The 5 Best Websites To Make Money Online

The internet is a beautifully simple marketplace for people to make money, and get paid for their services. We’ve compiled the five best places for you to make money online, whether you want to start your own business – or just make a little extra on the side.

Site 1: Elance

Elance is the Internet’s biggest marketplace for legitimate freelance work. And, it’s my personal favourite of all the websites in this list.

It provides a simple interface that allows you to search for jobs in any kind of niche. From Writing and Translation, to Web Design and Programming.

Basically, people post jobs they want doing on the website, and you submit a proposal for it. It’s that simple. 

Regardless of how much money you want to make, the possibilities are endless: there are freelancers on subscribed making $1,000 to $100,000 a year.

Pros: Free service. Simple to use. Easy to manage Tax Documents. Verified, trustworthy jobs.

Cons: Can be slow to become established. Bad Freelancers willing to work

for $1-$2 an hour.

Fiverr is a long established freelance site where everything costs a $5 minimum. It’s a simple and easy to use website, where you post the services you can provide: and if someone needs them, they’ll pay you to work.

It takes the traditional Freelance way of working and turns it on it’s head. It also ensures you get paid before you complete any work so that you never find yourself ripped off.

There is also scope to earn more than your $5 per job, with different levels for different services, such as: early delivery dates, extra work or ‘bolt-on’s for your services.

Pros: Protected payment before work. No marketing required. Work is on your terms. Quick and Easy to set up.

Cons: Lots of competition for work. Hard to establish a business. Have to do your own accountancy books. Not much scope to build a solid income.

Site 3: oDesk

oDesk is somewhat of a sister company to eLance, that helps freelancers find work in a wide range of areas. Out of the two sites, it’s down to your personal preference: but the oDesk’s design and Payment tracker app set it apart from the competition.

This is a great website to get started on as a beginner as the average prices for jobs is lower, and it’s much easier to establish yourself as an up and coming freelancer.

Pros: Good design. Simple set up. Great for beginners. Easy to use interface.

Cons: Prices can be too low if you’re looking to build a big business.

Site 4: Craigslist

Craigslist isn’t a site you’d think synonymous with Freelance Work – but it’s actually a hub of jobs and work to apply for.

It’s a simple and easy to way to start to build a portfolio and make some money in the process. The normal client can vary between local businesses, college students and someone looking to get work done as quickly as possible.

Air on the side of caution though, as sometimes you can find yourself chasing money for work you’ve done.

Pros: Easy to get started. Low pressure environment. Constant stream of new jobs. Easy money.

Cons: Not always reputable clients.

Site 5: Freelancer

Freelancer is a ‘gameified’ version of the sites eLance and oDesk mentioned earlier. You have the ability to ‘level up’ by earning experience points from the projects you complete and the milestones you hit. There are no shortage of jobs on these sites and everything is channelled depending on your skills and abilities.

Freelancer doesn’t have a free option that is as flexible as it’s competitors, and you find yourself paying to take tests and complete certain tasks.

This plays into the hands of people posting projects, as it shows you’re committed and established, but it doesn’t really help you if you’re just getting started.

Pros: Fun and easy to use interface. Interactive spin on normal freelancing. More reliable jobs than any other source.

Cons: Paying for tests and membership makes it hard to access for low-budget new starters.

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Waymo Offers Glimpse of Autonomous Chrysler Minivans

Waymo, the standalone venture that emerged from Google's self-driving car project, on Monday unveiled a fleet of 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans with the latest high-tech sensors, telematics, and other gear designed for fully autonomous operation.

Modifications were made to several parts of the Pacifica -- including its electrical, powertrain, chassis and structural systems -- to optimize it for fully autonomous driving.

With the additional computer equipment, the cars will undergo more challenging tests. They will be subjected to a broader variety of traffic and weather conditions, as well as other variables, with the goal of being ready for introduction by 2017.

"Waymo chose the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan, as its well-suited for Waymo's self-driving systems," said FCA spokesperson Berj M. Alexanian.

"As a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Pacifica Hybrid is fuel-efficient, which is important to Waymo," he told TechNewsWorld. "Pacifica Hybrid offers a highly refined and comfortable ride experience. Using Pacifica Hybrid also gives Waymo a chance to test a different kind of passenger vehicle.

