Today, I get to do one of the best parts of my job, because it’s time to commemorate another employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba. Our technical support guru Chris Barajas recently reached a full decade with the company, and we’re tremendously pleased to celebrate the occasion here.

Chris’s Impact

In 2015, when we marked Chris’s five year anniversary, I talked about the challenging nature of tech support:

Technical support is a demanding role here at Rogue Amoeba…In addition to providing helpful and polite responses, there’s a great deal of problem-solving required. Tracking down bugs and issues based on reports from users is also a key part of the job.

That’s all as true now as when it was written. In fact, our product line has expanded, and it’s now more powerful than ever. Helping customers understand our products, and use them to their fullest extent, continues to require both patience and keen insight.

However, Chris’s role here at Rogue Amoeba has also grown. In 2017, Support switched from a one-man show to a team, when we hired a second full-time tech. Chris has led the support team well, and been instrumental in pushing Rogue Amoeba forward. With his guidance, the support team has adopted a more modern backend, updated multiple internal systems and tools, and written new policies based on years of experience.

Many things have changed since Chris was hired in 2010, but his passion and advocacy for our customers has remained unwavering. His dedication to always seeking to make things better is an inspiration.

An Artifact of Our Appreciation

Long-time blog readers may recall that after five years with Rogue Amoeba, employees are presented with a custom challenge coin. For a ten year anniversary, we wanted to go even further. Companies often give employees some sort of mass-produced award when celebrating a milestone. That’s nice enough, but we wanted to do better.

With that in mind, we decided to create something different and distinctive:

Yes, that’s a silver Rogue Amoeba logo-shaped token of our appreciation. It was hand-crafted by our own CTO Quentin Carnicelli, in his shop. He dreamed up and implemented the entire project.

Crafting the Artifact

Now, Quentin’s very modest about the whole thing, but I’m happy to speak for him. His initial idea was to have an object created by a jeweler or metalsmith. However, after talking to multiple candidates, the desired size was simply too big for them. As you might expect, most jewelers are focused on making rings and other small objects.

Instead, faced with a fast approaching deadlined, Quentin decided to roll up his sleeves and do things himself. To start, he acquired a melting furnace, which is sure to come in handy if fondue parties make a comeback. However, according to Q, the melting is the easy part. Building the mold on the other hand, takes some effort. In this case, that meant getting a vector file from our designer Neale, then CNC plasma cutting our logo shape out of 3/8″ steel plate. Another 1/4″ steel plate formed the back, to which the logo’s rings were attached via interference fit pins.

After the mold was ready, it was time for some test pours. Several test pours were done in lead before Quentin was satisfied the project was viable. At that point, melting down of the silver commenced. In total, four more pours were done before the correct pour speed and mold pre-heat temperature were achieved.

After the silver cooled, it was polished to give it a nice texture and sheen. Rather than the smooth perfection of modern jewelry, however, the end result has the quality of a piece of old-time bullion.

We certainly hope Chris enjoys this physical representation of our appreciation. It ought to make for quite the conversation piece. Worth noting, however, is that the object also has actual value. Just in case Chris ever falls out of love with Rogue Amoeba, this artifact can be melted back down to pure silver, and sold for a healthy sum. Try doing that with an acrylic trophy!

Closing

If you’ve emailed our much-lauded support team in the past decade, you’ve undoubtedly benefited from Chris’s hard work. Whether you received a reply directly from Chris or worked with our other support techs, Chris’s influence was present. Because the support team is an integral part of the development process here at Rogue Amoeba, that positive influence also extends to customers who’ve never needed to contact us for help at all.

So on behalf of both the rest of the Rogue Amoeba team, and all of our customers, we thank you, Chris! We’re grateful for the work you’ve done this past decade, and hope for many more fruitful years to come.

P.S. We’re Hiring

This post is meant to show our appreciation for Chris’s fine work, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t also note that we’re currently looking to expand our team. We’re hiring a Mac software developer, and you can read more over on our Jobs page. Come join Chris and the rest of our tremendous group. You might just wind up here for a decade!

For the second time this year, we’re delighted to celebrate a five-year anniversary here at Rogue Amoeba! This is always a treat for me, because it’s a chance to put one of our great employees in the spotlight for a bit. Today, we’re honoring Ed Wynne, who joined Rogue Amoeba full-time back in October of 2011. Since then, he’s been helping to make our products the best they can be. In fact, he was doing so for many years before he came on full-time as well.

Ed’s most visible work is actually our newest product, Loopback, which allows you to route audio between applications and around your Mac. While Ed has been working for Rogue Amoeba since 2011, this app marked the first time he handled the front-end of an application. Loopback has proven even more popular than we expected, and we’ve been pleased to see Ed’s skills develop in this area after many years working behind the scenes.

It’s in our back-end code that Ed has made his biggest contribution. From the recording done by Audio Hijack and Piezo to the local audio streaming Airfoil allows, and even broadcasting to the web with Nicecast, audio capture is an integral part of our apps. The Instant On component used for much of this audio capture has long been Ed’s domain, and he’s worked long and hard to make Instant On powerful, robust, and as close to flawless as it can be.

