klauskomenda.com » Job

Listen to the voices

Klaus — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:23:11 +0000

I am on my way back to the US after spending some nice days over Christmas with my family in Vienna. While I was there and especially now, heading back to the US, I am reflecting on my decisions that led me to a life on the West Coast of the United States of America.

When I am in Austria, which is, these days, only once a year for Christmas, usually one of the first questions I get from relatives is “So how do you like it there?”, which is the obvious conversation opener. But they save the real important question for later “When are you coming back?”.

“Not any time soon”, is usually what I respond.

Taking public transport and walking around in the city, I had some time to think about what it is that really makes me look forward to coming back to the US. I am trying to collect these thoughts and put them into meaningful writing in the following paragraphs. One could write a book about these issues (and most likely someone already has), but I am not trying to be scientific here. I am just speaking from the point of view of someone who, unlike what the average Austrian would do, left his home town, to, first, go to London and then taking an even bigger leap to move to the United States to seek a better job and, in a sense, a better life and a better future.

The Rising

After the second world war and gaining sovereignty in 1955, Austria prospered due to an immense effort being put into rebuilding the country after much of it was destroyed in the war. The social democratic party in power was more worried about creating a social infrastructure and safety net than about who will be responsible for the debt that incurred in those years. Fast forward, Austria grew to become one of the richest countries in the world, not at least for its key geographical location for economic ties to Eastern Europe and Russia, and joined the European Union in 1995.

Tourism contributed its fair share to this incline. Austria, and especially Vienna, is incredibly rich when it comes to history and culture. Tourists love this city for its magnificent old buildings, artifacts of a former large empire. According to several studies, Vienna continuously ranks high among the most livable cities.

Stuck the past?

However, I see some truth in the lyrics of Rainhard Fendrich, a Vienna-born “Austropop” musician. In his unofficial Austrian anthem “I am from Austria”, he writes “Dei Hohezeit is lang vorueber”, which essentially translates to: “Your best time is behind you” (referring to Austria, the country). I never paid much attention to that line in the lyrics, but it started to make more sense to me viewing my native country from the distance.

Everyday life in Vienna is influenced heavily by its past, but unfortunately not so much by the present and the future. I am trying to identify a few key distinct issues:

Materialism, jealousy and titles. Americans like to show their wealth, no doubt about that, but the difference is that people in Vienna look at other peoples wealth with jealousy more often, they frown upon others driving bigger, more expensive cars, have a bigger house or a better job, attributing it to luck, a win in the lottery or just “knowing the right people” (which, actually, might be justified in many cases). Nowhere else I have seen people bragging about having as many as 5 different titles, even engraved on their grave stone. It screams of “look what I have achieved, look at me!”
Thinking outside the box. Not. It is widely known that very few Americans own a passport and very few actually know what the world outside the US really looks like. To the contrary, lots of Austrians have a passport, they use it for traveling to popular beach vacation destinations in e.g. Italy and Greece. However, only a minority would consider moving abroad for even a limited amount of time to leave their comfort zone and experience life in a different culture, city and country.
“We have always done things this way”. Viennese (I can’t really speak for all of Austria here) are afraid of change. Too often people choose certain career paths because its the socially accepted way to do and will lead to prestige, a nice big (German) car and a house in the countryside. Entrepreneurship is, so it seems to me, more discouraged than encouraged. In the US, however, I feel you can become whatever you want, and nobody will look at you in disgust if “out” yourself as a musician or a painter. Questioning things, risk-taking and exploring new ways (of thinking) are not necessarily strengths of the Viennese.

