SeatGeek Blog
seatgeek.com · Company blog · on HN since 2009
SeatGeek, a ticket marketplace, shares engineering posts on Kalman filters, fuzzy string matching, Redis autocomplete, and hiring challenges.
What HN saysHN mostly mentions it in job postings for engineers and interns, along with its open-source tools like FuzzyWuzzy and Soulmate.
39HN people shared it
24linked it in comments
39stories submitted
1.4Kstory points
3 years agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage5 people · first shared 2011
- 2Jobs4 people · first shared 2011
- 3Using A Kalman Filter To Make Sense Of Noisy Data3 people · 89 points · first shared 2012 · 18 comments on HN
- 4Henceforth, All Job Applicants Must Hack Into Our Backend (Dev Challenge)3 people · 49 points · first shared 2010 · 37 comments on HN
- 5Yak Shaving: Adding OAuth Support to Nginx via Lua3 people · 18 points · first shared 2012 · 5 comments on HN
- 6FuzzyWuzzy: Fuzzy String Matching in Python2 people · 150 points · first shared 2011 · 24 comments on HN
- 7Announcing Soulmate, a Redis-backed service for fast autocompleting2 people · 97 points · first shared 2011 · 23 comments on HN
- 8OpenCV Face Detection For Cropping Faces2 people · 72 points · first shared 2013 · 11 comments on HN
- 9The Math Behind Ticket Bargains2 people · 24 points · first shared 2012 · 4 comments on HN
- 10Nhl 22208942 people · first shared 2014
- 11We Built Interactive Seating Maps Using Raphael; Please Give Us Feedback1 people · 217 points · first shared 2010 · 78 comments on HN
- 12SeatGeek Blog: What An Earthquake Does To Page Load Time1 people · 123 points · first shared 2011 · 29 comments on HN
- 13Open The Beers And Wait To Be Showered With Job Applications1 people · 75 points · first shared 2010 · 50 comments on HN
- 14SeatGeek Launches iPhone App1 people · 54 points · first shared 2012 · 14 comments on HN
- 15The SeatGeek Event Recommendations API1 people · 38 points · first shared 2013 · 8 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
pixelmonkey · 2012-11-01
Some background: Postling was founded by an ex-Amazon product manager, David Lifson and the two original technical co-founders of Etsy, Haim Schoppick & Chris Maguire.
It was originally developed at Dreamit Ventures, the accelerator program in Philadelphia, in 2009. They worked alongside my startup (http://parse.ly), Jack & Russ of SeatGeek (http://seatgeek.com), Matt & Burak of Tidal (http://tid.al), and a few other early-stage companies.
After the summer in Philadelphia, they relocated to NYC just like we did. They are some of the nicest guys who worked tirelessly on their company for several years, building up a customer base and strong following in the market. They took a methodical approach: built an MVP, launched it to customers, and iterated it in response to customer feedback.
This acquisition is a nice, soft landing for the company and the founders.
chadburgess · 2011-08-19
SeatGeek (marketing internship)
http://seatgeek.com/
New York, NY (11th and Broadway)
Looking for local people, but transportation is expensed
SeatGeek is a ticket search engine that enables fans to quickly and easily find the best price for sports and concert events on the secondary ticket market.
Technologies: https://github.com/seatgeek
Length = 1 semester or minimum 8-10 weeks
Unpaid internship. Can sign off on college credit and provide extensive formalized training in customer aquisition/SEO/PPC
Apply to me directly by emailing a resume to [email protected] or read more here: http://www.startuply.com/Jobs/Online_Marketing_Fall_Internship_1618_22…
Look at how cool our last interns were: http://seatgeek.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/some-of-the-seatge…
sddamico · 2020-09-02
SeatGeek (https://seatgeek.com) is actively hiring Android engineers! We’re an event ticketing company based in NYC. Yes, live events have been battered by COVID, but we are well capitalized to weather the storm (plus we’ve managed to sign a few new clients along the way). We have a small team of awesome engineers but are looking to grow and are working on some awesome things to make sure SeatGeek is ready for the return of people in seats!