The Waymo Brand

The announcement comes just days after Waymo unveiled new branding and a new team of executives, amid increasing competition to bring autonomous vehicles to the U.S. market.

The joint program team has worked to integrate the self-driving computers and other systems into the Chrysler Pacifica minivans to get them ready for use, noted Waymo CEO John Krafcik. The work has included more than 200 hours of extreme-weather testing since the companies originally announced the partnership in June.

Waymo and Fiat Chrysler have co-located part of their engineering teams to a new facility in southeastern Michigan to speed development. The companies also have conducted extensive testing at FCA's Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, and the Arizona Proving Grounds in Yucca, Arizona, as well as Waymo's test track in California.

FCA sells cars under the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram and SRT performance vehicle brands. The firm also distributes under the Alfa Romeo and Topar brands.

Improved Safety

The introduction of the fully equipped Pacifica minivan is a signal that Waymo may be focusing on autonomous vehicle technology as a means of making driving more efficient and safer for families, suggested Michael Harley, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

"This is something deep in the heart of what a family would purchase," he told TechNewsWorld.

Waymo has emphasized its track record of operating test vehicles in a safe manner -- Krafcik last week posted a copy of Google's November self-driving report on Twitter.

During autonomous testing, 24 Lexus RX450 SUVs and 34 prototype vehicles navigated shared roads and successfully engaged in lane splitting -- accommodating motorcyclists that bobbed and weaved, making multiple lane changes, the report shows.

The rollout of the Chrysler Pacifica minivans puts Google well ahead of its direct technology industry competitors in the race to get autonomous vehicles in the hands of the public, said Egil Juliussen, principal analyst for automotive technology at IHS Markit.

"Basically Google needs more vehicles to test," he told TechNewsWorld. "They've advanced quite a lot."

The testing of such a minivan offers Waymo a more flexible set of options when considering the kind of vehicles it wants to deploy when it makes its first commercial introduction of fully autonomous vehicles.

It may be a bit early in terms of pinning down the use case or an autonomous version of the Chrysler Pacifica, however, noted Steven Polzin, director of mobility policy research at the Center for Urban Transportation Research.

"This general direction would be consistent with the thinking of folks who are very nervous that automated vehicles will induce additional travel or have significant 'empty' deadhead miles between trips," he told TechNewsWorld.

"The way to mitigate that consequence is to use automation and logistics to aggregate trips -- dynamic carpooling -- to increase vehicle occupancy so as to offset the empty miles or induced demand miles," he said.

Ride-Sharing Ambitions

Alphabet placed its secret autonomous vehicle development plans front and center with last week's announcement of Waymo.

"We believe that this technology can begin to reshape some of the 10 trillion miles that motor vehicles travel around the world every year, with safer, more efficient and more accessible forms of transport," Krafcik noted at the time.

Google has spent the equivalent of 300 years of driving time since 2009 testing various prototype vehicles on the roads over more than 2 million miles. It also has conducted roughly a billion miles of testing in simulated environments. Google developed the technology with an eye to a range of autonomous technologies, from ride-sharing fleets and personal vehicles to logistics and last-mile public transport.

The next step for Waymo will be to let real people test the technology to run errands, commute to work or get home after a night out, Krafcik said.

Waymo likely will make a major push into ride-sharing, which has a huge potential for seniors, the disabled and others who cannot access their own vehicles due to physical or mental challenges.

"Waymo stands for a new way forward for mobility, which is indicative that Google is not just pursuing private car ownership model for its autonomous platform," observed Praveen Chandrasekar, mobility research manager at Frost & Sullivan.

Rather, its focus is on the shared mobility market, told TechNewsWorld, "where Level 5 autonomous platform makes a lot of sense, especially in providing mobility for the physically challenged."

As a standalone company under Alphabet, Waymo can operate in a much more agile way than it could as a project within Google, said Kelley Blue Book's Harley.

Rival Pursuits

Despite safety concerns and a variety of setbacks, autonomous car development has been advancing steadily.

Uber has launched real-world testing in Pittsburgh and San Francisco, with self-driving test vehicles picking up and transporting passengers in live traffic conditions. A driver is on board to take over if warranted.

