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My break from MerchantOS starts with three sunrises. The first was on the bus ride to the Seatac Airport. The second was at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I managed to stay awake for the third at my home in Grafenwoehr, Germany. It helped that I arrived to enjoy my stepbrother Tobias’ 21st birthday party in a large garage full of smoke, beer, and hard alcohol in a bar he built. Stumbling home drunk with the family was a great way to come home after 3 years. The days I had between Weihnachten (Christmas) and Sylvester (New Years) were not wasted.

This Weinachten provided my family with the best times we’ve had in years. The very last gift was a small round box my stepbrother Mathias handed to my mother. Inside were two small knitted socks, one red, one blue. Between the socks and cotton padding was a sonogram. There was a small pause before comprehension dawned as everyone at the table looked at the young couple. The celebratory drinking started shortly after.

My mother decided before I had even got on the plane that we would travel together and catch up. I suggested Hamburg, or more formally the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. What I originally came to see was the Miniatur Wunderland; a 6,400 square meter attraction of impossibly detailed miniatures. Imagine a COSTCO sized building with a fully active ecosystem of trains, planes, buildings, communities, an active airport, a day/night cycle, and over 200k human figurines. Pictures do not capture the extraordinary amount of lights, mechanisms, detail, and thought put into each model; so this video will have to suffice.

The first night in Hamburg we met some acquaintances that soon became friends in St. Pauli, the quarter of Hamburg famous for its mile of sin known as the Reeperbahn. That area is ripe with sexual energy and you couldn’t find a better place to go in Europe for a night of drinking with friends. If I wasn’t there with family, that portion of the trip would need to be omitted from my travelogue.

While I will never forget being harassed by sex workers on Herbertstraße, what left the biggest impression on me was a hole in the wall Portuguese restaurant named after its owner, Franco. There was no menu in Casa Franco. You enjoy your meal by paying 20 Euro while the open kitchen prepares the fresh catch of the day in 4 courses. While we were being seated our new friend Markus pointed out that the soft orange walls were significantly darker than the ceiling. I couldn’t help but think there must have been an epic kitchen fire that was just not cleaned up thoroughly. Amidst our introductions to one another, Franco walks the three slate steps to our table carrying our appetizer of shrimp in a garlic wine sauce. Did I mention it was on fire? Not just a dull blue blaze when you light strong alcohol (which we enjoyed throughout the evening) but a tall flame, over a foot high!  All the while having a casual conversation with us in his comical and romanticized German. All of this accompanied by good wine, live guitar and serenata, an owner who loves to yell Caramba and, in jest, berates his cooks for their cuisine and expediting. Franco ended up treating the four of us to the best dining experience we could have had. That evening, my mind was opened to what I now see as the right way to serve food to people.

Our 3 days in Hamburg were just not enough. My mother and I were upset that we didn’t make it to the Fisch Markt open on Sundays. Alas, we had festivities back in Grafenwoehr to prepare for. We ended it the best way possible-splitting a case of Astra Rott Licht (6% ABV) between four people. There was a lot more to Hamburg than I imagined. It’s a place I’ll be visiting again and would recommend you do the same.

I did my best to conceal it but I was more than disappointed that I came home to not a drop of snow. I flew all the way to Germany in the heart of winter with scarves, gloves, and multiple coats prepared for the wurst, worst. The same crappy weather I left behind in Washington was there to greet me when I got off the plane.

Just before New Year’s Eve the rain drifted much slower to the ground, dancing in the wind, but not sticking to pavement. That night Tobias asked me if I wanted to go snow hunting with his friends. We get in his 4-wheel drive Audi and sped off into the night. With his foot all the way down on the pedal I watched the speedometer climb over 120 km/h when we finally found snow-covered roads and fields. When we arrived Tobias asked “Haben sie angst?”. Having watched The Green Lantern on the plane, I thought the line “I have no fear.” seemed appropriate. I realized I was the only one in the car with a seatbelt on and who hadn’t been drinking that night. All those drifts and offroading, on what I believed to be a ski course, seemed like a terrible idea that I was happy to be a part of.

