Games, Programming, Web
Archive for August, 2010
Took a job at Amazon – What’s good, what’s not
Aug 13th
After being rejected by Facebook (despite nailing every interview – at least I thought), I accepted a job at Amazon. Today marks my 2 week anniversary, and here are some quick pros/cons about Amazon with some Microsoft/Google experiences thrown in for comparison.
+ The average age at Amazon is much younger than at Microsoft.
+ Amazon’s apps and services are much less brittle, much more fun to work with, and release 30x more frequently than most products at Microsoft.
+ Amazon has awesome office spaces in Downtown Seattle, which I prefer to the Redmond campus or the Google buildings in Freemont and Kirkland.
+/- Amazon pays better than Microsoft but not as well as Google (see GlassDoor).
+ There are many opportunities for travel at Amazon (on-site Kaizens with operational groups).
- Frugality is a company core principle (which is good), but it’s taken too far when it comes to monitors and assigned computers.
- Amazon has insignificant perks ($100 retail site discount) compared to many perks at Microsoft (company store, discount cards, free beverages, subsidized cafes, 100% health, gym).
What I care about most is opportunity for personal growth, and there’s plenty at Amazon. Management has proven that they can expand into new areas even better than Google, and Amazon is still in the early stages of exposing its many platforms and service verticals to the public through AWS, WebStore, FBA, and similar programs.
Tools for creating MacOS installer .dmgs
Aug 2nd
I spent some time updating the StepMania MacOS installer. There are many features that you probably will want in an installer dmg:
- an “Applications” link or alias
- a custom background image
- custom placement of icons
- .dmg compression
- a way to script building of an installer dmg
Here’s how you’ll want to achieve the above in your installer build script
- Create a temporary directory and copy into it all files you’ll want in your final .dmg (typically a .app or 1 directory, and maybe a documentation file)
- Create a symbolic link (ln -s /Applications $your_temp_dir) or manually make an alias to /Applications and then copy the alias to your temp directory.
- Use the yoursway create dmg script and pass in your temp directory, background image, icon locations, and it will spit out a compressed dmg. Something like: create-dmg –window-size 500 300 –background background.png –icon-size 96 –volname “StepMania4″ –icon “Applications” 380 205 –icon “StepMania” 110 205 StepMania.dmg ../$temp.dir. Their script is based on the Adium installer applescript + wrapper.
You can see exactly how StepMania does it by checking out our scripts: https://svn.stepmania.com/svn/branches/4.0/stepmania/PBProject
