What is this about The Hive?

Recently I was contacted by a recruiter for a Ruby on Rail developer job with a rather interesting company called The Hive ( www.thehive.com ). Interesting because of the nature of their setup. Interesting because it almost sounds too good to be true.

According to their website, the Hive is one big distributed group of software developers who work building cool projects. Their motto says "Live anywhere, dream anything and code everything". It is most developers' kind of dream job. You are provided with "High-end Mac desktops and laptops with dual 30 inch cinema displays" and "Executive desk with your choice of ergonomic chair" for your development environment, which is more than enough to make any developer drool with envy. If that isn't enticing enough, they offer competitive salaries (75 - 150K a year base salary) with full benefits living wherever you want. Are you drooling yet?

The one thing strange about this company is that I can't seem to find any outside information on them. Other than what's on their website and the recruiting ads (most which are very recent), it isn't easy to check them out, even with extensive googling. The only project they claimed to their credit, on their website, is an internet dating web site that they developed and own. One can't help but ask how they are financing their operations and offering such competitive salaries and benefits. Their website offers no such clues. It is possible that they could be operating in stealth mode on other projects using funding to keep them afloat until something that turns a profit. In any case, it is still a mysterious company.

Based on whatever information is available on the Hive, it still seems like one great opportunity to check out. If it wasn't for anything else, it would be for curiosity sake. I agreed to allow the recruiter submit my resume to the Hive for consideration and got a preliminary phone interview lined up for next week. Hopefully I can find out more what this company is all about.

After a brief preliminary phone interview with someone called Matt, here's what I did find out about the Hive. It is a legitimate company,even though somewhat mysterious in some ways. They are based somewhere on the east coast, Boston, I believe. But the employees may be scattered everywhere around the world. Someone from the Hive mentioned places like US, Canada, UK, Romania, Mexico, to name a few.

They use video conferencing / video calls to talk to everyone during work every day. They have daily scrum meetings per project at assigned times. Basically your contact with the others in the Hive is via Video conferencing. The working hours is based on the EST zone, Boston time, regardless where the employee may be. This means irrespective where the team members are they follow Boston time in terms of working hours. So for someone working from other countries, it could mean working on hours when everyone else is sleeping.

The Hive do not do contract development, but rather project development, usually for themselves. They do a lot of SaS sort of stuff. Privately held, self-funded, supposedly profitable (what I was told).

That's about all summarizes what I gathered.