The only day I had to myself in the 10 day vacation was well spent in Nürnberg. It’s just a 45 minute train ride from the nearest train station in Vilseck.

None of my friends really believed my story of accidentally finding Nürnberg’s red light district, but it really doesn’t look like anything during the day. To me it was a magnificent wall with beautiful arches made of black, mossy stones unlike anything we have in a country so infantile in comparison to Germany. On my way back from the 1 FCN fan shop I took the same route, still mesmerized by the dark stone wall as dusk approached. As I hurried to catch my train a pink glow to my left distracted me from the wall.  I was instantly struck with the realization as to why I was the only one on this street before. Scheisse! I used my experience on the Reeperbahn to keep my head forward and ignore the aggressive sex workers behind the windows and caught my train home with just one minute to spare.

I know this is a generalization, but seriously, the Germans know how to party. In a town of just 9000 people, you would think the locals would be content with a few sparklers and roman candles. No, not Grafenwoehr. It was turning 650 years old and it was going into 2012 with a well-lit sky, battle simulators that needed to be detonated with car batteries, and illegal fireworks you can pick up from the Czech border just 30 minutes away.

While I lived in Germany for over half my life I hadn’t realized until this trip how much I took for granted. I’m not sure when I’ll be returning, but while I was there I already knew that I would. So I did my best to capture the things I experienced with this photo gallery, I hope you enjoy it-

Ubahn stop to St. Pauli

Surprise on Weihnachten

Tobias' bar

blutwurst

Franco with the appetizers.

Say Cheese!

fireworks

fireworks1

fireworks2

Well lit tree in the Hamburg craft market.

Hamburg rivers near the Miniatur Wunderland.

Hamburg docks

A nice local symbol of love.

Gluhwein und Bier

Neuerwall

Lit stands in the Hamburg market.

knodel

Nice piece from Miniatur Wunderland.

Murdoc in Hamburg train station

Nurnberg Craft Market.

nurnberg2

nurnbergaltstadt

Spin this ring in Nurnberg 3 times around for good luck.

The Occupy Movement didn't skip over Germany's 2nd largest city.

The mesmerizing wall in the red light district.

An inside look of the Herbertstraße.

seafood

shrooms

Cheers!

As you’ve read in recent posts, we’ve been hiring a lot this past year, doubling the size of the company, in fact. We recently had to rent more office space downstairs in order to accomodate the entire development team. In typical MerchantOS fashion, we had a party to celebrate the opening of the MerchantOS Annex!

You know it's for real when there's a sign.

Roderick, Justin, and Luke hard at play.

Now that Kim Jong Il is gone, Murdoc is the most ruthless dictator in the world.

Chris ever so gently removes a piece...

...we hired him for his other great skills.

A cooler, some brews, waves - perfection.

Justin makes his move...

Luke's office - complete with Cow-related pop art!

Luke's desk. What else?

Now back to improving our point of sale software!

This time of year is always a natural time to reflect on the past, and set goals for the future. In this vein, I’ve asked some of the folks at our company to think about their resolutions for MerchantOS in 2012.

A Look Back At 2011

We accomplished a lot this year and added a number of awesome folks to our team. In 2011 MerchantOS…

• Reached the 1,000 customer mark. We now have over 1,300 retail locations using our point of sale software. Thank You!
• Processed our One Billionth dollar in transactions. We averaged $1.4 milion per day in our point of sale system.
• Added 7 full time employees, a half timer, and an intern.
• Released 28 versions of our software with over 400 individual improvements and fixes.
• 525,570 minutes of up time, 10 slow, 20 minutes of downtime for a subset of customers. 99.994% uptime overall.
• Secured a bank loan for 2012 expansion.
• 2 awesome parties, many ping pong matches, beer-pong games, and trips to the bar downstairs. Along with 2 babies born.

