Archive for the ‘jobs’ Category

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023

Job: Systems for LibraryThing (full/part-time, remote)

Update: LibraryThing has filled this position. Thanks to everyone who shared and/or applied!

LibraryThing is looking for a systems administrator / reliability engineer.

Job: Systems for LibraryThing (full/part-time, remote)

$1,000 in Books! As with our Developer Job, we’re offering $1,000 in books to anyone who finds us a person—or finds themselves.

Specifics

About Us: LibraryThing is a small team of developers and librarians. We need a systems administrator/reliability engineer to power our products, including LibraryThing.com, Syndetics Unbound, and Talpa.ai.

Qualifications: We’re looking for someone with broad systems administration experience, who can quickly pick up unfamiliar technologies, diagnose problems, and keep everything running smoothly. You need to be calm under pressure, cautious, and an excellent communicator.

Experience: Applicants need considerable experience running websites on Linux hosts. Experience with MySQL is also important. You will need to be able to demonstrate experience with remote server administration including lights-out management techniques and equipment.

Technologies: We use the following technologies:

Puppet/Chef
Terraform
Prometheus/Grafana
Nginx
Docker
PHP
MySQL, with replication
Memcached/Redis
Elasticsearch
Rabbitmq
Git
Python
Logstash (ELK)
Managed Kubernetes
KVM virtualization on physical hardware
AWS

Work Anywhere. LibraryThing is “headquartered” in Portland, Maine, but the servers are in Massachusetts and most employees are in neither. We would need daily overlap between your location and Eastern US time.

Hours: We are open to both full-time and part-time applicants, as well as contract workers, depending on skills and experience. A full-time employee may wish to contribute to our product as a developer. See our recent Developer Job for more information on our development.

Compensations: We will consider both contract and salaried positions. If salary, we offer great health insurance.

How to Apply: Email sysadminjob@librarything.com. Send an email with your resume. In your email, review the blog post above, and indicate how you match up with the job. Be specific.(1) Please do not send a separate cover letter.

The Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

Did you read this far? This job is going to be posted in a lot of places, and that means we’ll get a lot of people “rolling the dice.” If you don’t seem like you’re applying for this job, we’ll ignore your email. If you want us to know you read the job post–and are therefore a detail-oriented person–please title your email Systems Job: [Your name] (Mango). Really.

Labels: jobs

Wednesday, July 5th, 2023

LibraryThing Needs a Great Developer (Work from Home)

Update: LibraryThing has filled this position. Thanks to everyone who shared and/or applied!

LibraryThing is looking for a great remote developer to work on our library projects.

Win $1,000 in Books!

If you find us one—or you find yourself—you get $1,000 in books from the independent bookstore of your choice! (See details at bottom.)

The Job

This job is focused on what LibraryThing does for libraries. This includes Syndetics Unbound, co-developed with ProQuest, TinyCat, and our new AI-based library product Talpa.ai. You will probably also be involved in projects for LibraryThing.com.

Depending on interest and experience, your job may involve working with Large Language Models, machine learning, systems administration/operation, or mobile programming. You will at least be trained in the basics of LLMs.

We Use

PHP. LibraryThing runs on PHP, in mostly non-OO code. PHP isn’t rocket science, so other, flexible programmers are welcome to apply.
JavaScript. We try to do as much as possible on the back end, but JavaScript is a must.
English. Remote work requires skill and a commitment to communicate clearly and effectively.

Good to Have

Library Experience. This job will primarily be working with library facing products; library technology experience is a plus but is not required.
Library Degree. An MLS or equivalent degree is a plus.
Book Experience. Understanding books from work as a bookseller, a publisher, an author, or just as a reader would be helpful.
UX/UI Experience. We will use any design, UX, or UI experience you have.
Python. We also use Python, both for working with library data and machine-learning.
MySQL. Again, not rocket science, but true expertise in MySQL takes time and is valuable.

Non-Technical

LibraryThing is an informal, high-energy, small-team environment. Programming is rapid, creative, and unencumbered by process. We put a premium on speed, reliability, communication, and responsibility. If this sounds attractive, we want you.
LibraryThing has been proudly remote for 18 years, so we put a premium on communication skills, discipline, and internal motivation.
All LibraryThing employees come up with ideas and solutions to problems on their own. We also develop and refine ideas together. We need your ideas and your criticism as much as your labor.
All LibraryThing employees interact with LibraryThing members directly, and library developers work with library customers. We believe that “the user is not broken.”
Interesting, passionate people make interesting, passionate products and are fun to work with. This is also the rare job for which a degree in Arabic, or an interest in watercolor painting, are a plus. We all love books, libraries and bookstores.

Location and Compensation ($65–130k)

This is a remote job open to anyone eligible to work in the US. We’d love to employ people outside the US, but the legal hassles are generally too much for us as a small company.

We are looking to work with the right person, not filling a spot with a clearly-delineated set of responsibilities and a predetermined salary. We will consider everything from junior to senior candidates. The salary range reflects that.

LibraryThing offers excellent health and dental insurance. Employees pay no premiums. We require hard work but are unusually flexible about hours and family commitments.

How to Apply

Before you apply, you should make sure you can do the LibraryThing Programming Quiz, which is something like Jeff Atwood’s “Fizz Buzz.” Our interviews include a simple programming quiz not unlike that. If you object to such things, please do not apply.

