Visa And Immigration Routes For Working In Whistler, BC

Posted on June 5, 2013 by

The provincial flag of British Columbia

We know some great immigration lawyers here in Whistler, and I tapped their expert knowledge to put together this quick guide outlining the five routes available to foreign workers who want to come to Whistler, BC.

To see if PayrollHero is what you’re looking for take a look at our careers posting, here.

Visa and immigration options

1. Working Holiday Visa (WHV) – Working holidays visas are a great way for young people to get a temporary work permit for Canada. If you would like to be part of our Engineer in Residence program, this would be the best option as WHV’s are genrally easier to get.

How to apply: Each country has a different application process for Canadian WHV’s, so you will need to apply through the appropriate government program for your home country. A quick Google will help you find your native WHV program.

Restrictions: There are a limited number of WHV’s available, per country, per year and most have upper age restrictions. They are usually limited to a 1-2 year stay per WHV and there is also a limit on the number of consecutive WHV’s you can have.

2. Temporary Work Permit – Normally you have to apply for work permits outside of Canada, from your country of residence, but under some circumstances you can apply once in Canada. A work permit is a temporary visa allowing you to work in Canada and you must have a confirmed job offer in order to apply.

How to apply: If a work permit is the right route, we will apply for this with advice of our immigration lawyer.

Restrictions: The Human Resources and Skills Development of Canada may require that we do a Labor Market Opinion (LMO) survey to determine that there are no local workers that are right for the job, and that the best option is to bring in a foreign worker.

3. BC Provincial Nomination – To be accepted to the BC PNP program applicants must have a permanent, full-time job offer that is on the Strategic Occupations list. The BC PNP is considered to be a fast-track option to permanent residency.

How to apply: This will also be done with our immigration lawyers, as eligibility for the BC PNP depends on many criteria.

Restrictions: We may be required to do an LMO (see Temporary Work Permit, above). Permanent residents are required to live in Canada for two out of every five years, or they risk forfeiting their status.

4. Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) program – On the FSW program workers are selected to enter Canada as permanent residents based on their skills, education, knowledge of English or French and work experience. This is usually applied for if you are not currently living in Canada.

How to apply: If appropriate, this will be done with our immigration lawyers as there are lots of hoops to jump through.

Restrictions: Applicants must have proof of enough funds to support themselves and their dependents when they arrive in Canada. Your work experience must be on the Canadian National Occupational Classification list to be considered for this route of application.

5. Canadian Experience Class (CEC) – The CIC is open to people who are currently living and working in Canada and would like to become permanent residents, but do not want to be ‘sponsored’ by their current employer.

Application for the CEC program: This will be done with our immigration lawyers as they will have to determine your eligibility and if this is the best route to take.

Restrictions: Applicants must have at least one years work experience in Canada and have to take an English speaking and listening test.

Overwhelmed by all the information or stoked to get started?

If you come to work with us, we will let the immigration lawyers guide us down the right path to get the best people on our team.

You can apply to join the PayrollHero Dev team by sending us a (not-so-typical) resume that best represents your personality and your skills, to support[at]payrollhero.com

Whistler, British Columbia: The Best Place For A Startup

Posted on May 28, 2013 by

As a technology startup on the west coast of Canada, most people would expect that we’re based in Vancouver. Which isn’t a bad guess really considering that Vancouver has incubated some amazing startups, including Hootsuite and 7Geese. But, as awesome as Vancouver is, we decided to buck the trend and move 90 minutes north to a resort town called Whistler – and here’s 3 reasons why:

1. Adventure Engineering

We’re looking for Adventure Engineers who are as comfortable in the bike park as they are leading an orchestra of disruption with RoR, JS or another weapon of choice from your vast array of code bases.
Never seen Whistler Bike Park? Watch this video.

– Ad-ven-ture En-gin-neer-ing Noun: An unusual and exciting experience or activity built around a flexible work schedule

Adventure Engineering is just as much a lifestyle choice as it is a set of personality traits a person must have to be successful in a startup. Adventure Engineers have a thirst for learning, for experiencing new things and they actively seek discomfort over predictable situations – these are the very foundations that PayrollHero was built on. After living in Whistler for many years I realized that the town’s transient, travelling, adrenaline junkie (and extremely well educated) community was naturally breeding the Adventure Engineers I needed. I just had to convince them to stop travelling (for a short-time), not to go back to their existing jobs and to stay in Whistler with PayrollHero.

