Visiting Sequoia National Park! 

Yo, it's that day where we showcase a super cool person that we get to work with every day. Meet our numbers enthusiast, Gayan: 

How did you find SnapStream?

In 2012, I was in the last year of my MBA and was attending a career fair. Most of the students were flocking to the big gas company booths but I wasn't too interested in working for a large company. I spotted SnapStream with a cool booth and more importantly, no line. I decided to go see what it was all about and came away thinking "Wow, that's a very cool product!". I later found out I had a connection with Rakesh (SnapStream's CEO) since he was an advisor to the startup incubator I was working at as an Operations Analyst, so I applied. After a couple of rounds of interviews, I joined the team!

What is your role here?

Senior Marketing Program Manager

How have you grown with SnapStream?

I've grown quite a bit. For a start, I’ve grown laterally from all the snacks in the office! :) Jokes apart, SnapStream was my first job in the U.S. since moving here for my MBA. I’m originally from Sri Lanka where I studied Chemical Engineering and had my own startup making e-learning software but moved here to pursue higher education. I first joined SnapStream as a Sales Engineer and whenever they needed help managing a team, I would step in. I liked working with Sales and Engineering because you work both in the technical side and with customers. I had the opportunity to move into an Analyst role and work with Sales and Marketing, which was great because numbers have always been my passion. I now work completely in marketing and do lead generation, digital marketing, and analytics. I have a lot of fun with the technical things I’m working on now and I’m very happy with how I’ve been able to pursue my passion here at SnapStream.

What is your favorite thing about SnapStream?

Absolutely the PEOPLE, we have a big commitment to our culture. Even when times change, things get busy, and life gets hard, we are always consistent in our culture. A lot of startups start to lose their roots as they grow large, but we’ve always kept that playful and relaxed startup feel. We have the right environment for our people to blossom. This commitment to people was really evident when COVID happened. We were one of the first companies in Houston to move to a remote structure and have done a ton to help employees navigate this really strange time we are in.

What do you like to do when you aren’t at SnapStream?

I spend a lot of time with my 2-year-old daughter. She’s loads of fun and it’s incredible to watch her grow. I also have a variety of hobbies. My wife and I used to travel all the time and so far have visited 20 national parks (our plan is to start again and visit all 62 parks). We have a map framed in our living room with flags that mark where we have been. I’m also into cryptocurrency; I’ve lost more money than I’ve made, but it’s a very cool concept that I follow closely. I play a lot of video games, especially city simulators, transport simulators, and warship simulators. Recently, I’ve been into water cooling my PC. It's a huge money pit but it's super fun since it’s basically a never-ending engineering project.

Gerard visited the battlements of Blarney Castle during his vacation in Ireland!

Y'all know what day it is: Feature Friday! Meet our expert bug catcher Gerard:

How did you find SnapStream? 

I found SnapStream through Indeed.com. The job listing was very effective at portraying the company as a geek-friendly environment with a great culture. Working on a product that records television was an interesting choice. Many of my college friends ended up working on bill collecting software. 

What is your role here?

I’m a Developer-in-test, or a developer that works on the Quality Assurance team. I’m responsible for writing and maintaining various suites of automated tests, writing internal tools, and testing some of the more technical improvements that end up in our queue. It's my job to make the lives of the blackbox testers easier by catching bugs before they do, and coming up with improvements to our workflow to save time.

How have you grown with SnapStream?

I came to SnapStream knowing how to “code”. I’ve grown to understand more about what it means to develop and maintain a solution. I’ve been exposed to so many new challenges like learning how to build and maintain a cable plant or how to automate user interaction with a page streaming live video. My favorite memories working at SnapStream are those when I finally get to the bottom of a problem I’ve been banging my head against. 

What is your favorite thing about SnapStream?

The atmosphere and culture is my favorite thing about SnapStream. It's a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Between that and working on interesting products, I’d say that we have it pretty good here. 

What do you like to do when you aren’t at SnapStream?

I’m a PC gamer. I love to build my own gaming PCs and sink 100 hours into open world RPGs. I’m also very interested in travel.