Refugee haven

One particular problem that has always been an issue in the past decade (and even before that), but became more prevalent recently is immigration. Austria was always known, not at least from the civil war in Yugoslavia, to take on refugees and giving them shelter and social care. Its geographical location, bordering so many other countries, also makes Austria the ideal destination for people fleeing from corruption, poverty and economic distress in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, it seems that this over-welcoming hospitality is growing into an ever increasing problem that, when not dealt with, might put the whole social system and, subsequently, society in danger. People are being accepted into the country that don’t contribute anything to either the Austrian society, nor economy but rather exploit the social security system for their own (and their families) benefit. Resulting in an ever growing financial burden for society. No wonder that right-wing parties like the FPÖ (formerly headed by Jörg Haider, now by Heinz-Christian Strache) are gaining more and more votes with each election.

You can have your own opinion about how the US handles immigration, a reform seems long overdue, but one thing remains true: The United States only (legally) accept people into the country, if these are willing to contribute to the economy. “You are a foreigner and out of a job? Get the hell back to where you came from!”.

Job opportunities

This brings me back to probably the main reason why I feel that the US is the place for me: job opportunities. Working in the internet business, the place to be is still Silicon Valley. Yahoo! is, despite struggling to get back up, still a big player and a big name in the business and being able to work for such a company is an opportunity that I would never find in Austria. And even if things would some day not work out any longer between me and Yahoo!, there are plenty of other companies in the Valley that would provide equally or even more interesting jobs.

Conclusion

Of course this is a highly subjective analysis of my particular situation, my personal thoughts and opinions. Others might (and probably will) disagree with some statements I made here and that is perfectly fine. Others might see Austria or certain issues I noted here differently. Feel free to disagree.

Listening to my inner voice, it tells me that Austria is a dead end (or rather a country to retire in), but not a country of possibilities, that provides room and opportunity to change and grow. As of right now, the US is that country for me. Will it be that country forever? Maybe not. All I can do is live my life, listen to my inner voice and see what the future brings.

First Days in the New World

Klaus — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:03:10 +0000

My bags were packed, I got my visa and my passport in my pocket. And so I jumped on a plane on November 12 to go to San Francisco via Munich. I have been over here for a little bit over a week now in total and I am glad to say: I like it. I like it a lot.

Until I have figured out where I would want to live here in California, whether in San Francisco or closer to the Yahoo! office in Sunnyvale (although I am currently leaning more towards the latter), I am lucky to have a friend like Cindy who lets me crash at her place for now. Thanksgiving is coming up and I am the one who has to be thankful for that. Also, because of her, I was able to meet up with some nice people like Marianne, Craig and Daniel. I was also able to catch up with my Web Developer mates from London: Marco and Ben. And because of Cindy’s status as a web celebrity, one needs to be prepared to do a lot of partying, like Marianne’s birthday at Foreign Cinema, Ben’s housewarming party…wow, I am already partied out and could use some relax time.

But that’s not happening. I had my first day at Yahoo! last Monday and had to go through New Hire Orientation—although I am technically not a new hire. But anyways. Also got a new MacBook Pro, which is nice.

If you guys are curious, I am gonna be working on the new Universal Profile, which was redone and a beta version launched just recently.

As stated above, I really like it so far. The weather is nice (apart from today, where it is a bit cloudy), the people I have met so far were all nice and welcoming. San Francisco as a city is, by far, not as busy as London, much more spacious and with its location at the Pacific, it makes it a place you just have to like.

The only thing I pretty much hate right now is the commute from San Fran to Sunnyvale, which takes about 1 to 1.5 hours one way. Yahoo! provides a shuttle service from San Francisco and back, equipped with nice leather seats and even WiFi. All nice, but I still consider these 2 to 3 hours every day pretty much wasted. Which is why I am more leaning towards finding a place closer to the office, in Sunnyvale or Palo Alto. I will think about that during the next couple of weeks.

To sum it up: All good here in California. I like it here and, most of all, I am enjoying it.

Whole Lot Of Leavin’

Klaus — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:18:14 +0000

When I came to London in May 2007, it was because of the great opportunity Yahoo! provided me. I got the chance of working with Europe’s finest Web Developers, gaining a lot of knowledge and experience. Furthermore, working in London, a great and big city I have only been to as a tourist. An adventure, an exciting one, so I thought at that time. And it was.

