Read the original article at NYC Tech Firms Are Hiring – Map

If you haven’t noticed how much the NYC tech scene has grown recently, I’m afraid you’ve been hiding under a rock. It’s simply incredible. Take a look at Mapped In NY a google maps mashup of the growing list popularized by the NY Tech Meetup called Made In New York. b>Join 5000 others and follow [...]

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1. What Recession? – New York Tech Hiring Frenzy
2. Half of NYC Fastest Growing Firms In Tech
3. Hiring is a numbers game
4. Hacking Job Search – Three Meaty Ideas
5. Why you should attend Percona Live 2012

Read the original article at A Pagerank of 5 Is Possible – Here’s How

Join 4500 others and follow Sean Hull on twitter @hullsean. A highly trafficked website is a valuable asset indeed. For a services business it helps you build reputation and reach prospects. Here’s how to get there. 1. Longevity We’ve been around for a while, as you can see from a quick whois search below. I’ve [...]

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1. Top Five Easy Ways to Search Engine Optimization
2. My blog traffic is growing – using 5 killer tactics
3. Web Cornerstone – iHeavy Insights Newsletter 80

Read the original article at Why your cloud is speeding for a scalability cliff

Also find Sean Hull’s ramblings on twitter @hullsean. Don’t believe me that you’re headed for the cliff? A startup scales up to no avail Towards the end of 2012 I worked with an internet startup in the online education space. Their web application was not unusual, built in PHP and using Linux, Apache & Mysql [...]

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1. 3 Ways to Boost Cloud Scalability
2. Cloud Operations Interview
3. Your Database – A Long-Haul Truck Or A Sports Car?
4. 5 Tips for Scalability
5. Cloud Deployment Interview

Read the original article at A master isn’t born but made

A review of Mastery by Robert Greene. Also find Sean Hull’s ramblings on twitter @hullsean. Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power was a great read, offering endless lessons for business and personal dealings. When I saw he just published a new book, I was quick to grab a copy. What I like about his writing [...]

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1. Open Insights 58 – Ownership

Read the original article at Business Agility at AWS re:Invent

Also find Sean Hull’s ramblings on twitter @hullsean. Although I couldn’t be in Vegas to attend re:Invent, there is so much online it’s almost better than being at the conference. From an ongoing live stream of keynotes and sessions, to an archived collection on Youtube. The big wins You may have heard of all the [...]

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1. Migrating Business To The Cloud – Advantages and Challenges
2. Auto-scaling – What is it and why is it important?
3. Business lessons from brokering a half million dollar deal
4. Capacity Planning – What is it and why is it important?
5. Introduction to EC2 Cloud Deployments

Read the original article at Hacking Job Search – Three Meaty Ideas

Also find the author on twitter @hullsean. Demand for talented engineers has never been higher. It is in fact the dirty little secret of the startup industry, that there are simply not enough qualified folks to fill the positions. What this means for you is that you have a lot of options. What it means [...]

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1. Road War Story – Hacking Inflight Solutions
2. Why do people leave consulting?
3. Hiring is a numbers game
4. Going Solo for Fun or Profit?
5. Top Five Easy Ways to Search Engine Optimization

Read the original article at Cloud DBA and Management Interview

What does a cloud computing expert need to know? This is the last of a three part guide to interviewing for a cloud operations position. You can find them here – part one Operations Interview and part two Deployment Interview. Here’s my guide to do just that. 1. Database administration experience Although in some shops [...]

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1. Oracle DBA Interview Questions
2. Cloud Operations Interview
3. Cloud Deployment Interview
4. Top MySQL DBA interview questions (Part 2)
5. Introduction to EC2 Cloud Deployments

Read the original article at Crisis Management in the Crosshairs – Sandy

Crisis Management During Sandy The news this past week has brought endless images of devastation. All metropolitan region, the damage is apparent. More than once in conversation I’ve commented “That’s similar to what I do.” The response is often one of confusion. So I go on to clarify. Web operations is every bit about disaster [...]

