It’s once again time to celebrate an employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba. Membership in our 15 year club recently doubled, with Grant Farr joining that exclusive group. It is an honor and a privilege to celebrate him today.

Helming Audio Hijack

When we marked Grant’s five and ten year milestones, the primary focus was on Audio Hijack, and with good reason. From 2011 through today, his steady hand has guided our flagship to continued excellence. In 2015, we shipped Audio Hijack 3, the app’s revolutionary leap forward after over a decade of version 2. In 2022, Audio Hijack 4 shipped, an evolutionary update. In between, and since, we’ve had point updates that added new features and functionality.

Grant led the app through all of that, and he continues to lead it today. His work has made Audio Hijack remarkably stable, even as the app has evolved and changed, with year after year of steady improvements really adding up.

Audio Hijack is now up to version 4.5, and it remains one of the Mac’s most powerful and popular tools. Of course, there are more updates and improvements in the works too, and we know you’ll love what Grant’s been cooking up.

And Piezo

A decade and a half of leading Audio Hijack would be plenty, but that’s not the only audio recording tool Grant has worked on. Since 2011, he’s also served as the lead developer on Piezo, our charmingly simple recording app. Piezo was originally created to make recording as easy as possible, and nearly 15 years later, it’s still doing that. That’s possible in no small part thanks to Grant’s work, which created a dependable app that doesn’t require a lot of upkeep.

And Farrago 1

We can’t forget the third app Grant’s led here at Rogue Amoeba: Farrago. What began as an idea to include inside of Audio Hijack grew into the Mac’s best soundboard app. Development of Farrago was eventually handed off for version 2, but the app is still built on top of the wonderful work Grant did to create Farrago 1.

Even More

Grant’s contributions have been crucial to even more of our product lineup. Much of Grant’s user interface work is actually shared across multiple applications. Big parts of work he’s done have then been re-used in other apps, including Loopback and SoundSource. In ways both big and small, Grant’s work helps countless users every single day.

Take Your Pick

With Chris Barajas’s anniversary last year, we decided new members of Rogue Amoeba’s 15 year club would receive an original Apple watch:

At the time, I noted that the timepiece in question dated to 1995 and Mac System 7.5. Long-time Apple fans might recall that this watch was specifically part of a promotion to encourage users to purchase an OS upgrade for their Macs:

[Image credit: Hodinkee]

We decided we’d one-up Apple’s promotional offer by providing both promo options. Yes, in addition to a beautiful and bizarre original Apple watch, folks who work at Rogue Amoeba for 15 years also earn a copy of Conflict Catcher 3:

Grant will need to locate his own floppy drive, however.

Cheers to Grant

For over 15 years, Grant has been writing rock-solid code for Rogue Amoeba. Thanks to him, Audio Hijack has been incredibly stable, and that’s crucial for a production recording tool. His work also led to the low-maintenance delight that is Piezo, gave a strong foundation to Farrago, and provided crucial parts of Loopback and SoundSource. Not bad!

The positive impact Grant has had on Rogue Amoeba can’t be overstated, and we’re so glad to have him on our team. Thank you for all you’ve done, Grant, and here’s to many more years working together!

It’s always exciting to celebrate the employee milestones of our teammates, and today, I get my first shot at authoring one of these posts. We’re very proud to share that our “newest” support tech, Aaron Wasserman, has reached an impressive five years of service with Rogue Amoeba.

Making a Team of Three

At Rogue Amoeba, we’ve always had fast and responsive customer support. For many years, the job was handled by just one person, but it grew to a duo in 2017. That worked well for several years, until the rapid expansion of remote work caused by COVID-19 led to a substantial increase in demand for our products. The corresponding increase in customer support needs meant expanding to a full-time team of three.

When I was promoted to manage the support team, I took the lead in the hiring process. We had multiple good candidates, but Aaron’s prior background in operations made him a strong fit. His genuine care for the people he’d be helping also shone through, and we were glad to have him join us full-time in the spring of 2021.

Since coming on board, Aaron’s done far more than simply help customers. He consistently brings ideas forward — feature requests, suggestions from beta testing, thoughts on how we work internally — with a frequency that speaks to genuine investment in the company. That initiative has pushed us all to think harder about what we’re building and how we’re building it.

Of course, helping customers directly is a big part of the job. I ran some numbers, and found that Aaron has helped over 15,000 users of our products so far in his tenure. That’s an impressive number, and one that increases steadily each day. Beyond the tally, what really stands out is the patience Aaron brings to each conversation, and the care he takes to get things right for the folks who rely on our software.

