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Pied Piper Pic: Decisions, Decisions…

by Jared Dunn

New offices or servers? It takes big men (and women!) to make big choices like this. (Sadly, our one female employee is in the next room, out of camera range.) [x]

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Servers in the Garage! Whee!

by Jared Dunn

Greetings again, readers!

This has been a challenging few days. Just as it seemed the Pied Piper team was about to move into luxurious new offices once inhabited by Zynga, today…we find ourselves once again back at Erlich’s.

Why? Well, our contracts to rent server space suddenly vanished like Julia Roberts in Sleeping With the Enemy! And we didn’t need to find a wedding ring in the toilet to know that a certain CEO of Hooli—who I will not dignify by naming—must have pulled some strings. Fortunately, Gilfoyle has impressive hardware skills, as well as a disturbingly apocalyptic worldview, and offered to stand-up servers himself in the Hacker Hostel garage. And that is how I was…discovered. 

I have a confession, readers. Sometimes my solicitude for the fortunes of Pied Piper comes at the expense of my person, whether it be my sleep, my digestive system or my apartment. You see, in an attempt to cut our budget I slashed my salary rather drastically and then discovered I could no longer afford my apartment. And so that was I came to be secretly living in Erlich’s garage, between a broken hydroponic tank and an apparently functional but abandoned NordicTrack.

Of course, once Gilfoyle needed the space, I cleared right out. Fortunately, our wonderful CEO Richard Hendricks graciously allowed me to sleep on a cot in his room. I felt so tiny and safe in that womb of innovation that I cannot describe the feeling.

In any case: Our new data center is up and running, our team continues to build out the platform and I have found an affordable place nearby, though I am occasionally bitten by a stray ferret in my sleep. (Long story!) [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: A Little PP Pride

by Jared Dunn

Ever a team player, our co-CTO Dinesh Chugtai gives an enthusiastic “We’re Number One!” [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Our Captains

by Jared Dunn

Richard and Monica at a board meeting, charting a course for H.M.S. Pied Piper. With them at the helm, we’ll only navigate toward success. Ahoy! [x]

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Our Workplace Harassment Policy

by Jared Dunn

Time to get real here, people.

We’ve had a lot of fun on this blog. No one more than I. You have no idea how I look forward to settling down with the ol’ laptop, a nice pear cider and banging out a post for you good folks to read. But now, I want to start a dialogue about something of great importance, particularly here in the Valley where our track record has been decidedly mixed: I’m talking about Pied Piper’s workplace harassment policy. 

Pied Piper has instituted a zero-tolerance workplace harassment policy. Any employee experiencing harassment is urged to report this to the Acting Vice-Director of Human Resources—that’s me (no one else wanted to do it). I made myself vice instead of full acting director so as not to seem intimidating to employees wishing to report abuse. After a report of this kind, an investigation will occur. The employee(s) in question will be spoken to. And if appropriate, disciplined up to actual termination (!). The anonymity of the complainant will be strictly maintained. 

Pied Piper will, of course, have zero tolerance for harassment based on gender, race, sexuality, religion or lack thereof, class, trans status or ableness. Pied Piper will also of course not merely prohibit harassment that is direct and public but also less direct harassment that creates a hostile workplace. But furthermore, Pied Piper will join the cutting edge of the harassment-detection industry in forbidding microaggressions, nanoaggresions, picoaggressions, yoctoaggressions and all such oppression “particles,” if you will, down to the quantum level.

Pied Piper additionally forbids man-splaining, white-splaining, straight-splaining, cis-splaining, able-splaining, splain-splaining, splain-plaining, splain-shaming and, in general, saying things people doesn’t like. Discussion or possession of the Kurt Vonnegut short story “Harrison Bergeron” will be grounds for immediate termination.

Next Tuesday, I will lead a harassment workshop, “Understanding  Why What You’re Saying Is Terrible.” There will be cupcakes. [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Here’s Gilfoyle!

by Jared Dunn

Gilfoyle ponders a knotty coding problem. Or…maybe he’s just glaring at me for taking his picture, who can tell? [x]

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Welcome Our New Employee: Carla Walton!

by Jared Dunn

Hello readers!