Seven 2012 Apocalyptic Resolutions

It may be the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make plans:

1. Focus on making our point of sale software awesome:

I want to take our point of sale to the next level. Making it easier and more pleasant to use while adding functionality. This is a difficult balancing act but we have a good plan for how to accomplish it and I’m excited about the challenge.

2. Have Fun:

I started this company because I didn’t like the other jobs I had. There weren’t fun. It wasn’t rewarding the way I wanted it to be. In 2012 I want to make sure that everyone that works here (and hopefully our customers) have some fun, enjoy their work, and feel valued.

3. Provide the best dang support:

We spent a great deal of effort searching for awesome support heroes to hire this year (adding Ciara, Ryan, Chris, Vanessa, and Jered). We try to treat our employees like we’d want to be treated ourselves. And we ask our employees to do the same for our customers. We have fun. We also take our jobs seriously and really care about our customers and the product we give them. That’s our recipe for awesome support.

4. Hire awesome people:

We are what the people who work here make us. If we want to be awesome we have to hire awesome. We’ve already got 2 (a programmer and designer) lined for the start of the year. We’ll probably add a few more before the year is over. I’m going to make sure we take the time to hire the right people.

5. Stock pile food, gold, and guns…

To fight the zombies. Oh we might also need this.

6. Sign up another 1,000 retail locations:

This is a high bar to reach for. With purely natural growth and without any change in our marketing strategy, I’d predict we will add somewhere around 700. How will we get those extra 300?

We have a bank loan so we can spend more on Adwords, that will help. We are optimizing our sign-up process. Working on our website marketing. We want to improve the look and feel of our application while we make it easier to use and more powerful. And I’ll just give you a hint there might be something with Mobile and web based accounting systems (no promises! It’s software development, nothing is guaranteed).

7. Build a product we are proud of.

Most of all in 2012 I want to build a product we are proud of. I want to write excellent code, create awesome user interfaces, build solid and reliable server and network infrastructure, and provide awesome support.

I’m Proud Of Our Employees, And Thankful To Our Customers

Without the great people that work for us and all our customers who support us, we wouldn’t be able to take on these goals. So thank you for making this all possible!

Best Wishes In 2012!

We just completed a seriously exhausting and rigorous hiring process to find three new team members for MerchantOS. By the numbers our process looked something like this:

• Two Posts to Craig’s List, one each for Customer Hero, and Office Admin
• 117 applicants for Customer Hero
• 203 applicants for Office Admin
• 106 phone interviews (~10 minutes each)
• 43 short in person interviews (~10 minutes each)
• Seven long in person interviews (~1 hour each)
• 30+ Hours Of Interviewing Candidates
• Three awesome folks hired.

I’ve already covered our phone interview process pretty extensively: Why You Failed Our Phone Interview. So, here’s what I’m looking for in an in-person interview.

Preparation – You Ready For This?

At this point, we’ve weeded out the truly un-prepared during our phone interview. Yet still, amazingly, some people walk into an in-person interview completely unprepared. There isn’t too much to say on this one, except: do some preparing. Eat your Wheaties, get a good night’s sleep, dress appropriately (I’ll cover this a little more later), read over our website, and generally do whatever you need to do to walk in confident and prepared.

Bonus: Take some time to think about why you want this job in particular. How does it fit into your goals professionally and personally?

Nerves – The #1 Interview Killer

This one is especially hard for me to critique because I wouldn’t consider myself a super confident person socially. However, I think I can fake it long enough to get through an interview, and I think you can too. For the lucky few of you who don’t have this problem, skip on down to the over-confidence section!