Send a cover-letter email and PDF resume to info@librarything.com. Your cover letter should go through the key parts of this job advertisement, responding to it, briefly.

The Fine Print

Did you read this far? Prove that you did by making your email subject line “Camembert Job: [Your name].” Really.

$1,000 Rules

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the indie bookstore of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible, and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are not eligible to win.

Labels: jobs

Monday, December 6th, 2021

LibraryThing Needs a Great Library Developer

LibraryThing is looking for a great developer to work on our library projects.

Win $1,000 in Books!

If you find us one—or you find yourself—you get $1,000 in books from the independent bookstore of your choice!

The Job

This job is focused on what LibraryThing does for libraries. These include Syndetics Unbound, co-developed with ProQuest, and TinyCat. You will also be involved in parsing library data for LibraryThing.com and other company projects, as needed.

Depending on interest and experience, you may also be involved in machine learning, systems architecture, or mobile programming.

Need to Have

PHP. LibraryThing runs on PHP, in mostly non-OO code. We love PHP people, but it’s not rocket science, so other, flexible programmers are welcome to apply.
JavaScript. We try to do as much as possible on the back end, but JavaScript is a must.
HTML/CSS. This is not a design job, but you should understand both well.

Good to Have

Library Degree. An MLS or equivalent degree is a plus.
Library Experience. This job is geared to library and library-industry developers. Other programmers are welcome to apply if you are excited about working with library and book-world data.
UX/UI Experience. We will use any design, UX, or UI experience you have.
Python. We also use Python, both for working with library data and machine-learning.
MySQL. Again, not rocket science, but true expertise in MySQL takes time and is valuable.

Non-Technical

LibraryThing is an informal, high-energy, small-team environment. Programming is rapid, creative, and unencumbered by process. We put a premium on speed, reliability, communication, and responsibility. If this sounds attractive, we want you.
LibraryThing has been proudly remote for 15 years. Working remotely puts a premium on communication skills, discipline, and internal motivation.
All LibraryThing employees come up with ideas and solutions to problems on their own. We also develop and refine ideas together. We need your ideas and your criticism as much as your labor.
All LibraryThing employees interact with users directly. We believe that “the user is not broken.”
Interesting, passionate people make interesting, passionate products and are fun to work with. This is also the rare job for which a masters in Medieval Irish or a side gig as a jazz bassist is a plus. Of course, we all love books, libraries and bookstores.

Location and Compensation ($60–120k)

This is a remote job open to anyone eligible to work in the US. We’d love to employ people outside the US, but the legal hassles are generally too much for us as a small company.

We are looking to work with the right person, not filling a spot with a clearly-delineated set of responsibilities and a predetermined salary. We will consider everything from junior to senior candidates. The salary range reflects that.

LibraryThing offers excellent health and dental insurance. Employees pay no premiums. We require hard work but are unusually flexible about hours and family commitments.

How to Apply

Send a cover-letter email and PDF resume to info@librarything.com. Your cover letter should go through this job advertisement, responding to it, briefly.

The Fine Print

“Help LibraryThing…” image uses a CC BY 2.0 photo by Jorge Láscar (source).

Labels: employment, jobs

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020

Win $1,000 in books: LibraryThing needs a Project Specialist (Remote)

Update:

This position has been filled. See our blog post on our newest employee for more details.

We need to find a great new employee, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds us one. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Job Ad: Project Specialist for LibraryThing

LibraryThing is hiring a project specialist (full-time, remote position). Although we’d love someone in Maine, the job is open to librarians and other book lovers throughout the United States.

You Must

Love books, love people
Write, edit, and communicate clearly and quickly
Work well independently and under direction
Manage your time effectively
Understand What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing
Be organized and detail-oriented enough to read and follow all the directions in this ad

We Want

We will pick smarts, affability, and drive over any skill. And we’ll tailor the job to fit your skills and experience.

An ideal candidates might have some or all of these:

Book-world experience
Library experience (with or without an MLS)
Professional social media experience
Familiarity with bookish social media
Creativity and enthusiasm to learn new things
Excellent computer skills. (We’re a Mac shop.)
Technical skills (Excel, HTML, CSS, SQL)

Your duties will probably include:

Write our monthly newsletters, blog posts, Facebook and Twitter posts
Organize and coordinate events and projects, such as SantaThing, Hunts, testing efforts
Help members with problems via email, Talk and social media
Troubleshoot problems and test new features
Be an active, approachable presence on the site

As a small company, we have few “siloes.” So other duties calling on organization, adaptability, diligence, intelligence, and creativity will pop up, and you must play an engaged and constructive role in company meetings on any topic.

Your job may include occasional travel—once that’s possible again—to meet your coworkers and perhaps to publisher or library conferences.

Compensation

Because we’re willing to consider a wide variety of applicants, we can’t set a salary. But our health insurance is gold-plated. We require hard work and are only looking for full-time applicants, but we are unusually flexible about hours.

How to Apply

Send your resume in PDF format to tim@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter. It should show your ability to be persuasive but succinct.

If we interview you, we will ask you to write and edit something “live.” We do this together a lot, so if that makes you uncomfortable, this might not be the job for you.

Fine Print

LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Remember that part about diligence? Your subject line should be “Brie Cheese: [Your name]” so we know you are diligent.

