Yesterday our Co-Founder and CEO, Keith Smith was featured on NPR’s “Morning Edition” discussing finding great talent. The story, by national correspondent Wendy Kaufman, focused on computer scientists and the very small number of Bachelor’s degrees that Seattle’s University of Washington awards each year.  According to Kaufman, the number of degrees UW has rewarded has “remained unchanged for the past decade.”  With so many technology companies in the Seattle area looking for great talent it’s increasingly more competitive to find people,

“Really it just comes down to, I think, simple supply and demand. There are too many companies that are looking for great talent, and there’s just not enough developers and engineers to go around.” – Keith Smith 

At BigDoor we’re currently looking for a Black Box Tester to join our team. If you have what it takes please send an email to HR@bigdoor.com.

Posted in: BigDoor news, Blog, Employment

Today’s blog post comes from our COO, Ring Nishioka.

We recently hired two new employees at BigDoor.  Nothing unusual there as we are in growth mode. In the last year, we have grown from 8 to 33 employees.  What was unusual to me are some of the questions that came up as these two individuals got settled in with the company.  One of the questions that I was taken aback by related to our “conflict management model.” Not because it’s a bad question, it’s actually a great question and one that I think everyone should ask as they are in the early stages of talking to a prospective company.

The main reason I didn’t know what to say was because we don’t really have a conflict management model at BigDoor.  My first thought was, you work in a company that actually needs a conflict management model? And I thought more about how BigDoor is not that kind of company. I have worked with this group of execs for close to 10 years and I haven’t seen a need for this kind of model ever.  It may also be one more great thing about working at a startup – we all work together as a team and towards one goal.  We trust everyone to do their own jobs and since everyone has specific goals, in addition to the larger company goals, there isn’t really a question about why we are doing something one way or another.  All that conflict related drama gets left on the side because we’re all just really, really busy working to meet our goals.   There is of course an open-dialogue and a lot of transparency about what direction the company is headed and how we’re going to get there.   If there’s an issue or a problem we address is right away.  We don’t have time to let things linger and walk through a specific behavior model.  I’m really glad to say I didn’t have to go to a handbook and review our conflict management style!

–Ring

Posted in: Blog, Employment

An advance look today at a story that will run in Sunday’s Seattle Times.  The story is about unusual work perks and features local companies including BigFish Games, REI, Artitudes Design and tech startup BigDoor!  Our COO Ring Nishioka took some time to talk to Karyn Johnson about a few BigDoor perks – including Sennheiser headphones as standard issue for all of our Developers as well as our close proximity to the hotbed of Seattle’s startup community and Techstars.

We’re looking for a few more developers, including Full Stack Product Python Developer & Sr. Full Stack Product Python Developer;  Operations Software Dev; Experienced Test Developer; Black Box Tester  - check it out!

Posted in: Blog, Employment