SeatGeek prides itself on its attention to detail in our product development and we look to hire engineers that are product/design/UX-minded to help craft great experiences for people that love live events.
Quick hits:
- 1+ years of experience (essentially hiring all levels but entry right now)
- Full-time
- HQ and Android team are in NYC, but are remote optional until at least Jan 2021 (we can provide relocation post-pandemic)
- Full-time remote considered for US-based folks
- Interview process: recruiter video screen, technical video screen, virtual on-site; generally focused on applied skills and knowledge, not algo
- Visa sponsorship: not at this time, sorry
Feel free to ask questions, I’m happy to answer them, I’m the EM on the team here and have been with the company for almost 6 years now. You can reach me directly at [email protected]
If you’re just interested in applying (awesome!), here’s a link to our job posting: https://grnh.se/ormck1
jack7890 · 2018-02-01
SeatGeek — New York, NY — Full Time — We're a mobile marketplace for tickets and live events.
Web Engineer — We're looking for someone who loves building for the web. Everything else (professional experience, where in the stack you fit, the languages you've used) is up for grabs. Details here: https://seatgeek.com/jobs/software_engineer
iOS Engineer, marketing roles, and lots more here: https://seatgeek.com/jobs
josegonzalez · 2014-11-06
Seems like the scanning may be broken. I just tried it with https://seatgeek.com and it says the site isn't public.
rraval · 2014-08-19
This is an awesome writeup!
I was playing with the demo linked elsewhere in this thread [demo], and noticed a bit of a hiccup when scrolling past multiple zoom levels. It seems like there'd be a bit of a pause as the tiles were rendered at each successive zoom level. It may be worthwhile to debounce the scroll event listeners with a small timeout, so you can catch multiple successive scroll events and zoom straight to the target zoom level without having to render each step along the way.
Quick video of the stuttering: http://gfycat.com/BrilliantActiveAfghanhound
[demo] https://seatgeek.com/senators-at-flyers-tickets/4-11-2015-philadelphia…
malandrew · 2013-06-27
adamsge · 2022-07-15
SeatGeek (https://www.seatgeek.com) | NYC / EU / Remote
We are hiring a Database Reliability Engineer to join our Platform team. This position will be primarily working with our B2B product, SeatGeek Enterprise, supporting some of the largest teams and venues in the world, including Manchester City FC, Liverpool FC, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Brooklyn Nets.
Our technology stack includes MSSQL and Postgres, utilizing both Windows and Linux, Hashicorp products (Nomad/Consul/Vault), Go, Chef, and Gitlab.
This position will focus on automation, and increasing observability into our existing database system resources.
SeatGeek is a mobile-focused primary and secondary ticketing service that enables fans to buy and sell tickets for live sports, concerts, and other events. Our primary focus is to help the world experience more live.
Benefits and perks include:
- Equity stake in a well-funded growth stage company
- (For NYC employees) A hybrid in-office approach, allowing you to work remotely at your choice
- A WFH stipend to support your home office setup
- Benefits package that supports health/dental/vision. We also provide annual subscriptions to Headspace, Ginger.io, and One Medical
- A focus on transparency. We have regular company meetings and Q&A panels where employees can chat openly with teams across SeatGeek, our co-founders, and external guests from the industry
- $120 a month to spend on tickets to live events
- Annual subscription to select music services…
kajecounterhack · 2017-06-09
Two weeks isn't a ton of time, so I'd stick around SF with some short trips down to the Peninsula. Here are some ideas:
SAN FRANCISCO
1. Mission
Get off at 24th st BART and start at Ritual Coffee. Walk down Valencia street toward 16th st BART station and stop into the variety of stores. At lunchtime go to 18th street and grab a sandwich from Bi-rite -- eat it at Dolores park nearby. At night go to The Chapel and see what's playing, you might be able to get tickets. If not, try stopping by Noisebridge (google it!)
