by Willy Franzen on August 20, 2008
Software used to be all about personal computers. You bought a computer, then you bought software, and finally you loaded the software onto the computer. Whether you wanted to play a game, make a spreadsheet, or edit images, the process was essentially the same. We’re rapidly moving towards a future where much of the software that we use resides on someone else’s computer – a server – and we access it over the Internet. One obvious example of this change is Google Apps. Another less obvious example is Facebook. You may say, “But it’s just a website!” Yes, it’s a website that does a lot of things – it’s software. More and more developers are spending more and more time building applications that run “in the cloud.” The biggest challenge for these developers is ensuring that their applications scale – in other words, that they work just as well with 100,000 users as they do with 100 users. Building the software and hardware infrastructure needed to scale efficiently is a mountainous task, that’s why 10gen is building a software based solution that runs on most current hosting hardware. They envision a future in which a single developer can build a software product that serves millions of users without having to worry about scaling.
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engineering,
entry-level jobs,
New York,
quality assurance,
software development,
writing
by Willy Franzen on August 14, 2008
A company’s home page should make it instantly clear what the company is about. For many companies this is not the case. There’s all kinds of fluff that fails to give potential customers a proper brand introduction. Menlo Innovations doesn’t make this mistake. Their home page introduces a problem: “In 2004, the U.S. wasted over $55 billion on failed and poorly run software projects.” Then it identifies the cause: “These failures can be traced to a lack of understanding of the business issues being addressed and the wrong implementation methodologies being used.” Finally the home page poses their solution:
Menlo Innovations applies High-Tech Anthropology® to help our clients fully understand their business problems and opportunities. If the solution requires software, Menlo either develops the software within our Menlo Software Factory or The Menlo Institute trains your staff to use proven methodologies to develop the software themselves.
It’s clear. It’s concise, and it gets to the point. There’s no misunderstanding about what The Menlo Institute does.
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analyst,
business development,
entry-level jobs,
innovation,
Michigan,
project management,
quality assurance,
software development,
user experience
by Willy Franzen on July 11, 2008
Imagine that instead of graduating in 2008, you graduated in 1978. You’re a paralegal, and you’re working on a major litigation for a Japanese auto manufacturer. You are responsible for organizing thousands of pages of documents by keyword so that the lawyers will be able to quickly find relevant depositions. Doesn’t sound like very much fun, does it? Not too long ago this was a reality, and although we’re now mostly blind to the wonders of search, Laserfiche offered a revolutionary product in 1987 when they offered the first DOS-based document imaging system. Now paralegals could just scan these documents, and software would automatically index every single word. This may have been bad for paralegals (software replacing humans), but it was good for anyone who might consider working for Laserfiche. Although it may seem that companies could easily manage their documents now that most things have gone digital, they can’t. That’s why Laserfiche is still kicking around, helping organization manage information.
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account management,
California,
China,
consulting,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
marketing,
quality assurance,
sales,
software development
by Willy Franzen on June 25, 2008
Now that it’s summer, it may be hard to think back to having the sniffles and feeling a cold coming on, but try your hardest. You probably heard from various friends and family members who swear by this remedy or that remedy. Chicken soup. Zinc. Naps. Vitamin C. Ahhh…. Vitamin C. Some people swear by it, and others think that they’re nuts. You can drink OJ, use Airborne, or take Emergen-C – my favorite. You can also swallow cheap Vitamin C pills, but that’s no fun. Airborne got slapped with a false advertising suit for making claims that their product has the “ability to cure or prevent the common cold.” They settled for $23.3 million. Emergen-C doesn’t make such aggressive claims, although they do say that their product will “give your immune system a fighting chance.” In reality, it’s not all that important. Emergen-C is absolutely delicious, especially when mixed with orange juice. If it even makes you think that you’re going to feel better after taking it, then it’s doing its job – at least we know that it’s not less effective than Airborne.
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California,
design,
entry-level jobs,
food,
quality assurance
by Willy Franzen on June 10, 2008
We didn’t get a whole lot done yesterday. We were slightly distracted by the events going on at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where Apple announced a 3G iPhone along with some amazing software updates, and a daytime Yankees game on tv. A lot of people complained that too much time was spent at WWDC talking about software, but we couldn’t get enough of it. A couple really cool apps in the medical field (Modality and MIMvista) were showcased, but neither of the companies that developed them appeared to have entry-level jobs; however, Epocrates is a company that was featured at the announcement of the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and is also putting the iPhone into use in the practice of medicine.
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California,
entry-level jobs,
medicine,
operations,
quality assurance,
software development
by Willy Franzen on May 29, 2008
Most people like shoes. They protect your feet, offer support, and keep you warm. Some people love shoes – love them to the point that their loved ones (not the shoes) are likely worried about them. Oddly enough, the people who deeply love shoes often seem most interested in shoes that barely protect their feet, offer little support, and provide little or no warmth. We don’t really get that. Zappos.com puts these people to shame. As a company they have a shoe obsession that is far worse than that of the most Sex and the City addicted, Daily Candy reading, New York City fashionista. Why do we say that? Because Zappos.com is obsessed with everything shoes, not just the shoes of some designer whose name you’re supposed to know.