To attract and retain the best software engineers we started offering full time and flexi-time working hours, with great success. We then added our Adventure Engineers in Residence (EIR) program with the purpose of:

1.Cultivating our thirst for learning by bringing different methods to the table and new ways of thinking from across the globe

2. Enabling engineers from different cultural backgrounds and experiences to join us at PayrollHero, without the pressure of making a permanent move to Canada

Our first Adventure EIR, who is currently making a very big impression, is Dane Natoli from Australia – you can read more about his story, here.

Sound like something you’re interested in? Get in touch, and if we think you’re the right fit we can help you move to Whistler. We have excellent relationships with local immigration lawyers who are experts in working holiday visas, permanent residency and citizenship.

2. Jam with Incredibly Smart, Entrepreneurial People from all over the World

Most people who travel to Whistler have one thing in common – they’re all pretty damn smart! And I’m not talking about university smart, I’m talking about entrepreneurial smart. They have masters and doctorates; want to run or currently do run their own business; and are usually here on some kind of sabbatical or a career break. Whistler is a fruitful intersection of international disciplines and skills that is ripe for the picking.

We feed off this at PayrollHero. France, Australia, Poland, India, England and Canada are just some of the countries representing the team in our Whistler office; and each person brings their own unique brand of knowledge, experience and wisdom from their respective corner of the globe. In an environment that promotes high levels of developer collaboration and has constant focus on improvement it’s easy for creativity and innovation to spread through our products like wildfire.

3. Happy People make Happy Employees

Whistler in the full bloom. Taken from the top of Flank Trail on Sproatt Mountain

Vancouver is constantly listed as one of the top 10 most ‘liveable’ cities in the world, and one of the reasons is its proximity to the mountains and to world class ski resorts such as Whistler. So we skipped Vancouver and came right to the source.

Biking, golf, lake swimming, hiking, skiing frisbee golf, bear watching and more, whistler has it all. Watch this video and experience a small fraction of summer in Whistler

With endless activities and flexi-time at work, we encourage everyone at PayrollHero to exercise their brains outdoors, as well as at the office. Here’s just a few examples of what we have to play with:

Our home mountains are Whistler Blackcomb – home to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
We have 8,171 acres of terrain, 16 alpine bowls, three glaciers, 5 snowparks, 1 super pipe, 1 snow cross track and the worlds best summer, alpine bike park on our doorstep
We get an average of 39.1 feet of snowfall a year
There’s 4 championship golf courses in town
Whistler has some of the worlds best cross country skiing and mountain bike trails
Not to mention the 4 lakes, 3 beach volleyball courts, 2 frisbee golf courses and indoor acrobatic academy, BOUNCE!
Every year Whistler host global festivals like Crankworx and World Ski and Snowboard Festival
Oh, and Vancouver is just 90 minutes away

Even Einstein rode bikes to help fuel his creative thinking!

I like to think we’re running PayrollHero in the spirit of the book, Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. To get a better idea of how easy going life is at our office, read my other blog post: Do You Work to Live or Live to Work?

Having said that, don’t be fooled into thinking that every day is a holiday, here. We play hard and we work hard. If this sounds like the kind of environment your talents could thrive in, get in touch!

PayrollHero Angel Investor And Venture Capitalist Comes To Whistler

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

It’s May, it’s 27°C outside and there’s wall-to-wall sunshine – we couldn’t have asked for a better week to welcome our good friend and angel investor, Nic Lim, to Whistler.

To give you a little introduction, Nic is a venture capital investor from Malaysia, who was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur. In 1999, Nic and his partners started their first dot com international investment company, Catcha, whose long line of success is down to their simple and effective strategy “take proven new media ideas from Western markets and execute them in Asia”. Now, as a shareholder of Catcha, Nic and his business partner Brian Wee built a new venture capital investing company, 8Capita whose portfolio includes mobile customer loyalty app, Perx; mobile game studio, Frenzoo; and e27, a media company focused on growing Asia’s tech startup ecosystem.

