Hello Rdio

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I'm starting a new job. As of Monday, I will officially be a senior software engineer at Rdio! If you aren't already familiar with Rdio, they are a streaming music company that is a direct competitor to Spotify and Pandora, although I think Rdio is better than either of those two of course!

I found Rdio through their app. I was a Spotify subscriber for some time, but their Windows Phone app was absolutely terrible. It was missing a lot of features compared to it's iOS and Android siblings, but I've come to expect that of apps and can let it slide. What I couldn't abide by though was the instability of the App. It was, without a doubt, the most unstable Windows Phone app I ever used! Half of the time it wouldn't play when I tried to get it to play something, and it crashed several times a week on me. I wouldn't tolerate that level of instability from a free app, much less one that I was paying a monthly subscription for, so I decided to check out the competition.

I had hear good things about Rdio, so I checked out their free trial and absolutely fell in love with their app! Their Windows Phone app is functional and stable, even if it isn't going to win any awards. Their web app and desktop app (which is web powered) is very nice and their iOS app is practically a work of art!

I was impressed enough with their app that I decided to see if they were hiring. They had an opening for a position working on their web framework, which is right up my alley, so I applied and got the job!

They are located in the mission district in San Francisco, and are about a 10 minute walk from the 16th st and Mission BART station. This works out very well for me since we live about a mile from the Fremont BART station. My total commute should be about an hour and fifteen minutes each direction, with about 50 minutes of that on the train itself. My previous commute to Appcelerator was about 45 minutes to and about an hour from work each day, all of it in the car. I'm really looking forward to getting to read and work on the train each day, instead of staring at the bumper in front of me the whole time.

I'm also really excited about working in the city. The food alone that I get to experience will make it worth it. More than that though, there is a vibe to the JavaScript community in SF that I just don't feel in South Bay. Most of the meetups I go to are in the city, and it is going to be so much easier to attend these meetups now.

I have meet the team I will be working with already, and they seem like a fantastic group of developers. Friendly, welcoming, passionate about what they do, music lovers. It's also one of the more diverse engineering teams I've encountered in Silicon Valley.

I'm very excited about my future career at Rdio, and can't wait to get started!