I’m hiring for my Web Development team in New York City. You can read the job description here.

Mainly I’m looking for a front-end (JavaScript, CSS, AJAX) developer, with experience in server-side technologies.

If you are qualified and interested (or know someone who is), apply at the llink above, or send your resume to:
jobs[at]smartmoney[dot]com

i will be at the web 2.0 expo in nyc this week. I hope to write a few posts about the sessions, and the experience. this is my second time attending this conference, so i’m excited to see what they have in store for us this year. first thoughts, it seems to be smaller than last year, unless everyone decided to show up late. Also no breakfast. just tea and coffee. the theme of the expo is “more with less” so i guess they started off by providing less food.

today i have 5 sessions, and the keynotes. jeff jarvis will be speaking as well as kevin rose. i have high hopes for today, lets see what i learn.
first stop, “darwinism on the web: surviving and thriving in a web 2.0 world.”

right now i regret not bringing a bagel.

This is a great Article I found on Joel On Software. In this article Joel writes about the concept of the Duct Tape Programmer. This is the programmer who gets things done and doesn’t feel the need to show off their software architect skills by over-engineering software. The Duct Tape Programmer is similar to the fictional developer I called “Jim” in my post A Tale of 2 Developers.

Joel’s rant is truly entertaining and accurate as well. Here’s an example:
“You see, everybody else is too afraid of looking stupid because they just can’t keep enough facts in their head at once to make multiple inheritance, or templates, or COM, or multithreading, or any of that stuff work. So they sheepishly go along with whatever faddish programming craziness has come down from the architecture astronauts who speak at conferences and write books and articles and are so much smarter than us that they don’t realize that the stuff that they’re promoting is too hard for us.”

I highly value the concept of the practical programmer who writes solid code, regardless of the newest programming fad. Give both articles a read, then come back and tell me your thoughts on the matter.

Today I am going to recommend 2 new books that have just become available for pre-orders.

The first is called Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals. Their first book, Getting Real, is a great read for any Software Development team. It will be out on March 9, 2010, and is only $14.96 for the hardcover version. According to the authors “Everything we know about business is in Rework.” If you’ve ever read or heard Jason Fried speak, that means it will definitely contain a lot of great information.

Second, if you read Smashing Magazine, you probably know their long awaited design book, The Smashing Book is also available for pre-order. Right now they are offering their book for 20% off ($23.90 USD), with free shipping. It will be available sooner that Rework (late September 2009). The early reviews are great, and if its anything like their regular posts, it too be be informative, and a must read.

Give these a try. If you happen to have a pre-release copy, or have some other reading recommendations, I’d love to hear in the comments.

A common dilemma of many tech managers and businesses in general is when presented with a business problem, do you build your own software or do you buy? For some companies, this is an easy answer. Some development teams are not equipped with the skills to build a particular tool or product. Other companies just do not have any budget available for the product needed, but do have ample resources to work on development. But for the teams and situations that fall in that middle or gray area, what do you do?

So, how do you decide to build or buy? Through my experiences I have compiled a short list of questions you need to ask yourself as a technology manager.

1. Do I have a budget to buy this product? – If not, the answer has been made for you. You will need to build a product that does the task, or at least can hold you off until there are available funds for purchase. Beware of the trap of building a ‘good enough’ product that then stays long past its shelf life.
2. Can my team build this? – This question has a couple of things to consider. Does your team have the skillets to build the product. Development teams have roles, and sometimes its obvious. For example a web team that builds games is just not going to build a billing system for you. Second, do you have the available resources and time? You may have the talent, but will you be able to set aside the right talent for the time required? They may be needed elsewhere.
3. Does developing in house cost me in other ways? – Once again this speaks to your talent base. Maybe you can put a developer on this application for the time required, but are you missing out on future development opportunities? Is this project so far from their original skills and desires that you will diminish team morale? Less tangible than cost, these are still important to consider.
4. Will the commercial software suit my needs? – My experience has been that many products have a set fee, but then you need to factor in the additional cost of customizations or additions that will suit your business needs. Or you think you can get away with a basic implementation, but soon need to upgrade, incurring additional costs. Or if you are paying for a subscription model, there may come a time when this may not be cost effective anymore.
5. What will the cost be to build? – Again there are a couple of things to look at here. First, how many development hours will a project take? To get a good assessment, you need to be skilled at creating project estimates. If done incorrectly you can end up in a losing proposition. Ask yourself, does your company have a history of feature creep? If so, this project will inevitably take much longer than originally thought. Finally, what is your possible productivity loss? Does putting 2 developers on a six month project keep you from developing a new tool that can be monetized? As Opportunity costs are just as important as accounting cost.
6. Could this be outsourced? – Sometimes the solution is not to build in house, or buy, but rather to have a custom application developed for you. It has been my direct experience that a lot of outsourced code, while possibly cheaper initially has cost more to grow over time. Digging through lines of code to fix bugs or to add a feature ends up wasting a lot of time. If you expect the contracting company to support the product, make sure they have been around awhile, and that you feel confident they will be there in the future. Also make sure their business model allows for incremental updates and support. Many consulting teams work on building and deploying full tools, and are not interested incremental additions.

