What is the best Atlassian partner/company/organization to work for, or is it better to work on your own?

[Gary Weaver]

The Atlassian Partner community from what I've experienced so far is more communal than adversarial, so usually there isn't an opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of working for each. Also, there may not be opportunities currently open for new developers or partner positions within Atlassian partners, other companies, or organizations for Atlassian plugin/solution developers. However...

In your opinion (and please back it up with your reasons), which are the best Atlassian partners/companies/organizations from an Atlassian plugin/solution developer's perspective, or is it better to work alone/on your own?

Please state the Atlassian product(s) that the partner/company/organization provides plugins/solutions for (e.g. Confluence, Jira, etc.).

If possible, please keep it clean and just list the facts. Thoughts from customers, currently/past employed developers, the companies themselves, and outsider opinions are all welcome. If possible, please discuss compensation for different levels of experience, benefits, ability to telecommute/where they hire, travel, etc.

e.g.: "Partner X mostly hires junior Java developers (2-3 years experience) to do Confluence and/or Jira plugins and related solutions (full life-cycle development/maintenance), their benefits are average, the salary is competitive with average Java developer salaries, no travel is expected typically to a customer site (<2% year involves travel), and all work in done onsite in the Melbourne office."

[Jon Silvers [Atlassian] · Accepted solution]

Hi Gary, this is a pretty odd quesetion for Answers. I think your answer is better gleaned through meeting with the partners and getting to know them and asking them about what it's like to work for them. You should attend AtlasCamp or Atlassian Summit to meet with many of our partners. The answer you're seeking -- is it better to work for x or y -- is entirely subjective and not going to be found in forums.

And if you like my answer, please close out this thread, I need the karma! :)

[Gary Weaver]

I appreciate everyone who volunteered information, and I voted your answer as correct, because you are right about a lot.

Now for the future, please consider striking the word "odd" out of your vocabulary, unless you are talking about numbers. In some areas and cultures, it may convey psuedo-intellectual posturing, and in this case I sensed passive aggression. Now if I would have heard what you said in a high voice with a cheeky British accent by a friend as we looked at someone else's egg cooking on a hot server, it would have been ok. Typed, it is not ok. :)

You are correct that it is a subjective question, and in other communities like Stack Overflow, this question probably would have been downvoted usually with a lightly chastising remark as a comment (and that is why my question was called "odd").

I asked this question the way that I did because in my opinion it is a question that just about every Atlassian plugin/solution developer thinks of at some point, if they get far enough into it.

I should have asked, "Where can I find information on work opportunities for doing Atlassian plugin/solution development?" I would expect to get at least one quasi-automated response, "Go to AtlasCamp, Atlassian Summit, or email each partner, and if you want to work on your own, strongly consider becoming an Atlassian partner." I was hoping to find more than that, and I did by a few here.

I would attend AtlasCamp or Atlassian Summit if I had the opportunity to.

[Kinto Soft]

Yes, no problem. I'm the developer of www.docminer.com. In my opinion, Atlassian is a great place for plugin development: good documentation, good support, good products and a lot of customers.

Lately, I don't like Atlassian has banned plugin developers from Answers (and closed the forum) . So, you do not have a channel to speak Atlassian users about your plugin. You can use it as user (ask for help) but not for advertisements.

Selling or not selling is not an Atlassian related question, it's much more global. Anyway, plugins developers get the stuff done from a sales point of view. You should follow the Atlassian's business model. If you read it then you see that everything is ready for success: Atlassian provides you a framework for busines, you don't need a sales team (they provide you a global sales channel instead) and you can sale 000s copies because they have 000s customers. So you only need a good product, a low price, wait for customers buy and massive sales. ;). The product and the price depends directly from you, thus the only two variables to become rich are: wait for customers buy and massive sales. At this point, I only know a man able to answer those variables: Mr. Steve Jobs.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's not quite true. Atlassian closed the forum because they felt it was archaic and not meeting the needs of the community any more. They think "Answers" is a better approach (my personal feelings are a little mixed - searching in here is dreadful compared with the forums, the spam is annoying, and there's still no easy way to flag/merge the duplicate questions that keep getting asked)

They have definitely not banned plugin developers, they've just asked us not to advertise. When a plugin is the right solution for a problem, or could help, then it's fine to bring it up, talk about it and link to it. What's not appropriate is banging on about plugin X when it is NOT relevant for the posting you're talking about. This is not a place for adverts, we're here to talk about Atlassian related stuff. I do agree with some of your complaints about this - the plugin exchange is a good thing, but it could really use a notification system for updates and new releases to replace the postings we used to do in the fora.

