Wez Furlong I am Wez Furlong, Chief Software Architect at Message Systems. We're responsible for building an awesome Messaging Platform.

I'm also a PHP Core developer and OpenSource contributor, residing in Maryland, USA with Juliette, Xander and Lily. (read more)

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mtrack: a software development tracker + wiki

21st January @ 11:12 EDT
updated 27th January @ 23:12 EDT

[Updated to add IRC and Google Groups links]

I don't know if it's just me, or whether everyone in software development finds issue tracking software frustrating and/or broken in some way.  They're all either way too complicated to set up, configure or use (the Bugzilla's or the Jira's), or have annoying "features" (such as Trac's you-lose-your-edits-if-someone-else-changed-something).

We've been using Trac at Message Systems for several years now and have been enjoying its pragmatic approach of keeping the interface simple but expressive; just enough structure to be helpful but not too much that it intrudes.  We've added/modified a couple of plug-ins to it to help track time and draw some graphs, but it has otherwise served us well.

However, we've got a couple of projects that have started to converge and overlap and it's frustrating to visit the two different portals to interact and stay on top of things.  As we scale up our development teams even further (we continue to have bigger and bigger plans!) this will prove to be more widely frustrating.

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by Wez Furlong in .

Wanted: Senior Backend Web Engineer

11th September 2008 @ 12:33 EDT
updated 11th September 2008 @ 13:26 EDT

I'm looking for a senior-level engineer to help extend the web-based dashboards for our messaging infrastructure platform.

This position reports directly to me.

While we don't face the traditional scale-to-the-world types of problems in our web UI, we do face some difficult UI and data scalability challenges.

If you're interested, please contact me via jobs@messagesystems.com.

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by Wez Furlong in .

Looking for a Trainer

29th August 2008 @ 23:47 EDT
updated 29th August 2008 @ 23:48 EDT

We at Message Systems are looking for someone to fill the position of "Technical Trainer / Curriculum Developer".

This position designs, develops and delivers online and in-person instructor led trainings on the Message Systems products and services for a variety of audiences including customers, partners and internal staff. You will design courses and instructional material for everything ranging from short informational quick-starts to multi-day workshops.

The audience for these training programs will primarily be mid-senior level Unix administrators, messaging anti-abuse operations staff, systems architects and other technical staff engaged in designing and maintaining corporate and carrier messaging infrastructure.

This is a full-time position based in Columbia, MD.

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by Wez Furlong in .

First impressions of virtualization on Solaris

22nd June 2008 @ 01:50 EDT
updated 22nd June 2008 @ 01:52 EDT
This article discusses some virtualization options in OpenSolaris. I was hoping to find a "silver bullet" solution for all my needs. I didn't, but it's not too far off.

We have quite a large support matrix for our software; 12 primary OS and architectures, with 4 major installation options. We test those as fresh installs, upgrades, upgrades from the previous major version and uninstalls.

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by Wez Furlong in .

C and Test Engineer Jobs @ Message Systems

1st February 2008 @ 15:26 EDT
updated 1st February 2008 @ 15:31 EDT

I've got a couple of full-time positions open on my engineering team. We believe in a fun but focused development environment: open-plan, flexible hours, and great benefits. Our customers include Fortune-500 companies, hot startups and tier-1 telecommunications carriers. Our software helps those customers deliver billions of email messages per day.

Email Infrastructure Software Engineer (x2)

I'm looking for one mid-level and one mid-to-senior-level engineer with strong "C" programming skills (3+ years of professional experience). These roles involve design, implementation and testing of our flagship email server product. E-mail encompasses a very broad range of standards and specifications which in turn means that our code base touches on a little bit of everything; it's both interesting and challenging. [Full Job Description]

Gozer (The Destructor)

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Message Systems, Inc.

22nd January 2008 @ 21:56 EDT

At the start of this year, we spun off the email product side of OmniTI into its own entity, Message Systems, Inc. This marks another step on the road to dominating the world with our awesome software.

I've also changed roles; I'm now the Director of Engineering at Message Systems. I'm looking forward to see what challenges are in store for me, and will try hard to avoid adopting too much suit talk (I've already found myself using a few phrases that would have made me cringe last year).

What does this mean for me and PHP? Despite the increased responsibility, I think it should actually give me a bit more PHP time than I've had in the past (I'll have more control over my destiny). I should still be able to attend PHP related events, and I still deal with PHP (we use it for the management GUI in the product).

What about OmniTI? Well, we're still part of the family and share office space, jokes and good times at our HQ in Maryland.

Would you like to work with me?
I have positions open for server/infrastructure software development (C) and QA.

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