Even before Ed joined us full time, he did contract work on our audio capture code. For over 13 years, Rogue Amoeba has been using Ed’s work. In the past five years things have really improved, however, as Ed has been able to devote his full efforts. When things work right, users barely notice, but we certainly pay attention internally. From reduced latency in audio capture to far fewer bumps surrounded OS updates, we’ve got a lot of reasons to be thankful to Ed.

Most recently, Ed was instrumental in adding support for Chromecast to Airfoil for Mac. He’s also hard at work on updates to Loopback, so you can be sure he’s not done making things better yet. We hope our users will continue to be delighted with Ed’s work for many years to come.

Nerding Out

When an employee reaches the five year mark with us, we like to find a gift especially for them. For several years, Ed’s been working with his son and daughter on various robotics competitions. If you’re thinking of Battle Bots, you’ve got the general idea, anyhow.

To help him in these endeavors, we provides a gift certificate to SparkFun Electronics, one of the best electronics retailers out on the web. While Radio Shack may have gone the way of the do-do, the internet has fortunately stepped in to provide places to purchase all the bits and pieces needed for electronics projects.

Even more fun is the Flir One thermal imager we got for Ed. Below, you can see our old friend Ammo using a Flir to diagnose a problem.

“Yup. There’s the problem.”

The Flir One attaches to an iPhone (or an iOS device), and turns it into an infrared camera. This can show overheating components in a robot, which windows are drafty and in need of repair, and even find leaks behind walls. Or you can just point it at a dog to see which parts of your canine are the hottest. In Ed’s own words, “this is so much better than the plaque my last employer gave me after 5 years!”

Cold Nose

In addition to these gifts, there was also our traditional custom card and 5 year challenge coin as well.

Custom Card

Thank You!

I’ll close by again publicly expressing our gratitude to Ed. The work he’s done to help our products, particularly in his last five working full-time for Rogue Amoeba, has been tremendously appreciated. Thank you for all you’ve done, Ed!

Previously

We’ve previously celebrated the five year anniversaries of six other employees here at Rogue Amoeba:

• Grant
• Chris
• Christa
• Lee
• Jeff
• Mike

Rogue Amoeba is well into its fourteenth year of selling software for the Mac, and we continue to be privileged to work with a tremendous group of employees. In 2010, we celebrated our first employee’s five year anniversary with the company. Now, we’ve recently had our sixth such celebration! Grant Farr recently reached his five year anniversary of joining Rogue Amoeba, and we couldn’t be more pleased. It’s extremely gratifying to be able to employ the talented folks we do, and to have them stay with us for many years.

While programmers here frequently move between products, Grant’s work has been heavily focused on our two audio recording applications: Piezo and Audio Hijack. Grant’s first task when he joined us full-time in 2011 was creating and shipping Piezo. This gorgeous little application was originally created so that we could bring the ability to record audio from other apps to the Mac App Store. Due to various changes in Apple’s App Store policies, Piezo eventually had to leave the Mac App Store, but it remains available for direct purchase. Every day users take advantage of its charmingly simple interface to record audio on their Macs.

Piezo

After Piezo was released, we embarked on our long journey to releasing Audio Hijack 3. The development process was hardly short, but Grant’s resolve never wavered as he steadily guided us toward that fantastic release. When Audio Hijack was selected as the 2015 Mac App of Year, it was clear Grant’s hard work was well worth it. Since then, we’ve returned to smaller, more frequent updates, and Grant’s led us through Audio Hijack 3.1, 3.2, and the recent version 3.3.

Audio Hijack

We’ve still got plenty more planned together for Audio Hijack, as well as exciting new projects for the future, so Grant is sure to provide much more for users to love.

Safe and Exciting

When an employee reaches the five year mark with us, we select a gift especially for them. Grant’s an avid sport rider, taking his motorcycle to the track to really push the limits. He’s shown us some great action shots taken by others, but we thought he could do even better. So we presented Grant with a new GoPro and helmet mount, to capture video as he races around the track. We also gave him a gift certificate to purchase a brand-new helmet to go with the camera.

A Helmet With Attached Helmet Cam

We’re now eagerly awaiting the first images and videos from Grant’s new toy.

In addition to the aforementioned gifts, there was also our usual custom card and 5 year challenge coin as well.

Custom Card and Challenge Coin

Thank You!

We always appreciate receiving praise from users via email or Twitter, and Grant deserves a tremendous amount of the credit for everything folks love about both Audio Hijack and Piezo. We often share those kind words internally.¹ Now, however, it’s a great time for us to express our gratitude to Grant for all he’s done to make our products top-notch over the years. Thank you, Grant, and we hope to share your hard work with the world for many years to come!

Previously

We’ve previously celebrated the five year anniversaries of five other employees here at Rogue Amoeba:

• Chris
• Christa
• Lee
• Jeff
• Mike

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Footnotes:

1. If you use Slack, praise from customers makes for great loading messages! ↩︎

Rogue Amoeba has been around for almost 13 years, and in that time we’ve been fortunate to work with phenomenal employees, some of whom have stuck with us for many years. Most recently, our technical support lead Chris Barajas celebrated his five year anniversary with the company. After half a decade of helping customers with our products, we now take a moment to express our gratitude to Chris.

