Item — HN Reader

Blackstorm is building the world's most advanced javascript game engine, among other cool products like an IDE (js.io) We are hiring senior engineers who can tackle architecture and APIs for our game engine on a small team of 3-4 folks. Blackstorm has raised more then $30M, and we have more than a million users per engineer at the company.

For flavor: our last project was to use redux as a server state timeline for 10M+ active players; before that we used code mods to port it from our propriety module and class system to es6. There are numerous projects coming up, such as first class typescript support to facilitate better tooling and API documentation, a facial tracking/AR engine, and a react-powered webgl-based UI system.

We have projects for hosted real-time multiplayer gaming, social gaming, cross-compilation to native platforms, and many other core infrastructure tools that we would welcome your support on defining and creating.

Our technologies engine have already been in front of tens of millions of users, and we're adding millions of new users monthly. This is a high leverage position, and very senior. We welcome remote for certain folks, because we're looking to build the best small engineering team in the world.

We are also actively looking for folks across range of leadership roles in product, engineering, and operations.

Please email keela@blackstormlabs.com

Subject: Blackstorm Engineering: YOUR NAME HERE

Please include a personal note about your background and interests so we can prioritize your application!

5 comments

Echoing the negative comments about this company. They interviewed me (two names ago, I believe it was Game Closure) via an engineering quiz. It took two hours and in the phone conversation that followed, it was clear they barely read my (completely working) solution, and then rejected my candidacy for vague reasons around the tech stack I used.

Also had a negative experience. I had read some of the comments here, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. I thought perhaps some of the commenters were just bad candidates, or there was a one-off fluke that gave them a bad experience during the interview process. Unfortunately it seems there is something up with these guys. I'm not sure what, things sound good on the surface, but honestly I wouldn't waste your time.

This exact same blurb was posted last month, but when I spoke to them, they claimed that the "REMOTE" tag was "accidental". This is not a remote position, not sure why they keep adding that tag to their hiring posts.

I see I'm not the only one who's had a bad experience with these shapeshifters. No wonder they have to keep changing their name. Blackstorm aka Weeby aka Game Closure. They wasted my time. They do NOT want to hire for remote, and will try to talk you out of it. They are NOT offering the salaries they claim.

They're also "js.io": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240175

Nothing adds up.

I've never heard of their products before. And they've been around for a heck of a long time in these boards with these salaries, and there was no SEC Form D's back then.

Also, check this out: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blackstorm-labs

They claim to have 33.5M funding. It's been 9 months, I can't find the SEC filing.

There is "news" about Game Closure raising 12.5 Million, but I can't find an SEC filing.

Weeby, can't find a anything.

> I can see how you’d be bummed spending the time without the expected outcome...

I think a lot of "honest people" have contacted these guys on these threads over the past year.

They mention on their website (http://www.weeby.co/jobs.html)

> Hand-optimized assembly drawing routines for arm6/7 > Create a particle engine which maps to webgl shaders, pure Javascript, or optimized C > Rebuild backwards compatible Android APIs > Context-aware code parser for automatic internationalization & localization code parser > Analytics platform, terabytes of data every week, real-time processing. > Scale real-time notifications and chat to hundreds of millions of game players > Create a particle engine which maps to webgl shaders, pure Javascript, or optimized C

Meanwhile, look at their weeby's GitHub: https://github.com/weebygames

Terabytes of data from what? Hundreds of Millions of users?

Look at their games: http://www.weeby.co/games.html. Some of them were also taken off the store. Others have less than 100 ratings total.

"The item you've requested is not currently available in the U.S. store."

And let's see game closure: https://github.com/gameclosure, here, they actually have something that's not a fork: https://github.com/gameclosure/native-android

It appears they were outsourcing. In addition, they were hiring programmers in Vietnam: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tappy-pte--ltd-#/ent... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12407125

But what about js.io?

> js.io is a new IDE for HTML5 Apps / Games, AR, VR, Minecraft mods, Arduino, IoT, and more, targeting javascript as a common language. We provide developers their own persistent container, a beautiful end-to-end development experiences, r remote-over-LTE (sic) debugging, one click publishing, and carefully polished community support. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12204213

So... where's the IDE for Minecraft mods, Arduino, IoT... it seems to be an IDE that does everything! Through javascript, remember: "Cross-compiling javascript to other languages and vice versa". OK? Where is it? https://github.com/blackstormlabs? https://github.com/weebygames? I see forked repos of Flask and React. How is that going to get you transpiling for Minecraft mods, arduino and IoT? Let alone the abstraction to the API's.

Take a look at the "js.io": https://github.com/gameclosure/js.io. It even links to js.io in the description.

> js.io is a multi-platform package management and module system for JavaScript. js.io modules can be evaluated in a JavaScript runtime (e.g. node.js) or precompiled into a single package for use on the client side.

Here's the game "dev kit" (the real js.io?) they were touting so highly? https://github.com/gameclosure/devkit

It hasn't been updated in over a year, but it does have 600+ stars. No sign of the millions of players, no hand-optimized asm drawing routines, context-aware code parsers or terabyte analytic platforms.

Nothing adds up.

I look forward to an explanation of where these SEC filings for Game Closure, Weeby and Blackstorm are at. Also, where are the "terabytes of data every week, real-time processing" analytics. The "hundreds of millions of game players". Where are the hard core "Hand-optimized assembly drawing routines".

I'm disappointed they haven't even tried to respond to any of this, and the poster appears to be "Tom" who's apparently the CoFounder.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-fairfield-b950a53b/

You know, people can see when you fib about salaries.

According to Glassdoor, this employer's salary to an engineer is 97-104k.

According to the Department of Labor, you are paying an engineer 102k/yr (https://lcr-pjr.doleta.gov/index.cfm?event=ehLCJRExternal.ds...) It says Mountain View. Begin date 09/01/2017.

Could you explain the discrepancy or please correct your salary information so people don't waste their time interviewing when it's not your intention to fit the salary you specified?

Not trying to cause a scene, but interviewed for a few places with high salaries and after sincerely following their interview process, realized they were just giving a widely inflated salary to get resumes in.

It may be a "junior" engineer. But still, you're posting 140k as a minimum range in the post currently when glassdoor says 97k and DoL says 102k.

Maybe I'm mistaken. Not making accusations, just want to give you a chance to clarify things.

I interviewed with them and received an offer in the past.

They changed their name from Weeby (weeby.co) to Blackstorm.

They claimed the same salary range and said they would "meet" my requirements. They ended up offering 120k which was far below my requirement and wasted a lot of my time and energy with them.

I'd stay away from them. When I asked them about the low ball offer, they claimed I could earn "raises" every month, all the way up to 220k.

I commented about them before on another "Who's Hiring" thread but it appears their comment has disappeared. How interesting...