Networks

Introduction

My current position is Director of Engineering for Songza.com. My biggest challenge today is recruiting. Our engineering group is currently 3 people. We need to double that. Finding good people isn't easy.

What languages/frameworks do you use (Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, etc.)?

Our backend is all Python. Obviously lots of javascript in the web front end and whatever any particular mobile device requires for native apps (i.e. Objective C for ios, Java for Android, etc). We inherited a PHP codebase from a previous project which morphed into the current site. After struggling with PHP for a year, we invested the time to rewrite it all in Python, and we've never looked back. Our stack is basically python, django, mongoengine, mongodb, linux running in AWS.

What topics might you be interested in?

How to find and recruit good engineers.

Do you have any specific areas of expertise? Would you be willing to share it with the group?

Unix, Python

What is your favorite unit test framework and why?

After sticking with good old python "unittest", I've recently become a big fan of nose. There's a lot less boilerplate, and the parallel execution is a big win.

What is your favorite version control system and why?

Hg rocks. I know git is basically the same thing, but the command syntax just seems so clunky compared to hg. I used to use p4, which is pretty good as non-distributed systems go (and their tech support is awesomely good).