Living in London

When I arrived, I moved into a pretty small studio flat in Camden, but relatively close to work, so easily reachable by bus, tube or even by foot. On the other hand, Camden is a pretty busy, lively and noisy area. All the places I have lived before that, I was never used to be exposed to traffic noise or music from nearby pubs. Or hearing drunk people yelling on the street at 2am in the morning, for that matter.

And London itself is a pretty condensed city. I get the impression that it was originally planned for 1–2 million people at max, but effectively 7 million live here, many of which use the tube every day. And much like the main streets, the tube seems to burst at the seams during rush hour. Fun is certainly something else.

What I probably miss the most here is nature and not being able to escape the city life easily. You can’t do that by staying in the city, cause if the weather is nice (and that doesn’t happen often) literally millions of Londoners make their way to the parks. So you could go somewhere out, which is possible, don’t get me wrong, but it just takes a while (maybe with some strikes or line closures along the way) and you won’t be the only one having that idea, especially on weekends.

I used to bike to work at other places I have lived. Even though I see co-workers doing that, it just looks pretty dangerous to me. Some people are talking about having a little “accident” with a bus or a cab from time to time and considering the fumes…I’d rather not do that. Well, I did not even have to think about it, cause I didn’t even have the space in my flat to put a bike somewhere

Which leads me to money. My opinion is: You get paid more here in London, but you also spend more than almost anywhere else. Except maybe other expensive cities like Moscow or Oslo. But the quality of life that one would expect by paying almost 1000 British Pounds per month for a flat is just not there. No way. In the end it comes down to a simple question: For the money I am spending, am I getting back what I would expect? The answer for me here in London is: No.

Don’t get me wrong, London has a lot to offer. There is always something going on, which makes it pretty lively and interesting, especially for tourists and visitors in general. At the same time, there are so many history-rich sites and buildings. You can do something different every day, every weekend and not get bored. In fact, you would not be able to keep up with all the things happening. Which is great, don’t get me wrong. I really liked to explore new parts of the city and seeing new places.

But in the end, I believe those things were less important to me. Apart from my 6 months internship in New York City in 2005, I have always lived in pretty quiet, residential areas, with lots of green spaces around, easy access to nature and mountains. My parents’ place in Vienna for example is a house with a nice garden and within minutes from the Donauinsel where you feel miles away from the city life, even though you are still pretty close to the center. Dornbirn, where I studied, has 50,000 inhabitants, is close to Lake Constance, and has forests and mountains all around. I used to do mountain biking there a lot and I could have happened easily to not meet a single person for 3 hours whilst cycling up one of the mountains. I really loved that. And I did miss that a lot here.

Working at Yahoo! in London

Work is a bit of a different story. First of all, I got the chance to work with the finest guild you might find all over Europe when it comes to Front-End Web Development. I have no doubt about that. And that alone was worth accepting the offer back in 2007 and coming to London.

On the first project that I was working on, I got the chance to work with Drew, which was really cool and I met Simon, with whom I did a private project later on. And, of course, Jimmy, who I would say became my closest friend here in London, who gave me guitar lessons and helped me to keep my head above the water when things weren’t going so great.

Like the other two, Jimmy moved on to greener pastures as well. To Chile, in his case. In general, many of the people that where working for Yahoo! when I started have left the company in the meantime, which certainly did not help either.

Leaving and moving…again

I bet it’s warm in California,
I think it’s time to hit the road

Whole Lot Of Leavin by Bon Jovi

When I decided to undertake the adventure of moving to London, I thought that I will give it some time and see how it goes. If I like it, I can stay here for quite a while. If I don’t like it, I can move on. And that is what I will do in the end.

Around May this year I made the decision that London is not the city for me. It just did not work between us. Once you have figured that out, there is not much sense in arguing with yourself about it. It is time to move on. At that time I started to make contact with some people in the Yahoo! Headquarter in Sunnyvale and finally, a couple of weeks ago, we reached an agreement. So if everything goes to plan, I will have my first day at Yahoo! in California on November 17.

