Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Buffer (http://bufferapp.com) - Anywhere in the world (we're a distributed team of 11 people across the US, UK, Hong Kong and Sydney).

I'd love for you to come join Buffer for the fun ride. We have over 650,000 users and are on a $1.3m+ annual revenue run rate. There are some super interesting challenges ahead, as we are looking to pass a million users in 2013. We are expecting even faster growth in the coming months through our mobile efforts.

We need help on 2 areas right now:

1. Android:

    - Android is our second highest source of signups for Buffer, only
      trailing behind Web which was our original platform.
    - our users love the app, which has a 4.3 rating on Google Play.
    - the app has 100k+ total downloads and 3k daily active users.
    - we work with Google Play, Kindle and Blackberry stores.
2. Full stack:

    - we get 1,500-2,000 signups per day on the web
    - we have 160,000 weekly active users for our Chrome extension
    - 4,500 API clients. Most popular: Feedly, IFTTT, Pocket, Instapaper
    - we ship to production multiple times a day
    - we have a data-driven process, with Einstein, our custom
      built a/b testing framework
    - ideally, experience in: PHP (Codeigniter)/Python, MongoDB,
      Backbone.js Javascript, CSS, HTML

We're a small team of driven hackers and happiness heroes (our support people). Just like you, we're excited and passionate about engineering challenges and have some interesting architecture and scaling problems we work on.

If you're interested in coming on board, you will:

    - work closely myself on Product and Sunil on technical
      architecture
    - ship to thousands of users and iterate quickly
    - work with our metrics team to make smart changes
    - be friendly and comfortable talking directly to customers
      on issues and features
    - be a happy, positive-minded and kind person who has a great
      approach in dealing with others
    - be a Buffer user (would be awesome, it’s cool if not)
    - be anywhere in the world, and if you'd like, you have help and
      support from us to move to where you want to be
    - have experience working with another startup before (would
      be awesome, it’s cool if not)
Some aspects of Buffer culture that makes us a little different:

    - we are totally transparent. We raised $450k, we currently
      have 650k users and generate $110k/mo. Ask me anything else!
    - within the company, all salaries and equity are open and we
      have a formula for the distribution.
    - we're all very focused on self improvement - we have daily
      standups where we discuss our current improvements. This
      could be waking up earlier, starting public speaking, blogging,
      exercise, learning a language, etc.
    - culture deck: http://www.slideshare.net/joelg2/buffer-culture-01-16707113
Salary: 88k-110k depending on location (living costs) and experience.

Equity: 0.5-1%

If this sounds fun, let's chat. Send a note to Sunil (our CTO) about yourself, why you’re interested in Buffer, and any relevant links (Github profile, Android Apps, projects and background): thenexthacker@bufferapp.com

- Joel (Founder/CEO)




What does living cost have to do with the value a developer produces? It doesn't make much sense to me why a developer in a low cost of living area is worth less in terms of what features they develop for the company. I say this as someone who lives in a high cost of living area, so I'd be at the higher end of your scale and this is not a self serving comment.


If the best developer for the job happens to be in Manhattan or SF, s/he won't take a job paying Detroit or Wichita salaries.


Right, but if they don't produce more than the "normal Wichita salary" then you probably shouldn't hire them. If they produce enough value to be worth $150,000 per year let's say, then you pay them that. If they don't, you shouldn't pay them that much whether they live in SF or Detroit.

If they do produce enough to be worth $150,000, why pay them less just because they live in Wichita? Supply and demand, sure, but it just seems odd to me to explicitly say that you're paying less if someone lives outside of a major metropolitan area. I prefer to be (or think that I am) paid based on the value I produce (value pricing) rather than what it costs to keep a roof over my head (cost pricing). Whether or not this is the case also influences my understanding of how a company thinks about me.


A lower salary for a developer in low CoL area doesn't indicate that a company values that resource less than another dev in a higher CoL area. It just means that the company has to pay less in order to reward the developer in the low CoL as much as the employer rewards the high CoL dev. The equation looks like this:

salary - CoL/year = reward_dev


Sure, but I still find it interesting to make the following observation:

The CoL modification to the developer's salary has nothing to do with whether the company makes more or less revenue as a result of their work.

My guess is that as companies find good talent increasingly hard to find this problem will resolve itself as the remote workers outside major metropolitan areas get bidded to higher and higher salaries.


Honestly, I'd love to write a native BlackBerry 10 app for you guys, if I were given the chance on a part-time/consulting basis.


You must be one of the power users of CodeIgniter! I used to build everything with CI, but have switched to Laravel a while ago.

Anyway, with "help and support to move where you want to be", do you mean you can sponsor H-1B?


out of my curiosity, which person in the buffer team is located in hong kong?


Great question, the person on our team in Hong Kong is Michelle Sun. She is leading growth and that's her Twitter account: https://twitter.com/michellelsun


Hi seferphier :) Are you based in Hong Kong too?


What about profitability, do you mind sharing either gross or net margins ?


Profitability doesn't matter when you're growing. If they have 11 employees they are presumably spending every penny coming in to grow their business, which is what you would want. The payout will come later.

Anyway, it seems a great company.


Great question and cpncrunch is exactly correct. We are at 0 (more or less every month) and if there would be any profit we would hire people so we can invest it back into the company. Let me know if I can help answer anything else!


As long as the increasing spending doesn't outpace the increasing revenue.

Growing revenue is great but only if the red number gets smaller (or is staying in the same expected/manageable range).




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2025 batch! Applications are open till May 13

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: