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20070130 Tuesday January 30, 2007

Roller as a Photoblog Discovered on the roller-dev mailing list from Richard Jones:

For the last 6 months I've been turning Roller into photoblogging platform - you can see the most up-to-date version @ www.pixyblog.com.

I really like what Richard has done with Roller - especially this entry. ;-)

In job-hunting news, the market seems to be pretty hot in Denver right now. While I haven't accepted any offers, I have been replying to 4-5 inquiries per day, as well as shooting out 2-3 resumes per day. I had a couple interviews yesterday and another one this afternoon.

The most intriguing interview so far has been with Sun. I'm jazzed about it because of the work opportunities there, but I'm not-so-jazzed because 1) it's a full-time position (which typically pay a lot less than contracting and 2) it's working for a big company. That being said, it does seem that Sun is really turning things around and it's probably an exciting time to work there.

For those folks out there that have worked for Sun - what's it like? Is it a good place to work these days? Would you recommend it for a passionate open source developer like myself that likes to make contractor rates and take lots of vacation? Posted in Roller at Jan 30 2007, 11:12:47 AM MST 11 Comments

Comments:

Have a good look at their intellectual property clause. I'd hate to see you get sued for integrating something from your Sunny experience into an open source project.

Posted by 199.79.224.101 on January 30, 2007 at 04:27 PM MST #

Didn't Dave Johnson go to work for Sun after roller fame... maybe he's got the insight? There's lots of work out there, I'd stay a free agent. It feels very 1998 in in the Si valley. Good luck, and sorry to hear about what happened.

Posted by Jason on January 30, 2007 at 04:40 PM MST #

Sun has got to be a cool place to work from a technical perspective. The problem that I see for you is that you have your own gig. The Appfuse project is so much cooler than any corporate ball and chain. Best of luck either way.

Posted by Rick Marry on January 30, 2007 at 07:33 PM MST #

The market in Denver and surrounding areas is very hot right now. I agree with Rick's comment -- stay a free agent and make a heap a money doing what you love and what you are GREAT at (Appfuse is a very impressive stack). The market will always make room for great talent like yourself. You'll always have opportunities open to you, whether the market is hot, warm, or cold. Best of luck.

Posted by Clint Smith on January 31, 2007 at 08:33 AM MST #

Matt, I have no idea what role in Sun you are contemplating... but I spent 13 years with Sun from 1991 to 2003. What I loved about the company was the opportunities it provided to change assignments. Like getting a new job without loosing any benefits. I suspect Sun might drive you crazy if you care a lot about seeing your work go out into the world to make a difference. Sun is overloaded with management and many great projects are underfunded or just never get out. Over bloated efforts add people until the scale of the project is so large that it moves at the spped of Microsoft... without the adoption rates. My 2 cents... and it's worth less than that: If you can stay afloat as a contractor... I'd do so and re-visit Sun when your passion for producing code diminishes and your more interested in hanging with smart people that like to talk about software and produce less of it. Sun offers a great career for those types of programmers. If the job is in R&D then forget everything I said... they get work around their own interests.

Posted by McD on February 01, 2007 at 02:45 PM MST #

Matt, unless Sun is offering you some kind of evangelist position or a position with true freedom, I've heard the same things as McD mentioned about working for them-- one of the luxuries I think you afford now is the weight of your opinion on things, which a lot of people respect-- if you join a big vendor, then it may affect the perception people have. Now the counter to that would be an evangelist position within Sun where you'd be able to champion the platform while having the freedom to be vocally impartial on Sun's own initiatives. Then again, you may be looking to be part of some big company, if that's the case-- hold out for google ;-)

Posted by Jacob Hookom on February 01, 2007 at 09:03 PM MST #

Matt, Did you feel that it was easier to modify roller than to create your own with appfuse and your framework of choice? Would you do it the same way again?

Posted by CMH on February 02, 2007 at 12:36 PM MST #

Sorry about that.. Should trying reading ALL the words first.. So Richard put a lot of work into Roller to make this happen. Matt- If you were going to build a similar product with Appfuse what would your framework of choice be? How about the back end?

Posted by CMH on February 02, 2007 at 01:25 PM MST #

Hey Matt! Congrats on the interviewing! I've been doing the same, but in San Francisco. The market there is pretty hot as well. Have you had any horrible interviews? I just posted about some of my experiences on my blog. Have you run into anything like what I hint at there? (I'm just wondering if it was a SF-specific thing, or just a company-specific thing...) Don't get me wrong, I had one great interview, but the other was a nightmare... Thanx! - Nelz

Posted by Nelz on February 03, 2007 at 05:23 PM MST #

CMH - if I were going to build a similar product with AppFuse, I'd use Struts 2 and Hibernate. If it weren't for Apache politics, Roller would use this combination in 4.0. However, we have to remove Hibernate because of its license (LGPL).

Posted by Matt Raible on February 07, 2007 at 05:30 PM MST #

Matt, as a two-time boomeranger at Sun, I can say it's been better on the inside than on the outside, and that includes a stints at NeXT where the neurological capital was off the chart and a compelling startup whose mission was to "change the world one click at a time" [cough]. Now in my third "tour of duty", I'm finding that Sun has a renewed drive and mission that extends well beyond business, where it's leaders take seriously it's role in society and the environment. I've been an independent contractor too, and must say I prefer to dispense with all the administrative overhead and risk management in favor of focusing on really interesting problems, for which Sun affords me the opportunity. Not to mention Sun has turned the corner and is profitable again. Good luck with the search process.

Posted by Scott on March 28, 2007 at 10:38 AM MDT #

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