Bookshelves image courtesy Germán Poo-Caamaño (see Flickr), CC BY 2.0.

Labels: employment, jobs

Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

Job: Junior Social Media Specialist in Portland, ME

This could be you! (photo by bluesky1963)

LibraryThing is hiring a full-time Junior Social Media Specialist. We’re looking for someone who is bookish, local (Portland, ME area), and social media-savvy. You’d be working closely with Loranne, our Member Support and Social Media Librarian, here at LTHQ in Portland.

You must:

Live in or near Portland, ME
Love books
Love people, at least sometimes
Be familiar with social media, and bookish social media
Write and edit well and quickly
Work both independently and under direction
Be hard-working, organized, and detail-oriented enough to remember to title your job application email “[Name]: Job Application”
Be aware of What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing

We’ll pick smarts, affability and drive over any skill. But our ideal candidate would have:

Book-world experience
Professional social media experience
Technical skills (HTML, CSS, SQL)
LibraryThing membership/familiarity

Your duties include:

Help members with problems via email, Talk and social media
Help write our monthly newsletters, blog posts, tweets, and Facebook posts
Help developers to develop and test new features and projects
Be an active presence on the site
Manage incoming/outgoing mail, and some general office management tasks

Compensation:

Experience-appropriate salary with gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours, and–so long as you are in the area–where you work from.

How to apply:

Send your resume (in PDF format, please) to loranne@librarything.com. Your email should be your cover letter.

Fine Print:

Per our Privacy Policy, LibraryThing is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of religion, race, color, national origin, ethnic origin, age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy status, parental status, marital status, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

Labels: employment, hiring, jobs

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

Find LibraryThing a Programmer, win $1,000 in books.

LibraryThing is growing. We’ve long devoted a sizable hunk of our resources to our products for traditional libraries (LibraryThing for Libraries). That business is growing fast, as more and more libraries are discovering the value of our tools.

So it’s time to reap the benefits, and fund LibraryThing.com development.

And we need your help to get the word out.

We need to find a kick-ass PHP programmer, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to the person who finds them. Think of it. $1,000 in books. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to the local, chain or online bookseller of your choice.

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up by applying themselves—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about this”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it from someone else, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Employees and their families are eligible to win, provided they aren’t work contacts. Tim is not.

Here’s the job post:

What we want: LibraryThing is looking for a kick-ass programmer (coder, hacker, engineer, etc.) to join the team, working mostly on LibraryThing.com.

Basics:

You can be anywhere. LibraryThing is headquartered in Portland, Maine, but most technology employees are remote.
If you’re not local, we’d expect you to visit the office for team meetings from time to time.

Tangibles:

Necessary. LibraryThing is made with in non-OO PHP. You should be a sure-footed, experienced, secure and rapid PHP coder.
Core. JavaScript (with JQuery, Prototype), CSS, MySQL.
Bonus. Mobile development (native or not), Python, Solr, book- and library technologies, systems skills, design or UX chops.

Take the Quiz:

Want to work for us? We have a simple quiz, developed back in 2011. If you can do it in under five minutes, you should apply for the job!

» The LibraryThing Programming Test

Do it in your best language the first time. If you also want to do it in PHP, we won’t object.

Intangibles:

Creativity, diligence, optimism, and outspokenness are favored.
We like to hire people who care about books, and believe in a open and humane vision of the future of reading.
We like LibraryThing members, and people who should be LibraryThing members. Be sure to check out What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing?
Working on LibraryThing.com means understanding and working with its members. Staff and members develop and refine ideas together. LibraryThing is for those members, and most of what makes LibraryThing great is created by members, so—in a way—you are their servant. That can be great, and it can (occasionally) suck. You need to want that dynamic.
Working on LibraryThing.com means working with Tim. A lot. Don’t worry, he’s really very nice.
LibraryThing is an informal, high-pressure and high-energy environment. This puts a premium on speed and reliability, communication and responsibility.
Working remotely gives you freedom, but also requires discipline and internal motivation.

Compensation:

Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We find the best programmers keep regular hours, but we are both understanding and flexible.

Other:

We are not looking for part-timers.
We are not looking for companies.
We do not discriminate on any irrational basis, such as age, race, sex or religion, but you should probably use a Mac.

How to Apply:

Send an email and resume to jobs@librarything.com.

Skip the cover letter, and go through the blog post in your email, responding to the tangibles and intangibles bullet-by-bullet.

Also include your solution to the quiz, and how long it took you. Anything under five minutes is fine. If it takes you longer than five minutes, we won’t know. But if you make it to interviews, they’ll involve some live coding of this sort, and will be painful for you.

Labels: jobs

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

700 Thank-Yous

After congratulating Loranne and Matt, I want to thank everyone who applied for the job and didn’t get it.

You are superstars

Almost 700 people ended up applying. Many put a lot of work into their cover letters, and I asked almost 100 to complete detailed follow-up questions. I interviewed 10–at two hours each, on average. People gave us a lot of time, and I’m grateful for it.

The applicant pool was amazing, including booksellers, librarians, publishing people and book lovers of innumerable types and talents. We seriously considered everyone from a director of marketing at a red-hot imprint to first-job people who just loved books so much they had to apply. Many were long-time LibraryThing members, many “outsiders.” Each “cut” was difficult. I suspect that most could have done the job, and I suspect hundreds would have rocked it. Deciding on Loranne and Matt was exciting. But saying goodbye to so many great people feels like a loss.

