top rails shops by reputation?
Obie Fernandez
we think are the best Rails shops out there. If you can send me your
top 5 or 10 list it would be much appreciated. If you think your shop
is one of the best please don't be shy about saying so -- I know I'm
not shy about considering Hashrocket one of the best ;)
Cheers,
Obie Fernandez
CEO & Founder | Hashrocket
904.435.1671 office
404.934.9201 mobile
Hashrocket, Inc.
320 N 1st Street
Suite 712
Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
Robert Dempsey
Sincerely,
Robert Dempsey, CEO
Atlantic Dominion Solutions
http://adsdevshop.com
http://twitter.com/rdempsey
Phone: 321-274-4684
Robby Russell
2. see #1
Obie, are you trying to open up a can of worms here?
Robby Russell
Chief Evangelist, Partner
PLANET ARGON, LLC
design // development // hosting w/Ruby on Rails
http://planetargon.com/
http://robbyonrails.com/
http://twitter.com/planetargon
aim: planetargon
+1 503 445 2457
+1 877 55 ARGON [toll free]
+1 815 642 4068 [fax]
Robby Russell
>
Robert,
Valid question. It's all relative. What makes a great Ruby on Rails
shop? The team itself and what they contribute to open source? The
team that delivers great products to their clients/customers? The best
value for their clients? The team that launched their own product?
(would 37signals fit into this?)
Without more understanding of the metrics, it's kind of a weird
question to ask in a group that mostly consists of people that run
their own Rails shops. :-)
Perhaps Obie can chime in and help clarify his question a bit.. :-)
Robby
Obie Fernandez
I talk about best with regards to Hashrocket I mean the following
attributes (among other things):
- performance and reputation (tied to delivery capabilities)
- honesty and transparency
- happiness and sense of humor
- process discipline, stability and risk mitigation
- contributions back to the community / open-source
- business consulting and agile coaching
What do you guys think of as "best"?
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Christopher Redinger
<redi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hashrocket
> ENTP
> Relevance
> InfoEther <-- not a Rails consultancy, right?
> OGC
> Terralien
> 37Signals <-- not a Rails consultancy
> Thoughtbot
> Planet Argon
> Edge Case
Sorry I guess I was being vague by saying simply "rails shop" -- I
meant companies that build Rails applications for clients
Robert Dempsey
- Rob
Agustín Cuenca
rank high on every point mentioned
I think we could also use some metrics that reflect the values Obie
mentions and some that I miss.
I think that profitability and revenue growth year on year are key ratios.
I would also include things like DOS compare to local market average
( is a great indicator of delayed projects) and employee retention
rate (good indicator of happiness).
If we could find a good metric for community contribution with those
five ratios I bet we can create a pretty good ranking.
Regards.
2009/2/12 Robert Dempsey <robert...@gmail.com>:
Agustin Cuenca Guevara Tel. & fax +34 916 587 332
e-mail: agustin (at) aspgems (dot) com Mobile +34 629 222 222
!!!!!!Yaba-daba-doooooooo !!!!!!!!. Fred Flintstone.
John Moody
But, if you want to have a pissing contest, that can be fun to watch too! :)
- John
will.sargent
the rails shops share, and what can they learn from each other.
Will.
Jason Cartwright
Robby Russell
* http://planetargon.com/who-we-are/
Robby
Courtenay
>
> WRT common values, we outline "Our Core Values" on our site.
>
> * http://planetargon.com/who-we-are/
>
> Robby
>
Speaking of values, I've been half-assedly considering building an
industry association (Obie will remember my blatherings on this from
two railsconfs ago).
Basically, the plan is we'd build up a charter of values and call it
"certified rails development agency" or something like that. Really
just a way of differentiating the "Good agencies" from the bad ones,
and having some form of reputation metric (aka booting people out)
What do you think? I thought "oscert" was a great name since the cert
is collaboratively developed.
Courtenay
(ENTP)
Philip Hallstrom
> industry association (Obie will remember my blatherings on this from
> two railsconfs ago).
>
> Basically, the plan is we'd build up a charter of values and call it
> "certified rails development agency" or something like that. Really
> just a way of differentiating the "Good agencies" from the bad ones,
> and having some form of reputation metric (aka booting people out)
>
> What do you think? I thought "oscert" was a great name since the cert
> is collaboratively developed.