Still, watchdog groups remain vigilant in making sure the technology doesn't get ahead of public safety issues.

It is reassuring that Google abandoned plans to develop cars that lacked steering wheels and pedals, according to John Simpson, the privacy policy director at Consumer Watchdog.

However, Waymo needs to explain to the public how the cars would work and disclose what it has programmed into the secret algorithms it uses to run them, he said.

Google's last disengagement report filed with California regulators showed its self-driving technology failed 341 times over 425,000 miles, Simpson noted, including 272 times because the software could not cope. There were 69 times when the driver intervened for safety reasons. The next report is due on Jan. 1.

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Samsung May Unleash a Beast

Hot off the rumor mill on Wednesday is news of a new feature Samsung may include in its upcoming Galaxy S8. It's dubbed "Beast Mode," and that's just about all that is known about it so far.

Spotted in an EU trademark application, Beast Mode would apply to smartphones, mobile phones and application software for smartphones, notedGalaxy Club, a Netherlands-based blog.

The Galaxy S8 is expected to be the first smartphone built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 processor. If true, that lines up with the notion that Beast Mode could allow super high performance.

Another rumor is that the Galaxy S8 will have an optical fingerprint scanner built into the display instead of the body.

Further, it's rumored that it will include Bluetooth 5.0, recently approved by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group -- and that idea seems to carry a fair amount of weight.

Countering Bad PR

"There's a strong possibility that Samsung will incorporate Bluetooth 5 into the Galaxy S8," said Ken Hyers, director of wireless device strategies at Strategy Analytics.

"With the cancellation of the Note7, the Galaxy S8 is now [Samsung's] premier device to showcase the latest and best smartphone technology," he told TechNewsWorld.

Samsung had to institute a global recall of millions of Galaxy Note7s after multiple instances in which the device spontaneously burst into flames. Some replacement devices also caught fire.

"Samsung has a PR problem," observed Michael Jude, a program manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan. "Note7 is a disaster, and they need something with which to seize the technological high ground."

Putting cutting-edge technologies in the S8 "will help a lot," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Remember, practically nothing is Bluetooth 5-compliant," Jude noted. "As long as the S8 can talk to existing Bluetooth devices, it's golden. People will be drawn to the latest, greatest technology."

Bluetooth 5.0 doesn't replace 4.0, 4.1 or 4.2. It extends the functionality of these previous versions of the Bluetooth Core Specification.

Further, Bluetooth 5.0 lets manufacturers leverage interoperability and performance improvements incorporated in the core specs since 4.2 was released.

"From Bluetooth headsets and speakers to home control, personal robots and drones, Bluetooth is a default technology for connecting devices, with the smartphone as the hub of consumers' device universe," Strategy Analytics' Hyers remarked.

"We are rapidly moving into a more complex connected device world," he pointed out.

Samsung has focused heavily on the Internet of Things, offering smart TVs and smart appliances that can be tied to its smartphones.

Bluetooth 5 "is a huge advance over previous versions of Bluetooth from a connectivity speed and capacity standpoint," Hyers pointed out, noting that it's a natural fit for Samsung's next flagship device.

The S8 will "be both a mass market flagship and a showcase for Samsung's technological leadership" since the company has canceled its Note series of phablets, he said.

Therefore, Samsung "will be careful to only put technology and features in it that it's certain will not create issues," Hyers contended. As a relatively low-risk feature, Bluetooth 5 likely will appear in the S8 in Q1 2017.

Bluetooth 5.0 Specs

Bluetooth 5.0 offers 2Mbps of bandwidth, twice that of Bluetooth 4.2, with low energy.

The bandwidth can be decreased to achieve up to 4x the broadcast range of Bluetooth 4.2 with the same power requirement. That means home automation and security devices can cover entire homes, buildings or locations.

Developers can adjust the broadcast range, speed and security for different environments.

Bluetooth 5.0 delivers reliable Internet of Things connections, and it will increase the relevance of beacons and other location awareness technologies, which will enable a seamless IoT experience.

It also has ad extensions that enable more efficient use of broadcasting channels on the 2.4 GHz band.

Slot availability masks can detect and prevent interference on neighboring bands.