So, thank you for your time, and good luck in your careers. You guys are the superstars of the book world.

And all I got was this lousy t-shirt?

If you applied for the job, and if you’ve read all the way down to this, you may be saying “I applied for this job, and all I got is nice words?” But if you applied, you also know the original job post hid something at the bottom.(1)

Well, not true. You also get a t-shirt. Well, at least the first 100 people to ask will get one. (We might go above 100, but supplies here may give out.) Just email Tim your address, color and size, and we’ll hook you up.

1. About 1/3 missed it.

Labels: employees, employment, jobs

Friday, August 30th, 2013

Goodbye Jeremy

Jeremy wins one.

Tim and Jeremy lose one.

Yesterday LibraryThing turned eight, and today we say goodbye to Jeremy Dibbell (jbd1), LibraryThing’s social-media guy and all-around LibraryThing soul.

After nearly three years at LibraryThing, Jeremy is moving on. Next week he begins work as Director of Communications and Outreach at Rare Book School, located at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. We’ve loaned him to Rare Book School each summer he’s worked for us. He’s looking forward to joining the team there full time.

Jeremy is a long-time and much-loved member of the team. He was an early adopter, and became LibraryThing’s official-unofficial head of the Legacy Library project long before he came to work for us formally. Most members probably know him from the newsletter, our Facebook and Twitter feeds, from member-help emails, and for his Talk posts, helping new members and laying out his vision for LibraryThing’s development.

We aren’t going to lose him completely. Jeremy will continue on for a few weeks helping us where he can and giving his successor(1) some tips. And he will continue as head of the Legacy Library project. Indeed, as he says, he’ll have more time for it now. I suspect he’ll make his views about the site known too. I doubt he could help it.

It’s not easy to summarize everything Jeremy has done for us. Some highlights include:

Sending 10,600 emails, not counting those that came from info@librarything.com. He saved us from drowning, and far exceeded what a run-of-the-mill “social media” manager could have done.
Growing the size of the Early Reviewers program from around 1,200 books/month to today’s 3,500 or 4,000/month.
Helping to design, troubleshooting and discussing every major new feature in the last three years.
Continued growth of the Legacy Libraries program (see an overview here), including the new landing page, most of the Libraries of Early America (1,500+), and a number of wonderful LL flashmobs.
Special events, like our edible books contests, and book spine poetry.
Playing Santa for SantaThings 2010 (the Book Depocalypse), 2011 and 2012.

Jeremy moved to Portland to take this job, living only a block away from my house and the office. (My wife and my son were particularly grieved to hear he was leaving.) Being in the office gave his advocacy for members and his vision for LibraryThing extra impact. He’s been at the center of every major decision–from features to hires–for some time now. He’d be harder to miss if his contribution was not more obvious in the culture he leaves behind.

Sad as we are, we’re also excited for him too. He’s been passionate about Rare Book School for years–continuing to help out there in the summer was a condition of his taking the job. Charlottesville is a beautiful place. It is also close by Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson built his library. When he left Jeremy gave my son Liam a children’s book about Monticello and Jefferson’s love of books. It is fitting that Jeremy is there now, with his Jefferson-sized library and bibliophilia.

So, from me and all the LibraryThing staff, thank you Jeremy.

1. In case you’re wondering, our social-media job is still open, but closing fast. See the job post.

Labels: employees, employment, jefferson, jeremy dibbell, jobs, legacy libraries

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

LibraryThing is Hiring: Bookish and Social-Media Savvy?

This could be you! (clockwise: ChrisC, Kate, Abby, Tim, Mike, ChrisH; unpictured Seth, KJ, Jeremy.)

This could be you too, and wouldn’t that be great?
(photo by member Bluesky1963)

LibraryThing is hiring(1) a full-time, bookish, social-media savvy employee. We want someone who lives and breathes books, and would jump at the chance to talk to book lovers, authors, publishers and librarians.(2)

This is an anywhere position, but we will favor Portland, Maine people. If you live elsewhere, you’ll be expected to spend time in Portland at the start of the job, and return on a regular basis.

You must:

Love books
Love people, or at least not hate them
Be in tune with What Makes LibraryThing LibraryThing
Be deeply familiar with social media and bookish social media
Write well and quickly
Be hard-working, optimistic, and detail-oriented
Able to work and set goals independently

We’d like:

A book-world background (librarian, bookseller, publishing, etc.)
Professional social-media experience
Technical skills (HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, etc.)
LibraryThing membership, familiarity
Some useless expertise and passion, to fit in with the rest of the staff.

Duties:

Write our newsletters, blog posts, tweets, and Facebook posts
Coordinate our Early Reviewers program
Assist members with problems
Be an active presence on the site, well-known to members and participating in important LibraryThing discussions
Suggest and help develop new features and projects
Learn, analyze and look for new opportunities

Compensation: Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours.

