Software Developers Should Work at Trulia: The Top 10 List
By now most people interested in real estate have heard of Trulia-the-real-estate-startup, Trulia-the-slicker-than-whale-snot-Web-site, and Trulia-the-talent-magnet. But unless you’ve been on the inside, it might not be obvious that there’s also a Trulia-the-cool-as-heck-workplace lurking underneath our glittery Web 2.0 threads that’s a heaven for us engineer types.
Sure, I’m biased, having been with the company for a while now; but I really do believe Trulia is the bestest place to work for software developers (I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t, now, would I, what with the 287,018,311,779,637 tech startups in the Bay Area vying for engineering manpower). So I thought I’d pull a David Letterman and come up with a silly top-ten list of my own detailing why you should come work with us. Now. As in ASAP, a.k.a. PDQ.
10. We have a wii and a big ol’ TV to play tennis on in between bouts of coding.
9. We think Web development is a branch of software engineering, not Italian cuisine (think silly hobbyist procedural spaghetti code). Our VP of engineering even has a PhD in computer science (plus he’s Italian, so we grok both computer science and spaghetti).
8. Our kitchen is fully stocked with enough snacks for every developer to cultivate their proverbial engineer silhouette if they so choose.
7. We not only understand scope rules in JavaScript, we can explain them.
6. Our models don’t need permission to view our controllers.
5. The engineering team strikes the fear of God into the product team. Not the other way around.
4. Everyone in the engineering team is incredibly good at what they do, and they’re always happy to teach you new m@d sk|lz that make you look really, really smart at parties.
3. We know what design patterns are, and we use them with great care and discretion.
2. Every developer gets 2 mondo big huge monitors and a fast machine to work on as part of their standard setup.
1. We write, QA and release code so fast you’re always working on something new (that and it’ll make your head spin).
and…
0. Our top-ten lists are zero-indexed, so they go to eleven.
On any given day, you might find yourself building AJAX components used throughout the site, hacking high-performance CSS to minimize page load times, Frankensteining our data access layer to publish Trulia content on the moon, tweaking memcache to help our pages load even before the user has decided what link to click on, assembling fluid table-less HTML pages, or constructing complex, interactive Flash apps to display our data in new and interesting ways. Whatever you do is seen and/or used by millions of users (on average, over 100 users every minute of every day), so every engineer in the company makes a difference.
We use pretty standard technologies: primarily PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS on the site, and Python, Java, MySQL, Perl and Linux under the hood. If you’re not a PHP expert but know your stuff and have experience with some P language, we can bring you up to speed.
So if you’re ready for a great intellectual challenge and eager to work with a great group of smart, experienced, and funnier-than-thou engineers, drop us a line and we’ll go from there.
`
Rudy, Social Media Guru said,
February 12, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
Hi Roger!
You were one of the first people I met when I joined the team and I have to say,
you had me in stitches. Awesome list. Now can i hAz a tRANslaZion pLeaze?
Rudy
Roger, Engineering Lead said,
February 12, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
Easy.
Work at trulia = good
Work at not trulia = not so good
Capisce?
Magnus said,
February 13, 2008 @ 10:27 am
Great post!
For sure many similarities to our team.
One difference though, over here battles on Guitar Hero III takes the pressure away…
Roger, Engineering Lead said,
February 13, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
We have Guitar Hero III too. Nyah.
Robbie said,
February 14, 2008 @ 8:55 am
Speaking of pasta and code, does your VP of engineering have an opinion in the great
Lasagna code vs Raviloli code debate?
Matt Goyer’s Real Estate Blog » Blog Archive » Truliaholic and Trulia offshoring said,
February 16, 2008 @ 2:11 pm
[…] course Trulia is also looking for local engineers. We’ll need to post a similar top 10 list for working at Redfn. Our #10 would be that we have […]
Roger, Engineering Lead said,
February 18, 2008 @ 6:36 pm
I can’t speak for our VP, but I’m a big fan of lasagna made out of ravioli.
ravioli ravioli ravioli ravioli ravioli
pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta
ravioli ravioli ravioli ravioli ravioli
pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta
etc.
I hope that makes sense.