Whistler Crash Course: Poutine, Ziptrek and Mountain Biking

“I’m in Whistler for work…but when you’re in somewhere so beautiful it’s not so hard to squeeze some fun in every now-and-then”. – Nic, Partner at 8Capita

This was Nic’s first time to Canada and he admits to being taken in by the spectacular beauty of Vancouver. However, when asked what he thought of Whistler, before commenting on Whistler’s breathtaking mountain-scapes, the Sea-To-Sky Highway or even the wildlife, Nic said:

“I really like the food here in Canada!” and proudly followed up with “and I’ve even had poutine…but I had to get a doggy bag. I don’t understand how you eat all of it.” – Nic

We agree that the food in Whistler is great, but felt we needed to show him more of the outdoor lifestyle and what better way than biking to the office through the rainforest. The next morning Nic joined Mike (PayrollHero CEO and President) and Adam (Product Development & Co-Founder) for the 9.9km cycle from Nesters to the Payroll Hero office in Function Junction. “Not only did I ride 10km to work this morning, I also had to walk the 2km to Mike’s house before we set off” said Nic. But even after admitting that it had been over ten years since he had last pedalled a bicycle, Nic said:

“This is such beautiful place, why would anyone drive!”. – Nic

Like the rest of us here in Whistler, Nic is not stranger to adventure and loves nothing more than a burst of adrenaline in his veins. Nic is a seasoned bungee jumper and seeking a similar thrill he sought out the high speed, high-wire fun of ZipTrek. We offered the possibility of a company bungee jump, but in his words, “at 38 I need to slow down, I’ve had enough of vertical free-fall for now”. We didn’t mention that at in Whistler we regularly see downhill mountain bikers in their late 50’s.

How did PayrollHero Meet Someone Like Nic?

Nic says his path first crossed with PayrollHero when he and Mike were sat next to each other at the Echelon awards in June 2012. “We got chatting and it turned out we had mutual friends” said Nic, “then I saw their their pitch, and it was their intensity and preparedness that really attracted me to Steve, Mike and PayrollHero”.

Now as angel investor in PayrollHero, Nic is an integral part of helping us achieve our goal of ‘Optimizing Work Productivity with Happiness’. After nine months with PayrollHero, Nic now calls himself the ‘Payroll Hero Cheerleader’ – interesting for a guy who thinks he’s now too old to bungee jump.

It has been exciting having Nic here in Whistler with us, he really is a good guy, a good laugh, a good friend and an excellent business man!

Whistler’s Vast, Untapped, Potential is…You

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

In this blog post we’re going to meet Vicky, who flocked to Whistler looking for a better work-life-balance and is now working with us here at PayrollHero. We’re going to share with you some of her tips and advice on moving to Canada and the truth about finding a career in a resort town – and hopefully inspire you to get in touch and make the move too.

* In a future post, coming soon, we’ll be chatting with local immigration lawyers to provide you with practical guide to the process of moving to British Columbia.

Meet Victoria, Curator of Digital Communities and Happiness

Name: Victoria Farrand

Age: 27

Home: Huddersfield, England

Previous Industry Job: Digital Content Manager and Creative Strategy at Brass Agency, UK

Reason for moving to Canada: I came for a career-break and never left, Whistler just pulled me in and I knew this was where I had to put my roots

How do people choose Whistler?

Ask most long-term locals how they ended up living in Whistler, and you’ll probably get the same answer over and over: “I came for a holiday and never left”. And like the thousands before her, Vicky didn’t plan on living in Whistler permanently either, it just happened.

“My partner, Tom, and I were setting off for a round-the-world trip… three years later, we never left Whistler and now we almost have permanent residency.” – Vicky

For every person who does stay, there are unfortunately many who don’t. Many who think that making a permanent life in a resort town is just too tough. So at PayrollHero we asked ‘what can we do to help more people realise their dream of living in Whistler?’