How to apply: Resume [as a PDF file] is good. Don’t send one of those overboiled cover letters, sent as another damn Microsoft Word document titled “Cover Letter,” but a brief introduction would be good, recapitulating the bullets above and how they do or don’t fit you. Send emails to tim@librarything.com.(3)

1. Jeremy (member JBD1) is moving on and up; he’ll be the new Director of Communications and Outreach at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA. It’s a great move for Jeremy–he’s been going down there to help them run the summer sessions for four years now. He’ll continue as unofficial-but-unquestioned leader of the Legacy Libraries project. We’ll bid him a proper good-bye in a later blog post.
2. In another company this might be called a “social media manager” job, but we don’t “manage” our members, we talk to them. We don’t want fake, we want nice but genuine.
3. Please title the email “LTSOCMED [your name].” Also, follow directions–even the ones at the end of a blog post.

Labels: employees, employment, hiring, jeremy dibbell, jobs

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Job: Systems Administrator and/or Hacker

Work anywhere!

Or work here!

You may never meet these fine people!

Brian Stinson, LibraryThing’s sysadmin is moving on–he’s landed a job working for Kansas State University, where he’s getting a Political Science degree. It’s a great move for him. We’re sad to see him go–and we need someone to step into his shoes!

The Job: Part-time Sysadmin or Full-time Wizard?

After all the good work by Brian and John before him, and with support from our our programmers, Mike Topper, Chris Holland and Chris Catalfo, LibraryThing’s systems administration is no longer a full-time job. Brian worked part-time.

So we’re looking to fill either:

Part-time sysadmin
Part-time sysadmin, part-time PHP programmer

As one of our programmers, Mike, has sysadmin experience, the proportion of sysadmin-ing may be as low as 25%. But you need to be able to handle more than that.

Systems Administrator

Qualifications: We’re looking for someone with broad systems administration experience, who can quickly pick up unfamiliar technologies, diagnose problems and keep everything running smoothly. You need to be calm under pressure, cautious and an excellent communicator. We’re a small team, so when things break at 4am, you need to be available.

Work Anywhere. LibraryThing is “headquartered” in Portland, Maine, but the servers are in Boston and many employees are in neither. We never even MET our last sysadmin—John in Tasmania.

Experience: Applicants need considerable experience running websites. Experience in Linux systems administration is essential; we use RHEL and CentOS, but you’ve probably got professional experience with at least half a dozen distros. Experience with MySQL is also important, including replication, monitoring and tuning. You will need to be able to demonstrate experience with remote server administration including lights-out management techniques and equipment.

Technologies. Here’s a partial list of the technologies we use.

Apache
Nginx
Memcache
Solr
Subversion
PHP
Python

Bash shell scripting
Munin
rrdtool
Xen and KVM virtualization
NFS
LVM
iscsi

PHP Programmer

LibraryThing runs on PHP, MySQL and JavaScript. We also have work for mobile app developers. Basically, we’d love to hear how you can help us.

You can find out more about our programming needs in this older post. If you’re applying as a programmer too, be sure to see and take the programming quiz below.

Compensation

Salary plus gold-plated health insurance.

How to Apply

Email: sysadminjob@librarything.com. Send an email with your resume. In your email, go through the sections of the blog post above, and indicate how you match up with the job. Be specific.(1) Please do not send a cover letter.

If you want to stand out, go ahead and take the LibraryThing Programming Test. We’ll definitely ask you to take it before we interview you.

Another job: We have another open job too, a new position as Customer support for LibraryThing for Libraries.

1. This job is going to be posted lots of places, and that means we’ll get a lot of people “rolling the dice.” If you don’t seem like you’re applying for this job, we’ll ignore your email.

Labels: employment, jobs

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Summer internship at LibraryThing

Will you be around Portland, Maine this summer? Are you interested in libraries, programming, or website design? LibraryThing’s looking for a local intern (or two) to work on a variety of projects for us. Depending on your interests and skills, we may have you work on programming or design for LibraryThing.com; we’d also be interested in having some help on various Legacy Library projects, so if you have an interest in historical libraries and bibliography, we’d love to hear from you too!

Potential internship opportunities:

LibraryThing.com programmer. Build a new feature (or improve an existing one) for LibraryThing.
Designer-developer. Help LibraryThing plan its future look.
Legacy Libraries researcher/cataloger. Assist with research, cataloging and maintenance of the Legacy Libraries.

Skills

Programming. LibraryThing is made with PHP, mostly in non-OO code. We also use JavaScript and MySQL.
Design. The standard software and a keen eye.
Legacy Libraries, we’re looking for someone with an interest in library history and bibliographic description. You don’t need to have the programming and design skills mentioned above, but a familiarity with bibliographic databases and rare books is a must.
Bonus. Familiarity with LibraryThing itself would be extremely helpful.

Intangibles

We like to hire people who care about books and libraries, and believe in a open and humane vision of the future for both. We live to create technologies that make readers happy and keep libraries vital.
LibraryThing is an informal, high-pressure and high-energy environment. Programming is rapid, creative and unencumbered by process. We put a premium on speed and reliability, communication and responsibility.

Location

LibraryThing is headquartered in Portland, Maine. For these internships we’re looking for people who can be in the office regularly.

Compensation & Schedule

We’ll pay—minimum wage, but we’ll pay! We’ll work with you to come up with a suitable schedule for the summer, but ideally we’d like you to commit to about a month with us.

How to apply

Send an email and resume to jeremy@librarything.com. Instead of a cover letter, go through this blog post in your email, responding to it, especially the skills and intangibles part, and suggest some ways you could be useful or projects you’d love to work on. Include your availability for the summer months (June, July, August).