How would you validate the agencies? I'm an agency of one so you'd
have to take my word for it wouldn't you? Not that I'm a bad one, but
how would you know if I was and just decided to lie about it? Which
is probably if I'm a bad one :)
If you do this, I'd personally love to see a list of "designers we've
worked with that are great and have an understanding of rails" that
could be tapped into. I'm sure they would probably appreciate a
reciprocal list. Something like programmermeetdesigner.com, but
minus the job/project aspect and more just reference based.
-philip
Mike Gunderloy
Microsoft land, but the lessons are general. Based on those years, I
would argue STRENUOUSLY against anything that smacks of certifying
Rails developers. No good will come of it (I'll hold off on the
extended rant for now).
An industry association with some guiding principles that everyone
agrees to follow is a somewhat different idea. But I'd counsel you not
to call it "certified" anything. That will just put you into the wrong
mental bucket for too many people.
Mike
Courtenay
>
> I spent a *lot* of my career in the certification industry - mostly in
> Microsoft land, but the lessons are general. Based on those years, I
> would argue STRENUOUSLY against anything that smacks of certifying
> Rails developers. No good will come of it (I'll hold off on the
> extended rant for now).
>
> An industry association with some guiding principles that everyone
> agrees to follow is a somewhat different idea. But I'd counsel you not
> to call it "certified" anything. That will just put you into the wrong
> mental bucket for too many people.
Yes yes industry association. That's what I meant.
You just keep a list of members, the values we all hold, and if
there's a complaint against someone you investigate and kick them out
:)
It's like getting professional insurance. You answer the
questionnaire, and they give you the coverage. If you lie and shit
hits the fan, it's pretty obvious that you lied, and you get denied
compensation. If you're one of the bad ones, you may get in
initially, but your peeved customers will quickly find a place to air
their complaints.
Courtenay
Aaron Blohowiak
Courtenay
These are valid questions. Obviously there'd have to be buy-in from
the big guys.
There would also have to be a benefit from being a member, and the
association would also have to have teeth.
Courtenay
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Aaron Blohowiak
> <aaron.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Who pays for the investigation of claims? How is the value of club
>> membership created in potential clients? It seems like joining such a club
>> might dilute the brand imaging of highly recognizable consultancies, and
>> small shops would be hesitant to spend their limited funds for membership.
>
Also, we're often dealing with fallout from small consultancies
ditching clients. So.. maybe that's a good thing. If the aim as an
industry association is to say, "hey, we're reliable and also
excellent" then a one-man shop probably isn't going to be THAT
reliable. Just sayin'.
Philip Hallstrom
I know you don't mean it that way, but there's no reason a one-man
shop isn't just as reliable as larger shop. I'm a one man shop and
have every incentive to serve my customers as well as you do. More so
since I can't say "well, our developer Joe Bob went AWOL. We've fired
him, and now all is well".
Case in point... 9 years ago my wife's company did a 6-figure deal
with one of the largest web shops in the Seattle area. Why they did
it we will never understand. It was horrific. The delivered product
was unusable. I personally fixed it in about 8 hours of serious perl
hacking over several hundred files. Who was more reliable? Of
course, did her company bring their next web project to my small web
firm? No. So maybe that's a bad example :-)
-philip
Courtenay
>
>> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Courtenay <cour...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Aaron Blohowiak
>>> <aaron.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Who pays for the investigation of claims? How is the value of club
>>>> membership created in potential clients? It seems like joining
>>>> such a club
>>>> might dilute the brand imaging of highly recognizable
>>>> consultancies, and
>>>> small shops would be hesitant to spend their limited funds for
>>>> membership.
>>>
>>
>> Also, we're often dealing with fallout from small consultancies
>> ditching clients. So.. maybe that's a good thing. If the aim as an
>> industry association is to say, "hey, we're reliable and also
>> excellent" then a one-man shop probably isn't going to be THAT
>> reliable. Just sayin'.
>
> I know you don't mean it that way, but there's no reason a one-man
> shop isn't just as reliable as larger shop. I'm a one man shop and
> have every incentive to serve my customers as well as you do. More so
> since I can't say "well, our developer Joe Bob went AWOL. We've fired
> him, and now all is well".
Of course, but that's the point. Say you have two people, and the one
other developer gets ill, or quits, who will replace them on the job?
Wait, it's just you. You either double your workload (not possible)
or .. what? You're probably fairly screwed.
Courtenay
Philip Hallstrom
Perhaps. Or the client understands folks get sick and doesn't sweat
the lost couple of days :) I see where you're coming from, but I've
also seen the other side. For 6 years I ran a 5 person web firm.