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1. Real Disaster Recovery Lessons from Sandy
2. Database Change Management – What is it and why is it important?
3. Configuration Management – What is it and why is it important?
4. 5 Tips for Better Database Change Management
5. What is disaster recovery and why is it important?

Read the original article at Cloud Deployment Interview

What does a cloud computing expert need to know? In part one of the cloud interview guide we covered some basic unix & Linux systems administration skills, and cloud computing and infrastructure concepts. Those are key starting points. You might also want to jump to part 3 cloud dba, architecture and management interview questions. In [...]

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1. Cloud Operations Interview
2. 4 Considerations Migrating to The Cloud
3. Cloud Computing – Disciplined Deployments
4. Introduction to EC2 Cloud Deployments
5. 5 Steps to Cloud Computing

Read the original article at Real Disaster Recovery Lessons from Sandy

Also find Sean Hull’s ramblings on twitter @hullsean. Having just spent the last 24 hours in lower manhattan, while Hurricane Sandy rolled through, it’s offered some first hand lessons on disaster recovery. Watching the city and state officials, Con Edison, first responders and hospitals deal with the disaster brings some salient insights. 1. What are [...]

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1. What is disaster recovery and why is it important?
2. MySQL Disaster Recovery
3. Disaster Recovery Services
4. Backup and Recovery in EC2 – 5 Point Checklist
5. High Availability – What is it and why is it important?

Read the original article at Cloud Operations Interview

What does a cloud computing expert need to know? How do you hire a cloud computing expert? Competition for operations & DBAs is fierce, so you’ll want to know how to find the best. If you’re a systems administrator or ops guy, you may want to prepare for an interview for such a position. Meanwhile, [...]

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1. 3 things CEOs should know about the Cloud
2. Review: Host Your Web Site In The Cloud, Amazon Web Services Made Easy
3. 3 Ways to Boost Cloud Scalability
4. Cloud Computing – Disciplined Deployments
5. Oracle DBA Interview Questions

Read the original article at AirBNB didn’t have to fail

Today part of Amazon Web Services failed, taking down with it a slew of startups that all run on Amazon’s Cloud infrastructure. AirBNB was one of the biggest, but also Heroku, Reddit, Minecraft, Flipboard & Coursera down with it. Its not the first time. What the heck happened, and why should we care? 1. Root [...]

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1. 5 Ways to Avoid EC2 Outages
2. Cloud Computing – Disciplined Deployments
3. Introduction to EC2 Cloud Deployments
4. How To Build Highly Scalable Web Applications For The Cloud
5. Zero Downtime – What is it and why is it important?

Read the original article at Going Solo for Fun or Profit?

Sara Horowitz has serious chops. Independent herself, she started Freelancer’s Union way back in 1995. Back then it was tougher as a freelancer. Through her great efforts, we’ve all benefited. So when I saw she’d published a guide called “Freelancer’s Bible”, I was quick to grab a copy. And the book doesn’t disappoint. I wish [...]

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1. Why do people leave consulting?
2. You’re Too Young To Be My Boss
3. Thank You for Arguing – Persuasion for fun and profit
4. iHeavy Insights 63 – Slow To Credit

Read the original article at Why do people leave consulting?

As a long time freelancer, it’s a question that’s intrigued me for some time. I do have some theories… First, definitions… I’m not talking about working for a large consulting firm. Although this role may be called “consultant”, my meaning is consultant as sole proprietor, entrepreneur, gun for hire or lone wolf. 1. Make more [...]

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1. Consulting essentials: Getting the business
2. Consulting essentials: Building your business
3. Hiring is a numbers game
4. MySQL Consulting in New York
5. Database Heavy Lifting – Consulting and Professional Services

Read the original article at Anatomy of a Performance Review

A lot of firms come to us with a specific scalability problem. “Our user base is growing rapidly and the website is falling over!” Or they’re selling more widgets, “Our shopping cart is slowing down and we’re seeing users abandon their purchases”. These are real startup growing pains, so what to do? We like to [...]