[Radu Dumitriu]

Pablo, with the risk of being down-voted, have you tried C₁₅H₁₀Cl₂N₂O_{2 ?}

[MattS]

Radu, that's a bit personal!

[Kinto Soft]

@Nic, they have been banned as plugin developers (not as Atlassian product users).

Regarding whether talking is or not relevant for the posting I would say that the "relevant" word is quite subjective. For example, at least two times you voted me -1 because I talked about my plugin in two different posts. Some days later, two users voted me +15. So, it was not relevant for YOU, but others have a different opinion.

Providing alerts for new plugins or new versions is not enough if the message does not reach as much users as possible.

A theorical exercise: What would it has more impact? Dropping plugins from Atlassian and nobody could install them. Or dropping people providing support? I have the answer: If you drop all plugins then customers should spent a lot of time and money developing their own solutions. If you drop support then customers should read the documentation (which seems quite expensive too).

Well, I don't want to start the III World War, so I must recognize how much valuable support is. I don't want to my questions become un-answered in the future ;)

[Radu Dumitriu]

@Matt: Opened: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-250

[MattS]

Good idea - voted for

[Kinto Soft]

@Radu,

Seriuosly speaking, I don't understand how Atlassian moderators allows you to participate.

Intelecual narcisism should have some limits.

[James Dumay]

Guys, could we please keep it professional?

[Radu Dumitriu]

Yeap, I somehow apologized for that. Ashamed.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>they have been banned as plugin developers (not as Atlassian product users).

No, you are still wrong. They have not been banned as plugin developers. They have been "banned" as advertisers who make noise, go off topic and try to plug their own plugins inappropriately. It's fine to mention/recommend/explain a plugin when it solves a problem, but some plugin developers bang on about their plugin when it is not right.

>Regarding whether talking is or not relevant for the posting I would say that the "relevant" word is quite subjective. For example, at least two times you voted me -1 because I talked about my plugin in two different posts. Some days later, two users voted me +15. So, it was not relevant for YOU, but others have a different opinion.

No, I voted you -1 because you were advertising something that really wasn't appropriate at the time. I've remained neutral where I thought you might have a case and I wasn't sure. Some people liked it, that's up to them (and it's not +15 - you get 15 karma for a single positive vote). And finally, if you look carefully, I've +1'd you in a couple of places where Docminer is a potential answer and mentioned it myself first in (at least) one posting. When it could be of help.

>Providing alerts for new plugins or new versions is not enough if the message does not reach as much users as possible.

That's why we need an announcement system. But you're also making the mistake advertisers do - "as many possible users" is wrong, it's "as many as possible who might be interested", and that is not everyone on the forums. I for one, don't want adverts in my community talking space. I'm more than happy to have them in an associated place where I can filter and sort them

[Radu Dumitriu]

Not trying to pour gasoline on fire, but poor Nic here explained this for the third time ...

[Kinto Soft]

@Nic,

>That's why we need an announcement system. But you're also making the mistake advertisers do - "as many possible users" is wrong, it's "as many as possible who might be interested", and that is not everyone on the forums. I for one, don't want adverts in my community talking space. I'm more than happy to have them in an associated place where I can filter and sort them
A lot of times, most users are not interested in a plugin because they don't know that it exists. How they are noticed if they are not subscribed? What is it worst? Avoid users be disturbed by advertisements or avoid users find useful solutions?

Answers is the ideal place for that because it has the biggest user base and it allows filters. So users subscribed to some key word would be automatically advised and the rest not.

Of course, there would be more stuff at Answers, but, for example I'm mainly interested in JIRA. But when I read Answers I get a lot of stuff (Bamboo, FishEye, Crucible, Bonfire, and so on) what is not relevant for me. Anyway Atlassian decided provide one unique place for everything: Answers. This is the major difference among the forum: in a forum themes are categorized. In Answers not.

Really, If I was a director at Atlassian I would be surprised hearing people asking for build a new system to solve an imaginary problem. Even more when that new systems is just similar to the forum what has been deprecated.

