True story: Last year, Trey was conducting a phone interview with a developer. It was going badly. Five minutes in, Trey was thinking, “There’s no way I’m going to hire this guy.” The interviewee’s voice was flat, his answers were uninspired, and he just wasn’t fun to talk to. When you’re bombing an interview in [...]
We’re building an awesome product for hosted continuous integration. Yeah, unless you already know what that means, it’s probably not for you. But our logo design process was really fun and here’s a peek at what we did. The product, by the way, is called Canary CI, and it’s going to do for continuous integration [...]
We held a company retreat in a lodge at Sundance Resort a few weeks ago. We made fantastic pizza and played cutthroat ping pong, but we also spent a great deal of time discussing our process. I’ll post some of the highlights in the next few weeks. We spent a session discussing how we estimate [...]
In this segment we explore what team members at 12 Spokes do to ready themselves for starting something new… Colleen (Web Designer) 1) New music. I love listening to music while I work and nothing jolts my creativity like listening to some new tunes. It can range anywhere from jazz and mellow (think Trio of [...]
Over the years, we’ve had clients ask if we’ll offer a price break or even waive our costs altogether in return for equity in their product. As an idealist, I totally understand and love the idea of equity. Hey, we’re all part-owners of this product now! We all have equal incentive to make it succeed! [...]
Or rather, “software development.” It’s nice to read articles with headlines like this one: “For Software Developers, A Bounty of Opportunity” Of course, as a business owner, I recognize that there are two sides to the coin: when you’re in a hot industry, it can be tough to keep hot talent. Still, that’s the kind of [...]
Check out the latest 12 Spokes launch! We’re happy to introduce The Wisdom of Others this week! Here’s how it works. Say you’ve got some friends getting married, and you want to give them some advice from their friends and family as a personalized wedding gift. Ask a question—like “What is the secret to a happy [...]
We’re in the early stages of putting together Canary, a continuous integration add-on for Heroku. Naturally, one of the questions that arose in discussions with the team is what to build it with. We’re a Rails shop, but since we’re starting a new internal project, we discussed investing our time into learning something new and [...]
Update: I’ve changed my tune and am sold on the 37 Signals board. Last month, we needed to hire some good Ruby developers. In the past, we’ve listed our job postings free on Craigslist and Rubynow, and we’ve always gotten dozens of responses. Moreover, we’ve hired really great people that way. But Rubynow began charging [...]
Here at 12 Spokes, we’re about as distributed a team as you’re going to find. From Salt Lake City, to Washington DC, to Columbia in Missouri, everyone on the team was recruited for talent, not location. This is awesome because we really can get some great developers on board without uprooting their families and without [...]