If I could turn back time, would I do it again? Would I go to London? Yes, absolutely. Cause the things I have learned, the things I have experienced during my time here in London were great. Some things were just incredibly awesome, some things were painful. But that’s life I guess. I think that I was able to improve myself as a person, which, for me, is already a big achievement.

I still have a couple of weeks here in London and I am planning to get the most out of my time left here. But come end of October, I will need to pack my bags and move on. To greener pastures, as well, or so I hope. California Dreamin’.

Where does the Frontend end?

Klaus — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:46:17 +0000

The young, and maybe immature industry that we still are in the business of web development, still has not figured out what we should call that geeky guy in the corner, in his casual outfit, focussed on the screen of his Mac and talking about strange things like “Web Standards”, “Progressive Enhancement” and “Microformats” (I only know “Letter” and A4). We haven’t yet figured out how to call him, whether it should be “Web Developer” or “Frontend Engineer”. But we know what he should do, right? He should build the damn weird thing so that it looks like the marvellous mocks from our hip designer, for chrissake. Yeah, exactly.

If we take that and say that there is “Frontend” and “Backend”, we certainly need to put our guy on the Frontend side. But where does the “Frontend” actually “end”?

I have been working at my current company for a bit over a year now and I have been on 3 different projects. On the first one, we worked in pairs on new features, where each pair consisted of a backend engineer and a frontend engineer/web developer. The backend person had to deal with all the stuff that one would relate to backend, such as:

Setting up Apache rewrite rules for SEO friendly URLs
Getting the appropriate data out of the framework/database and provide them to the templates in the frontend
Doing the data processing when it comes to form submits
(add more similar things here)

As a frontend guy, I had to take care of the following:

Implement the mock from the designer using HTML, CSS and JavaScript in one of the templates inside the framework
Using the data provided from the backend guy and displaying it in the template (usually not anything complex, so e.g. looping through an array)

I find this a nice separation and it gives the frontend person enough “room” to focus on the things he is good at: implementing the pages in nice, proper and semantic HTML, CSS and JavaScript, adhering to Web Standards.

But on another project, it worked completely different. I, as the frontend person, was responsible for, what I think, more stuff that I should actually be responsible for. Apart from the things mentioned above, my responsibilities were, amongst others:

Owning the entire framework tree, including the libraries that are responsible for MVC, which obviously included talking to the database layer (actually setting up the appropriate functions and classes), extracting the appropriate variables out of the response, feeding them into the template.
Validating and processing form responses
Messing around with setting up rewrite rules

I think there are 2 sides to this. On one side, it is a great challenge and experience to not only touch templates, CSS and JavaScript, but also dive deeper into the layers behind. There is nothing wrong with that and adding those skills to your skill set. But on the other hand, it adds another huge area of responsibilities to the ones that you already have, namely to make sure that the page adheres to Web Standards, renders correctly in different browsers, degrades gracefully when certain technologies (JavaScript, CSS) are not available, and so on and so forth.

Of course, if you have a guy at hand who is a whiz in the frontend AND the backend, lucky you. Of course you would put that person in charge of all these things cause you can be certain that he can handle that. But my question is rather: Should a frontend developer be made responsible for things that are, actually, more related to backend?

Yahoo! is hiring: Junior Web Developers

Klaus — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:16:55 +0000

Even though there is some noise currently in the media about Yahoo! and some other company, Y! (as we like to refer to it, because we are cool and hip — or lazy) was and is a great place to work for a Web Developer. And we are hiring. Specifically for London, we are looking for Junior Web Developers to extend our team here in the UK. Please find the detailed job description below or just download the PDF.

Yahoo! Junior Web Developer — Job Description

As the world’s number one Internet brand Yahoo! delivers news, entertainment, information and fun to over a half billion people every day. Our European web development team, based in London, is seeking standards-savvy front-end developers to work on Europe’s busiest sites.

