Help Scout Blog

I've been assembling a list of these lately for a book that I'm working on. (http://startingandsustaining.com) Some of the categories are fairly loose as some apps don't fit nicely into categorical buckets, but hopefully this is a helpful list.

--Browser/Email Testing

BrowserStack (http://www.browserstack.com)

Litmus (http://litmus.com)

--Bug/Issue Tracking

BugHerd (http://bugherd.com)

Lighthouse (http://lighthouseapp.com)

Sifter (http://sifterapp.com) (Disclaimer: I built this.)

--Planning & Project Management

Sprintly (http://sprint.ly)

Podio (https://podio.com)

Flow (http://www.getflow.com)

Interstate (http://interstateapp.com)

Basecamp (http://basecamp.com)

Apollo (http://www.apollohq.com)

Pivotal (http://www.pivotaltracker.com)

Asana (http://www.asana.com)

Trello (https://trello.com)

Blossom (https://www.blossom.io)

Trajectory (https://www.apptrajectory.com)

--Business & Traffic Analytics

KissMetrics (http://kissmetrics.com)

MixPanel (http://mixpanel.com)

DigMyData (http://digmydata.com)

--Continuous Integration / Code Quality

Travis (https://travis-ci.org)

Circle (http://circleci.com)

CodeClimate (http://codeclimate.com)

Sempaphore (https://semaphoreapp.com)

--Dashboards

Ducksboard (http://ducksboard.com)

Geckoboard (http://www.geckoboard.com)

Instrumental (https://instrumentalapp.com)

--Error/Exception Handling

Sentry (https://getsentry.com)

Coalmine (https://www.getcoalmine.com)

HoneyBadger (https://www.honeybadger.io)

BugSnag…

Help Scout | Site Reliability Engineer | REMOTE | helpscout.com
Apply at https://help-scout.workable.com/jobs/171036

YOUR IMPACT
As Help Scout's first dedicated Site Reliability Engineer you will own and define the best practices, tools and automation to ensure our fast growing SaaS provides high availability while increasing engineering velocity. Your work will empower more than 6,000 businesses around the world to deliver a great customer support experience. This is a critical role that will influence every engineer in the company and directly impact our customer's satisfaction.

ABOUT THE ROLE
We are looking for an experienced Site Reliability Engineer to build sophisticated continuous delivery and test automation to keep our AWS-based services highly available and fast while increasing the engineering team's velocity.
Help Scout engineering is 24 full time engineers organized into 6 teams. You will be a member of a small team with one engineer focused on continuous delivery (CD) pipelines, and 3 engineers focused on our AWS infrastructure and operations. Working with your team, you will partner with our feature delivery teams to build any automation they need to improve site reliability and velocity.
You will be responsible for working on our three biggest site reliability priorities: four 9s high availability, continuous delivery and test automation. You will own the implementation and roadmap planning for improvements to our automation, tools and tests to support…

1) Startups/business. If you haven't, I would read all of Paul Grahams essays. I think startups are a great option (http://www.collegeanswerz.com/risks-and-rewards-of-startups), but even if you don't end up starting one, you should understand the business. I would also highly recommend reading Rework.

2) Your site. The top part (good design is good business) and the footer (contact me) are solid, but the rest could use a lot of work. The periods in the 'Hi there' paragraph are on the next line. Could just be my browser, but something you should look into. That paragraph definitely should be "nicer". Maybe something like this: http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/2.3.2/examples/carousel.html. The design of the case study is solid.

The main problem with your site I think is the lack of information. Tell us more about yourself. What you do? What are your aspirations? Hobbies? Thoughts/opinions? Show us that you know design and programming by telling us your philosophies. Also, have a blog (http://nathanmarz.com/blog/break-into-silicon-valley-with-a-blog-1.html).

3) Design resources. I'm new to programming and design too (~ 1 year of on and off experience), but there are some resources that have helped me a lot.
- Definitely learn bootstrap (http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/index.html).
- Best resource on typography (http://practicaltypography.com/)
- Best resource on color (https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/)
- Amazing…

Help Scout - Java engineer - [REMOTE or LOCAL]
Headquarters: Boston | http://www.helpscout.net

Help Scout is a help desk that is completely transparent to customers yet highly useful for teams that utilize it. It works by parsing all incoming customer emails and provides a consolidated mailbox view allowing multiple users in the backend to interact with customers, assign to other team members and a whole host of other features such as statistical reports, automated workflows and integrated 3rd party services.

I work as one of the Java programmers at Help Scout alongside 7 other senior programmers. It's a great company to work for, everyone is really passionate about what we are offering to our customers and code quality. The majority of the engineering team work remotely and are based in the US (except myself in Barcelona). We communicate 90% of the time via Slack and the position really allows you to 'own' your area of expertise, no long meetings, fast development and above all you are trusted to make the right decisions.

If any of that interests you then you can apply here: http://help-scout.workable.com/jobs/24579 or read more about the company here: http://www.helpscout.net/about/

Feel free to reach out to me on this thread or via my work email owen@helpscout.com if you have any questions about the role!

Technologies we use:
- Java 7 and 8
- Play framework
- MySQL, MongoDB. Solr
- RabbitMQ

Here are my notes on possibilities, for if we ever actually get a CRM:

1. HelpScout -- http://helpscout.net -- Seems nice

2. SupportBee -- http://supportbee.com -- Almost want it for the name alone but we got an anti-recommendation from a friend at Gratipay

3. BeSnappy -- http://besnappy.com -- Possibly recommended by patio11 but then I heard they shut down?

4. Intercom -- http://intercom.io -- Recommended by Matt at HookFeed

5. FreshDesk -- http://freshdesk.com -- Recommendation from friend at Gratipay

6. Front -- https://frontapp.com/ -- Lots of funding and big names behind it; Patrick Collison recommened it now too (coupon code for 3 months free: startuppack)

7. FogBugz -- http://blog.fogcreek.com/fog-creeks-email-workflow/ -- Blog post by Fog Creek about what they do

1. Tweet surveys out to hashtags.

2. Go (literally, physically) to places where your customers hang out. (Starbucks.)

3. Post in Facebook groups you think your customers would Like.

4. Post in LinkedIn groups you think professionals who'd buy your tool would participate in.

5. etc.

There are so many examples out there. Just brew some coffee, Google "how to get customer feedback", and take notes for an hour. You'll be set for at least a week of experiments.

* http://blog.kissmetrics.com/best-ways-to-get-feedback/

* https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-feedback/

* http://www.desk.com/blog/customer-feedback/

* http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/09/17/customer-reviews-that-convert/

* http://insideintercom.io/3-rules-for-customer-feedback/