PayrollHero has a local immigration expert on our side

We have a great relationship with a local immigration lawyer here in Whistler. If we decide that you are the right blend of adventurous, dedicated and talented, and we offer you a position with us, they will guide you through the visa process for foreign workers.

We can help you live permanently in Canada

As well as finding talent from overseas, we also especially like to employ locals; and in a resort town ‘local’ can be someone who has been here 6 months or 6 years. We’re looking for the locals who are starting to think that they might have to move to Vancouver to get the job and they pay they want. Well don’t move, we want you! And if you’re not from Canada, Rudy will help you stay.

“We originally came to Canada on a working holiday visa, but a year later we decided we wanted to be permanent residents. Having lawyer took away all the stresses of this big life-decision. They helped us get Provincial Nomination with the BC Government, walked us through the implied status process and helped us get new working visas until or residency came through. This was very important to us because we were at the limit of how many visas we could get being from the UK. Now we’ve had our medicals and we’re just waiting for confirmation.” – Vicky

Move to Whistler for a career break…at first

As Vicky mentioned, you can come to Canada on working holiday visa. We recommend looking into it for your respective Country of origin, as each has different age restrictions and limits on the number of visas you can have.

Once you have been approved for a working holiday visa you can move to Whistler, British Columbia or anywhere else in Canada (but why would you want to go anywhere else).

“I moved from the UK to get away from the lifestyle associated with working for a big a marketing and advertising agency, I needed to escape the constant feeling that I was working working for the weekend and re-evaluate what It actually was that I loved about my job. As a result I’ve had many jobs in Whistler, I’ve been a snowboard instructor, a ski technician, a bootfitter and a zip-line guide to name a few, but doing these jobs has brought me full circle to realise that this is what I want to do, I just want to do it for the right company” – Vicky

Not everyone who comes to Whistler on a working holiday visa wants to only stay 6 months. A lot of people use it as a career break, a good way to escape the daily grind, and others use it as a way to bridge the gap while they apply for residency. But however you end up in Whistler one thing is sure, it’s hard to leave.

If you’ve ever been to ‘Super, Natural British Columbia you’ll understand why this west coast province continually attracts like-minded, creative people. Like like bees to honey, creatives flock from all over the world to find the right work-play balance. Each one bringing with them their culture, knowledge and skills; and here at PayrollHero we are very happy to welcome Whistler’s vast, mostly-untapped, potential – you.

Whistler sounding good to you? Drop us and email right here at support[at]payrollhero.com.

Move to Whistler For A Career In Software Engineering With PayrollHero

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

If you were to ask most people in town why they moved to Whistler, British Columbia they would reel off answers like skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking and summer nights by the lake; the rest would say they were on a gap-year and most on a career break, but very few (if any) would say they moved for the perfect job.

With such a transient community Whistler has a bit of bad reputation for employment, but it’s PayrollHero’s goal to change that…one well-paid happy, adventurous employee at a time.

Just in case you still have doubts, later on we’ll introduce you to our most recent success story – Florent Lamoureux, all the way from historic Bordeaux, France.

Keep on reading this post for why more and more career-focused people are moving to Whistler and how, together, we could make it happen for you.

Work to live and live to play

CEB uncovered that one of the top 5 reasons an employee would quit his/her job in 2012 would be to pursue a better ‘work-life balance’. So if you’re already feeling underwhelmed with your current work-life situation, the only way is up when you move to somewhere as recreation-focussed as Whistler, British Columbia.

Swap your stressful highway commute for a walk or a bike ride through acres of lush green coastal temperate rainforest; and on the way home you could even stop for a game of beach volleyball or an evening BBQ at one of four lake-side beaches.

* Does this look like the life you’d like? You should get in touch and tell us a little about yourself. Maybe we could work together.

But isn’t moving stressful?

Psychiatrists Holmes and Rahe listed changing working conditions and moving house in their top 43 most stressful life events for adults. We know moving is never going to be easy, but there are a few things PayrollHero can do to help ease the ‘typical’ stresses of relocation.

#1 Stress: Finding a house

PayrollHero has staff housing for our new-into-town employees. On arrival Florent and his girlfriend moved into their own apartment right in Whistler village to help them get orientated as quickly as possible.