I have to admit with the increased amount of opensource code in the community and advanced APIs to work with, I tend to build. We can usually find a good opensource product, edit and grow it for our needs, and save a lot of time and headaches. Or we buy a small commercial component that takes care of some aspect of the tool that we could/should not build, then build around that component.

Do you have similar issues? How do you decide whether to build or buy? Maybe you made a decision and wish you had chosen the other? Did I miss a major point in my decision process? I’d love to hear from you. Join the discussion in the comments. We should all learn from each others experiences.

image by msmail

It’s been another 2 weeks (plus holiday weekend), so here is another wrap up of the tools, links, and other sites that came across my various readers, etc… It could be a good resource, an interesting blog post, or anything I found useful since the last Web Tools Tips and Talk, #8.

NOTE: If you find these useful please note this is not my full list of links, tools and news. As I come across links for use, I add them all to my Effective Development Delicious.com page.
Sometimes I come across a quick link that I don’t want to wait for the Wrap-Up. Those links I send out as I find them on my Twitter account.
Finally, you can always follow my RSS Feed and check out the Tools Tips and Talk Archive.

Feel free to suggest other links in the comments.

Web Tools

• Colabolo Team Collaboration – I do not use this product but I believe strongly in collaboration software, and I also believe in having choices, so here is one you might want to check out.
• ICSI Netalyzr – Having trouble with your internet connection? This tool will help you deduce if you are having a firewall problem, or blocked port, etc…
• pingdom – This site was famous for pinging a site of your choice, and emailing you if it was down. Now they have opened their full site monitoring for free for one site. Great feature at a great deal.

Web Talk/Blogs

• Google changes PageRank flow: Why you should use an iframe in blog comments – Short discussion about Google’s new PageRank algorithm, and how it may affect your comments and nofollow code. If you have comments that allow users to post links, research this and see if it affects you.
• 10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To – Guide to common User Interface design patterns and a discussion about why they should be important to you. Usability is very important, and this is a pretty detailed read.
• 5 things I wish some people wouldn’t install on their PCs – Fun rant about some of the extras people install on their PCs ultimately slowing them down, or making them unusable. You must know someone who has 20 toolbars installed on their web browser?… or maybe you!
• How to adapt Basecamp to an agile methodology – Case study of an actual development shop using BaseCamp for their SCRUM/Agile team.
• CSS Image Replacement, what’s up Matt? – Article and video discussing using CSS to replace text with images. Discusses why you would want to try this, including SEO benefits.

Web Tips/Resources

• 10+ useful jQuery Plugins for web development – Exactly what it says. A good list for jQuery, tips demos, and code. Always good to have in your code toolbox.
• 7 Firefox Add-ons that make Web Development Easier – I’ve posted similar lists before, but if you don’t have these tools installed, you should. /li>
• 50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow – More tools for your toolbox if you are a JavaScript programmer.
• LESS – Leaner CSS – Tutorial and examples for producing cleaner CSS code.
• 35 CSS-Lifesavers For Efficient Web Design – Much more in the lines of CSS tips and tricks.

Enjoy, and have a good week.
Post any good resources or links you use in the comments.

image by seanbonner