Adrienne dressed up as the Flying Spaghetti Monster for one of our famous in-office Halloween parties! 

Hey, it’s Feature Friday! Meet our queen of Support, Adrienne: 

How did you find SnapStream? 

I was looking for a new position because I was a network services technician at a call center that was about to close down. I was told that I could start looking for another opportunity, so I started blasting my resume everywhere. When I applied to SnapStream in 2009, I didn’t really realize what it was until I got home and opened up BeyondTV on my home computer. I was greeted with the SnapStream branding declaring the company that makes the software I was using to turn my PC into a DVR. It was a pleasant surprise to realize that I did know what SnapStream was and I was one of the only interviewees that was familiar with their DVR software. 

What is your role here?

Technical Support

How have you grown with SnapStream?

I’ve learned all sorts of new stuff, especially pertaining to standards in the video and media industry. I’ve always been interested in networking and anything with flashy lights! Since SnapStream is always evolving as technology changes, I’m constantly being exposed to new things. We went from recording content being fed directly to a single system to figuring out how to record to a cluster of systems. Then we were off to record from a variety of different types of IPTV streams, and why don’t we go ahead and have our software record this content in the cloud instead?  This gave me an opportunity to learn about different ways that a/v content can be sent, viewed, and manipulated. That also involves the discovery of all the things that can go wrong with doing this stuff.  I like fixing things in general because I’m honestly really good at breaking things! 

What is your favorite thing about SnapStream?

I love how there’s a lot of intelligent people working here so I always feel challenged. In my previous position, there weren't a lot of places an issue could go beyond me. Things can get complex here at SnapStream, so when I have an issue I can approach someone who knows way more than I do in certain subjects, and in turn I learn how to fix things faster. I don’t feel like there’s a ceiling holding me down in learning here. 

What do you like to do when you aren’t at SnapStream?

I like to read mostly - I like to read Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman (Good Omens is a favorite), and Sci-fi fantasy books. I also enjoy camping, I went hiking in New Mexico recently. My favorite place that I have gone is Yosemite. 

Fun family time!

It's our favorite day of the week, Feature Friday! Meet our IT superhero, Kyle: 

How did you find SnapStream?

I was currently employed but looking for a new opportunity as my previous employer decided to scale back its recent growth and return to a family run business. In turn, this would impact my career growth so I decided it was in my best interest to look for a role that aligned with my goals. I was really happy to find SnapStream’s listing on Indeed. SnapStream is the first company I’ve worked for that doesn’t have a formal corporate culture. I’ve worked for national companies in manufacturing and construction, so I was excited to find a small company in the tech field. 

What is your role here?

Platform Engineer

How have you grown with SnapStream?

I was initially hired as an IT Administrator. SnapStream was much different then as we had a smaller tech footprint regarding the products offered. I was responsible for supporting the company's infrastructure, but my responsibilities and title grew with the company. I started supporting more than just IT and began working closer with engineering, more specifically hardware and cloud services. I transitioned to my current position as platform engineer where I work with our product and internal infrastructure.

What is your favorite thing about SnapStream?

The culture, encompassing both how we work together as a group and how we are managed. I love the flat management style which offers flexibility and ability to create a good work/life balance. You’ll find friendly people in just about any work environment, but I’ve found actual friends here that I talk to outside of work. 

What do you like to do when you aren’t at SnapStream?

My passion has always been fishing, more specifically inshore and bass fishing. My hobbies had to take a back seat when my wife and I decided to start a family.  Now that 5 years have passed and my daughter Sophia is about to start school, I am able to find time to enjoy the outdoors. Since we are working remote due to current events and COVID, this allows even more time to spend outdoors doing the things I love, mainly fishing.

Welcome to the second edition of Meet Team SnapStream, where we introduce you to the people behind the scenes. Today we're talking to Marlon Dait, QA Tester, who has been at SnapStream for just over 2 years.

What is a QA Tester?

Marlon: First of all, QA is not question and answer, it's Quality Assurance. Which means making sure that our product can be used by a wide margin of people. People using different operating systems, different browsers, etc. Making sure our product works in any environment.