Probably 70% of our work was from clients we'd bid on, lost "because
we were too small" and then 3 months later got a call from cause
things hadn't worked out well with the big firm they picked.
My real concern is that I can safely say I'd never join an association
where there was a reliability ranking based on the size of the
company. I just don't think it's that accurate and certainly not
advantageous to me! :) So if you don't have any of the one person,
two person, or <5 people shops... who's left to make the association
legitimate?
Although honestly, if it exists and only the big folks join it, that
still benefits everyone since as they get overloaded they can sub it
out to the smaller shops :)
-philip
Philip Hallstrom
http://www.fahimilyas.com/blog/2009/02/the-only-valid-measurement-of-code-quality/
:-)
Robert Dempsey
-1 for certifications. I have multiple certifications (M$) and they only mean you can pass a test. Hell, some certifications don't even require a test. This takes me back to my above point.
Also, I have yet to see any industry association be able to benefit large and small organizations alike. That's the great thing about the open source community. Individuals can rise to the level of a company of any size, and often times go even higher.
Christopher Redinger
> -1 for certifications. I have multiple certifications (M$) and they only
> mean you can pass a test. Hell, some certifications don't even require a
> test. This takes me back to my above point.
+1. Or -1 I guess. I too have multiple certifications, that I don't
bother advertising any more. My impression is that in the Java world,
certifications became a way for the headhunters to shop devs around,
rather than any indication of anything useful, like coding ability.
--
Christopher Redinger
http://www.agiledisciple.com
Robert Bazinet
Rob Bazinet
http://stillriversoftware.com
http://accidentaltechnologist.com
InfoQ Ruby Community Editor - http://www.infoq.com
Courtenay
> Perhaps. Or the client understands folks get sick and doesn't sweat
> the lost couple of days :) I see where you're coming from, but I've
> also seen the other side. For 6 years I ran a 5 person web firm.
> Probably 70% of our work was from clients we'd bid on, lost "because
> we were too small" and then 3 months later got a call from cause
> things hadn't worked out well with the big firm they picked.
>
> My real concern is that I can safely say I'd never join an association
> where there was a reliability ranking based on the size of the
> company.
Gah, no, forget the size thing. For small shops, I'd say for this very
reason ("you're too small") it's important to have some form of
industry association.. you know, to show that despite being small you
have a good reputation / standards.
You know how many development shops don't even unit test? It's a big
number. You want to stand out from those guys?
Courtenay
> I agree with Mike here, I spent my time in Microsoft certification land and
> putting Rails developers through a merit badge process is one of the worst
> ideas I have ever heard. Are we trying to follow down the path of Novell
> and Microsoft with their useless certifications?
> No good can come of this, let's not even entertain this beyond the few who
> have been unfortunate enough to read it here.
> -Rob Bazinet
>
Regardless of the justified cert hate, I find asking "Do you write
tests?" a great way to separate the good devs from the bad ones.
Better than any cert.
Robby Russell
The association/certification idea is an interesting one. However, I'd
suspect that most of our past clients could care less whether we
belong to an association organized by other development firms. (can
only speak from my experience)
How do our new clients evaluate us? We give potential clients the
names and phone numbers of our past clients and invite them to give
them a call. Works great.
Robby
Robby Russell
Unit testing is an important part of the cycle... but how would you go
about evaluating whether a developer or development team is good at
communicating and collaborating with their clients or colleagues? I'd
argue that this is the most critical thing and not something a
committee could ever really assess.
In my opinion, the biggest crime I've seen in our industry is all too
often, development firms/freelancers give their clients what they
want... not what they need.
My two cents,
Robby
Obie Fernandez
> about evaluating whether a developer or development team is good at
> communicating and collaborating with their clients or colleagues? I'd
Ask the clients? Examine client communications and score based on
common criteria?
> argue that this is the most critical thing and not something a
> committee could ever really assess.
Hmm. Maybe not a committee, but an independent auditor operating under
NDA could probably make pretty good judgment calls.
> In my opinion, the biggest crime I've seen in our industry is all too
> often, development firms/freelancers give their clients what they
> want... not what they need.
Do you mean doing too much work? Not enough? We're constantly
operating under circumstances of the client wanting a lot more than
what they can afford to pay us to build, so narrowing of scope (aka
"getting real") is a constant challenge.
