tg3
Joined 15 years ago
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http://twitter.com/tgriff3
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Comment · 5 years ago
Xkit | Senior UX Engineer | REMOTE | https://xkit.co
Software is eating the world, and that software is going to be connected together. Xkit is helping bring that future to fruition by building tools that make it easier for developers to add integrations to their apps.
We're hiring a Senior UX Engineer to help us define and deliver the user experience for Xkit.
We're a small team without a dedicated designer, so this role is responsible for determining the best UI/UX patterns to employ (using our existing patterns and frameworks where possible) as well as delivering them in the form of working, performant code.
This is a highly product- and user-focused role. We're looking for the rare combination of a highly capable React/Typescript engineer paired with a good UX and design sense.
For a full description, check out https://github.com/xkit-co/jobs/blob/main/senior-ux-engineer... or send me an email, trey at our main domain.
Comment · 5 years ago
Xkit | Senior UX Engineer | REMOTE | Full-Time | https://xkit.co
Xkit lets developers add direct, native, embedded integrations to their SaaS app as easily as building a Zapier app. With one straightforward integration to Xkit, developers can add integrations to Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, and others without writing any additional code. Most of the time, those integrations can even be added by non-engineers, like product managers and customer success managers.
We're hiring a Senior UX Engineer to help us define and deliver the user experience for Xkit.
We're a small team without a dedicated designer, so this role is responsible for determining the best UI/UX patterns to employ (using our existing patterns and frameworks where possible) as well as delivering them in the form of working, performant code.
This is a highly product- and user-focused role. We're looking for the rare combination of a highly capable React/Typescript engineer paired with a good UX and design sense.
For a full job description, check out https://github.com/xkit-co/jobs/blob/main/senior-ux-engineer... or feel free to email me directly, I'm trey at our main domain.
Comment · 5 years ago
SEEKING FREELANCER | 100% Remote (one weekly meeting at 11:30am PT)
Looking for a Senior React/Typescript Engineer to help build out a new project at https://xkit.co (YC S18). We build developer tools to make it easier to add integrations to your app.
Small, fast-moving team; the rest of the stack is Elixir, PostgreSQL, running on AWS.
More details on the team and project here: https://github.com/xkit-co/jobs/blob/main/senior-frontend-en...
Comment · 5 years ago
The specific framing of founders buying capital (dollars) is super helpful in understanding VC behavior, which is nearly are marketing.
VC’s sell a commodity product, money. In order to sell it, they add marketing, branding, and freebies - a bit like buying cereal with a toy inside.
Understanding that is the ultimate mental shift in raising money.
Comment · 5 years ago
Great read. Two days I wrote about my own experience learning Elixir to build Xkit[1]. As I wrote there, the language guide is one of the best I've ever seen and is pretty much all you need to get started.
There are drawbacks of course (typing, deployment) but the pros far outweigh the cons for me so far. Here's to the next ten years!
[1] https://xkit.co/post/pivoting-with-elixir-how-i-learned-a-la...
Comment · 6 years ago
I'm planning to build something like this with Next.js / Vercel. All of the changes will be managed via GitHub Pull Requests (so no need for any other authentication) with automatic deployment on Vercel.
Comment · 6 years ago
> I really wanted to like OAuth but implementing it is a nightmare!
Not only is the spec itself challenging, it leaves enough ambiguity and rough edges that most providers end up extending it some way that makes it hard to standardize. Most commonly: how to get refresh tokens (`offline_access` scope, `access_type=offline` parameter?), and how/when they expire (as soon as you get a new one? as soon as you've received 10 new ones? on a set schedule?)
And that's not to mention how OAuth gets extended to handle organization-wide access. Anyone that's dealt with GSuite/Workspace Service Accounts or Microsoft Graph Application permissions knows what a pain that is.
This is exactly why I built [Xkit](https://xkit.co), which abstracts away the complexity of dealing with all the different providers and gives you a single API to retrieve access tokens (or API keys) that are always valid. Not everyone should have to be an OAuth expert to build a 3rd party integration.
Comment · 6 years ago
Thanks for the note on the typo, I've fixed it.
I'm happy to add other auth providers to our docs. Shoot me a note (trey@) with the instructions and I'll add it in.
Many developers want to have their integration catalog match the look and feel of the rest of their application, or they have additional configuration for their integrations outside of what Xkit provides. In these cases, building their own custom catalog using xkit.js makes the most sense.
Zapier is a tool focused on the user of SaaS products (e.g. I want to connect my Google Sheets account to my Mailchimp account). Xkit is made for developers (e.g. I want the users of my brand new CRM tool to be able to pull in data from Google Sheets).
Many developers start out by just adding a Zapier integration and telling their customers to hook up to other tools themselves. However, many companies find that having those integrations be native (rather than going through Zapier) is helpful with both sales and activation, not to mention the increased level of control you have. We're helping developers build those types of integrations.
Comment · 6 years ago
Thanks for the kind words.
I agree we need to re-think our home page a bit. We initially focused on "OAuth" to really get specific about what we do, but it's had the unfortunate side effect of making us seem like an auth provider.
I like the idea of specific examples, and your headline ideas are great!
Comment · 6 years ago
We have a Developer plan that's free up to 10 users. Our Startup tier ($50/month) is intended for early stage projects without significant funding.
If you have a project that can't afford our Startup tier for some reason, shoot me a note (trey@) and I'll see what I can do.
Comment · 6 years ago
That's good feedback. We'll have to examine the native use-case a little more closely.