Labels: jobs

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Technical jobs: Work for LibraryThing

IMPORTANT UPDATE July 28, 2011: Jobs are still open. Programmers should also look at The LibraryThing Programming Quiz.

LibraryThing is hiring! We’re looking for smart, fast, diligent and creative people to work in Portland, Maine or remotely.

There are four “jobs” out there, which we expect to be filled by 2–3 people.

LibraryThing.com programmer. Work primarily on LibraryThing.com. We have a lot planned. We need you to help us do it.
Library programmer. Work primarily on our library products, LibraryThing for Libraries and Library Anywhere. Both products are growing fast–already in over 400 library systems around the world. Library Anywhere is a technical marvel.
Designer-developer. Help spruce up LibraryThing and LibraryThing for Libraries.
Systems administrator. We recently advertised for a Systems Administrator. We may keep that a separate position or distribute responsibilities between old and new technical staff.

Technical skills.

Necessary. LibraryThing is made with PHP, mostly in non-OO code. You should be a sure-footed, experienced and rapid PHP coder.
Core. JavaScript (with JQuery, Prototype), CSS, MySQL.
Bonus. Python, Solr, library systems and formats (OPACs, MARC, etc). A library degree is a definite plus—we have three MLSs on staff now. Publishing or bookstore experience is also a plus.
Design. The standard software and a keen eye.
Systems administration. If you think you could help out here, see the systems administrator job for more details.

Intangibles.

We like to hire people who care about books and libraries, and believe in a open and humane vision of the future for both. We live to create technologies that make readers happy and keep libraries vital.
LibraryThing is an informal, high-pressure and high-energy environment. Programming is rapid, creative and unencumbered by process. We put a premium on speed and reliability, communication and responsibility.
Working remotely gives you freedom, but also requires discipline and internal motivation.
All LibraryThing employees interact with members and/or libraries.
We develop and refine ideas together. We need your ideas and your criticism as much as your labor.
We do so much and with so many technologies, learning is a job requirement. Mentoring is somewhat limited by distance, so you need to be able to learn on your own.

Location

LibraryThing is headquartered in Portland, Maine, but most employees are remote. We’d love to find someone local, but remote is fine. Unless you’re in Australia, we expect you to visit the office for group meetings from time to time.

Compensation

Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work but are flexible about hours.

Gustatory

An excellent recent hire forced us to rethink our cheese-lovers-only requirement, and as much as Abby and I might want requirements to love wine or coffee are probably illegal. So this is the first LibraryThing job post without any food requirements. However, if you are partial to any of these, we can, um, guarantee you’ll get what you want at the LT office.

How to apply

Send an email and resume to jobs@librarything.com. Instead of a cover letter, go through the blog post in your email, responding to it, especially the skills and intangibles part.

Labels: employment, jobs

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Job: Be LibraryThing’s Systems Administrator

John chatting with Abby and Jeremy at the colo.

After four happy years at LibraryThing I’ve decided to take up an offer to move on to a new role. This means we need to a find a sysadmin to replace me!

LibraryThing is the labour of love of a small group of smart, dedicated people who work hard to do a lot with a little.

LibraryThing is “headquartered” in Portland, Maine, but the servers are in Boston and many employees are in neither. You can be anywhere—I’m in Tasmania!

Technologies. Here’s a partial list of the technologies we use.

Apache
Nginx
Memcache
Solr
Subversion
PHP
Python
Bash shell scripting

Munin
rrdtool
Xen virtualisation
NFS
LVM
iscsi

Abby looking at the space where the new servers should go.

How We Work. LibraryThing has a somewhat unusual development culture. It is not for everyone. We develop quickly, knocking out features in hours or days, not weeks.

We develop incrementally and opportunistically, assuming that member feedback will sometimes overturn our plans in mid-course, and that some projects will fail. Everyone who works for LibraryThing must interact directly with members.

LibraryThing is more than a job for us. We work long, hard and usually sober, but not necessarily during “regular” hours. We love what we do. We want someone who will feel the same way.

Compensation. Salary plus gold-plated health insurance. This is a full-time job.

How to Apply.

Email: sysadminjob@librarything.com. Tim and I will read your applications.

Send an email with your resume. In your email, go through the sections of the blog post above, and indicate how you match up with the job. Be specific. Do not send a cover letter.

Labels: employment, jobs, servers

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

LibraryThing is hiring (non-technical)

2007 Halloween book pile winner by member Bluesky1963

LibraryThing is hiring again—a relatively junior position, with room to advance and grow. We’re looking for someone smart and organized to help out with the customer support side of the quickly growing LibraryThing for Libraries.

You must be:

Able to write quickly and well
Organized as all get-out
Able to juggle multiple tasks efficiently and with humor
Extremely comfortable with computers
Able to work independently and communicate effectively

We’d appreciate:

A Library or Information Sciences Degree
Experience in libraries or library “industry”
Technical skills (HTML, CSS, MySQL, etc.)
Customer-service or sales experience
Mac lover
Love of cheese

Duties:

Assist Abby with LibraryThing for Libraries
Provide customer support to libraries
Attend trade shows
Learn whatever we need you to learn
Think creatively and suggest improvements
Whatever else is needed. We are still a startup so “duties” are fluid.

Location:

Boston, MA or Portland, ME area strongly preferred. If we get enough applications we will probably not look at others–no offense.