2. FiDi
Start at Philz (300 Folsom) and walk to the Google @ Spear St. If you know someone there you can get a tour. If not, you're now standing near the base of the Bay Bridge and it's quite beautiful. Mozilla is right next door as well if you want a tour. They have a nice monument outside their office. Walk away from the Bay Bridge toward the Ferry Building, and get lunch there. Take the Ferry to Sausalito and work from there in the afternoon -- get dinner there and catch a ferry back to SF. Alternatively you can stick around downtown. If you know someone at Salesforce they are right in the area as well.
Night: Try hitting up some local bars for drinks. Some popular ones include Local Edition, Novela, and Rickhouse.
Bonus: Go see a giants baseball game. It's super cheap and really fun. https://seatgeek.com/san-francisco-giants-tickets?oq=SF+giants -- the cheap seats high up are the best. You get a great view and you can eat stadium snacks while watching an…
prepend · 2023-05-10
I don’t live in New York and two tickets all in can regularly be had for $50, all in. Although interestingly movie tickets are only $20 for regular and $25 for imax in Manhattan so the value calculations vary a bit depending on where you live.
Also you need to be selective on when you go. If you have to go now, you’ll may more. If you can wait until May 20th you can get two tickets vs Montreal for $38 [0]
[0] https://seatgeek.com/cf-montreal-at-new-york-red-bulls-tickets/mls/202…
ericwaller · 2022-06-03
For anyone who wants to take a crack at building a competitor on the ticketing side: https://seatgeek.com/jobs
smackfu · 2014-01-22
I wanted to check this out for UConn Women's Basketball games (which are the most popular sport in this state) and got this bizarre search result back:
http://seatgeek.com/university-of-connecticut-vollyball-at-boston-coll…
Gigablah · 2013-10-09
Some are scripting it into the web server (nginx in this case): http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/oauth-support-for-nginx-with-lua
clarkbk · 2013-04-02
Also at SeatGeek:
Marketing Analyst – A numbers-oriented role for someone who can help us get the word out about SeatGeek.
http://seatgeek.com/jobs/marketing_analyst
mtourne · 2012-12-09
Nginx exposes multiple phase to process an incoming HTTP Request. Mainly rewrite, access, content, header_filter, and log
You can embed Lua at the access phase, and query your API from there. Some of the Lua libraries of the OpenResty package [1] might help you do that.
And here [2] you can find an example of OAuth support.
[1] http://openresty.org/#Components
[2] http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/oauth-support-for-nginx-with-lua
flahertyiv · 2012-08-10
rdudekul - here's a link to a blogpost series we published a few months back that gives more insight into the methodology, parameters and math behind Deal Score:
http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/using-a-kalman-filter-to-predict-ticket-p…
endersshadow · 2012-08-10
It instills confidence if you just look up some tickets [1]. I've used a few times and have always been very impressed with the experience. It's pretty clear to tell that they're taking a lot into account by just scanning around the stadium.
[1]: http://seatgeek.com/angels-red-sox-tickets/8-21-2012-boston-massachuse…
nsp · 2012-08-10
Its an absolute score, we made the transition from a relative scale with this update.
There's more information on our blog in these two posts.
http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/the-math-behind-ticket-bargains
http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/using-a-kalman-filter-to-predict-ticket-p…
danso · 2012-02-29
I'm astonished at the terms of their API (so far). No limits and free to cache?
http://seatgeek.com/api-terms
tangentcity · 2012-02-25
Seatgeek, especially their Columbus discovery engine. http://seatgeek.com/columbus
aonic · 2011-07-27
FuzzyWuzzy: Fuzzy String Matching in Python
http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/fuzzywuzzy-fuzzy-string-matching-in-pytho…
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2744190
thibaut_barrere · 2011-02-22
One thing I'm considering is either solr facets or a structured auto-completion like soulmate [1].
What's your opinion on the later ?
[1] http://seatgeek.com/blog/dev/announcing-soulmate-a-redis-backed-servic…
kertap · 2010-09-10
It didn't load for me either. It seems to be just that game though because this one worked for me. http://seatgeek.com/event/show/457428/green-bay-packers-at-philadelphi…