This is probably our biggest announcement to date: We have a new employee, who is also a woman: Carla Walton!

Carla was hired because she was the best female candidate for the job, not because she was a woman—although being a woman made her uniquely qualified and will allow her to bring her unique female experiences and perspective to building Pied Piper’s streaming capabilities with vp9 and p2p, as a female programmer who happens to be a woman.

So far no “haters” have come forward and done any “hating” about this hire, which should in no way be controversial, but if any are thinking about it, I’ll just say this: Carla will be performing her duties just as well as a man could…maybe even better, who knows???  [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Thanks Again, Russ!

by Jared Dunn

Our rakish new primary investor, Russ Hanneman, welcomes us back into the world of the funded! [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Erlich on the Hunt

by Jared Dunn

Erlich Bachmann listens to an app pitch from a prospective tenant of his incubator. He’s always looking for the next Pied Piper—and for the perfect hybridized strain of cannabis sativa!  [x]

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Who Is Pied Piper?

by Jared Dunn

Who is Pied Piper? Good question! That would be the intrepid folks whose bios are featured on this site and are currently building out our platform for launch at CES. Do we employ a pleasant-seeming young woman of Asian descent, who apparently plays the guitar? Sadly no, though I hope to change that soon when we expand our team, including the guitar-playing part: It would be nice to hear some music around here besides Gilfoyle’s terrifying noise that sounds like angry men raping each other with guitars. Something from Sarah McLachlan’s Surfacing album for me, please!

This is by way of saying that some may have been a mite perplexed by the “I AM PIED PIPER” billboards—featuring said guitar-strumming woman—that recently went up on the 101 freeway and at other scattered locations in the greater Palo Alto area. These are the brainchild of our new investor Russ Hanneman, who believes they will promote our brand awareness. So for those who saw them, misunderstood and left us voicemails: We are a cloud-based compression company, and are ***not*** in the business of 1) selling guitars, 2) guitar lessons or 3) human trafficking.

I hope that clears things up! Jared out! [x]

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Meet Our New Funder: Russ Hanneman

by Jared Dunn

That’s right! Despite Gavin Belson’s best efforts, he has failed in using his groundless suit to freeze our funding. We have secured, in lieu of a standard Series A, a substantial seven-figure bridge loan—albeit on a less-than-ideal disbursement schedule—from none other than famous (and some say polarizing) financier Russ Hanneman.

Russ Hanneman, as anyone not living in a cave for the last several decades knows, made a billion dollars in the early 1990s with his company that allowed internet users to access radio stations, or, in his colorful words: “Putting radio on the mother-f**king Internet.” Since then, he has launched other businesses, such as noted California billboard-purveyor Hanneman Outdoor Media, as well as busied himself with buying hockey teams, dating women thrown off reality shows for behavioral issues and the like. He also, flatteringly, seems to believe my romantic life is far more active and strenuous than it in fact is.

In any case, we’re glad you’re backing us, Mr. Hanneman! Please, please, please don’t park your McLaren on Erlich’s lawn again! [x]

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We’re Hiring!

by Jared Dunn

That’s right, dear readers: Because we now have funding from Mr. Hanneman, we in the Pied Piper family hope to soon have the stork bring us several well-qualified, bouncing baby programmers! While we will be hiring front and back end web app developers and an implementation engineer at some point, for now we are looking to hire for the four below roles.

Resumes will not be accepted from any of the email/IP addresses I have compiled which have left certain comments on my blog. These are comments that have threatened my person or encouraged me to perform acts not possible under the laws of physics, although I suspect a percentage of them may originate with PP’s Gilfoyle or Dinesh, in which case they’re all in good fun!

One note: In addition to these very modest requirements for each position, we also require that all applicants be non-smoking, dog-friendly, fat-positive and respectful of the diversity in gender, race, religion, ableness, sexuality, age and weight which we hope to soon create. Also, tolerance of extreme rudeness, Satanism and marijuana use is recommended.