Will Sargent
I've had the unfortunate experience of having an engineer answer
positively to that question, and then decline to write any tests for
his code once actually hired. Amongst the reasons why he didn't write
tests: because they cause the build to be broken whenever he changes
any code.
Will.
Rick Bradley
> I've had the unfortunate experience of having an engineer answer
> positively to that question, and then decline to write any tests for
> his code once actually hired. Amongst the reasons why he didn't write
> tests: because they cause the build to be broken whenever he changes
> any code.
I've interviewed a number of people who know the answers to all the
software koans and yet are not enlightened.
It is, however, not impossible (and, in my limited experience, not
even overly difficult) to recognize the Tao when confronted with it --
so to say.
That is, whether in the interview, or during a trial period, it's
usually very easy to tell someone who knows how to create good
software -- but such clarity from initial doubt is not going to arise
merely from asking for discourse on questions.
The unfortunate state of affairs is that it's often tricky to find
*anyone* who can at all create such software.
For the exceptional positive cases, the answer is often clear before
even conducting the interview. Surely there's some value in the
interview anyway (even if it's the chance to spend an hour with
someone of like mind), so we hold them nonetheless.
Do we then choose to settle for those who cannot, hoping to train
them, or do we continue to search for those who can? That question is
more personal.
Best,
Rick
suman karthik
Agree with rob here. The only way to find a reliable service provider regardless of Certification is through recommendation and referral on the social network called the real world.
PS: will check this thread in abt 3 months by which time i expect to stop ROFL at the sick days discussion.
-Suman
http://twitter.com/mrphoebs
Colin Bartlett
> Speaking of values, I've been half-assedly considering building an
> industry association.
The whole concept does not appeal to me at all.
But if you do move forward, remember that you likely won't be able to
use "Rails" in the name of your organization unless David signs off on
it.
Colin
Colin A. Bartlett
Kinetic Web Solutions
http://blog.kineticweb.com
Bryan Liles
Peter Cooper
> If you don't mind helping me out, I'm trying to compile a list of who
> we think are the best Rails shops out there. If you can send me your
> top 5 or 10 list it would be much appreciated. If you think your shop
> is one of the best please don't be shy about saying so -- I know I'm
> not shy about considering Hashrocket one of the best ;)
I'd like to hope I'm mostly objective here (!) - not really being in
the same industry - I'd rate:
New Bamboo
Intridea
ENTP
Hashrocket
Unspace
ADS (although they seem to be moving more into self products)
There are probably others I could mention that aren't springing to
mind (I don't personally consider hosting companies to be "shops", so
no Engine Yard, Brightbox, etc).
Pete
Chad Pytel
as well, of course.
Peter not putting us on his top list doesn't make me angry with him,
or make me think that we aren't doing a good job as a company - it
makes me want to work harder to make it onto everyone's top list. I
don't necessarily think we should shy away from lists like this -
which is what it struck me was happening at the beginning of this
thread.
I'd also point out http://railscompanies.com, which while its
relatively superficial in its mechanism, actually does, in my opinion
have many of the firms I'd consider "top".
-Chad
Chad Pytel, Founder and CEO
thoughtbot, inc.
organic brains. digital solutions.
-------------------------------------------
tel: 617.482.1300 x113
fax: 866.217.5992
http://www.thoughtbot.com
Chris Conrey
@conrey on Twitter
Josh Susser
what they are looking at. I'd think Pivotal Labs (where I work) would
be on anybody's list of top-notch Rails companies, but I know that not
everyone is looking from the same place or in the same direction. I
could rattle off a list of places I think are great too, but it's
largely going to be everyone you've heard of already.
I'm more interested in understanding what people's perspectives are.
That's useful to know so that we can learn about and appeal to what
they find value in, and also because there's certainly things we can
do to be more visible. But on the other hand, we've got a team of
over 40 Rails developers and we're fully utilized and continuing to
hire to get more capacity. So apparently we are known enough that
clients manage to find us, even if other Rails devs might not think of
us at a top consultancy.
Companies like Thoughtbot, RailsEnvy and ENTP have created strong
brands by contributing value to the development community. I
certainly appreciate their contributions, but is there a tradeoff
between their spending time and effort on those contributions and
spending time on client work? I'm quite curious how that is working
for them, and if they consider those investments of time to have paid
off.