You should be able to provide examples of your work showing use of progressive enhancement techniques (e.g. unobtrusive scripting), and clear separation of structure, presentation and behaviour layers.

Required Skills

Hand-coded (X)HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
Solid knowledge of standards-based, accessible, cross-browser web development
PHP programming skills
User-level experience with BSD/Linux
Experience using version control systems such as CVS & Subversion

Desirable Skills

Client– and server–side performance optimisation techniques
Search engine optimisation
Experience in developing web applications with rich client interfaces using AJAX, drag and drop, and other DOM Scripting techniques
Experience with JavaScript libraries, especially the YUI
Experience of Web Services (eg REST, SOAP, XML-RPC)
Knowledge of web site internationalisation issues and experience developing web sites in multiple languages particularly in Europe
Use of the following technologies: XML/XSLT, Perl, Microformats, JSON, Flash/Flex
Experience developing functionality/applications by assembling existing code modules

Responsibilities

You will work closely with Information Architects, Visual Designers, User Researchers, Software Engineers, and Product Managers to ensure that our web based products in Europe provide the best possible experience for our users.

Does that sound like you? Then either leave your comment below, get in contact using the contact form or send me your CV to mail at klauskomenda . com.

London – Vienna – London

Klaus — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:17:21 +0000

For the long last weekend I flew to my home city, Vienna. It was nice to be back for the weekend, visiting my parents and meeting friends. The downside: it was kinda stressful, cause my plane landed at Vienna International Airport 2pm on Saturday (via Frankfurt) and I had to fly back to London Monday 5pm (via Düsseldorf). So there was lots of stuff to do, but basically not enough time.

When I came back to London Monday night, it was freezing cold, and I thought: “Well, that was a short summer this year.”. Tuesday was bad as well, but towards the weekend it got better and better, with temperatures around 20° celcius. The weekend should be nice as well.

To let you know how our office looks like, I took some pictures on Friday. A place at the window would be nice, but you can’t have everything right. I don’t wanna sound ungrateful, cause I have a new and shiny MacBook Pro and a large screen, as posted earlier. I am satisfied .

First week in London at Yahoo!

Klaus — Sat, 19 May 2007 12:04:41 +0000

First week in London is done and dusted. And I am still alive. Well, no, just kiddin. It was actually a really good start. But as I had to learn and adapt to new things, I am a bit stressed out as well and try to relax this weekend.

I kinda expected that my MacBook Pro would not be ready on my start date, they told me that it might take a couple more weeks until I get it. But my tears dried quickly, cause they gave me my monitor. It’s always nice to have a 24” flat panel screen to work with . Apart from such administrative stuff (I received my final badge Friday), I spent most of the time getting familiar with the project that I will be working on with Drew over the next couple of months and getting up to speed with the YUI library.

I haven’t done anything with YUI before. So getting to know what the library has to offer and learning the singleton/module pattern syntax introduced by Douglas Crockford caused me some headaches this week. It’s really great stuff, but I need to get used to it and learn how it works.

Apart from relaxing, I actually won’t do much this weekend. I am gonna play a bit with the YUI stuff and start converting my current javascript files to the YUI and the new syntax. Well, what else…I definitely should go running in Regent’s Park, cause it’s kinda nice outside.

First day at Yahoo!

Klaus — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:16:35 +0000

Gosh. My first day at the Yahoo! Office in London. Unbelievable. If anyone would have told me that 6 months ago, I would have called him completely nuts. But that’s life, expect the unexpected.

Anyways, the first day was pretty good. I got introduced to so many people (I will take ages for me to learn their names), finally met Chris and was informed that I will work with amazing Drew on a very interesting project. The atmosphere at Yahoo! is, as expected, very relaxed and laid back. But don’t get misguided by this kind of work ethic: the guys who work there really know what they are doing and are real experts in their respective fields. I really can consider myself fortunate that I got this job.