Compensation:

Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours.

How to apply:

Email and resume is good. Don’t send a separate cover letter. In your email, please go through the bullets above, explaining briefly how they do or don’t fit you.

Send emails to abby@librarything.com.

[Update, 4/21/11: We’re reviewing applications now; further submissions are not being considered at this time. Thanks for your interest!]
[Update, 5/12/11: We’ve made our hire, look for an announcement soon!]

Labels: employees, employment, jobs

Monday, October 25th, 2010

LibraryThing is hiring: Are you bookish and social-media savvy?

madinkbeard‘s beloved “We Heart LibraryThing” entry in a 2007 photo contest.

LibraryThing is hiring a bookish, social-media savvy employee. We want someone passionate about books and about book lovers, and excited to take social cataloging and bookish social networking to the next level. LibraryThing takes a different approach to social media, and the job is a step above the usual “social media manager” position with its overtones of being “the face” of a company, and of manipulation and fakeness.

This is a Portland, Maine position exclusively. We want someone who can come into the office most days. If we find the right candidate, we will help you relocate. Portland is a great place to live.

You must be:

Deeply familiar with social media
Able to write well and quickly
Able to work and set goals independently
Able to think big, but also handle details
Hard-working, smart, driven, optimistic, organized and productive
A passionate bibliophile

We’d appreciate:

LibraryThing membership, familiarity
Librarian, bookseller, publishing or other book-industry background
Experience designing software features or interfaces
Technical skills (HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP, etc.)
No cheese allergies

Duties:

Write newsletters and blog posts
Suggest and help develop new features and projects
Look for new opportunities and set priorities for yourself and others
Work with publishers, authors and other actors (eg., coordinate and expand the Early Reviewer program)
Attend trade shows and so forth, at need
Maintain LibraryThing’s presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social media

Compensation:

Salary plus gold-plated health and dental insurance. We require hard work, but we are flexible about hours.

How to apply:

Resume is good. Don’t send one of those overboiled cover letters, but a brief introduction would be good, followed perhaps by recapitulating the bullets above and saying briefly how they do or don’t fit you. Send emails to tim@librarything.com.

Labels: jobs, member input, member projects, social cataloging, social networking

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

$1,000 Indie bookstore spree for a Maine-based PHP hacker

As LibraryThing learns again and again, hiring hackers in Maine is hard. So we’re renewing our offer—find us an employee and get $1,000 worth of books.

Skills. We’re looking for a smart, capable, passionate hacker/programmer. We work primarily in PHP and JavaScript, with some Python thrown in. We use a lot of MySQL. We have a startup mentality.
I’ve given up on listing skills and requirements. We want someone who will kicks ass immediately or very soon after the hire. The rest is window-dressing.
We are only looking for someone in or around Portland, Maine. If you’re super-excited about working for LibraryThing from home, go ahead and send a resume, but it’ll go in a different pile.

$1,000 for an Indie. With southern Maine losing bookstores fast, we want the money to, well, keep ’em here. So, the winner gets a $1,000 gift certificate to Longfellow Books, Books, Etc. or any other independent bookseller, new or used. If you’re not local, we’ll write the check to your local indie.

Rules. To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about LibraryThing”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone’s blog, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired for a full-time salary job, not part-time, contract or for a trial period (which we often do first). If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already heard of or from the candidate, or the situation is otherwise unclear, we may split the money up. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the hidden tax of shelving. Tim Spalding and his family are not eligible, but other LibraryThing employees are.

Labels: employment, jobs, maine, portland

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Spamming ourselves: $1,000 for a Sysadmin/DBA

We’ve said it before. But it’s absurdly important. And it’s good for you too.

See the main blog post.

Labels: jobs

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Find LibraryThing an employee, get $1,000 worth of books.

We need to find two excellent employees, a PHP hacker and a systems/database guy or gal, so we’re offering $1,000 worth of books to each of the people who find them. Think of it. $1,000 in books. What would you buy? Everything.

Rules! You get a $1,000 gift certificate to Abebooks, Amazon, Booksense or the independent bookseller of your choice. You can split it between them. You don’t need to buy books with it (but why do that?).

To qualify, you need to connect us to someone. Either you introduce them to us—and they follow up with a resume and etc.—or they mention your name in their email (“So-and-so told me about LibraryThing”). You can recommend yourself, but if you found out about it on someone’s blog, we hope you’ll do the right thing and make them the beneficiary.

Small print: Our decision is final, incontestable, irreversible and completely dictatorial. It only applies when an employee is hired full-time, not part-time, contract or for a trial period. If we don’t hire someone for the job, we don’t pay. The contact must happen in the next month. If we’ve already been in touch with the candidate, it doesn’t count. Void where prohibited. You pay taxes, and the insidious hidden tax of shelving. Tim Spalding and his family (all his family, Oakes) are not eligible, but if Abby wants to work Simmons or Altay his startup connections, fine. Abebooks employees are not eligible for this (but the internal offer still stands).

Needless to say, we’ll throw in a free lifetime membership, so you can catalog your loot. And you’ll get the satisfaction you helped LibraryThing become everything it could be.

Here are the job announcements:

UPDATE: We’ll take a look at people not in New England, especially for the DBA position.