Here are my main tips for playing it cool and not letting your nerves get between you and the job you want:

• Pump yourself up for the interview. Do some laugh yoga, or whatever it takes to get yourself in a positive mood.
• Cover the basics: smile, make eye contact (with each person in the interview), shake everyone’s hand, introduce yourself clearly.
• Don’t be afraid to joke around during the interview. This is a little tricky, because you don’t want to treat the whole interview as a joke, but don’t be afraid to laugh or throw out a few puns.
• Remember: we are people just like you.
• Speak clearly.
• Bring some water with you. If your mouth gets dry and it’s bothering you. Take a second to take a drink. If Steve Jobs could sip from a water bottle during a key note, you can definitely do it during a job interview.

Why it’s hard to give a thumbs up to a super nervous candidate: I just can’t accurately judge your personality. Your nervousness obscures who you really are, which is what I’m trying to find out. If I can’t find out who you really are, what motivates you, how you’re going to interact with me and the rest of the team, then I’m left with a big question mark. I’m looking for a candidate that gives me positive signals that they are the right one for the job. Nerves obscure these signals.

You Can Be Overconfident

Nervous people, skip this, it doesn’t apply to you.

Don’t walk in thinking you’ve ‘nailed it’ before you actually have. We’re interviewing a lot of people. Assume that a lot of those people are awesome too. There isn’t a lot I can say on this subject, it’s fairly straight forward–have some sprinkling of humility. Typically this is more of a problem for men, for whatever reason.

What Not To Wear

What to wear to an interview totally depends on where and with whom you are interviewing. If you’re not sure if you should wear a suit or sweat pants, you should probably ask. You need to wear something that fits with the company and people you are interviewing with. This doesn’t mean you have to look just like us, it just means you shouldn’t come in a 3 piece business suite and tie if I’m gonna be in jeans and flip flops (well that’s really Ivan’s role). It’s going to make us both uncomfortable.

Why is it important? Whether we want to or not, in some ways we are going to judge you based on your appearance. It’s just human nature and it’s extremely hard to override.

Tip: Figure out the company culture. Is it super professional (lawyer’s office?), or is it casual and laid back? Try to fit your apparel choices to this. But, I’d say it’s ok to dress up more than you think you would just coming to work on an average day. You still want to look put together and like you are taking the interview seriously.

Bonus: Think about the position you’re applying for and what sort of personality we might want to hire for that. We usually give some clues in our job description. We are not totally superficial, but again it’s human nature, and it definitely can’t hurt your prospects to try to craft your image a bit to what we are looking for.

Age, Race, Gender, Or Other Protected Status

We’ve had candidates draw attention to these issues regarding themselves during the interviews. If you do feel the need to bring it up, say, if you want to make sure it’s not an issue: Keep it brief, to the point, and then move on.

Why? Because we won’t be able to say anything in response. The only thing we can say is something really generic like “we don’t discriminate on the basis of…”. If you bring it up over and over, it makes it an uncomfortable conversation because there is nothing for us to talk about.

For example if someone is significantly older than me and they repeatedly mention this throughout the interview. I start to think “is this person going to have issues working for someone way younger?”.

We keep these issues off the table when making a decision on a candidate, and you can help by not making it the focus of your interview.

Motivation

This is a big one. Why do you want to work here? We know that no one is going to work for us forever, but we still want to know that this job is something you want to do (for reals) and you are going to be happy doing it. Hopefully you’ve thought about this before you even applied because if you really don’t want to do this type of job you’re wasting both of our time.

Personality

This is like ‘Location’ in real-estate. And unfortunately it seems you either have it or you don’t. That’s not to say that one personality is right for every job. It takes all kinds. But there are certain personalities that don’t work for a particular job. For example, if you don’t like to talk, then talking customers through problems all day on the phone is not going to work for you.

Most of the stuff I’ve written about up to this point is to get you to the point where we can fairly evaluate your personality and fit with the position. I’ve come to rely on personality as my main final criteria in picking candidates. I’ve been burned when I’ve ignored it, and delighted when I’ve focused on it.

That’s what it looks like from our side of the table. I’d love to know your opinion. Please leave a comment below.