Keeping the Note7's Specter at Bay

Many consumers returned their Note7 phablets to purchase an older Galaxy S7, Hyers said. "Given that history, "I expect that the Galaxy S8 will be the most carefully tested and verified smartphone ever released."

Also, consumers in the know will see Bluetooth 5 as a future-proof technology, he suggested, while early adopters will see it as a useful item

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Gadget Ogling: Heightened Hearing, Toasty Toes, and Glass Speakers

Welcome to another edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that breaks down the latest in gadget announcements to determine if they'd be naughty or nice additions to your stocking.

Hanging on the fireplace this time around are earbuds to improve your hearing, heated insoles, and a small transparent speaker, which is called "Small Transparent Speaker."

As always, these are not reviews, and you should place no stock into my ratings, beyond their denoting how much I'd like to try each item.

Ear Boost

Bose's latest earbuds (pictured above) are designed to help you tune in to the specific sounds you want to hear from the world around you. Hearphones are a sort of blend of noise-cancelling earbuds and hearing aids.

There are several presets in the app, with names like "focused conversation," "gym," "airplane" and "television." You can opt to crank up the volume on all sound from the world around you or turn it down. You can block out noise or amplify it from certain directions.

For instance, you might use it to help you better hear a specific person in a crowded place. Can't hear what your partner is yelling at a festival? You can temporarily turn up the Hearphones, and turn down the crowd and music (though why you'd have Hearphones in your ears at a live music event is a little beyond me).

It's not the first time we've seen earbuds pull off this sound-augmenting trick, but to my knowledge, it's the first time we've seen a pair like this from a manufacturer as well-known as Bose. The "Bose" name should help Hearphones gain more recognition than they otherwise might, normalizing the concept to a degree.

I like the idea, and there are a lot of practical applications for it. The option to stay laser-focused on listening to what my kid might be up to at a crowded playpark seems like it would be welcome in the alternate reality where I have children. My partner also might be less annoyed at my listening to podcasts while we're cleaning up if I can hear her over the top of the chatter.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Surround Sounds

Winter Warmers

I can't think of a better time to start a crowdfunding project for heated insoles than when the temperatures start to plummet and there's a very real chance of cold toes, even while wearing three pairs of socks.

We've seen other connected heated insoles in the past, but the +Winter models have some advantages over the competition. They pair with an app over Bluetooth to set the temperature and monitor battery level, and they can charge wirelessly.

Although I've been vocal about my dislike of wireless charging and its energy inefficiency, I'd absolutely make an exception here. I'd turn the charger on only when actually using it, and if it meant I could charge the insoles without having to remove them from my boots and carefully refit them afterward, I'd forego my principles for once.

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Tim Cook explains to Apple employees why he met with President-elect Trump

n a series of answers to questions posted on Apple’s internal employee info service Apple Web today, CEO Tim Cook commented to employees on some hot-button topics. We obtained some of the answers to interesting questions about a few topics, including the fate of the Mac — but more on that later.

First up is probably the most topical: Why did he feel it was important to meet with President-elect Trump? The short answer: You have to show up to have a say.

Cook was part of a round table of tech leaders that met with Trump last week. The group included Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Larry Page of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and others. There has been a lot of discussion about the event, but the most prominent difference of opinion among commentators was whether it was worth engaging Trump in this manner at all — given that the publicly expressed values of many of these leaders were at such odds with statements he has made during and after his campaign.

Cook’s case in the internal communication, which we verified is legitimate, is that there was more value in engaging than there was in not doing so. “Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be,” writes Cook. “The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So whether it’s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t change things by just yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best. In many ways, it’s a debate of ideas.”

So much for the “take your tech and stay home” camp. The response was given, specifically, to the following question: “Last week you joined other tech leaders to meet President-elect Donald Trump. How important is it for Apple to engage with governments?”

In his response, Cook says that there are specific issues that Apple cares about deeply and that it would need to become an advocate for those things.

“It’s very important [to engage]. Governments can affect our ability to do what we do,” he responded. “They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways. What we do is focus on the policies. Some of our key areas of focus are on privacy and security, education. They’re on advocating for human rights for everyone, and expanding the definition of human rights. They’re on the environment and really combating climate change, something we do by running our business on 100 percent renewable energy.”