--josh
Josh Susser
http://blog.hasmanythrough.com
Golden Gate Ruby Conf :: April 17-18 :: http://gogaruco.com
Courtenay
>
> Companies like Thoughtbot, RailsEnvy and ENTP have created strong
> brands by contributing value to the development community. I
> certainly appreciate their contributions, but is there a tradeoff
> between their spending time and effort on those contributions and
> spending time on client work? I'm quite curious how that is working
> for them, and if they consider those investments of time to have paid
> off.
Wait, what? Pivotal only contributes to the community for *branding*
purposes? Isn't that a bit cynical?
We don't "invest our time" and expect a ROI on open source. It's a way of life.
Courtenay
Xavier Noria
> We don't "invest our time" and expect a ROI on open source. It's a way of life.
I hear a lot about the ROI of contributing, about contributing for
branding etc. What the heck, those people do not understand this
thing. As the zen saying goes you're confusing the finger that points
to the moon with the moon.
You contribute because you believe in the fundamentals of what you're
building your fucking business upon.
Josh Susser
Oh please. Contributions to the community repay you in many ways, and
a strong brand is just one of those. Some companies make
contributions explicitly to help their brand, some do it for other
reasons. Pivotal does it for many reasons, and branding is (in my own
assessment) one of the lower priorities, but it's still one of the
reasons we do it. Many open source developers have created their own
personal brands through making contributions, many people on this list
included. It's how we get jobs, make friends, and get access to cool
new technology before the noobs, as well as improving the ecosystem
where we thrive. That is an investment, whatever you want to call
it. If it's good enough for us as individuals, why is it somehow a
sin for a company to do the same?
And it's not totally selfish to want to develop your brand. If you
think you have something valuable to contribute, you need for people
to notice you so that they'll take what you're offering.
We could have a lot of conversations about open source and why people
contribute, but this thread is about reputation (see the subject
line), and a brand is just a managed reputation. Now can I try and
ask my completely valid and relevant question again?
Pete Forde
> > Wait, what? Pivotal only contributes to the community for *branding*
> > purposes? Isn't that a bit cynical?
>
> > We don't "invest our time" and expect a ROI on open source. It's a
> > way of life.
>
> > Courtenay
use Ruby because it enables us to do what we love in a way that breaks
free of traditional models that tend to restrict us. Top of that list
of things we escape is a suits and sales, growth over logic mentality.
In order to do what we do without caving to this, we rely on our
reputations in the community.
Speaking for Unspace, our business is 100% referrals. Most of those
referrals come from other developers. It's unlikely that developers
that don't work for Unspace would give a shit about us if we hadn't
released Haml and hosted RubyFringe.
I don't think Josh is out of line suggesting that any sane open source
business owner would consider their contributions to open source as an
investment. It's what keeps us from having to certify and hire a pen
of salesdouches.
This is good sense, not a violation of some perceived tenet of open
source ethics.
Pete
Chris Parsons
> -1 to the entire association thing. Regardless of size, if you (as a
> business or individual) are lying about what you can do, falsely
> advertising, and failing clients time and time again, that will become
> apparent in that you will cease to exist as a company. We don't need an
> association to help Darwin people out. People can do that all by themselves.
and this list explodes. Can you guys just stop posting for a bit
please so I've time to read back through all the interesting stuff? :)
Anyway, I'm with Rob -- certifications are a smokescreen, industry
associations are slightly less so. If you're the kind of shop that
screws its clients, then you're also the kind of shop that might over
inflate your 'association creds/certs/awards/etc'.
However, I've seen shops leave a trail of client destruction in their
wake -- they prey on the weak, swallow the budget, and move onto the
next project. We all then move in to clear up the mess, right? It's
laudable to try and save these clients from this fate, but I'm not
sure that an association will help for reasons above.
Here's another option: much of our work comes through recommendation,
as I'm sure is true of many of you. If we stick together and to our
practice, and ride the incoming wave of bad developers/shops, then
we'll avoid the 'Java' issue of a flood of mediocrity drowning out the
voices of experience.
There's a tight network of decent Rails shops, and if we recommend
each other and educate prospective clients on the right ways to build
software then hopefully these ideologies will propagate and spread and
the false economy of trashy code will die away. Let's make it our
mission to educate clients to the point where they know the issues as
well as we do. Clients talk to each other too, and eventually the
ideas should take hold. It may be the only way we'll win the war of
ideas in the end.
Chris
--
Chris Parsons
Managing Director
Eden Development (UK) Ltd
www.edendevelopment.co.uk