Two jobs—dream jobs for the right people. We may hire one person or two, depending on what we get. (We’re happy to look at resumes with a mix of talents, or other talents.) Both jobs are located in the New England area, with some potential for telecommuting.

Syadmin/DBA

LibraryThing, the web’s largest and most innovative site for book lovers, is looking for a smart and experienced systems and database administrator. We value brains and talent above everything, but demonstrated experience with complex, high-traffic LAMP websites is essential to this position.

MySQL. Query optimization, replication, tuning, maintenance, recovery.
Systems administration. Linux administration, security, maintenance and recovery. Installation of new hardware.
Programming. You don’t need to start out a PHP guru, but you’ll have to support this part of the site.
Personal qualities. Speed, intelligence, reliability, high availability, good communication skills and sang-froid.

Hacker/Developer

We’re also looking for a crackerjack PHP/MySQL developer. To qualify you must be passionate, creative, flexible–and fast.

PHP. We write terse, losely modular non-OO code.
HTML, CSS, Javascript.
MySQL. Knowledge of query optimization, replication and MySQL internals a plus.
Design or UI talents a plus.
Knowledge of social networking, math, statistics, collaborative filtering, bibliographic data or library systems a plus.
You must learn quickly and communicate effectively. Skills and attitude matter; experience per se does not.

How We Work

LibraryThing has a somewhat unusual development culture. It is not for everyone.

We develop quickly, knocking out features in hours or days, not weeks. We value results, not process.
We develop incrementally and opportunistically, assuming that member feedback will sometimes overturn our plans in mid-course, and that some projects will fail.
Everyone who works for LibraryThing interacts directly with members.
We value initiative and intellectual engagement. You must be able to work alone or in a small team.
We are only accepting applications from people within driving distance of Portland, ME or Cambridge, MA. We are currently headquartered in Portland, ME–the second floor of a gorgeous three-family along the Eastern Prom.–but may relocate to the Boston/Cambridge, MA area.
LibraryThing is more than a job for us. We work long, hard and usually sober, but not necessarily during “regular” hours. We love what we do. We want someone who will feel the same way.

About LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a social cataloging and social networking site for book lovers. Started in August 2005 as a hobby project, LibraryThing has grown to a handful of employees and some 215,000 members in a dozen countries. Members have cataloged 15 million books and applied almost 20 million tags. We are well known in the library world, and rapidly winning over booksellers, authors and publishers.

Contact Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com) for more information, or to send a resume.

Labels: jobs

Monday, June 18th, 2007

LibraryThing Jobs: Hacker/Developer and Sysadmin/DBA

Syadmin/DBA

MySQL. Query optimization, replication, tuning, maintenance, recovery.
Systems administration. Linux administration, security, maintenance and recovery. Installation of new hardware.
Programming. You don’t need to start out a PHP guru, but you’ll have to support this part of the site.
Personal qualities. Speed, intelligence, reliability, high availability, good communication skills and sang-froid.

Hacker/Developer

We’re also looking for a crackerjack PHP/MySQL developer. To qualify you must be passionate, creative, flexible–and fast.

PHP. We write terse, losely modular non-OO code.
HTML, CSS, Javascript.
MySQL. Knowledge of query optimization, replication and MySQL internals a plus.
Design or UI talents a plus.
Knowledge of social networking, math, statistics, collaborative filtering, bibliographic data or library systems a plus.
You must learn quickly and communicate effectively. Skills and attitude matter; experience per se does not.

How We Work

LibraryThing has a somewhat unusual development culture. It is not for everyone.

We develop quickly, knocking out features in hours or days, not weeks. We value results, not process.
We develop incrementally and opportunistically, assuming that member feedback will sometimes overturn our plans in mid-course, and that some projects will fail.
Everyone who works for LibraryThing interacts directly with members.
We value initiative and intellectual engagement. You must be able to work alone or in a small team.
We are only accepting applications from people within driving distance of Portland, ME or Cambridge, MA. We are currently headquartered in Portland, ME–the second floor of a gorgeous three-family along the Eastern Prom.–but may relocate to the Boston/Cambridge, MA area.
LibraryThing is more than a job for us. We work long, hard and usually sober, but not necessarily during “regular” hours. We love what we do. We want someone who will feel the same way.

About LibraryThing

Contact Tim Spalding (tim@librarything.com) for more information, or to send a resume.

Labels: jobs

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Archive for the ‘jobs’ Category

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023

Specifics

The Fine Print

Wednesday, July 5th, 2023

Win $1,000 in Books!

The Job

We Use

Good to Have

Non-Technical

Location and Compensation ($65–130k)

How to Apply

The Fine Print

$1,000 Rules

Monday, December 6th, 2021

Win $1,000 in Books!

The Job

Need to Have

Good to Have

Non-Technical

Location and Compensation ($60–120k)

How to Apply

The Fine Print

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020

Update:

Job Ad: Project Specialist for LibraryThing

You Must

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Compensation

How to Apply

Fine Print

Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

Friday, August 30th, 2013

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

Monday, October 29th, 2012

The Job: Part-time Sysadmin or Full-time Wizard?

Systems Administrator

PHP Programmer

Compensation

How to Apply

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Syadmin/DBA

Hacker/Developer

How We Work

About LibraryThing

Monday, June 18th, 2007

Syadmin/DBA

Hacker/Developer

How We Work

About LibraryThing

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