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Calling All Future FreeWheelers

Letters to Recruit the Best Talent from Beijing Universities

This week our team in Beijing is busily recruiting the newest talent fresh out of Tsinghua University and Peking University. Below are letters our alums from each school have written to tell potential hires why FreeWheel is such a fantastic place to work. Happy reading from our happy employees!

ALUMNI FROM TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY

Wang Yuantao 王元涛, Software Engineer DEV, Forecasting Team

Hi, I am Wang Yuantao. I majored in Computing Mathematics at Tsinghua University in 2003, graduated with a masters degree in 2009, and joined FreeWheel. I'm a developer on the forecasting team now. In the autumn of 2008, I sat in the room for FreeWheel recruiting, thinking that the work was interesting and that the business model made sense. I thought it was interesting because I worked in the Student Network TV of Tsinghua University when I was an undergraduate, and was a Media Operations volunteer at the International Broadcasting Center in Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. So I, as a student, I knew the international TV industry and was familiar with online video technology. FreeWheel sat right in the center of my mind. I thought the way the company makes money was reasonable because I have some friends trying to provide other technical services for online video, so I know how the industry value chain works and why they are hard to get profitable. After the recruitment, I submitted my CV and passed the writing test. When I got the final interview, I had received some offers from other companies. Some run like huge stale machines, while I'd like to work with young people in a young company. Some offers did not compete with FreeWheel's, so I gave them up. When I received FreeWheel's offer, I was still waiting for another one. However, a rational person considers marginal profit: the marginal cost of giving up FreeWheel was far larger than the marginal revenue of the next one on the way. So, I chose FreeWheel finally. Now, I feel my decision was correct. As a developer, I find QA here is very smart, friendly, and easy to communicate with. We play badminton and practice yoga every week. Also, engineers often hold tech salon, learning new techniques together.

Wei Wei卫伟, Sr. Engineer, Video Integration

FreeWheel was my first job, and I have been working here for almost 3 years. Before joining here, I did internships at five other companies, including huge ones such as IBM and Bosch as well as small start-ups. Experiences with various companies told me I should work in a good start-up, and FreeWheel is the one. From my individual experiences at FreeWheel, I would like to state a few advantages to work here:

1. Fresh challenges. I started my job in the UI group without any Ruby on Rails experience. After two years I was transited to the Video Integrations group to work on ActionScript and Flash, another totally new field for me. Recently, I began a rotation program to work as a Sales Engineer, flying between New York and Beijing to help build a bridge and exchange knowledge. As a Sales Engineer, I have more direct communication with clients, which is precious practice for me.
2. Real and fast. When I worked in a big research lab of a huge company, I found my project probably would go to nowhere after six to twelve months. But at FreeWheel, the codes you're writing today will sometimes be released several days later to satisfy eager clients, and will be running on some of the biggest video sites in US. This is totally thrilling.
3. Working closely with US people. Why do Silicon Valley and so many great companies exist in the US? In my opinion, a very root reason is the nature of the American culture and entrepreneurial spirit. By working with US people, we can learn from them about this.
4. Nice environment. Besides boosting and showing your own personal value, our company is also a very nice and flexible place to work. We're in very good business district. Our office is nice. Food is awesome. And you can find lots of friends to play with. (For board game, contact me please...)

Yu Bing 于冰, Video Integration Team

What I did before FreeWheel: My ID is trueice@newsmth. I'm the creator of the trueice ftp and "zixia" music online (famous music sharing website at Tsinghua University.) I have been the manager of the Pop Music/Linux Boards on SMTH BBS (Tsinghua Alumni BBS), and I co-founded and served as tech director of the TVie project (online time-shifting TV).

What I do at FreeWheel: I am leading the Android platform integration development project on FreeWheel's Video Integration Team.

My background: Today I returned to Tsinghua University to share with you some of my experiences and personal reflections about the online video industry and the work in start-up companies. My major at college was not computer science, but fluid dynamics. However, in the first year of my college life, I got interested in Linux/internet technologies, and then started doing network administration work in the student science and technology association. One year later, I bought a server by myself and began to set up the biggest online music sharing/streaming service in CERNET. I enjoyed sharing music with the students and playing with Linux servers. At that time, streaming video was not widely used, due to the bandwidth/hardware limit. However, streaming music was quite popular.

In my post-graduate study period, my major was changed to Storage Systems in computer science, and I took part in a lot of storage systems-related projects at Tsinghua University. In early 2006, I went to 1verge Inc. and worked for a short period with two fellow FreeWheelers, Free (Du Song) and Kevin Liu, to build the early version of youku.com. After that, I also helped with another start-up company called Mojiti, which turned into Hulu after a year. These work experiences activated my interest in online video streaming technologies and pushed me into the industry. In late 2006, I decided to work with one of the Mojiti co-founders to create world's first online time-shifting TV product, TVie. After three years of hard work, our product has been used in a lot of TV stations throughout China. Also, our technology powered several massive live events for video sharing sites such as youku/ku6. At a start-up company, you may enjoy the innovation environment, building a product from ground up, and designing the architecture all by yourself. Even you can participate in the operations of your company. However, in China, start-up companies have trouble getting well funded, and just have limited resources for R&D.

