giant robots smashing into other giant robots
Written by thoughtbot
Episode 22: Your code looks nice today
Ben Orenstein is joined by Bryan Helmkamp, founder of Code Climate, hosted software metrics for Ruby apps. In this episode, recorded at RubyConf 2012, they discuss what code climate is, how Bryan considers it a small business not a startup, and what its like being a solo founder. They also discuss how code metrics can help you write and maintain better software, how it helps, and how it changes behavior. Finally they explore what the biggest surprise for him has been so far, some of his plans, and what success looks like for him.
Episode 18: Trading Hours for Money
Ben Orenstein is joined by Brennan Dunn, author of double your freelancing rate and planscope.io. Ben and Brennan discuss transitioning from a freelancer to a consulting company, the issues he faced doing it, and how he overcame them. How he promoted someone to replace him in his consulting company and is focused exclusively on products now, where Planscope came from, how it works, and how he more than doubled the conversion rate. How content marketing was slow to work for him, and how he fixed it. How to effectively pitch and sell products, what victory looks like for him and what he’s working for, and so much more.
Podcast Episode 16: Make it fast
In this episode of the Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots Podcast, Ben Orenstein is joined by William Josephson and Jay Moorthi from Solano Labs, the makers of tddium, the hosted, scalable continuous integration service. They discuss the architecture of the service, including how they’re using Go to speed up parts of it, the surprises they’ve had in getting started, how they’ve gotten involved in the Ruby community, and how they validated their idea and get feedback from customers. Also, they’re experience working with thoughtbot, what has worked and not worked for driving public customers to the site and converting them, dealing with privacy, customer support, their goals and their growth plans, and much more.
Ben Orenstein is joined by Matt Jankowski, COO of thoughtbot. Ben and Matt start off by talking about how Matt came to join thoughtbot and his role at the company. They then discuss the typical thoughtbot sales process. How all problems are communication problems. How the way thoughtbot works is appealing to startups and how they hear about thoughtbot. How thoughtbot handles its 20% investment time in open source and our own products, how we preserve that despite trying to grow the business, and how that has evolved over time. The reasons why it’s not always possible to work faster by increasing the team size. Goals, metrics, and things thoughtbot can do better. Plus, how project management techniques translate to child-rearing, his standing desk, and much more.
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TDD for Business!!
In episode #9 of the Giant Robots Smashing into other Giant Robots podcast, Ben Orenstein is joined by Chad Pytel, the CEO and Founder of thoughtbot.
Ben and Chad talk about the history of thoughtbot, success, failures, lessons learned, the current growth plans for the company, and much more. They also answer listener questions about hiring, growing, balancing client and internal work like open source and products, and contractor rates and how to set them.
- Listen Now (50 minutes, 24.2MB mp3)
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To have us answer your questions on the air
Email your questions to info@thoughtbot.com or tweet to us @thoughtbot.
Notes & Links
Upcoming Events
- Rocky Mountain Ruby, September 19-22, “Refactoring from Good to Great”
- Frozen Rails in Helsinki, Finland, September 20-21, “When Not to Use Object-Oriented Techniques”
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