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analyst,
apparel,
design,
editing,
finance,
human resources,
Kentucky,
merchandising,
Nevada,
photography,
project management,
quality assurance,
software development,
user experience
by Willy Franzen on May 12, 2008
Some people love grocery shopping, some people hate it, and most people don’t have time for it. If your college campus was anywhere near a Wegmans, then you probably made time for the supermarket; however, once you start working a full-time, entry-level job in a city with no Wegmans, grocery shopping will likely become an imposition. That’s where FreshDirect steps in. They deliver fresh, affordable food to your doorstep quickly.
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analyst,
buyer,
entry-level jobs,
food,
human resources,
logistics,
merchandising,
New York,
operations,
quality assurance
by Willy Franzen on April 18, 2008
Get your shovel out. No, we’re not going to BS you, but it’s required equipment if you want a job at Digg. Digg is a social news site that allows users to vote up and share interesting news items, videos, and images. At times it can seem like a total time waster, but then out of nowhere an extremely useful submission will pop up. You’re also likely to find Breaking News on Digg well before it gets picked up by the mainstream media.
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California,
entry-level jobs,
human resources,
quality assurance,
social media,
software development
by Willy Franzen on February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine’s Day! Yesterday and the day before we profiled companies that not only offer great entry-level job opportunities, but also can help you with last-minute preparations for making today (or any day) special for someone you love. Today we’re going to talk about a company that has something to offer for those of you who are looking for someone to love. Speaking of which, we want your love, so become a Facebook Fan, subscribe through RSS, or join our e-mail list. You’ll get great information about entry-level careers, and we’ll get a self-esteem boost. Everybody wins.
A lot of people say that job searching is like dating. That metaphor has been played out, and we’re not going to write an article on How to Use Google to Find a Girlfriend. We are going to talk about how you can use your surplus of Valentine’s Day love to find a job or a date at eHarmony, since randomly poking people you think are cute on Facebook isn’t going to get you a date (nor will doing the equivalent on LinkedIn get you a job). eHarmony is a dating site that matches people based on a scientific approach to compatibility. We’ve never used it, but the couples on their commercials seem pretty darned happy; moreover, on average, 90 people get married from eHarmony every day. With so much success, there has been an upcropping of sites that claim to be “the eHarmony of jobs,” but we’re pretty skeptical of this approach. If most companies can’t even put together good job descriptions, how can they be expected to write an organizational profile that will yield accurate results when put into a compatibility algorithm? You’re better off reading One Day, One Job, doing your own research, and determining organizational fit yourself.
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account management,
California,
design,
entry-level jobs,
holiday,
marketing,
quality assurance
by Willy Franzen on January 24, 2008
College is when you make decisions that affect the rest of your life. You pick a major, you choose to study (or party) hard, and you might even decide to ask out your future spouse. Then, one night, things get a little out of hand. You wake up on the living room floor of your apartment, you walk to the bathroom, look into the mirror, and see that you’ve managed to get a bit of ink on yourself. No, your friends didn’t shame you with sharpies. You got a tattoo. It’s not going to wash off, no matter how hard you scrub. Sorry, mom.
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engineering,
entry-level jobs,
New Jersey,
quality assurance
by Willy Franzen on January 16, 2008
Yesterday, we spent a good part of the day camped in front of our computers reading MacRumors.com’s live blog updates from the Apple Keynote at MacWorld Expo San Francisco. In case you aren’t a “macfanboy,” you should know that they announced the MacBook Air, updates to the iPhone and iPod Touch software, improved AppleTV functionality with downloadable movie rentals, and a wireless router/storage/backup device called Time Capsule. For some who were expecting more, yesterday’s products announcements were quite a disappointment, while for others, it was like Christmas morning all over again. Anyways, today’s event was a great display of how even huge companies can remain innovative, and that got us thinking about how a new college grad can snag a job at Apple.
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California,
engineering,
entry-level jobs,
nationwide,
quality assurance,
retail,
software development
by Willy Franzen on December 14, 2007
Do you remember the Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson? There was one with two parents watching their son playing a video game. Both parents had thought bubbles coming from their heads with dreams of classified ads listing high-paying video game testing job after high-paying video game testing job. Their dream has come true. A career in video games is a reality for today’s college graduates. Unfortunately, those video game jobs aren’t always as dreamy as they might seem. The industry is known for a high rate of burnout; however, Insomniac Games is not one of the culprits – for the past 3 years they have been in the Top 10 of HR Magazine’s List of the Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America.
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California,
design,
entry-level jobs,
quality assurance,
software development,
video games
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