Technical support is a demanding role here at Rogue Amoeba. It requires responding to emails rapidly and continuously, so that customers and potential customers alike get the answers they need. In addition to providing helpful and polite responses, there’s a great deal of problem-solving required. Tracking down bugs and issues based on reports from users is also a key part of the job. We’ve had a half-dozen people handle the role over the years, and none have lasted as long as Chris. We’re tremendously grateful for the work he’s done and the stability he’s provided. We know that the many, many, many users he’s helped are grateful as well.

It’ll Last and Last

When an employee reaches the five year mark with us, we present them with a distinctive gift we hope will be meaningful to them specifically. Given that Chris can work from just about anywhere where he has an Internet connection, he’s done quite a bit of traveling over the years. He’s also spent a good amount of time refining what he carries with him. With this in mind, we set out to find Chris a great bag to travel with, ultimately deciding on a gorgeous briefcase from Saddleback Leather:

(Out of focus dog not included)

When a company offers a 100 year warranty and uses the slogan “They’ll fight over it when you’re dead”, you know they’re worth checking out. It’s clear that the folks at Saddleback care as much about their products as we do about ours, and Chris has been delighted with the bag. We hope he has decades more use of it.

Of course, there was also a custom-made card, as well as one of the 5 year challenge coins we’ve had minted. All of this is just a small way to show our appreciation for the work Chris has done.

Thank You!

Chris is often fortunate to be able to receive appreciative feedback from those users he’s helped, but it’s important to publicly acknowledge the milestone as well. We want to thank Chris for his hard work since 2010. He’s helped thousands upon thousands of customers with our products, and then guided us to improve those products based on that feedback. So thank you Chris, and here’s to more great work in the future!

Previously

We’ve previously celebrated the five year anniversaries of four other employees here at Rogue Amoeba: Christa, Lee, Jeff, and Mike.

As some folks know, Rogue Amoeba is a distributed company, with home offices around the globe. This has both upsides and downsides, and it leads us to work hard to make the company feel like a cohesive group. Part of that is taking time to celebrate major releases and anniversaries. As readers of this site may recall, one big anniversary we celebrate is five years with the company. Previously, Mike Ash, Jeff Johnson, and Lee Falin all reached that mark, and were properly feted. Now, it’s Christa Mrgan’s turn!

Christa joined us back in October of 2009, as our first full-time designer. When we started the company, we used various part-timers for our art needs. As we grew, we realized we needed more, and eventually we sought out someone to work with us full-time. Unfortunately, we had a run of prospects who simply didn’t work out.

I had first met Christa at WWDC in 2009, and we hit it off as friends. After repeatedly bemoaning our troubles in finding a suitable designer with her, we eventually realized that, hey, she ought to give it a shot. More than five years later, it’s clear this was the right call. In ways both big and small, Christa has touched almost every single thing we make here at Rogue Amoeba. She’s done touch-up work on older apps, and full designs for newer apps, and all of our apps are better for it. There’s lots more to come, too, with some major updates including improved designs coming in the next year.

Piezo and the Braun RT-20

One of Christa’s best designs can be found in Piezo, our charmingly simple audio recording tool. Piezo was made to be very simple to set up, with one big record button and not much else, and it certainly succeeds in the ease-of-use department. However, its interface and corresponding icon also look great, featuring subtle wood grains and other textures. Even after the skeuomorphic trend has passed, Piezo still holds up well.

Christa did a lot of research finding reference images for old stereo equipment. As Christa noted in her Piezo design review from 2012, perhaps the most relevant hardware found was the Braun RT-20 radio. You can read more about that radio thanks to Australia’s Powerhouse Museum.

The RT-20 hasn’t been made for decades, but I knew this would be a great gift for Christa. Thankfully, the Internet makes it possible to track down things like this. After I hunted down and acquired an RT-20 to match Piezo, Quentin did some work in restoring it.

The controls are all in German, but it works! It sounds great, and it looks even better. We hope it enjoys pride of place in the Mrgan household for many years to come. As Christa’s Instagram photo indicates, she was delighted:

…[C]heck this out: a vintage Braun RT-20 radio, which inspired the design of Piezo, the first product I designed from inception at Rogue Amoeba. PLUS a special challenge coin for the RA elite (5 years!) Many thanks to [Paul] for hunting it down, and to Quentin for restoring it. And to both, for a job I enjoy doing!

Thanks for Five Great Years and More to Come

So then, allow us to issue a public thank you to Christa for her great work in the past half-decade! We look forward to the future as well, with many exciting new products and updates in the pipeline, all with your mark upon them.

P.S. Now Hiring

This also seems like a great place to mention that we’re currently hiring. While Christa handles all our current design needs, we do have an opening for a Cocoa developer. If you’re interested to join us in making top-notch audio products used by Mac users the world over, we’d love to hear from you.

You can get the full details on our Jobs page. Apply now!