Thu 04 Dec 14 @ 12:22 pm

Since it's recruiting season, and I'm getting some candidates asking what is it like exactly working at VirtualDJ (I guess they heard some pieces from the current employees), I thought I'd put a few pictures online to explain exactly how it all works.
I'm talking about the software/graphic/website designers mostly, since that's who I work the most with. But the tech support and marketing guys are having the same kind of fun.

So, first of all, like it's written on the official recruiting page, everybody working here has been writing software or website or design since their childhood, probably was part of a hacker group or something when he/she was 15, and consider programming or design a “hobbie” rather than work.

So we tried to build the company in a way that would be the most productive and pleasant for high-level designers. The most obvious result of this, is that we almost never work “in the office”.
Nine-to-five office hours are ok for regular fresh-from-school designers who churn out lines of code on command in an outsourcing company, but if you have IT in your blood, you know that’s not how it should be.
So we all work from our own home most of the time. And most importantly, we work during our own hours (which most often means work at night and sleep in the day, but hey, that’s your call).
And we can work for hours or days without stop when we have a good “inspiration”.
But when we don’t, nobody’s going to tell you anything if you don’t work at all for a few days. As long as you get the inspiration back later and deliver what is needed in the end.

Of course, sometimes we still need to meet for some intensive brain-storming, or rush coding sessions, and we need to lock ourselves up on a desert island for one week or two to get things done.
Well, as it happens, Atomix do keep an office on a genuine desert island in China, exactly for this purpose.
For example here are some pictures taken last winter for the development of the new VirtualDJ8 skin (the guy with the board on his head is not a programmer, he’s just the windsurf coach).

It was two weeks of intense coding with no parties, no facebook (thanks China’s censored Internet), just non-stop coding from morning to evening, with a few “let’s go surf” breaks every few hours, because as they say, a sound mind in a sound body...


Of course, we don’t always lock ourselves up on a desert island anytime we need to get something done.
Most of the time when we need to meet, we fly everybody to Kiev in Ukraine to work together in the office there.
Kiev is always a good spot to go relax and party once the work is done (obviously if we work on DJ software, it’s because we also all love to party).
Here's a picture of our Kiev office, having a drink with some friends before heading out to the clubs:



Speaking of parties, of course working at VirtualDJ is not only about coding, we also organize a lot of nice events where we have the opportunity to party together.
For example, we used to bring everyone to Paris France every year, and mix in front of 300,000 people during the TechnoParade:


Technoparade is just one example. We regularly meet for corporate events and parties, like for example organizing a party in Nikki Beach in Miami during the WMC (picture on the left), bringing famous DJs like Jay Style to perform on our booth during tradeshows (picture on the right), working with David Guetta to organize a virtualdj launch event in Pacha Ibiza during a Fuck Me I’m Famous (no pictures here, everybody was too busy partying), etc.


And when we make tradeshows in Vegas, we have one rule: what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas (someone stole this line from us afterward I think). Meaning, for every sales made at the tradeshow, the money has to stay in Vegas and needs to be spent in the clubs in the evening.


So, to summarize: if you want to work as a programmer or designer at VirtualDJ, you need to be able to handle a lot of partying with fashion models, working from paradise beaches, meeting famous DJs, and waking up in the middle of the afternoon. But it also mean that you need to be able to work on your own, without anyone standing behind telling you what to do.
If you think you have what it takes, www.virtualdj.com/atomixproductions/jobs.html ...