This might be a symptom that Atlassian is in the top of its success. Just the same happened at Microsoft and other sucessfuly companies: wasting time in no sense things.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

@Pablo - Argh, you completely miss the point again.

>A lot of times, most users are not interested in a plugin because they don't know that it exists. How they are noticed if they are not subscribed? What is it worst? Avoid users be disturbed by advertisements or avoid users find useful solutions?

Then they ask the community on Answers, and the community can point them at the right ones. The community Answers remain clean and focussed and have pointers when a plugin is relevant, not a constant stream of adverts obscuring the useful stuff. The documentation can point them at the plugin exchange and the community. As well as the notification system if we had one. That completely solves the "know it exists" problem, avoids needing a subscription, stops them being disturbed by adverts and gives them useful answers. You absolutely do NOT want to get "the widest possible audience" because they'll learn to avoid the community.

>Answers is the ideal place for that because it has the biggest user base and it allows filters. So users subscribed to some key word would be automatically advised and the rest not.

No, no, no. When I go to answers, I don't want to have to go around setting up filters or subscriptions, I want to see the stream of questions ordered by time/most active/unanswered and so on. I can search if I need to, I don't want to have to filter out adverts, it really discourages me to bother looking at Answers. I do think Answers should be closely linked to the plugin exchange and an announcement system, but allowing adverts as postings simply break it.

You're absolutely right about the way forums categorised stuff, and Answers doesn't do that. If it did, it wouldn't really have been worth moving off the forums. I think Answers is an improvement when you look at the increasing integration between the various Atlassian packages.

[Jeremy Largman]

@Pablo:

Answers is not the place to advertise plugins. Please don't use it as such. Plugins.atlassian.com is the marketplace for plugins, whereas Answers is a Q & A site, specifically geared towards finding answers to questions. We are in the process of creating a guideline for how to market plugins. Follow ANSWERS-139.

Regarding Radu:

Seriuosly speaking, I don't understand how Atlassian moderators allows you to participate.

Radu, for the most part, has been a good contributor, with a few comments that, say, we wouldn't tolerate from someone on staff but don't quite qualify for a suspension. He's answered over 100 questions and I don't think a suspension is the right thing to do. Radu, just please keep it professional. I'm going to mark ANSWERS-250 as 'close - won't fix'. This isn't a problem with the tool that can be solved by a feature.

However, this is raising a new concern I hadn't really considered. To deal with spam, we've been working on a feature to allow high-karma earners to suspend users. The idea was that our top users could suspend a spammer. I hadn't really considered that they might want to use that power to suspend a would-be legitimate user! If you've got thoughts about this, please comment at ANSWERS-228.

[Kinto Soft]

@Nick

> Then they ask the community on Answers, and the community can point them at the right ones.

Do you see it? "the community". You are excluding plugin developers from the community in a very implicit way. You don't believe in a democratic community.

> When I go to answers, I don't want to have to go around setting up filters or subscriptions, I want to see the stream of questions ordered by time/most active/unanswered and so on.

"I" every time. When I, I want... but Answers does not belong you. Perhaps I don't want to see the same things like you. Why did you put yourself at a superior level that the rest as what you want be more important? It seems like Answers belongs to a group of persons who have more rights than the rest. And it's not a real community for me. I think it would be better rename "Answers" by "Friends" and use "cows" instead of "plugin developers". I miss a welcome message at the Plugins Exchange: "Work and don't disturb".

As much you try to explain it, more I think plugin developers are not part of Answer community.

So, regarding the Radu's statistics, a 4th attempt will be required in the future to try to explain it better.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

@Pablo

>Do you see it? "the community". You are excluding plugin developers from the community in a very implicit way.

No, I'm not. I don't want to exclude plugin developers, I am one. The community is for users, plugin developers, admins, Atlassian, partners and so on, as equals. (Well, ok, maybe Atlassian are more equal than the rest of us).

>"I" every time. When I, I want... but Answers does not belong you.

Yes. "I" because I'm expressing my opinion. Answers belongs to Atlassian and the community, and I'm one of the members, like you are. I'm no more important than anyone else here.

I don't think I'm explaining my two points well enough though.

