The story of how I ended up at Twitter is typical of my embrace of
serendipity. I was working at a large technology company on the east
coast, fresh out of school, and moonlighting at night with the Twitter
API. I had long since realized I was ready for a move to the consumer web
and was a few months into a job search. I had a few offers on the
table but nothing looked compelling. I wanted something that exciting, and
just another programming job failed to meet the bar. As
I plugged away on to API one night in December of 2008, I realized
that Alex Payne's emails were getting short. I could tell he was
spread thin. "How could this guy develop the API and manage the needs
of developers at the same time", I thought.
So I shot him an email. "Alex, I have noticed you are running what
amounts to a one man show on the API front, and tend to a lot of
developer relations when I assume you would rather be developing. That
said, is Twitter looking for someone to help manage the developer
community (answer API questions, serve as liaison to development,
etc...)? ...".
"Funny you should ask.", he responded, "I put in a request to our
executives for some part-time developer community support."
Zip ahead a couple of months and Twitter decided that there was a role
here but we agreed that we didn't know quite what it entailed.
Naturally, I quit my job, moved to San Francisco, and accepted a
contracting gig to prove the full-time need existed. Anyone heavy
into the Twitter developer community around March of 2009 noticed a
few changes when I started:
* The API suddenly had a dedicated face to contact
* Whitelisting, account maintenance, and development needs got
immediate attention
* Platform communication increased
* Documentation improved
* Alex and Matt began focusing on the code
* Our business development folks had technical help
A few months later I had demonstrated the value and was offered a full
time job. It was clear then as it is now: we need a dedicated team to
give developers the attention they deserve. We believe that developer
happiness and Platform success are strongly correlated. Although I
have moved on to other projects internally, the rest of the Platform
team have taken up the slack in supporting the community. But we want
to do more.
Developer happiness and growing the community are major strategic
priorities for the Platform. To achieve our lofty goals we need
superstars to make big things happen. We like the idea of experienced
API developers supporting the community which is why I am writing this
note. If you are crazy passionate about the Platform and want to work
toward making it the best platform on the web, please apply:
http://bit.ly/Twitter_Platform. The work here is fast and
dynamic, and we don't always know where the road will lead. Which is
what makes it fun.
We look forward to hearing from you and all of your ideas to make the
Platform great.
Thanks,
Doug Williams
http://twitter.com/dougw
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