Wildcog is proud to announce that we are working with Twitter! We’ve started working to place some hard-to0-find folks like Data Scientists and Performance Engineers. Everybody knows Twitter. They have an amazing position on the net. A perspective into what’s happening around the world that is unparalleled and has become more important than anyone could have imagined.

Wildcog is one of the only firms that Twitter works with. If you want to work for Twitter, email us at getmeintotwitter@wildcog.com and let’s start talking!

We’re excited to announce that we’re working with Pearson, the education and publishing powerhouse. Pearson has embarked on journey to transform the company into a technology leader. They’re assembling a world-class team to make it happen and we’re thrilled to be helping on the talent front. If you’re interested in working for Pearson hit us up at getmeintopearson@wildcog.com

We’re excited to say we’re working with Ubisoft. We’re mainly focusing on hiring Senior Ops folks right now in the SF area! We’ve played a lot of Ubisoft games (Unreal anyone) so it’s great to be working with another company we’ve been longtime fans of! See the jobs section for more info or email us at getmeintoubisoft@wildcog.com.

We’re all saddened by the loss of Steve Jobs. I grew up in Southern California reading about the computer companies in Silicon Valley. I dreamed of one day moving to the Bay Area for a chance to work with these great companies. Apple, Atari, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Yahoo.

I moved to SF in 1999. Wildcog was founded 10 years later in 2009. My goal for the company was and still is to work with the best technology companies in the world. In 2010 we placed our first person at Apple in the store.apple.com operations team. That placement made me very proud because Apple is the very best of the best.

Steve was an inspiration to so many people. Apple products inspire people. They make people feel creative. They make people want to create. People being creative changes the world for the better. That’s an amazing legacy.

Sandy was at the Apple Store in SF last night to pay respects. She made this touching video of some of the people there doing the same:

-Shon

Thanks Ceren, one of our great SE peeps, we’re now working with Tumblr. Ceren is going to be heading out to NYC to help add skill to the ops team. Go Ceren!

We’re very excited to be working with another stellar technology company!

We’re happy to say we’ve just helped an awesome-stealthy-early-stage-world-changing-startup… aka Postmates add some skill to their core engineering team. Here’s to more great work together!

Wildcog is working with Pandora Media, the awesome-recently-IPO’d-free-net-radio guys. We’re currently looking for app developers and Business Int folks for them. Hit us up if you want to talk about working for this amazing company!

Dig this, Wildcog is working with Digg. Backend, frontend, SA and more. See jobs or contact us to insight.

Last month I messed up pretty bad. We spammed some people on Github. This was done at my direction and was my mistake alone. We don’t normally use “mass email” techniques, especially to people we’re not acquainted with but this time we did. Wildcog has been feeling the heat as demand for our services has increased and the market in general for technical talent is revving up towards the white-hot mark. In response to this demand we went against our mantra and got lame. We sent a generic/mass email and took a step towards the clueless-dark-side that many of our competitors dwell in. For that we are sorry.

Mistake made, lesson learned.

-Shon, CEO

We’re excited to say that we’re now working with Scribd. The “YouTube of Docs” is looking for the sort of super-sharp core CS folks that Wildcog loves to represent. Developers developers developers developers… ;D

We’re having our first geekSessions event of 2011 next week! Come by and say hello!

geekSessions 2.0: The Art and Science of UI @ Founders Den

For the next Session, we’re bringing together a great group of people to discuss the ever evolving world of UI development. We have retro game emulators written in HTML 5, Flash interpreters written in Javascript, new tools like Unity, Mobile platforms, Multi-touch, and more. The field has never been more compelling or more complex.

Thanks to geekSessions alumnus Jonathan Abrams, we’re teaming up with Founders Den to host the this event.

In addition to the great speakers and savvy crowd, around 50 Founders Den (Founders, Investors, and Advisors) people will be at the event!

Event Info:

What: geekSessions 2.0: The Art and Science of UI
When: Tuesday, February 22nd, 6:30pm-10:30pm

6:30pm – Registration, Networking, Free Beer, Snacks
7:30pm – Panel discussion and Q&A (bar closed)
9:00pm – More Free Beer, more networking

Where: Founders Den, Google Map: 665 3rd St, San Francisco

About the Speakers

Chris Smoak
Developer, Smokescreen

Chris made Apple iOS users cheer in 2010 when he released the open source “Smokescreen” beta. Smokescreen automatically converts Flash (SWF) to HTML5. Chris will give us the rundown on Smokescreen from a technical perspective and talk about his Flash to HTML5 magic!