#2 Stress: That awkward gap between pay checks

In our PayrollHero staff housing, Florent received his first month rent free, second month at 70% off and third month at 50% off! We also have an office meals program to help keep everyone happy and healthy. Our commitment to happy employees doesn’t just stop there, our aim to also to have the highest average wage in Whistler. All added up, that should give you a few months of financial ease to help you settle in.

#3 Stress: Settling in and making friends

Making friends is easy in Whistler because everyone is here for the same reason – to have fun in the outdoors while striking a sustainable work-life balance in the mountains. Our employees enjoy regular activities paid for by PayrollHero, annual staff retreats and access to some of the world’s best biking and hiking trails right outside of our office.

My Move to Whistler: Florent Lamoureux

Name: Florent Lamoureux,

Social: @Flrent, Florent on LinkedIn, GitHub

Age: 22

Home: Bordeaux, France

Education: Masters Degree in Computer Sciences

School: SUPINFO International University

Reason for moving to Canada: To spend more time in the great outdoors and perfect his English.

What Florent thinks about his move to Whistler and PayrollHero:

“The slogan of Payroll Hero is ‘optimizing work with happiness’ and that’s something I felt with the company and Mike, right away. They made my move (with my girlfriend) very easy – they even came to pick us up from the airport. Since then I have enjoyed a great work environment, free food at the office and company activities in the summer. From the point of view of my work, I can use my JavaScript, web and mobile knowledge, while learning new skills like Ruby, and attending educational conferences with my co- workers, too.”

Do you feel the pull of the mountains, too? Are you our next PayrollHero Adventure Engineer? We’re always open to meeting new happy creatives from all over the world.

What to do now? Drop us and email right here at support[at]payrollhero.com. Be sure to include all the best bits about yourself and why you think you’d be a good fit at PayrollHero.

Post by Payroll Hero.

PayrollHero Adventure Engineering Team Grows By +1

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Michael Stephenson

It’s not hard to imagine why people love to visit Beautiful British Columbia. With mountains, ocean and dozens of reasons to spend time indoors and out, those of us who live here count ourselves lucky, and those who visit can’t wait to come back.

Andrew Narkewicz joins PayrollHero

PayrollHero‘s newest staff member is Andrew Narkewicz – a Full Stack Ruby Engineer who tends to live in Ops – thrilled with his career move to PayrollHero in Whistler, where we are headquartered. Andrew attended UBC in Computer Science and most recently worked for Versapay as their Lead infrastructure developer.

What’s a typical work day like, at PayrollHero? There is no typical around here! We know that we get the best ideas from our talented recruits by giving them flexibility. Whether it’s 4-days-on and 3-days-off, or working weekends instead of only weekdays to take advantage time on the hill when the snow is best and the lines are shortest, or longer days with extra time banked for that great pow day, or a long weekend every couple of weeks. Flex-time is even more enticing when you live where the activities seem limitless, and your everyday life feels like a vacation… or at least looks like it to the outside world!

Blackcomb Mountain Pow

Whistler is proving to be a fantastic place to build a business: with its reasonable cost of living, rent, and ease of recruiting people to live and work in a veritable paradise. Whistler is a natural choice for Andrew, originally from Colorado. He loves ‘sledding’ (a casual term given to snowmobiling), which Whistler’s backcountry has plenty of room for! Andrew has joined us to live the best “Whistler Lifestyle” he can, taking every opportunity to play outside, with our blessing!

Don’t think we’re not hard at work, here at PayrollHero! Just because we post [seemingly constant] photos of our adventures doesn’t mean we don’t put in our dues! We’re busy at work, but we set up our business to attract and retain the best sales engineers, developers, iOS and Machine learning engineers, and customer service reps, so that we can create, build and maintain a great web-based payroll program.

Are you fit to be our next Whistler Engineering Team Hero? We are always looking for new teammates – at the office and at play! Drop us a line!

Couchbase Vancouver Dev Day

Posted on January 30, 2013 by

Last Friday I travelled down to Vancouver for the Couchbase Vancouver Developer Day. Just having joined the PayrollHero dev team, I was keen to learn about the NoSQL style of database, and Couchbase in particular since we currently use it in PayrollHero.

