Help!

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Chris Neale

Know some Javascript? Fancy the start-up life? Usable wants to hear from you.

We’re looking for a motivated web developer with some experience of building web apps (in any language) and knowledge of Javascript to join our small team.

All the usual job things apply;

  • You need to be able to communicate in more than a series of nods and grunts;
  • You need to be able to figure out what you think is the best approach to a problem and then get on with it without needing someone to hold your hand through the process;
  • You need to have a passion for building amazing stuff that ‘just works’ for the user;
  • You need to have built a few things that we can see.

You’ll have a few questions. Here’s the lowdown on us;

  • We’re a funded start-up based in Newcastle Upon Tyne. You’ll need to be based in Newcastle, at least in the short/medium term, and work from our office. We get remote working, we love it, but it won’t work until we know you. Our office is the Ignite Loft, so you’ll be working alongside loads of amazing start-ups, so you’ll probably want to be here anyway.
  • Our front-end code is all JS (with jQuery, Backbone.js, Mustache.js, socket.io, etc), HTML5 and CSS3. Our back-end code is a mix of Python and Node.js, but we’re planning to shift to just Node.
  • We’re a start-up so we can’t pay you massive amounts of cash yet. Someone described us as “the 37 Signals of Newcastle” once though, so that might change.
  • We go to the pub for lunch on Fridays.

If this something that piques your interest then drop us an email at jobs@usablehq.com telling us a little bit about who you are and we’ll go from there.

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Welcome to Usable.

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Chris Neale

Usable is almost 6 months old, so it’s about time we started talking.

Usable, or more accurately Usable HQ Ltd, is a start-up based in the lovely, albeit often freezing cold, city of Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North East of England. We’ve just graduated from the amazing Ignite100 Accelerator Programme, and we’ve won funding from Northstar Ventures and IP Group PLC. Altogether, it’s been an incredible, exciting, and exhausting six months. But that’s just the beginning.

Now we’re set on the road to disrupt the way people do projects. Our first product is all about managing the requirements of a project. Why? There are a few reasons;

  • We’ve got loads of experience running projects in lots of different areas, and we know there’s a huge problem with managing what a project is all about. Something like 50% of projects started every year fail – they’re either over-budget, they’re late, or they’re axed. That’s just in the software world. Outside of that it could be more (or less, obviously. But we’re confident it’s not zero)
  • We know how to solve the problem. It’s not easy, far from it, but we’ve identified something that really big projects do that smaller projects don’t. The reason for this is that the software to help solve the issue is horribly expensive for the most part. We’re bring many of the features of those expensive enterprise tools to smaller projects.
  • We’re incredibly passionate about fixing this problem. It sounds a bit strange to admit that we’re crazy about managing requirements, but we really are. We talk about them all day. When you realise what a well managed set of requirements can bring to your projects you will be too.

Who are we? We’re a team of two developers, Alex and Chris. We buck the start-up trend by being a little older than the usual twenty-something, we’re both experienced developers (more than 15 years each actually), and we’ve each run teams of developers. There’ll be more about us in later posts.

That’s it for now. Follow us on Twitter (@usablehq) for infrequent updates about what we’re doing, check back here regularly for more regular updates, and watch out for Usable Requirements launching in Q2 of this year. It’s going to be huge.

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