General information that is helpful for onboarding new hires.
- Technology
All the communication methods we use have desktop/web and mobile clients. If you are a remote employee, you are expected to have the mobile clients installed and running on your work devices during work hours.
What do I use when? And for what?
Are you communicating with an external party?
- Use email for "on the record", asynchronous conversations.
- Use conferencing for interpersonal, ephemeral, and on demand conversations.
Are you communicating with coworker(s)?
- Use the chat platform
- Make sure you select direct message vs channel conversations wisely. Nobody likes spam.
- Make sure your channel conversations are aligned with the channel topic. Again, nobody likes spam. Seriously, not even the people that make it.
For "on the record", asynchronous conversations.
We use Google Apps for email. So feel free to use your favorite flavor.
For informal, asynchronous conversations. While still technically on the record, these types of conversations should resemble that of two or more professionals at a morning standup.
We use Slack as our instant messaging platform.
- Instance: simplecityllc.slack.com
- Invite Url: https://simplecityllc.slack.com/signup
For interpersonal, ephemeral, and on demand conversations.
Since Slack does not provide video conferencing or the ability to allow external phone numbers to call in to their call system, we've elected to use Google Hangouts.
- Primary usage: Google Hangouts
- Testing usage: Google Meet
In order to follow best practices for sharing credentials we've elected to use Bitwarden.
Pros:
- Easily allows for team sharing
- Has free apps for all major mobile platforms
- Has free extensions for all major browsers
- Has a responsive web interface
- Allows for the first two user accounts at no cost (perfect for a startup)
- Relatively inexpensive to ramp up multiple users
Cons:
- Takes a little time to get used to
Since we are Google App driven, we chose to use the (alomost) freely available. It is straight forward enough and allows for external collaboration and sharing.
A common practice among great software is to do one thing very well. At Simple City we try very hard to follow that concept by taking advantages of 3rd party services for areas that we either are lacking expertise, time, and or funding to develop inhouse (usually all three). Below you will find several examples of the services that we leverage to construct our platform.
NOTE: TaaS = Thing as a Service
IaaS (infrastructure):
DBaaS (database):
FaaS (functions):
AaaS (auth):
Our front end consists of the following frameworks and foundations. As you will see, we are heavily invested in JavaScript.
- Starter project: Create React App
- Client side: ReactJs
- Server side: NodeJs
All great software is built on some sort of continuous integration. Code built on tests has proven to be more reliable, easier to troubleshoot, and cheaper to improve upon.
Maintaining and organizing our source code should be simple. There is only one source code provider that we consider reliable, of optimal flexibility, and cost effective. There is simply no other alternative to Github.
Our company's core is centered around JavaScript. Below you will find courses that will give you the fundementals and/or refresh what you already know to make you the most efficient developer when working on our stack.
Preferably in the following order:
Some are free. Some are < $100/per. All are priceless.