We have to do a lot of back and forth with the developers, testing out their code. If it isn't working the way it should, we have to work with them to remedy that, and if it works we pass it off as fixed.

Background:

Marlon: This is my first dive into the QA field. Before SnapStream, I worked in a general IT position. I fixed issues on computers or wrote simple macros scripts in Visual Basic. When I first got here, my manager gave me a few books on how to QA and how to QA better.

I realized that a lot of the QA work flow is something I identify with, so it was a natural progression to go from IT to QA. A lot of the skills transferred over with ease. 

Marlon's QA reading recommendation: How to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing by James A. Whittaker

The best thing about being a QA Tester:

Marlon: Being a QA tester in itself is great, but being a QA tester at SnapStream is amazing. The atmosphere is incredibly relaxed. It's great to have a team around you that knows how to do things and has arcane knowledge of our product's past.

The environment is also great because it's a nerd accepting culture.  I don't have to hide that I like to go to Renaissance Festival!  It's an accepting culture for anything that you want to nerd-out on, from Pokemon to Football. 

Favorite SnapStream Feature:

Marlon: So, I actually use our product quite a bit... I think the term is called "eating your own dog food". It's where you use your own product yourself. We test on a lot of the clips we record, so clipping out sections of recordings is something I do a lot. I'll notice a particularly interesting or funny clip, and I like to share it with my friends.

For instance, I was testing out MP4 playback to make sure there were no artifacts in the recording, no out of sync issues or skipping. I have to watch the file through to it's entirety, making sure it works, time shifting around, etc. I came across a teaser for a news segment talking about the dangers of flip-flops (there's a lot of flip-flop wearing here at SnapStream).

I just had to clip this out and share it with my friends.

Clip and share is my favorite SnapStream feature because you grab things instantly, right in the moment and share them immediately. 

SnapStream hosts monthly, company-sponsored outings. What's your favorite non-work, work function?

Marlon: There are so many great things we do. The most recent company outing we had was Painting with a Twist, which was really cool. They gave us wine and food and they had great music! We also had a Top Golf outing, which was fun even though I don't play golf. I just channeled my inner Happy Gilmore. 

Dog tax:

Ein isn't just Marlon's stuffed Corgi... she's a real, live Corgi!

Hi Everyone!

My name is Eric and I'm the Customer Success Specialist here at SnapStream. What the heck is a Customer Success Specialist? Great question! It's my job to make sure your experience using the SnapStream software is amazing. I want to help you take full advantage of SnapStream's features to make your job finding, clipping and sharing television content as easy as possible.

I've had the opportunity to meet many of you, whether in person or by phone. If we haven't met yet, please consider dropping me a line at eric@snapstream.com or by phone at (713)-554-4591. I'd love to chat with you!

We've created some really incredible resources to help you and your team take full advantage of the SnapStream software. I want to take this opportunity to share with you some of my favorites.

• SnapStream Cheat Sheets are colorful, fun and full of useful information. Keep them on your desk for quick reference on how to use SnapStream's most powerful features. Our newest cheat sheet showing all of SnapStream keyboard shortcuts is below.

• We've created how-to pages for nearly all of the features of the SnapStream software. Our how-tos show you step-by-step instructions for each task with a picture of each step. Learn how to do everything from creating a GIF with meme text to cloud-sharing a clip to a colleague or friend. Click below to see our webplayer clipping how-to! 

• Have a question about a specific feature of the SnapStream software? Odds are very good our SnapStream Help File has the answer you're looking for!

• Our engineers are always adding new features to SnapStream. Get a look at all of the newest features on the SnapStream Release Notes page. Did you know we recently added full iPad playback support for H.264 content in SnapStream, for instance? Click the image below to see all the great features added with each new release of the SnapStream software.

Still have a question? Don't hesitate to reach out to me at eric@snapstream.com. I can't wait to see all of the awesome ways you use SnapStream. What are you waiting for? Snap to it!

Eric Cohn - Customer Success Specialist, SnapStream