Though this is far from a statement of intent, and he doesn’t mention them specifically, Cook’s strong statement does touch on a variety of topics that abut controversial Trump stances.

“We very much stand up for what we believe in. We think that’s a key part of what Apple is about. And we’ll continue to do so,” he concludes.

During the close reading and aftermath of the meeting, Cook’s dour expression (seen above) at the table became a meme of the moment. His stoic mien somehow transmitting what most people hoped was the attitude at the table: “I can’t believe I have to be here but someone has to do it.” Cook’s statements to employees seem to back that up.

No one knows for sure whether President-elect Trump will in fact enact many of the sweeping changes to immigration policy, cybersecurity and environmental protection laws that he promised during the campaign — but his cabinet selections so far are not doing much to disabuse people of that notion. If there is going to be a healthy counter-balancing of those policies from the private sector, then CEOs like Cook must be willing to take a firm stance publicly.

I was able to get a hold of this internal posting and it’s out there now, but it would be encouraging (as argued well recently by Kara Swisher) to see these kinds of statements made “on the record” — and for them to be made by more people at that table. I await your calls.

Cook also talked about the future of the Mac desktop and Apple’s differentiating factor in a more and more crowded tech sector, but I’ll have more on that in a bit.

Here’s the posting in full:

Last week you joined other tech leaders to meet President-elect Donald Trump. How important is it for Apple to engage with governments? 

It’s very important. Governments can affect our ability to do what we do. They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways. What we do is focus on the policies. Some of our key areas of focus are on privacy and security, education. They’re on advocating for human rights for everyone, and expanding the definition of human rights. They’re on the environment and really combating climate change, something we do by running our business on 100 percent renewable energy.

And of course, creating jobs is a key part of what we do by giving people opportunity not only with people that work directly for Apple, but the large number of people that are in our ecosystem. We’re really proud that we’ve created 2 million jobs, just in this country. A great percentage of those are app developers. This gives everyone the power to sell their work to the world, which is an unbelievable invention in and of itself.

We have other things that are more business-centric — like tax reform — and something we’ve long advocated for: a simple system. And we’d like intellectual property reform to try to stop the people suing when they don’t do anything as a company.

There’s a large number of those issues, and the way that you advance them is to engage. Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be. The way that you influence these issues is to be in the arena. So whether it’s in this country, or the European Union, or in China or South America, we engage. And we engage when we agree and we engage when we disagree. I think it’s very important to do that because you don’t change things by just yelling. You change things by showing everyone why your way is the best. In many ways, it’s a debate of ideas.

We very much stand up for what we believe in. We think that’s a key part of what Apple is about. And we’ll continue to do so.

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Uber explains why it looks like its app is still tracking your location, long after drop-off

Uber responded today to reports that its app continues to check users’ locations even when they hadn’t used the ride-hailing service for days or weeks. The company explained that the issue is being caused by the iOS operating system itself, not direct tracking by its app.

Many users had realized that Uber’s app appeared to have recently checked their location, according to their iPhone Settings.

But Uber says this is behavior that’s being triggered by the iOS Maps extension that Apple opened up in September. It’s not due to a bug in the Uber app nor is it a consequence of the recent location services update, the company told us.

The reason this issue was worrisome is because Uber announced last month that it would begin background collection of user data, but only for five minutes after drop off. The data would help it improve drop-off and pick-up point accuracy in the future, Uber had said.

Some users, of course, were concerned the company may overstep here, or felt generally uncomfortable about sharing this data.

That’s not surprising, given that Uber has had several high-profile slip-ups regarding user privacy in the past, including poor security practices around private data, reports of Uber spying on reporters’ trips, misuse of an internal tracking tool dubbed “God View,” reports that internal employees stalked ex-girlfriends and celebs, among other things.

But, as John Gruber of DaringFireball.net noted in a recent post, an iOS feature would allow users to check to see if Uber kept its word about limiting location tracking to only five minutes after the drop-off.

He explained that, in iOS’s Settings, you’re able to track which apps are accessing your location.

Under “Settings → Privacy → Location Services,” an indicator appears next to apps that have recently checked your location. The indicator is purple if that check was recent, or gray if it was in the last 24 hours. He noted also that he had been checking this for his Uber app, but didn’t see any signs of misuse.

