By David Hendee on
in
Everything Else
2000: what a year! Steve Ballmer became CEO of Microsoft, the PS2 had just come out, the first crew boarded the International Space Station, and Carbon Five was founded. Continue reading …
By Courtney Hemphill on
in
Culture, Everything Else
Psychological Safety is the shared belief that everyone within an organization can take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed. Almost as simple as it sounds – it’s the idea that employees feel safe to do their best work.
When an organization prioritizes psychological safety it creates an environment that also promotes inclusivity. It ensures that everyone from different backgrounds, mindsets, and life experiences can share their thoughts or ideas and not be punished for them. Organizations that are struggling to retain employees or attract new and diverse talent should look at their processes for encouraging employees to take calculated risks without punishment. Continue reading …
By Zoe Madden-Wood on
in
Culture, Everything Else
With any field, and especially programming, learning is integral. Technology changes. The field of programming is vast. To be a good programmer, you need to continue to learn and develop. In addition to learning outside of work, co-workers are often excited to learn together at work or through work. I know personally, I’m a social learner and enjoy the camaraderie that comes from struggling through a new topic together. Continue reading …
By Zoe Madden-Wood on
in
Everything Else
One month ago I was on a panel at Grace Hopper, “Startups, Big Companies, Silicon Valley, Government Contractor — What’s the right career path for you?”. I was speaking mostly to software engineers who were just entering their career post-college or transitioning from their first job. I was on the panel with four other talented software engineers from a range of job experiences, Sha-Mayn Teh (Teachers Pay Teachers), Jennifer Liu (Quizlet), Neena Parikh (Benchling), and Stephanie deWet (Pinterest). Here are some of the thoughts I personally shared with the room on how to decide on what kind of company to work for.
By Ken Shimizu on
in
Development, Everything Else, JavaScript
React Native is an emerging platform in the mobile space that allows developers to write native apps in Javascript without having to learn Java or Swift. It’s great conceptually, but developers end up having to write NativeModules (for iOS and Android) anyway because it lacks the tools that other frameworks generally provide. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to pass your build environment from the native environment to your javascript environment. In the process, you should get a better idea of how to build simple NativeModules.
By Anna Neyzberg on
in
Everything Else
When the opportunity came up to participate in the Carbon Five apprenticeship program in April, I was first in line. With two other apprentices, I spent the next three months at Carbon Five, working alongside a mentor across client and internal projects.
I had been working as a junior developer for about a year and was looking for an opportunity that provided mentorship that would allow me to level-up my skill set. I would often be asked why quit your job and take an apprenticeship position when you are already working. Yet given the experience I had, if all apprenticeships were like that of Carbon Five, I think they would be invaluable to any junior developer. So why? Continue reading …
By Rudy Jahchan on
in
C5 Labs, Development, Everything Else
Thanks to PokemonGO, the streets are filled with people racing around cities, stopping to interact with virtual characters they could see through their phone camera. The experience is familiar to us at Carbon Five; 6 months ago we were doing the same thing on the streets of San Francisco playing our own augmented reality game. A game our tiny, three person team conceived, built and delivered in under a month, in and around our regular client workload!
This was no simple feat. In addition to the tight timeline, most of our day to day work focuses on mobile and web applications. Working in 3D was something only some of us have tried, with little practical experience.
So how did we do it?
By Rudy Jahchan on
in
Everything Else
Excitement continues to grow around the functional programming language Elixir and it’s web framework Phoenix. Many are intrigued by the pair’s ability to scale due to the Erlang VM while remaining maintainable and understandable thanks to their Ruby and Rails pedigree.
But is it production ready? Should you consider it for your next project? Basically, is it time to drink the Elixir? It’s a question we’ve answered before and we want to continue that conversation.
That’s why we’re inviting you to our next Talk Night, centering on the practical use and adoption of this exciting new language.
By Francesca Darlington on
in
Culture, Development, Everything Else
Twice a year, all of the Carbon Five offices congregate for our company-wide Summit. One of the funnest parts of these all company trips is the Codeo, which we have been running for the last few years and they have become an integral part of our DNA.
For those that don’t know, our Codeo (short for “Code Rodeo”) is a 2-day internal hackathon. The goal of the Codeo is to have fun creating a product with people you haven’t had a chance to work with in a while (or maybe ever).
The teams are made up of mixture of office locations and cross-functional groups so that everyone has a different role to play (developers, designers, product manager, and operations). The focus of this Codeo was “Slackbots” with the overall goal to create something that helps out our co-workers and/or Carbon Five as a whole. The only rule was to use an existing internal Slack channel as inspiration for the project.
Here is a snapshot of each team’s Slackbot, as told by the team. Continue reading …
By Alexa Roman on
in
Everything Else, Startups
We’re catching up with some of the most inspiring founders we’ve worked with to share insights and advice from their experience of starting and growing businesses. Recently, we worked with the Joyable team on their iOS app, and we were inspired by their customer-focused mindset. For those who are not yet familiar, Joyable offers an online Cognitive Behavioral Therapy program to help individuals overcome social anxiety. Every decision made by Pete and Steve from the outset was validated by real consumer experience.
We also published an extended version of this interview on Medium.
1) What was the “aha moment” that motivated you to start Joyable?
Pete: I knew I wanted to do something in healthcare, and I wanted to see problems on the ground [and] do some customer development work. So I convinced some doctors at Stanford Hospital, where I was in business school, to let me shadow them. I followed doctors in the emergency room for eight hours a day. It was fascinating and really fun. As anyone who works in a hospital will tell you, there are many things that can be improved in hospitals— even at great hospitals.
That hit me really hard. This idea that someone was in bad enough shape that they went to an emergency room, and they were being told to wait three months. – Pete Shalek