CORE COMPRESSION LIBRARY ENGINEER (C++ PROGRAMMER)

Requirements:

Deep expertise with C++/Java/C# development developing data compression algorithms.

5+ years with C++.

Knowledge of downstream video platform components, including encoding, muxing, CDNs, signal processing, workflows and broadcast standards.

3+ years experience with client-server and peer-to-peer architectures, network security, basic network protocols (e.g. TCP/IP and UDP), object oriented design.

Understanding of memory management, multiple processor use, runtime optimization, concurrency and synchronization.

Experience in building and running large scale distributed online services.

Experience with large distributed database design.

Proven track record of design/architecture of a large components.

Background in mathematics, including linear algebra and numerical methods.

BSc or MSc in Computer Science or related degree.

API DEVELOPER (JAVA)

Requirements:

5+ years of development experience in web-related technologies such as Web Services, REST, SOAP, WCF, ASP.Net, C#, JavaScript, AJAX, JSON and XML.

Experience defining and developing web service APIs.

Experience in integrating with web-based products.

Experiences with the entire software development lifecycle, including version control, build process, testing and code release.

Working experience with an industry standard API Gateway technology such as Layer 7, APIGEE or Intel MASHREY is a plus.

Experience with Agile and Test-driven development methodologies.

BSc or MSc in Computer Science or related degree.

UNIT TESTER

Requirements:

5+ years of testing & QA automation experience.

Experience in an Agile development environment.

Experience in Unit and UI testing.

Development experience in Java, JavaScript and web services.

Experience creating and reviewing test cases.

Experience in large-scale, real time video (including streaming) applications.

Testing multiple browser-OS environments.

Creating test cases.

Integration.

BSc or MSc in Computer Science or related degree.

VIDEO HACKER (ASSEMBLY)

Requirements:

At least 5 years of hands-on experience in C++ application development on Linux OS and extensive experience in Java and Javascript.

Knowledge of Linux C++ development tools and environments: make, gcc, gdb, gprof,, subversion, git, shell scripting, Perl, Python or Ruby.

Knowledge of virtualization and building distributed video processing systems.

Socket and network programming.

Multithreading and inter process communication.

Object oriented design and software development patterns.

Experience with video container formats: .mov / .mp4, .mkv / .webm, mpeg-2 transport stream, .flv.

Experience with video compression codecs: AVC, HEVC, VP6, VP8, VP9, ProRes, DNXHD, AAC, Vorbis, Opus.

Experience with video delivery formats for streaming and adaptive bitrate delivery: HLS, DASH, RTMP, RTSP, MPEG-2 TS over UDP, Zixi, FASP, WebRTC, and progressive download HTTP.

Experience with mezzanine file asset ingestion via SFTP and Aspera.

Network multicast, protocols, routing and topology.

Experience with video processing and broadcast standards. Deinterlacing, scaling, aspect ratios, telecine, etc.

Experience building end to end video workflows with a true glass to glass scope. Capture, process, encode, deliver, decode, and display.

Knowledge of workflows for stitching multiple cameras into equirectangular spherical videos. [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Peek Inside Hacker Hostel

by Jared Dunn

Pied Piper isn’t just a group of employees, it’s a group of friends. As you can see, the warmth here is almost palpable. [x]

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Congratulations, Bro!

by Jared Dunn

It is with great excitement that I congratulate our founding co-CTO Dinesh Chugtai’s cousin Wajeed on his new app, BRO! (Short for BRO2BRO.)

I am personally a huge fan of the app. I find it both sticky and, as a one-bit communication method, possessed of an admirable simplicity. I have used to it to “bro” many individuals for both business and pleasure, but have always found it user-friendly and in no way a “bro-job.” [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: IP Theft!

by Jared Dunn

As we’ve learned, IP theft doesn’t just happen to other people. Be careful! [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: Break Time

by Jared Dunn

Dinesh takes a little break from his building out the front end to “get his Oculus on” — literally!  [x]

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Pied Piper Pic: AT&T Park with Stern Taylor

by Jared Dunn

To the victors of TechCrunch Disrupt go the spoils! [x]