As it turns out, that wasn’t true for everyone.

In a second post, Gruber says many readers sent screenshots of the Uber app still checking their location, even though it had been days or even weeks since they last used the car service.

Some TechCrunch reporters here saw the problem on their devices, too.

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Hack Like a Girl with Zalando Tech

I recently had the opportunity to be a mentor at the Hack Like A Girl Hackathon. It was organized by Geek Girls Carrots Berlin, with Zalando on board as a sponsor. The hackathon had a health and fitness theme, and I jumped at the chance to volunteer for the event.

Before the hacking was to begin, participants and mentors met up at the Native Intruments offices on Friday evening to brainstorm their health and fitness related hacks for the weekend. We were also tasked with building teams. As a fashion platform, the link to health and fitness might not always be obvious, but with my colleagues Andra and Iuliia, gave some of the participants insights into using the Zalando Shop API.

I was excited to get participants interested in using our API. Zalando’s fashion reputation was less enticing amongst the participants, who were leaning towards more traditional health and fitness uses. Our pitch involved asking the audience to come up with ideas that involved a little bit of shopping. After all, you need new clothes and certain accessories for a healthy start at the gym!

The API briefing session was followed by a VR workshop using the Unity Framework, with a hands-on-hacking session available before teams became engrossed in their hacks. After our pitch, one of the teams reached out for some help to get started with React. The evening was rounded up with a Zumba workout session, staying true to the hackathon’s theme.

Jury discussions and voting took place on the Sunday, in the latter part of the afternoon. Being a jury member was an incredible experience, with seven teams presenting their hacks. The source code for all participating teams can be found here.

I was amazed at the energy level of all the participants. There was no drop in their energy, despite it being a Sunday. Our voting was based on code, the idea, and the potential behind the hack. Each jury member voted based on different evaluation criteria, which was interesting to observe:

• First criteria – potential and uniqueness of the hack
• Second criteria – presentations and team spirit
• Third criteria – implementation (working prototype)

It was surprising to me that looking into a team’s source code was the last criteria option, and that team ratings varied when this occurred.

Overall, Hack Like A Girl was a great event and it was tremendously valuable being a mentor for participating teams. I was excited by the turnout and elated by the whole experience.

The hackathon organizers also produced a short video, available here. I would be happy to answer questions about this fantastic experience – please reach out via Twitter at @princi_ya.

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Zalando meets Technology Foundation Berlin at Techsperts

We’re at the end of the Zalando Techspert Series for 2016, where we’ve decided to have an up close and personal event with Nicolas Zimmer, the CEO of the Technology Foundation of Berlin, and Marc Lamik, Zalando’s Head of Innovation and Partnerships. “Culture: Beyond Agile” was the hot topic of the evening, with healthy discussion taking place about expectations of the future workplace and the evolution of agile methodologies.

While it was an intimate affair, we know that not everyone interested was able to make it. We caught Nicolas and Marc after the panel to ask them some key questions related to the night’s energetic debate.

Zalando: How relevant will agile be in future tech companies? Is agile already needing a revamp?

Nicolas Zimmer: Agile is generally mainstream at the moment. So the question really is, what comes after agile? People have been discussing DevOps as the next step in achieving better collaboration, meaning agile is most definitely considered to be the baseline in terms of tech culture.

One of the major challenges we’ll have is with companies that are so distributed around the globe that they’ll need to find mechanisms to keep everything together. How much face time will they get? How will they communicate and really work together as a team on one product?

Marc Lamik: I think agile is a difficult word in general. Some teams who use Scrum, for example, consider themselves to be working under an agile mindset, however the rest of the company is still structured in an old-school, top-down hierarchical model. Of course, agile is somewhat of a baseline, but in most companies it’s only a very small portion of people actually operating in an agile manner. If you want to evolve your work culture, you need to think much deeper than just agile – considering not only how your engineers work, but also how the entire company will work together.

Zalando: What trends have you noticed in culture that have worked, and which ones haven't?