It's hard to build high tech safe-guards, and your product would be copied easily if your sales and revenue cannot grow fast enough. I gradually realized that technology start-ups are quite hard to grow in China. You won't get rewarded if your just have good technology. Start-ups' advantages do not make much sense in China's market environment. When I started feeling tired about working in a start-up and got worried about the future of my career earlier this year, FreeWheel contacted me. I've been paying close attention to FreeWheel's growth in the market for years, and knew well about this company's success story. After several close conversations with our CTO, Diane, I finally made the decision to join FreeWheel and started to work with Du Song and Kevin again. Furthermore, we have Jack and Wang Di and a lot of THU/PKU alumni here. Two more reasons why I chose FreeWheel are:

1. FreeWheel's product is solving the key problem of the online video industry. TVie and like products just enable the streaming infrastructure, however, it cannot get all the participants paid enough as content goes online. So, it's hard to make high and long-term margin in this unhealthy industry. FreeWheel's flagship product, MRM, links all of the stakeholders and makes them successful with their online video business.
2. FreeWheel has a top-down nice, human-centric culture. As Diane says, "Have the best people to build the best team and ship the best product." That's my dream!

ALUMNI FROM PEKING UNIVERSITY

Cheng Li 李成, Software Engineer DEV

Who am I: I am a software engineer at FreeWheel, graduated in 2009 from Peking University in China with a master degree of computer science.

Why I chose FreeWheel: Back to more than one year ago, when I was making the decision for my first full time job, I chose FreeWheel after thorough consideration. The main reason a fresh graduate like me chose FreeWheel were:

1. FreeWheel is in the right business, and our CEO and CTO made that very clear. All of the interviewers were very happy to see my interest in business, so I thought I could learn something beyond engineering.
2. FreeWheel is agile. Another company that also offered me a job was doing one major release per year, while FreeWheel is doing this almost once per month. Ten times more production release per year means ten times more challenge and opportunities for me to learn.
3. FreeWheel is in an emerging industry with a promising future and potential for market growth. And in the video monetizing industry, they are on the cutting edge.

What I have learned and experienced at FreeWheel: In the past year, I worked on the MRM ad server team as a developer. With the help of senior members of the engineering team and the industry knowledge from the product management team, we pushed a bunch of great features to production, making our MRM system the most advanced of its kind.

Meanwhile, keeping our system in top form is a fun challenge as our volume keeps growing. The most exciting moment are the times when we successfully support the ad serving for the most popular live events with very high traffic peaks. A good example was the 2010 World Cup games, which is also my favorite sports event, too.

In the mean time, our business keeps growing dramatically. The volume increase is beyond everyone's expectations. When the hockey stick-style volume trend chart that I drew appeared in our CEO Doug's slides for the board, I was so proud - both for FreeWheel and for me!

And from the short period of time I've worked for FreeWheel, the most valuable thing I have learned is that pursuing data accuracy and integrity is the most important and most rewarding thing to do.

Yu Xiaoqian 于小倩, Core QA

I am Cathy Yu (Chinese name: 于小倩). I joined Freewheel in 2009 after graduating from Peking University. Now I am a QA engineer in the Core team. After more than one year working on QA team, I found that I love this job!

Why, you may wonder, could a QA position be one of the best choices for graduates who are seeking for their first job? Because the QA role at FreeWheel is full of challenges, including some things that do not exist outside of FreeWheel. As you may know, FreeWheel built the best system in the world for monetizing syndicated video across all sites and partners through dozens of devices and environments. QA engineer cultivate solid logical thinking to understand the whole system with both internal and external aspects. We also support our customers to handle thousands of different kinds of requests. It requires that a QA engineer have good trouble-shooting and communication skills from your experience, business/technical knowledge, oral/written English skills and so on. Moreover, unlike the other positions, the QA position gives you many options to transfer to a broad set of other types of positions, including back-end development, consulting, management, etc. FreeWheel is also a place of warmth. We have lunch brought in from several famous restaurants, including the wonderful "Hai Di Lao Hot Pot." There is a party for everyone's birthday each month, and we practice yoga twice a week. All of these make us feel very comfortable. Our objective is not only working hard, but also playing hard. It's enjoying life. Come and join us!

Jared Liu 刘晓利, Operations

Hi, I'm Jared, and I'm very happy to join FreeWheel 2010 Campus recruiting.

I joined FreeWheel Ops - aka Operations - on January 8, 2009. If you guys have watched the TV show, 24, and still remember the character named Chloe, you will definitely know what ops does. In Ops at FreeWheel, you will be in charge of the hardware, software, accounts, and have access to all those resources. There are also N+1 data centers in the US and a smaller one in our BJ office for FreeWheel. We have HP servers, Citrix load balances, Cisco Network gears, and 3PAR central storage, all the most advanced technologies in their field. So,0 if you play around with Linux a lot, including all kinds of applications that run on the platform, e.g. MySQL, or if you're experienced with Shell or even more languages, please do not hesitate to apply for Ops at FreeWheel. You could be equipped with latest model of a Macbook Pro!

When I was looking for jobs just as you are right now, I had three choices to consider: P&G, PwC, and FreeWheel. For the first two choices, I was thinking, "Suits and shoes every day? Working as a cog, executing my job every day? Sitting in a small, sealed cube all day long?" So, I finally chose FreeWheel. Almost two years have passed, I can confidently proclaim that I made a right choice, and I have no regrets.

At FreeWheel, you can wear flip-flops in the summer if you're hot and you can be bald if you want in the open wide office since your personal style is not limited at all. As for the work at FreeWheel, you can talk to your team leader or supervisor directly when you have to, and you're encouraged to voice your own options/ideas/thoughts about the problem. If you can prove it right and doable, you will be able to develop it until it becomes part of our product, running on production, serving our client, and making the money. It makes you feel like you're really doing something. And after work, you have a good salary; many colleagues have purchased their own apartment in BJ city, or you can rent your own room in the most fantastic area you choose.

So, mark my words: if you still have a dream in your career, FreeWheel is the place you want to be.

Our teammates in Beijing

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