Senior Rails Programmer id-6730

 37signals is hiring a Senior Rails programmer. We're accepting applications until Wednesday, April 30th at 12:00 PM CST. The salary is $201,980.

We're a small team working on Base camp, HEY and its Calendar, ONCE, and new greenfield products at 37signals. Just ten Ruby programmers total. Doing all this product work plus a steady stream of new open source frameworks and tools. And we're now looking for a new product programmer to join the team.

Everyone says that they only "hire the best", but by definition, most of them must be full of it. Less because they're lying, more because most companies just can't discern quality.

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That's what happens at feature factories: endless Jira tickets flow from non-technical product managers, and shipping something, anything against that backlog is all that matters.

That's not how we work at 37signals.

We don't actually have any dedicated middle managers. The day-to-day supervision of new team members is being done by other programmers serving as mentors, and by working together with designers to ship the cycle work.

In addition, we believe in the magic of just letting Managers of One do their job through long stretches of uninterrupted time. It's incredible how much progress you can make when your calendar isn't stuffed full of pointless meetings with pointy-haired bosses, and you get to collaborate with incredibly talented, passionate people who thrive on shipping great software.

That's what we care about here: great software. That means great for everyone. Great for customers, but also great for the programmers programming it and the designers designing it. Beautiful code. Making our own tools. Compressing complexity. It quickly gets corny, but craftsmanship and care of code still does exist in this world — it's not all just AI slop.

Inspired yet? If so, here's a bit more of who we're looking for in this round: A senior product programmer with Ruby on Rails experience. Someone who can imagine themselves as a manager of one, and is comfortable working remotely. We don't put a lot of weight on educational pedigree at this end of the seniority scale, but on finding someone smart, who gets things done, and write prose and code with care and eloquence.

This role is specifically for product work. So you could be working alongside a designer on adding new features to Basecamp and HEY one cycle, then working on a brand new product in the next three. You'll dedicate time to addressing issues to make sure our apps are robust and our codebase is weed free. We also occasionally rotate people back and forth between product work and our SIP team (security/infrastructure/performance — where a lot of the open-source tool making happens).


Here are some real examples of the work the product team has done lately:

  • Extending a system to move information within Basecamp to accommodate a long-requested feature.
  • Collaborating with a designer to create a novel way of tracking progress in Basecamp.
  • Building a system to export iCalendar feeds for calendar events.
  • Diving into the RFC 5545 standard to design a system to synchronize external calendars incrementally.
  • Creating a Ruby library to parse natural expressions into dates.
  • Working with a designer to add more recurrence options to HEY Calendar.
  • Investigating why a HEY screen presents a jumpy scroll when navigating to it.
  • Troubleshooting and fixing a bug where a customer can't export emails for an Extension in HEY.
  • Creating an API for Campfire that customers can use to build their own chatbots.
  • Designing a Ruby gem that brings easy Web Push notification support to Rails.
  • Building a feature for session transfer via QR code, so Campfire users can quickly move between devices without logging in again.

This is a remote job, but we're only looking for people based in the Americas or Europe to ensure your work day overlaps with our existing team.

We respect everyone's right to participate in political expression and activism, but avoid having political debates on our internal communication systems. 37signals as a company also does not weigh in on politics publicly, outside of topics directly related to our business. You should be at peace with both of these stances.

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Common Interview Questions And Answers

1. HOW DO YOU PLAN YOUR DAY?

This is what this question poses: When do you focus and start working seriously? What are the hours you work optimally? Are you a night owl? A morning bird? Remote teams can be made up of people working on different shifts and around the world, so you won't necessarily be stuck in the 9-5 schedule if it's not for you...

2. HOW DO YOU USE THE DIFFERENT COMMUNICATION TOOLS IN DIFFERENT SITUATIONS?

When you're working on a remote team, there's no way to chat in the hallway between meetings or catch up on the latest project during an office carpool. Therefore, virtual communication will be absolutely essential to get your work done...

3. WHAT IS "WORKING REMOTE" REALLY FOR YOU?

Many people want to work remotely because of the flexibility it allows. You can work anywhere and at any time of the day...

4. WHAT DO YOU NEED IN YOUR PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO SUCCEED IN YOUR WORK?

With this question, companies are looking to see what equipment they may need to provide you with and to verify how aware you are of what remote working could mean for you physically and logistically...

5. HOW DO YOU PROCESS INFORMATION?

Several years ago, I was working in a team to plan a big event. My supervisor made us all work as a team before the big day. One of our activities has been to find out how each of us processes information...

6. HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE CALENDAR AND THE PROGRAM? WHICH APPLICATIONS / SYSTEM DO YOU USE?

Or you may receive even more specific questions, such as: What's on your calendar? Do you plan blocks of time to do certain types of work? Do you have an open calendar that everyone can see?...

7. HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE FILES, LINKS, AND TABS ON YOUR COMPUTER?

Just like your schedule, how you track files and other information is very important. After all, everything is digital!...

8. HOW TO PRIORITIZE WORK?

The day I watched Marie Forleo's film separating the important from the urgent, my life changed. Not all remote jobs start fast, but most of them are...

9. HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A MEETING AND PREPARE A MEETING? WHAT DO YOU SEE HAPPENING DURING THE MEETING?

Just as communication is essential when working remotely, so is organization. Because you won't have those opportunities in the elevator or a casual conversation in the lunchroom, you should take advantage of the little time you have in a video or phone conference...

10. HOW DO YOU USE TECHNOLOGY ON A DAILY BASIS, IN YOUR WORK AND FOR YOUR PLEASURE?

This is a great question because it shows your comfort level with technology, which is very important for a remote worker because you will be working with technology over time...