Marc Lamik: Flat hierarchies have shifted from being a trend to a generally accepted framework by a lot of companies, which works quite well in organizations of varying sizes. I think there are also some questionable trends to evaluate, such as shared desks. This was pretty hyped some years ago and a lot of the research about shared desks concluded that there was very little improvement. Employees missed their personal space, regardless of the size.

Nicolas Zimmer: I can chime in on the shared desks example here, as it’s something I’ve noticed a lot of German companies adopting who are not in the technology sector. I suspect it doesn’t make that much sense.

Another trend to consider is the growing popularity of working from home. We can see a big number of people returning to home offices which works to some degree, but what you still miss is the cultural and communicative flow that being present in the office can give. I think we’ll definitely see less hierarchies and more self-organizing teams in the future, but I don’t believe there will be anything coming along that totally dissolves organizations as we know it – some feel that the organizational model is something that needs to be overcome, however it’s a cost efficient strategy that steers employees towards a common goal, which is still needed regardless of what you’re trying to achieve.

Zalando: How much do you think technology, like AR and VR, will dominate the future workplace?

Nicolas Zimmer: There are a lot of promises and expectations with AR and VR. When it comes to hardware engineering, the adoption of these makes a lot of sense, as well as when we talk about employees on the shop floor, so to speak. Training via AR or VR to cope with certain challenges or tasks is a great use case and will certainly be a hot topic for industries producing goods.

Marc Lamik: I think there are definitely some areas where VR can make a difference if you think about cooperating between different offices, for example. We at Zalando do a lot with Google Hangouts which works well, but it’s clearly different from sitting in the same room and scratching on the same board during meetings and workshops.

If you could replicate this experience via VR, I believe meetings could become even more efficient. However, I’m also rather confident that VR experiences won’t completely replace face-to-face meetings.

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Hack Week #5 – The ajudando Project

maging the following: You and your team are facing a challenging technical situation and could reach out to hundreds of potential experts to help. This wouldn’t consist of merely an email exchange: They would actually come visit your team and spend time with you, making sure the problem was addressed and that you’re equipped to deal with similar situations in the future.

At Zalando Tech, we happen to have this pool of expertise. For Hack Week, we’re looking at how to match it with departmental needs and come up with "rules of play" to organize this type of exchange in a fair, undisruptive manner for delivery.

Aims of the project

Throughout the week, we’ve been exploring the need and acceptance of a knowledge exchange model between employees, to eventually come up with prototypical solutions. Hack Week has allowed us to speak to many different, relevant stakeholders, to test out our ideas, as well as matching expertise with need between other Hack Week teams for their own projects.

Ideally, as we have a diverse sample of Tech’s population, we won’t only be including the hard-skill programming language aspect of expertise. We want to evaluate this idea end-to-end and not just focus on the technical aspects of building an exchange board web app.

Operational model and prototype

ajudando – Portuguese for “helping” – is an exchange platform where Zalando staff can access knowledge beyond their teams, across all of our locations – you simply choose to “Join” (as an expert) or “Use” the exchange (to find an expert). We’re looking to create a concentrated timeframe or workshop situation that goes beyond the HipChat room, but isn’t meant to solve staffing issues for teams. This model of exchange would better support knowledge-sharing and communication of our vast expertise across the organization.

We started with some guerilla UX, running around Hack Week to collect the data required: Were fellow Zalandos willing to offer their expertise to help other teams? What would motivate them? What were potential blockers that we could identify from the outset?

Questions we were faced with throughout brainstorming include the amount of time people could dedicate to helping others vs. time spent directly with their own delivery teams. When we surveyed fellow Zalandos asking what would stand in their way of helping, their answers were quite revealing and validated the need for such an exchange: “People wouldn't know how to contact me and/or they don't know that I have the expertise they are looking for.”

Issues that could potentially be solved via the ajudando platform span all areas of the department: Frontend, Backend, Training, and Product. We begun with early prototypes for respondents to be able to get the idea off the ground. We also spoke with owners of existing tools such as zLive (our social intranet) and the Ideas Board (used to organize Hack Week ideas and teams).

By the end of Hack Week, we hope not only to have helped other Hack Week teams working on projects by connecting them with various experts, but to have a prototype ready for further testing and possibly integrate the results into existing tools for the new year.

Have you had experience with or are involved in a similar knowledge exchange? We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas – reach out via Twitter at @soblom.