The goal of the day was to introduce developers to Couchbase 2.0, give them a basic understanding of how to set it up and use it, and then tackle some tougher areas such as how to query the data using views. The seminar was run by 3 developers from Couchbase – Technical Evangelists Tugdual Grall & Jasdeep Jaitla, and .NET Developer Advocate John Zablocki. It was interesting to see the mix of developers attending the seminar – most mainstream programming languages were represented including Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Python and even node.js and Go. Amazingly there was some form of SDK for each of these languages, whether official or community created, proving just how much open source community support Couchbase has.

from John Zablocki’s Twitter: http://sdrv.ms/VyHHz4

The morning was spent going through the features found in Couchbase 2.0 with Tugdual. He ran us through the core principles of Couchbase Server – easy scalability, consistent high performance, no downtime and a flexible data model, before discussing the new architecture and features of Couchbase 2.0.

One of the features I found particularly impressive was how Couchbase handles server faults by replicating across nodes in a server cluster. The Couchbase client library detects when requests to a server within your cluster are failing, automatically promotes replicas of the requested documents on the remaining servers in the cluster to be active documents, and then rebalances the documents across the remaining servers. Added to this is the ease in which you can replicate your data across data centers using Cross Data Center Replication (XDCR), meaning if your data center on the west coast of the country goes down entirely, you can ramp up your clusters on the east coast of the country without losing any data whatsoever. An extension of XDCR is the ability to set up an Elastic Search cluster for providing scalable, real-time searching of documents. You can see that a lot of work has gone into making this as painless to set up as possible.

Installing Couchbase 2.0 was just as painless – well at least for us Ruby guys. The PHP guys seemed to have a fair bit more trouble (the price paid for still using PHP!) and any guys running 32-bit Windows were pretty much out of luck. WIth Rails, its as simple as downloading and running the server, installing the libcouchbase library, and installing the couchbase gem. Done.

After everyone had Couchbase 2.0 installed and set up for their various environments, we started to run through some labs to teach us the basics of Couchbase – connecting to the database, setting and retrieving documents, using atomic counters and optimistic locking, and observing when data has been pushed to disk and replicated.

Jasdeep – definitely the most vocal and opinionated of the three – used some of this time to proclaim the virtues of a NoSQL solution vs a Relational Database solution. A line that stuck in my head was “I don’t care about duplicate data – I have 10 times the performance!”. And he is definitely right about that. Couchbase, like other NoSQL databases, is blindingly fast compared to MySQL or MS SQL. By caching as many documents as it can in memory, and only caching to disk those that are the least requested, it can maintain request throughput at amazing rates. “No need to write migrations, I can change the schema at anytime through my models since there is no schema”, he proclaims, before following with, “And no more joins! I hate joins.”

from Tugdual Grall’s Twitter: pic.twitter.com/1cmGxgcb

After lunch, John stepped up to take us through the most difficult area of the day – views. By using Map-Reduce views, Couchbase can create indexes of documents for quick querying. He used the ASP .NET MVC framework to take us a through a fairly standard scenario, explaining how to construct views on Couchbase server to pull back subsets of data based on ranges, groupings, counts and more. This was definitely the most brain-intensive part of the seminar, and late in the day few people had made it through the labs unscathed. For most people who are heavily experienced in relational databases, it does take a while to shift your mind into thinking the NoSQL way.

All up it was a very well run and interesting day. I particularly enjoyed hearing how the NoSQL movement evolved and how passionate the Couchbase guys are about their product. PayrollHero already has Couchbase implemented as part of our clocking capture process, and will be looking to use it in other places where we require fast performance due to heavy traffic. I look forward to using Couchbase more and further learning what makes NoSQL such a popular movement.

AWS re:Invent

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Piotr Banasik

Drive from Whistler to Bellingham ~200km

Last week we went to AWS re:Invent Conference, we thought that once we get there the fun stuff will begin, but even the trip down there itself was an adventure.

