As a Lead front end developer you will lead client development for http://talk.to, our worldclass instant messaging and group chat service. talk.to runs on the desktop (windows and max), web (chrome, firefox and IE) and mobile (iphone, android and blackberry) leveraging latest technologies (HTML5, Javascript, v8, ajax, node.js, XMPP, BOSH/Comet), application paradigms (web apps on the desktop) and scalability concepts (NIO, NoSQL, memcache, partitioning). You will work with world class dev teams on this game-changing, globally distributed product.

You will manage a team of energized developers, and be responsible for the entire lifecycle of one or more client projects, including strategy, vision, design, coding, architecture, deployment etc. We believe that ‘code speaks louder than words’ and as such expect everyone at every level in the engineering team to be comfortable with rolling up their sleeves, firing up their favorite IDE and writing clean code that works across all the target environments.

Who should apply for this post?

If any of the following sentences describe you then you are probably the person we are looking for

• You keep little photographs of Doug Crockford and Brendan Eich in your wallet.
• You think closures and anonymous self-executing inner-functions can solve most of the world’s problems.
• You are able to jump between the worlds of functional programming, object-oriented programming and procedural programming easier than Leo Di’Caprio jumped between his dreams in Inception.
• You think lexical scope is the most natural way of scoping because that is how our minds work.
• You truly understand what “this” is, and you have an opinion about whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
• You don’t relate currying and composition to culinary recipes and school essays.
• You have encountered and fixed a memory leak in your code, and have been able to tame it even in IE.
• You think that the cross-domain policy is merely a hurdle, and always have ways to communicate with anyone anywhere.
• You think that the DOM sucks, but also appreciate it as a powerful way to manage your UIs.
• You love the way prototype based OO works, and have gotten so used to it that classical OO seems clunky, wordy, and doesn’t really model well for most problems.
• You have built something that uses app-cache, localStorage, and online/offline events, and then stepped back and marveled at the future of the web.
• You don’t really care whether WebDB is in HTML5 or not, but you care about where you can use it.
• You’ve lapped up both of Steve Souders books, and you tweak your code and web-servers obsessively.
• You have worked extensively with any Javascript library that lets you develop single-page apps for the last 3-5 years. No – jQuery and prototype don’t count.

Skills
You are acquainted with or have mastered some of the below skills -

• Javascript, cross browser javascript compatibility, CSS, HTML5, ajax, Networking fundamentals, XMPP, BOSH, Comet, SQlite

Bonus points:

• Active blogger
• Contribution to opensource projects

A JD can reflect a company’s culture and the mood amongst the guys within . So when was the last time you’ve read an interesting JD ?

Writing, In simple terms, Is putting thoughts into words . The problem is, often, we end up using inappropriate words while trying to express ourselves and end up giving a slightly different picture than intended. The words you use could make / break a deal , impress your next customer, give you a better score in exams or make your greeting card memorable…

A few points on how to improver writing:

Brevity : Try to shrink your paragraphs into lines and lines into words. Try to express yourself in the least number of words possible. Review and edit what you have written till you feel its good enough and can’t be compressed any more.

Using the right words : Often we tend to use similar but not the right words . It may not be a deal breaker but you don’t score full marks either. Practice is the key .

Reading : They say good readers make good writers. You can start of with reading the newspaper everyday and then move on to magazines and online blogs .

Writing in web Development.

Design – Yup , design. A designer who writes well can add up to the look n feel of your software. You need to convey the right message to your users and this is where the writer in you steps in. Along with a good design , a good write up can add clarity and enhance experience .

Documentation – As a programmer, you will have to rely heavily on documentation. Its indispensable, especially is you are in a team where you have to share classes and modules . I hate digging into others code and I have lost count of the number of times I had to do that to understand whats happening . This is where good documentation can save your time and effort.

Conceptualization / Technical writing – You have an idea and you want to share it with your team members. Of course the first step is to talk to them about it . But later you will have to put your ideas into words – what ends up being the software concept document. Later on, you will create specifications, milestones, task lists etc , so, a lot of writing there.

Communication : As a developer , you will have to be shooting emails every now and then – sending updates, asking queries etc. By choosing the right words and sending the complete picture, you will end up sending lesser emails.

While writing this post, I ran out of words a number of times . That’s probably because I am not very good at it . It would have been much easier if I had the words coming out more fluidly . But like I mentioned earlier, it all comes with practice, and you will better yourself with every step.

Feel free to share your writing experiences, how you’ve bettered yourself and how good writing has helped you along the way.