A Well-Traveled Tradition

We have some traditions in honoring five years of service at Rogue Amoeba, including a one-of-a-kind card from our designer, as well as our famous challenge coin.

We also like to provide a personalized gift. For my five year anniversary, I received a wonderful bag, and we figured it could be a new Support tradition when Robert reached his own five year milestone. However, Aaron’s already something of a bag connoisseur, with a sizable fleet in regular rotation. Given that, we’ve gone with some other travel accessories to complement his collection.

Muito obrigado!

As a virtual company, the employees of Rogue Amoeba live all over the world. From his own home in Portugal, Aaron brings a unique perspective to assisting our global customer base. And while Aaron does receive kind words from our grateful users across email, I also wanted to express our appreciation publicly for the five impressive years he’s had so far here at Rogue Amoeba.

Thanks for everything you do to improve the Rogue Amoeba experience, Aaron! Both our software and our company are better because of you, and we look forward to much more great work together.

Way back in 2009, we welcomed Lee Falin to the Rogue Amoeba team. In 2014, we celebrated his fifth anniversary with the company. Now, in 2026, it’s time to celebrate his tenth anniversary. What?

A Temporal Anomaly

Lee’s employment history at Rogue Amoeba could best be described as complicated. He’s done full-time work, part-time work, and contract work. There have been multiple opportunities that pulled him away completely, only for him to find his way back.

When Lee last rejoined the company in 2023, we hoped to incentivize him to stick around longer. We thus told him that if he made it to 2026, we’d mark his 10 year anniversary with the company, some 17 years after he was first hired. Hey, who’s going to stop us?

Lee’s Work

Lee initially handled Rogue Amoeba’s support needs, and like every member of our top-notch support team, he was great at helping customers directly with our products. After a little over a year, however, he switched to a programming role. In that role, he’s been able to have a big impact, in a wide variety of ways. In fact, he’s worked on MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and our web server. That’s quite the range!

For several years, Lee served as a product lead on the now-retired Airfoil for Windows. On the Mac, he’s also done extensive work on both Airfoil for Mac and our audio editor Fission.

When not focusing on a specific product, Lee has also worked on key components used across apps. To name just one example, the centralized Permissions window he built is found in each of our products, and it’s consistently been lauded by users. When people express appreciation for a Permissions window, you must be doing something right.

Lee has also done a substantial amount of server-side work. If you’ve ever purchased a product in our store, or used our support form, you’ve silently triggered a whole lot of backend systems created by Lee. More visible is our Customer Dashboard, a full-fledged web app he built.

Lee has always been a pleasure to work with, and he’s always improving. Of note, he’s gained the ability to accommodate changing requirements. We work hard to plan ahead, but the full scope of a problem isn’t always clear up front. Lee’s become quite good at iterating so we can get where we need to, and I now view it as a particular strength. In tandem with that, he’s always had a finely tuned sense for quality, and doesn’t stop until he’s met it.

Closing

Lee has been a terrific part of our team for a decade and then some. Seventeen years after Lee was first hired, I’m delighted to be able to celebrate this quirky “ten year” anniversary. Will we celebrate his fifteen year anniversary in a more normal timeframe? I certainly hope so. Check back in 2031.

Back in 2020, we were delighted to celebrate Neale’s fifth anniversary as Rogue Amoeba’s designer. It’s now 2025, and he’s still here doing stellar work. That means it’s now time to celebrate a full decade of Neale Van Fleet!

When you’re using one of our apps, perusing our website, or check in with us on social media, you’re undoubtedly looking at something Neale created. That’s even true of this laudatory blog post, which recycles his artwork from past posts.

Major App Updates and More

Since we last feted Neale, we’ve shipped three massive new app updates, and he led the design of all of them.

When compared against the revolutionary version 3, Audio Hijack 4 was more of an evolutionary update. With over 100 new features, however, it was still a massive design job. Neale rose to the challenge. I always enjoy his design evolution posts, but The Design of Audio Hijack 4 is a particular favorite.

After that came Farrago 2. Neale’s idea to allow the use of emoji on tile faces was a stroke of genius, making it possible for tiles to appear distinct while still maintaining an overall uniform look. He talked about that, and much more, in “The Design of Farrago 2”. That post delightfully details how he managed to make a soundboard app so visually appealing.