We left Whistler early in the morning, to make it down to Bellingham for our 11am flight. Arrived at the airport at around 9am, stood in the line indefinitely until around 11am, we were told that the plane is late (duh), and that it will not be here for another 4h or so, great …

We packed our bags back into the cars and went to grab lunch and waste some time.

We were checking the airline website the whole time to see what the new estimated time was. Anyways, we did finally get to fly out, it was around 4pm by the time we left and around 7pm by the time we got to Vegas, we imagined our day a bit diffrently 😉

Anyways, that was Monday.

On Tuesday, I went to my Workshop session. It was a whole day security session, presented jointly by RightScale and Trend Micro. RightScale showcased their product to get everyone up to speed on how to use it and Trend Micro showcased two of their products, Deep Security and SecureCloud. Overall I didn’t get that much value from the first half, since Ubertor has been with RightScale for years and I’m pretty famillar with it. The second half was a bit more useful for me since I’ve never seen any of Trend’s products, altho I’m not sure if/when we’ll make use of them. Still it was good to understand options. A nice bonus from this session was that it came with a $200 AWS credit code, so it technically made the session cost only $300 not $500.

Wednesday was the first day of the conference. During the keynote AWS announced further reductions in S3 pricing and the introduction of their new RedShift product, which is a large scale data warehousing solution, seemingly backed by Postgesql technology. They also summarized that they have released ~100 new features last year, and they expect to double that in 2013.

(from the keynote #1 video on YouTube)

They mentioned a crazy statistic: AWS adds more servers DAILY, than Amazon owned entirely in 2003.

At the end of the day was the big re:Play party. AWS kept us well inebriated and fed throughout the event so kudos for that.

Sorry about the blurry pic 😉

Thursday was the second day of the conf. During the second keynote, the Data Pipeline service which allows easily grabbing data from a bunch of sources, churning it through a massive array of map reduce instances and dumping the result somewhere else. All this can be configured through a gui workflow builder and overall seems pretty neat. I’m not sure what we specifically can do with it, but I can definitely see applications for it if you do any log processing or whatnot daily.

Over the two days of the conf, I mostly went to security and architecture talks. My main takeaway was a bucket list of little security tweaks here and there that should make our system even more secure than it already is. As for the architecture talks; Netflix has a bit of an insane setup. They have 100’s of little applications, all managed by different teams, all at different uptime standards. Its pretty amazing what systems they put in place to basically allow any of these pieces to fail and their system to continue working.

Netflix setup looks something like this: (grabbed from their slideshare deck)

I’m looking forward to next years’s re:Invent. The cloud landscape keeps maturing every year, I remember just a few years ago the whole idea of “Cloud” didn’t even exist ….

PayrollHero’s “Adventure Engineers”

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Stephen Jagger

We have ramped up our search for engineers looking to take on a role within a company that is not only programming focused, but also adventure focused. We are in search of engineers who want to work with a company on a big mission, while seeing some of the world along the way. Do you fit the bill of an “Adventure Engineer” ?

Reach out and let us know why you should work at PayrollHero.

Do You Work to Live or Live to Work?

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Michael Stephenson

I find myself reflecting on past travels from time to time…

Today I was reminded of a vivid bar night that took place while visiting some friends studying at the Sorbonne. It was 4am and I got into a conversation with a Swiss-German Tech Entrepreneur over how Europeans Work to Live while he thought that North Americans Live to Work.

I like to think we build companies with the spirit of Let My People Go Surfing.

So, how does “working to live” get implemented at the PayrollHero.com Whistler Office?

I guess like all things – It all depends…

There are many work schedule options anyone can elect to participate in including:

4×10; three day “weekend” every week.
5×9 and take every other Friday off.
Late morning start so you can ride the powder.
Work weekends and play weekdays when the hills are bare.

Pretty much we’re open for anything as long as you:

Have consensus with your pair if you are pairing on a new critical feature.
You attend the Weekly Engineering Meeting (Monday’s 15:07-16:07).
You present at the daily huddle on the days you are working 16:37-16:52.
If you are working on a new feature; you would be expected to attend all ideation meetings.

We understand and encourage the need for flexibility on snow days in the winter and 30 degree+ days in the summer.

What sort of work schedule would you be interested in?