After my first day, I went for a 40-minute run in Regent’s Park, which was kinda nice, cause it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. So, all in all, my first day at work in London was very satisfactory. Looking forward to the next days…

London: Moving In

Klaus — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:30:42 +0000

I departed from Vienna at 7:05 in the morning and began my “Yahoo!-Europe Adventure” Saturday, May 12. Not everything went as planned, but I am finished now with unpacking and look forward to the things to come.

The flight with Austrian was pretty smooth, but due to construction works, the trip from Heathrow Airport to Camden Town tube station took a little bit longer than I had expected. The guy from the real estate company handed over the flat to me, and I was really surprised by the nice and thoughtful service. After that, there were some problems with the forwarding agent I hired to ship my stuff from Vienna to London. First, there was a delay regarding the delivery, and then he refused to deliver my boxes up to the 3rd floor (although this agreement was part of the contract). Anyways, after some negotiation I was able to convince him to actually deliver my boxes into my new apartment. I don’t want to think about how I would have dealt with that 2 metre IKEA cupboard on my own.

Saturday evening and night I started unpacking but finishing it that night was impossible. The place was just crammed full of moving boxes. Unfortunately, I did not get much sleep then cause I found out that the location of the flat (near Camden Town tube station, with lots of shops and bars on Camden High Street) is also its big disadvantage. Apart from my stays in NYC and Cologne, I was always used to live in quiet areas, with almost no traffic noise. How lucky I was. Now I need to get used to hear about 30 cars per minute passing by and some buses every couple of minutes stopping and starting. The first night was horrible and I barely got about 3 hours of sleep. Additionally, at about 3am in the morning the traffic noise was supplemented with screams of drunken people walking by on the street to the bus stop, I believe. How nice. But guess what: I already ordered ear plugs .So this is the big downside that I see so far.

Today, Sunday, I was able to unpack the rest of my stuff and store it accordingly. It is basically making the best out of little space. Here are some pictures:

Tomorrow is my first day at Yahoo!. Really looking forward to it. Will let you know how it goes .

Joining Yahoo!

Klaus — Thu, 03 May 2007 09:56:11 +0000

So after about 3 months of looking for a job, scanning through job ads on various internet platforms, I finally can let the cat out of the bag. I will join Yahoo! Europe, based in London, UK, middle of May as a Web Developer.

However, I had to fight for this decision with myself a little bit. Some of you know this, but I studied in the small city of Dornbirn, Austria, for 4 years, stayed about another more because of the job I took there (which did not work out as planned) and somehow built a strong connection to the beautiful area and the nice people over the years. Leaving was hard. Harder than I had expected. But I had to do it, cause life changes and to keep up with those changes and develop yourself further, you need to adapt to those changes. But saying goodbye is never easy. Now I know that more than ever.

When the opportunity came along to join Yahoo! in London I almost had to take it. I will have the chance to work with industry experts like Chris Heilmann, Mark Norman Francis, Drew McLellan, Simon Willison and many more. What a big opportunity for me to learn from these guys.

Nevertheless, London is quite a city and I am curious how I will manage my life over there. For the past 5 years I was used to live in a small city, with beautiful nature all around (mountains, Lake Constance close by), lots of opportunities to go out running or mountainbiking. This will not be the case in London, a very large city, some parks but crowded places all over. But let’s see…I worked it out to live in NYC for a while, so I believe I can do the same in London. Speaking of NYC…I believe renting an apartment in London is even more expensive than in Manhattan. Sad, but true. The flat that I have rented is located in Camden, within a 3 minute walking distance to the tube station and with a couple of shops close by on Camden High Street. And very important: Regents Park close by for doing sports.

I have about one and a half week left to spend some time at my parents house in Vienna. My flight to London (one way) is scheduled for May 12. I will blog as much as my spare time allows me to give you an idea about me living in London. And if you have the time, book a flight with one of these low cost airlines (for my European friends) and pay me a visit. But I have to warn you, I have only rented a studio flat, which means very little space