We’ve also had dozens of point updates to our apps, and improvements like the sleek new Permissions window certainly didn’t design themselves. A few years back, Neale even went from designer to sound designer when we made the confetti in our License window accessible.

If you’re curious what that means, click the banner to read all about it.

Whimsical Things

We try to have a good amount of fun here, and Neale’s no stranger to that either. You might recall our Historic Screenshot Archive, which displays hundreds of images from 23+ years of Rogue Amoeba software. In addition to helping set that up, Neale also created some fun images to display on social media.

Last year, Neale added a special exhibit dedicated to Ammo the Amoeba. That page features dozens of assorted images of our mascot, and it’s a delight.

Even more delightful was Neale’s series on “The Least Likely Ways to Install Rogue Amoeba’s Apps”, like the goofy floppy disk seen above. If you missed that, you’re really in for a retro treat.

So Much More

Neale’s work encompasses far too much to list it all. Day in and day out, his work is outstanding, and we’re lucky to have him. Our users are too!

A Beautiful Award for Beautiful Work

Long-time readers might remember just how Rogue Amoeba celebrates a 10th anniversary: With a bespoke silver token. Neale’s was once again handcrafted by Quentin in his home forge, and it’s as beautiful as ever.

Neale is a particularly worthy recipient of this award, because he designed the logo it represents. We hope it brings him a feeling of pride., because we’re tremendously proud of his great work.

Closing

It’s an honor to be able to celebrate so many employee milestones here. The team that makes the products you use every day is second to none, and it’s a privilege to be able to work with them for such long tenures. Neale is no exception to that.

So thank you for ten great years, Neale, and here’s to many more to come.

As you may already know, I relish the chance to celebrate employee milestones. Making outstanding audio tools requires an outstanding team, and we’re honored to work with such stellar staff. We’re particularly proud that so many of our employees have long tenures with us. Today, I’m delighted to induct the first member into Rogue Amoeba’s 15 (!) year club: Chris Barajas.

Looking Back at Fifteen Great Years

Way back in 2010, Chris joined us to handle all of our front-line support. In that role, he answered countless emails and assisted tens of thousands of users in getting the most out of our products. That work alone is worthy of much acclaim, but it’s only part of how Chris has contributed to Rogue Amoeba’s successes.

In 2017, our lone Support position grew into a two-person team. Chris and Robert Charlton worked side-by-side, but Chris’s years of experience enabled him to take the lead on many things. For several years, Chris and Robert acted as a fantastic tag team. In 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 lead to a huge uptick in usage.

At that point, our Support team grew to three. Soon after, Chris was promoted to the new position of Support Manager. He’s been officially leading the Support team ever since, continuing to answer customer emails while also guiding our renowned Support operation. Chris now works on a wide variety of related tasks, from streamlining tools to help customers to refining our marketing. His direct contact with customers continues as well, making him an invaluable part of our product development cycle.

For fifteen years and counting, Chris has helped shape Rogue Amoeba. We couldn’t be more pleased to celebrate him today.

The Watch Anniversary

In honor of this anniversary, we recently presented Chris with some gifts. Everyone appreciates a nice monetary bonus, and the custom cards our designer Neale creates are always tremendous as well:

To commemorate his decade and a half with the company, we also wanted to provide Chris with a special object. Knowing that 15 years is the watch anniversary, we decided an Apple watch would do nicely. Do note the capitalization there, though, because we’re not talking about a smartwatch. Instead, we tracked down the original Apple watch:

Here’s a closer look:

This strange beauty was a promotional giveaway way back in 1995. And speaking of capitalization, this watch’s original band even correctly uses an uppercase “M” in “MacOS” (or maybe that’s “Mac OS”? Still good!):

That text is actually rather incongruous, because the Mac’s operating system was still called “System 7.5” in 1995. That didn’t change until 1997, with the arrival of Mac OS 7.6.

Odd branding aside, this watch is both a functional timepiece and a charming reminder of years gone by. Chris’s career has been tied to Apple and the Mac, and this memento is a tribute to his fine work over many years. We hope it brings a smile to Chris’s face, whether he’s wearing it or just glancing at it on a shelf.

Three Cheers for Chris

Chris’s tenure spans almost two-thirds of Rogue Amoeba’s existence, and his impact in that time has been immeasurable. In countless ways, Rogue Amoeba is better because of Chris. So on behalf of the entire Rogue Amoeba team, I want to express our tremendous appreciation. It’s been a privilege to work with Chris since 2010, and we hope for many great years to come!