1. I don't understand why you keep implying plugin developers are not welcome. They are most certainly part of the community, and valued ones at that.
2. I feel (note - opinion again) that Answers is a place to get, well, um, answers. The answer to some questions is "no, but see plugins X and Y". All I'm asking for is people not to say "see (my) plugin Z" when it's not a useful answer, and not to fill up the feeds with adverts.

@Jeremy Largman [Atlassian] - thanks for the pointer to ANSWERS-139, voted, and scribbling a comment.

[JamieA]

I have some sympathy with Pablo's position. He has written a product that he's justifiably proud of, so he recommends it. Yes, some of his posts come across like advertising, but I suspect that if you're not a native English speaker it's hard to hit the right tone.

Atlassian staffers sometimes recommend say Crowd or Bonfire, even when they're not the only (or even the best in some cases) solution. My posts often have a recommendation for one of my plugins... I wrote them to fulfil a need, and guess what, other people have those needs, so I recommend them. No doubt Pablo feels the same.

And whilst answers is an improvement in many respects we still need that channel to say: "hey, i've got a new plugin" or "check out these new blog entries". Until then people are going to fall foul of this murky boundary between recommending a plugin and advertising.

Re Radu's insult... come on, I hear ten times worse in the office every day. It's just banter.

[Radu Dumitriu]

@Jeremy

Could you please reset my statistics to 1 ? This is out of control. And ridiculous.

[Pepe]

Artemis is a one man shop that does really well. We're pretty small as well. The upside of being small is diverse projects and lots of hats so its never boring. It can be tough to get larger clients to depend on a small organization but many of our clients prefer it since they know us personally and know exactly who they are reaching out to for support. We aim to be a part of and extend their support team. Once you have a few big companies/projects on your resume the others fears are assuaged.

The upside I'd want in working for a big company is a more stable environment and side projects. When we are slow I get to work on side projects but I also get hungry. Big companies can just dedicate 20% of your time to pet projects. Or they could not let you do anything fun and jam you into a cube. I suppose it depends on their culture.

I struggled as a one man shop to keep my backlog full or would be overwhelmed with work and have to turn it away. 5-10 is a good size to smooth that out plus have resources for bookkeeping, legal, etc. I consulted with a group that I liked to work with. They had a good culture so I joined up.

Track your happiness with niko-niko and pick the place that makes you the happiest ;-p

[MattS]

That's last bit is a really good idea - subcontract for a slightly larger consulting organization and see how it works out.

[MattS]

I agree, it's a matter of restraint and good sense. I'm careful to only mention my O'Reilly JIRA books when there is specific information relevant to the question.

~Matt

[Kinto Soft]

If you have those sort of doubts then I would say is better for you work for a company.

[Gary Weaver]

I have no doubt that anyone could start off on their own if they are talented enough and do a great job- the benefits may not be there (except for a little while, maybe COBRA in the U.S. would be cheaper than seeing what you could get on your own), and the hours may be long, but I have no illusions about how easy or how difficult it would be for someone to start on their own. Just looking for feedback- could you provide your experience?

[Radu Dumitriu]

Tough question, huh? My company is a really nice one, but would you like to come to Bucharest? <sexist> On the plus side, romanian girls are beautiful </sexist> :)

[Gary Weaver]

If you're hiring in Bucharest or would consider hiring someone to work remotely, then it would be nice to see information about your company, etc. Otherwise, it would be cool to hear about your experience as a developer for Atlassian plugins/solutions and why you chose to do it on your own vs. working for another partner, etc. And if you worked at a company before that had you writing Atlassian plugins/solutions full-time, it would be cool to hear about it. It would also be helpful to post a link to additional info.

[JamieA]

Or could you just send the girls over to London?

[David at David Simpson Apps]

@Jamie Echlin: I'm sure there are some girls in London. Maybe less time on here would help you find them :)

[Radu Dumitriu]

Gary, to answer your question: the company that I work for is a great company, because we have bosses with real human qualities (besides intelligence, I value for instance compassion) (well, I hope they do not read this forum). That being said, we're not an Atlassian-only shop (although we like and promote Atlassian whenever we can).

Creating our plugins started mostly in fun mode (because our customers changed their minds every 1 1/2 minutes, but that's another story). However, in Atlassian world, we're new, and we're having fun.

Right now, I work in my spare time to materialize an idea that may be helpful for sites which need really high performance & availability (I intend to keep it in Open Source, do not worry). I have talked with my bosses, when time will come, they agreed to let me create a satellite company (a spin-off company, I think this is how it is called). This is another path you may try.