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1. iHeavy Insights 81 – Web Performance Metrics
2. Performance Metrics – What are they and why are they important?
3. Ask Me Questions – Scalability, Performance, Cloud Computing
4. How To Build Highly Scalable Web Applications For The Cloud

Read the original article at Hiring is a numbers game

On a recent twitter chat (#hfchat) I posted some comments about hiring. Some folks were complaining that they had applied to various jobs, and not heard back. I commented… In today’s market, there are hundreds of job applicants for every position. Sad to say, but that means things become a blur after a while. There’s [...]

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1. What Recession? – New York Tech Hiring Frenzy

Read the original article at Why you should attend Percona Live 2012

What I loved about Percona Live 2011 Last year I was excited to go to Percona Live for the first time in NYC. I arrived just in time to hear Harrison Fisk from Facebook speak about some of the awesome tweaks they’re running with MySQL there. It’s not everyday that you get to hear from [...]

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Read the original article at Upcoming for Scalable Startups

Just back from the Labor Day holiday, and ready to dive back in. I thought this would be a great time to outline some of our upcoming topics so here goes… 1. Why Oracle usability sucks - a rant about Oracle’s weak points In the meantime take a peek at our piece on why we [...]

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1. How To Build Highly Scalable Web Applications For The Cloud
2. Scalability Rules for managers and startups
3. Object Relational Mapper – What is it and why is it important?
4. Karma – Oracle Database Monitoring

Read the original article at 31 Essential Blogs for Startups & Scalability

So many blogs, so little time! Here’s our list of the best we’ve found. Currently our favorite reader is Pulse pictured left. Starting to play around with flipboard too. Nuts & Bolts Technical Slashdot One of the original tech blogs, that still covers lots of breaking news, and difficult topics. Very technical, with probing commentary. [...]

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1. Scalability Rules for managers and startups
2. 5 things toxic to scalability
3. Great Interactive Map of NYC Startups
4. Ask Me Questions – Scalability, Performance, Cloud Computing
5. Best of Guide – Highlights of Our Popular Content

Read the original article at Opportunity a day – career risk at bay

Free Agent. Stress Test. Avoid Sameness As the globalization juggernaut rolls on, it continues to create more Detroits. Skills and perspectives quickly become obsolete. What to do in the face of such change? So there’s your quick answer. Get the book if you want more! Some related material: why is it so hard to find [...]

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1. The risk of living in a filter bubble
2. Business plans are bunk

Read the original article at Sometimes… let things break a little

Have you ever started a new project, just into it you realize that maybe there aren’t technical problems to solve? It starts to dawn on you the real crux of the problem boils down to people & processes? It’s happened to me on a number of occasions, but once in particular really stands out for [...]

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Read the original article at Where’s my 80 million dollars?

Way back in the heydays of the dot-com boom, the year is 1999. I worked for a medium size internet startup called Method Five. When I came on board they were having a terrible time with their site performance. Website crashing When I first met the team, I was tasked with performance problems. After all [...]

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1. Business lessons from brokering a half million dollar deal

Read the original article at You’re Too Young To Be My Boss

About a year ago I engaged with a firm to do some operations work on their site. They provided services to colleges and universities. When they first reached out to me, they were rather quick to respond to my proposal. They seemed to think the quote was very reasonable. I also did some due diligence [...]

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1. Consulting essentials: Managing & Completing Engagements

Read the original article at A CTO Must Never Do This…

A couple years back I was contacted to look at a very strange problem. The firm ran flash sales. An email goes out at noon, the website traffic explodes for a couple of hours, then settles back down to a trickle. Of course you might imagine where this is going. During that peak, the MySQL [...]

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Read the original article at Half of NYC Fastest Growing Firms In Tech

If there was ever any question about the exploding tech scene in New York City circa 2012, check out Crains recent 50 fastest growing firms. #3 Thrillist City guide & lifestyle site for men. #5 Usablenet Provides a powerful platform for content delivery to mobile & tablets as well as laptops. #8 Admarketplace A leader [...]

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1. What Recession? – New York Tech Hiring Frenzy
2. About
3. Seattle Web Tech Meetup Nov 21