not about the money

This may seem clichéd to make as a final point but it is genuinely the reason I to go to work everyday. I know a lot of people that have gone off to work in big banks and various other corporate monoliths and as a result are pulling in huge salaries and have brilliant career opportunities. That’s great. It’s easy to be comfortable in this lifestyle and, indeed, it works well for many people.

I myself can’t imagine anything less inspiring or motivating than going to work everyday safe in the knowledge that all you are making is money. I believe your career should be worth more than that. At growing companies like Masabi you’re given the opportunity to change the mechanisms of the everyday world and produce things that make a real difference to people’s lives. It’s your chance to create something awesome and pursue a goal that means more than just sales figures or profit margins. It’s no coincidence that a friend of mine recently remarked, “Will, you’re the only person I know who actually loves their job.”

Working at Masabi has been one of the most fantastic, exciting, enriching and engaging opportunities of my life, and I would have never had that chance if I hadn’t sought it out for myself. So go out there and ask (us!) for a job! You may be surprised what you find.

P.S. In case you hadn’t noticed:

Calling all developers, testers, and startup job hunters – Masabi are hiring! If you want a job, come down and meet the team at the Silicon Milroundabout startup recruitment event, this Sunday 30th November, at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane (remember to register in advance). If you can’t make that, head over to our careers page now to see the jobs we have on offer, or follow my advice and get in touch with me on will[at]masabi.com.

Related posts:

1. Silicon Milkroundabout Impressions
2. Masabi Selected as a Red Herring Top 100 Europe Tech Startup
3. Masabi Wins Software Innovation Category at Digital Entrepreneur Awards

1. Mobile Developer
2. iPhone Developer
3. Production Manager

Please visit the careers page for full details and descriptions. Good hunting!

Lastly, NO AGENCIES OR RECRUITERS please!

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3. VACANCY: Java Server Developer – Develop something amazing and Useful

Firstly: NO AGENCIES OR RECRUITERS! We are interested in pro-active candidates who are motivated enough to find us by themselves.

Skills we look for in every candidate: passionate, clear thinking, flexible, confident working in small teams, fluent in English, and London-based, you’ll have a desire to be both critical and receptive to the input of other team members. Masabi offers the ideal candidates an exciting work environment with plenty of opportunity to excel in an exciting growing business solving a clear customer need with a working revenue share business model.

Server Developer

A flexible JavaEE developer with experience using Spring, Hibernate, web services and creating interactive web front-ends, who is happy to work with various databases and webapp containers. Of value, but not essential: an understanding of secure systems, clustering, automated testing (beyond unit tests!), experience in agile practices, skill working with remote teams from partner companies deploying products. Technologies you will be working with: Tomcat behind Apache, Weblogic, MySQL, Spring 2.5, Hibernate (via Spring extensions), JMX, Windows and Linux, proprietary SOAP APIs including .Net extensions, REST. Will work alongside our existing server developer, as well as our tester and client developers and external customer teams.

Sysadmin

We are looking for a part time sysadmin to handle a Rackspace-hosted Linux box and various internal Linux dev servers. Services running include Java, Apache, Tomcat and MySQL. We anticipate that this role will grow over time.

Candidates selected for interview must have excellent English skills with the ability to think concisely and communicate clearly with others, which will be tested at interview.

About Masabi

We work out of a funky loft office in a converted brick warehouse shared with some PR types, a couple of blocks south of the Tate Modern in Southwark. It has excellent transport links, sitting equidistant from London Bridge, Southwark and Borough stations in an area which is being slowly redeveloped with some great lunching facilities, nice bars, world class modern art and a convenient river. Proximity to Borough Market is excellent news for gastronomes, if less good for their wallets.

The company is an established leader in mobile applications, focussing on mobile transport ticketing – turning anyone’s phone into a train ticket and ticket vending machine, eliminating queues and relieving stress for passengers everywhere.

Again, please, NO AGENCIES! Really. We mean it.

If you’re confident you’re not an agency and are in fact the perfect candidate for us, please email us at jobs@masabi.com with a CV and covering letter, or phone Ben for a chat on 0207 981 9781.

Related posts:

1. VACANCY: Java Server Developer – Develop something amazing and Useful
2. 3 Job Vacancies: Mobile Tester, Server Dev and Mobile Dev
3. Job Vacancy: Server Programmer

Masabi are currently on the lookout for three new members of staff to join our team – a tester, a junior mobile programmer and a more experienced server programmer.

Skills we look for in every candidate: passionate, clear thinking, flexible, confident working in small teams, fluent in English, and London-based, you’ll have a desire to be both critical and receptive to the input of other team members. Masabi offers the ideal candidates an exciting work environment with plenty of opportunity to excel in an exciting growing business solving a clear customer need with a working revenue share business model.

The three jobs currently available are as follows:

QA GURU
We need a tester with experience across the full range of mobile devices, testing consumer-focused applications on real handsets and online simulators, as well as related web resources. We view a testing mindset as pretty opposite to a developer mindset and are really interested in someone who actually wants to work in QA, with a pedantic perfectionist attitude, who revels in finding problems and obtuse bugs whilst having the skills to explain exactly how to reproduce them, on which handsets, without bruising egos. We’d also love it if you’ve experience with automated server testing, and have ideas on how you’d like us to develop our funky internal mobile testing system.

JUNIOR MOBILE DEVELOPER
A Java developer with a Computer Science degree and passion for programming, wanting to learn about creating beautiful usable products to solve real world problems on mass-market mobile phones. Blackberry and Windows Mobile programming experience a bonus.

SERVER DEVELOPER
A flexible J2EE developer with experience using Spring, Hibernate, JMX and creating interactive web front-ends, who is happy to work with various databases and webapp containers. Of great value: an understanding of secure systems, broad experience and flexibility with maintaining working servers, and skilled at working with remote teams from partner companies deploying products.

To get a better idea about what we do and how we do it, read blog.masabi.com, look through our flickr feed, and our website.

Candidates selected for interview must have excellent English skills with the ability to think concisely and communicate clearly with others, which will be tested at interview.

Again, please, NO AGENCIES! Really. We mean it.

If you’re confident you’re not an agency and are in fact the perfect candidate for us, please email a full CV with salary expectations and details on all relevant work permits to jobs@masabi.com

p.s. for those that want to see the office that you might be coming to work in:
Photos:
Exterior
Interior, Interior again
Ed pretending to do testing

(map shows it has great access to food heaven at Borough Market, Tube stops at Borough, London Bridge and Southwark, and commuting access from the Thames Water Taxi, and trains from Waterloo or London Bridge stations)

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