[MattS]

Gary,

That's quite the question! I too like the community's outlook but my opinion is that there is always room for another partner.

Are you looking for feedback from partners as well as customers?

~Matt

[Gary Weaver]

Matt, yes I'd like feedback from partners, customers, and especially developers on what types of opportunities there are for those that would like to do Atlassian plugin/solution development. While there might not be opportunities currently avaiable with each partner or company that does this sort of work, I'm mostly just curious about people's experiences and what people would like to say about their company, their occupation, or their experience with a partner/working for some company.

[MattS]

Well, I can give my personal opinions. I ran my own one-man business Consulting Toolsamiths based in Silicon Valley for the last five years but have recently joined CustomWare, one of the largest and oldest Atlassian partners. I like the varied kind of work I get to do, and the variety of customers. So I chose not to change the main part of what I do day-to-day when I made that change.

Some of the reasons I made the change are:

• More regular income stream (not necessarily more or less)
• Medical benefits (a big deal in the US, as you're away)
• Larger projects (very large companies are wary of being dependent on a one-man company)

I see you're based in RTP, so there is probably enough work there to support a one-man operation. But getting there can be a challenge for someone supporting a family. If that's the case, then the larger organization could be the way to go.

Feel free to email me directly if you want to ask for more details.

~Matt

[Gary Weaver]

Restated here: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/13791/where-can-i-find-information-on-opportunities-for-doing-atlassian-plugin-solution-development

[Gary Weaver]

Thanks to everyone that answered. Unfortunately, there is a limit to the number of answers I can mark as correct, so if I didn't mark your good answer as correct, I apologize for not being able to.

[Gary Weaver]

Jeremy, good point and you nailed it. This would be a great question for a forum, well maybe if restated like, "Where can I find information on work opportunities for doing Atlassian plugin/solution development?" As I said to Jon in a comment down below, it would be helpful to have an area hosted by Atlassian (wiki, forum, job site?) that was the "go to" place for such information.

[Radu Dumitriu]

@Jeremy

Could you please reset my statistics to 1 ? This is out of control.

[Jeremy Largman]

Some lines of thinking are that you shouldn't allow open-ended questions in a Q & A site, since they can never be closed and don't really offer help. I've heard comments that this is one of the things that's been lost with the move from Forums to Answers, and now there isn't any other real option for where to start a community discussion, so I see why you'd do it here. Basically I think this is fine, but it's not really too much of a surprise that the conversation has digressed.

[Kinto Soft]

> Then they ask the community on Answers, and the community can point them at the right ones.

Do you see it? "the community". You are excluding plugin developers from the community in a very implicit way. You don't believe in a democratic community.

> When I go to answers, I don't want to have to go around setting up filters or subscriptions, I want to see the stream of questions ordered by time/most active/unanswered and so on.

"I" every time. When I, I want... but Answers does not belong you. Perhaps I don't want to see the same things like you. Why did you put yourself at a superior level that the rest as what you want be more important? It seems like Answers belongs to a group of persons who have more rights than the rest. And it's not a real community for me. I think it would be better rename "Answers" by "Friends" and use "cows" instead of "plugin developers". I miss a welcome message at the Plugins Exchange: "Work and don't disturb".

As much you try to explain it, more I think plugin developers are not part of Answer community.

So, regarding the Radu's statistics, a 4th attempt will be required in the future to try to explain it better.

[Kinto Soft]

[Sorry, it appears as answer instead of comment for Nic :(]

@Nic, they have been banned as plugin developers (not as Atlassian product users).

Regarding whether talking is or not relevant for the posting I would say that the "relevant" word is quite subjective. For example, at least two times you voted me -1 because I talked about my plugin in two different posts. Some days later, two users voted me +15. So, it was not relevant for YOU, but others have a different opinion.

Providing alerts for new plugins or new versions is not enough if the message does not reach as much users as possible.

A theorical exercise: What would it has more impact? Dropping plugins from Atlassian and nobody could install them. Or dropping people providing support? I have the answer: If you drop all plugins then customers should spent a lot of time and money developing their own solutions. If you drop support then customers should read the documentation (which seems quite expensive too).

Well, I don't want to start the III World War, so I must recognize how much valuable support is. I don't want to my questions become un-answered in the future ;)