Voxy | Software Engineer | New York, NY | https://boards.greenhouse.io/voxy/jobs/1043878?gh_src=jy1if5...

If you are a software engineer looking use your talent in an endeavour more noble than tricking consumers into buying a new widget or helping traders earn big bonuses, take a look at Voxy. Voxy software engineers will change the way millions of people around the world learn English by using sound science combined with innovative (and patented!) technology.

What You'll Do - Accelerate Voxy’s ability to automatically transform authentic content into lessons for our learners using NLP and advanced text/video processing - Build nicely-instrumented code that is testable and deployable without downtime - Evolve our big data pipeline to use real time feedback for an optimal platform for learners

What We’re Looking For - 5+ years of experience working as a commercial software developer - Curiosity and knowledge about technologies and architectural patterns of software engineering across the entire stack - Pragmatism in understanding when to build the solution that scales to 1 million users or works for 100 users - Build new data models that reflect the Voxy business using advanced SQL/NoSQL/ORM’s

What Would Be Nice To Have: - Modern front end javascript frameworks such as vue - Django - AWS and devops - B.S. or higher in computer science, science or engineering discipline or equivalent experience

This was the first thing that I thought of. Jason calls the idea "Memory Hole", which is both a much better and much worse name than "Hibou".

Jason here! I totally agree - the name "Memory Hole" doesn't really make any sense at all given what it means -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole

But something about it always made me laugh, so that's what I called it.

Anyway, I'm so glad that someone FINALLY got around to building the damn thing! I guess the lesson here is that if you want something done, either do it yourself, or ... be prepared to wait a really long time. ;)

Hahaha, I totally agree. I've just reached out to them for some feedback. Seems like they've spent a lot of time thinking about this.

Nice work! I think we need to bring you on the show.

Voxy (http://www.voxy.com) | Manhattan, New York, NY

Voxy is an adaptive learning platform focused on teaching English as a second language. We've just entered a growth phase as our product takes off in Brazil and Mexico. We have a small tech team that needs to grow rapidly, and whoever we hire next can have a real impact on our engineering culture.

We practice XP and real Agile, and have a very respect-driven, peer-based culture. Our team believes in real engineering, not programming. Stack-wise, we use Python/Django, Backbone, Postrges and MongoDB and have native iOS and Android apps.

We believe in T-shaped generalists so if you're a Python engineer that'd like to learn what mobile development is all about, or the other way around, we'd love to hear from you.

More details at http://grnh.se/c7qald

I created a website for folks learning English as a foreign language: http://www.phrasemix.com

I've been running it for the last 5 years. The first 2 years, it was just a blog that I maintained for free. 3 years ago, I started selling access to audio recordings of the lessons as a subscription.

The site generates about $2K per month off of around 300K monthly visitors. It continues to grow but very slowly.

Techzing: http://techzinglive.com/

I recently moved back to Durham, North Carolina after 10 years of living in bigger cities (Tokyo, then NYC).

I expected that the rent would be cheaper but that I'd miss out in terms of culture, food, and the quality of people I met.

What I'm finding is 1) The culture that is available here is easier to appreciate and digest because there's less paradox of choice 2) The food is a little more limited but overall better 3) The people that I meet are just as smart and interesting. I often forget that I'm back in the South and not in Brooklyn.

I really liked the RTP area when I was down there. Plus they seem to have a pretty good tech scene. It's kind of like Pittsburgh with decent weather.

Any tips on cool parts of the RTP area? I was at a conference in downtown Raleigh for a week two years ago, and was kind of surprised that the downtown is super-small. Had two nice coffee shops, but didn't feel like the downtown of a 500,000 person city; almost the kind of 5-block downtown you'd expect for a town 1/10 of that size. I might go again this year, and am hoping to find somewhere to stay where there's more stuff going on, but am not quite sure where that is.

I was in Raleigh too. It seemed like a much smaller town than half a million people and maybe that's why I liked it. My wife and I were only there for a weekend so we didn't do much exploring. The downtown area just seemed clean and safe compared to other places. I'm not really the kind of person that looks for things to do in town so I'm probably not the best to ask. It seems like they had some decent outdoor activities and they are only a few hour from the beach which is something I enjoy. It kind of reminded me of a bigger version of my hometown (Wheeling, WV) with much nicer weather.

I go back and forth on this. As someone who's taught English as a second language for many years, I can't help but alter the way that I speak. It does help a lot with people whose listening skills are weak.

But I sometimes think it does a disservice to students or people that I spend a lot of time with (like my wife, who's not a native English speaker). Yes, they understand me. But am I then making it harder to understand "real" English speakers who aren't as careful with their pronunciation?

This is a fantastic idea! Do you mind if I share that with my English students?

Certainly. I have another excellent trick for you that I was able to use to teach my all my Chinese students back in the day how to pronounce the word "usually", which is a notoriously difficult word for Chinese speakers.

Exploiting the technique above, start with a word in the language of the audience that share phonemes with your target word. From there you essentially play something similar to Lewis Carroll's "Doublets" game from the end to the beginning. So for the word "usually" I would usually start with the city in China, "Guanzhou" and proceed as follows (excuse my poor man's phonetic spelling):

    Gwan-jo
    Gwan-jo
    Gwan-jo
    Gwan-jo
    Gwan-joooo
    Gwan-joooo
    Gwan-joooo
    Gwan-joooo
    Gwan-joooo-aaaa
    Gwan-joooo-aaaa
    Gwan-joooo-aaaa
    Gwan-joooo-aaaa
    Gwan-joo-a-lee
    Gwan-joo-a-lee
    Gwan-joo-a-lee
    Gwan-joo-a-lee
    joo-a-lee
    joo-a-lee
    joo-a-lee
    joo-a-lee
    yoo-joo-a-lee
    yoo-joo-a-lee
    yoo-joo-a-lee
    yoo-joo-a-lee

The repetition is performed until your student(s) ha(s|ve) properly pronounced the current temperoary utterance.

I wouldn't take the risk .. he might sue you for copyright infringement.

I really like the fact that Moot seems to handle both forum-style posts and on-page comments. As the owner of a content site, I really want both. I've even gone so far as to try to hack Disqus to work as a forum.

If there was an easy import feature for Disqus threads, I'd probably switch right over.

We are aware of this urgent need. You are not alone in this. And you can be sure this is exactly what we are working on.

I started learning to code last year using Hartl's Rails Tutorial. It was actually a big part of me deciding to go with Ruby and Rails over any other language and framework.

I have spoken with many dozens of other beginners at local Ruby meetups. Basically EVERYONE learning Rails and Ruby (at least in NYC) uses this thing.

It might not be a bad idea to read through the Rails Tutorial, even if you're an experienced Rails developer, just to see what the baseline is for people starting out these days.

Very much appreciated, Michael!