-

Martin Kool
Co-owner, Q42

HTML5 Stunt Coordinator at Q42. Founder of Quplo. Wrote Sarien.net. Digital inventor. Technologist. Geek. Retro gamer. Father of 3. Husband of 1.

Martin created Sarien.net which is an HTML5 based retro game emulator and multiplayer social experience. Sarien.net enables anyone with an HTML5 capable device to play classic Sierra games like Space Quest (awesome on iPad) and Leisure Suit Larry. It also enables users to play these games in a multiplayer mode and interact with others in the game world.

David Kaneda
Creative Director, Sencha

David Kaneda leads the Sencha design team. He has over eight years of experience designing in a variety of fields, from architecture and fashion to education and software. Recently, David created Outpost, an iPhone app for Basecamp, and jQTouch, a Javascript framework for iPhone development. David also maintains WebKitBits, a site about the browser engine in Safari, Google Chrome, and the iPhone. David brings his wealth of design knowledge to Sencha, and is responsible for the look and feel of our websites and software.

Jeffery Kalmikoff
VP Product, SimpleGeo

Jeffrey spent nearly seven years as Chief Creative Officer of Threadless.com, focused on overall creative direction, design and product development/strategy. During his time there, they built the company from a profitable side-project into a multi-million dollar brand with an active, thriving online-community of over a million tee shirt and design enthusiasts.

After Threadless, Jeffrey spent some time as Digg’s Director of Design, and is now working to make it less complicated for developers to add location features to their web and mobile applications as VP of Product at SimpleGeo.

Additional Speakers TBA:

CALL FOR SPEAKERS!

Follow @geeksessions for event updates, FREE TICKETS, and Discounts!

If you’re doing something great in the UI space and want to share, get in touch with us!

Location

In our continuing mission to work with the best tech startups, we’re proud to announce we’re now recruiting for Dropbox. Dropbox is chock-full of MIT folks. It’s a brainy bunch and a perfect fit for Wildcog. Do you dream in Big O notation? Do you optimize sorting algorithms in your sleep? Then we want you. Check out our Jobs page for positions in San Francisco.

Everyone, meet Elvis. Elvis is Heidi’s assistant. Now at least you’ll know what he looks like if he answers your call!

We’ve been growing like crazy (more on that later) this year so we’ve moved to a new office in Potrero Hill! So far we’re really liking the new digs. There’s plenty of space and a few other startups in our building, including our friends at Tall Chair, who tipped us off (thanks Ben!) on the space.

Here are some pics we took shortly after we moved in:

Here are Kristen and Sandy flying the Wildcog flag! Gotta fly the flag…

Here’s some of the team headed to lunch and our new building in the back:

Speaking of lunch… one of Shon’s favorite spots is only a block from the office!

We still love TACOS so having an El Tonayense Taco Truck right by the office is a definite perk!

We’re at Alabama and 18th BTW. If you’re in the area, hit us up! We’ll go get tacos with you.

Hey, it’s 2010. Why do we still need recruiters?!

This is a question that I asked a few years ago. With the advances in machine learning, data mining, and pattern recognition during the last decade, recruiting seems like a function that could, and should be automated.

Why then do we still need recruiters? Why is Wildcog, a new company, so focused on recruiting and improvements in the recruiting process?

In short, recruiting (and hiring) is all about people. It’s about emotion. It’s about communication. It is not at all about keyword matching ratios.

I don’t believe this is a task that machines are good at yet. This is mainly because matching a resume with a job is actually a lot more qualitative than it is quantitative. Resumes are terrible things. Resumes try to distill a human being down two a few pages. They often fail miserably.

The devil is in the details and there is an arms race of sorts between job seekers and hiring managers. Call it the buzzword war; Managers tend to write job descriptions that are inaccurate because they contain a “wish list” of skills and experience. In response to this, sharp resume writers learned to stuff their resumes full of keywords so that pattern matchers (carbon or silicon based) would select their resume more frequently as a fit!

This is why companies like Google have armies of flesh-and-blood recruiters. The signal is weak and very noisy. This is why we are here. Trying to make it less lame.