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Zalando lands at EuroClojure 2016

EuroClojure is the largest Clojure conference in Europe. It is organised by Cognitect and is a single track, two day event organised this year in Bratislava, Slovakia. Zalando was excited to sponsor the event and send engineers to meet hundreds of Clojurians, attend great presentations, and enjoy the beautiful city.

The Talks

One of the most anticipated topics at EuroClojure were the presentations about clojure.spec, a new feature in Clojure 1.9 which is in the alpha stage. The talk that excited us most was Simon Belak’s presentation “Living with Spec”. Simon showed how the promises of spec translate well into large scale projects from tutorial examples. Simon elaborated how they originally viewed it as providing schemas, but they found out quickly that there were many other features like transformations, destructuring, and generative testing they got out of the spec for free. Clojure.spec seems very versatile and the performance improvements in the later alphas have addressed the biggest concerns that the Clojure community had.

We had great expectations for David Nolen’s keynote, having graced the Finnish Clojure community with a visit to the ClojuTRE conference in September where he spoke on the history and evolution of ClojureScript. His sequel talk at EuroClojure highlighted the next step: How, from a technical point of view, ClojureScript is ready for prime time and it’s now time to get more engineers onboard.

Some talks that were of special interest for Zalando were about crossing the chasm between Scala and Clojure. Zalando has a strong Scala community in addition to our Clojure developers, so combining and comparing the two is of great interest to us.

The first Clojure/Scala talk was “Clojure is a Foreign Country: Combining Datomic with Scala” from Peter Brachwitz. Peter presented an interesting case where his company wanted to reap the benefits of Datomic while developing with Scala. The topics that stood out were how to create typed queries and how to map the data back to typed objects on reads. Peter made interesting comments on the costs and benefits of using types. This brought about some questions: How could the same guarantees be provided with spec on the Clojure side, and would the costs and benefits be the same?

The other Clojure/Scala talk of interest was “Machine Learning with Clojure and Apache Spark” by Eric Weinstein, which presented a good primer on machine learning with decision trees using Spark and deep learning with DL4J. Eric explained the basics of machine learning and gave some good tips on what tools to pick up when working with them in Clojure. We’re eager to try out Flambo and Sparkling for Spark with Clojure.

Daniel Lebrero’s “Automating resilience testing with Clojure and Docker” was a favourite talk for Zalando’s engineers. It was premised on the ideas of antifragility in Michael Nygard's "Release it!". Daniel showed how they had been able to automate the installation of an isolated version of what they have in production, and then using generative testing to kill random nodes and verify that the invariants and guarantees they promise still hold. The whole topic would have been of great interest to those who don’t or can’t have Chaos Monkey running wild in their infrastructure.

On the entertaining side, Srihari Sriraman spoke about making computer-generated music. Not only was it greatly directed, but his presentation was also very insightful into Indian classical music. Srihari explained the basic concepts of the Carnatic system of music and then explored various possibilities to recognize and generate it in a programmatic way. The samples of his own singing were amazing; it’s always great to witness someone excel not only in one skill area but in several, and watch how different domains of knowledge become merged together.

The final and the most inspiring keynote was given by Carin Meier. Her appearance was announced by David Nolen, who referred to her as a speaker he personally admires, which turned out to be true for us in attendance as well.

Carin introduced a classification of programmers into four categories: Explorers, Alchemists, Wrestlers, and Detectives. She took the Alchemist path and showed two examples of how biology can be combined with IT. In the Genetic Programming case, given a vector of random values, a spec was bred that was able to conform the provided data without errors. In the Self-Healing Code case, a way to automatically replace erroneous parts of code in run-time was presented. This and the other talks we attended about clojure.spec unveiled the wonderful world of possibilities that the spec gives, which is inspiring and exciting.

Conclusion

EuroClojure 2016 turned out to be an awesome conference. The city, the venue, the people, and the talks were all better than we expected. Additionally, it was great to talk to engineers and share what we are currently building at Zalando. We love spreading the word about Zalando and how we’re building microservices with the hottest technologies that scale to web scale.

We’d love to share more information with the broader community about our Clojure initiatives at Zalando – reach out to us via Twitter at @veikea.

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