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In a move that isn't at all shocking, the NY Times reporter didn't have much interest in talking with me or any of the other Cheezburger Network developers when

In a move that isn't at all shocking, the NY Times reporter didn't have much interest in talking with me or any of the other Cheezburger Network developers when she was in our office a few weeks ago. If anyone is curious about the technical side of what we do and how we do it, I'll gladly answer questions here. Also, we're looking for software developers. We're in Seattle, and have a strong bias for local talent, but we have a bunch of remote deveopers. Of the dozen or so companies I've worked for, Cheezburger is hands down the best. Srsly. Email martin@cheezburger.com if you're interested.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
iamjustlooking 16y ago
I'm sure from a reporter perspective it doesn't appear like there's much of a technical side to what appears to be a wordpress blog with cats on it.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  That's why I would expect a reporter to, when introduced to a bunch of technical people to ask, "what? there's a technical side?" Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, or how we have a public API so people can submit funny content from their applications. The "wordpress blog with cats on it" is a very shallow view of the company. There's a lot more going on than that.
  - iamjustlooking 16y ago
    Are you referring to the lolcat derivative websites you guys have or is there something big going on behind the scenes?
    - MartinCron 16y ago
      A little of both, there's the constantly evolving system that powers ICHC and the ~50 other sites (not exactly lolcat derivative...the content is pretty diverse) as well as the growing niche social network on cheezburger.com. One big thing that we're trying to do is make the users' profile pages more of a destination in themselves, where your account on cheezburger is where you express your sense of humor to the world and consume aggregated funny stuff from the people you care about. A lot of people (myself included) use multiple social networks/online communities for different things. Personal example: Flickr is for my "serious" photos, I use tweetphoto for cameraphone snapshots and bestc.am for more artistic cameraphone creations. Picture using Twitter for current friends and celebrities, Facebook for family and old high-school friends, and Cheezburger for your online humor friends. Naturally there's overlap (we support sharing your funny stuff on Facebook and Twitter) but we already have a growing number of people who use our (very simple) systems for friending and messaging.
  - fortes 16y ago
    Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, or how we have a public API so people can submit funny content from their applications. So could you talk about some of that now? I'm genuinely curious.
    - ssharp 16y ago
      Really. If you want your story to be heard, tell it. Start talking here or start an IamA.
  - skinnymuch 16y ago
    > Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, I knew you guys had this and I honestly thought that was as far the technical feats for the company went - to be clear I'm not trying to insult you guys or anything...I didn't know there were 40 employees. I remember I saw a youtube video a while back that made you guys look like a 10 man operation at most. EDIT: Just saw your post down below talking the technical side. Interesting.
greyman 16y ago
Yes, I would be interesting about the technical side, like how the publishing backend works, how do you manage the large number of submissions, etc.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  So, our core backend system is a SQL database with two ASP.NET MVC (C#) web site front ends 1) cheezburger.com, the one that our users use to make content via our tools (Caption tools, graph builder, etc.). It's also a niche social network, where people curate their favorites, message with friends, etc. 2) The internal site that our moderators use to sift through submissions. Nothing shows up on any of our voting pages without having been screened by a moderator. Nothing shows up on any of our sites' front pages without having been voted on by the community. A lot of what makes things work is the mix of editorial guidance and community feedback. It's not a pure democracy, but it's not a pure dictatorship, either. It turns out that a lot of deliberate thought and hard work goes into running a funny web site. I'm constantly amazed at how our editorial team is perpetually refining their process and sharing knowledge. The software does things like automatically filter out duplicates and allow moderators to filter by items that have been added as a favorite by members of our community, etc. We also try to automate as many mind-numbing brute force things as possible, to let our humans do what only humans can do (answer "is this funny?") so the submission engine does things like automatically resizes and watermarks images. I personally spend about as much time working on software for around 16 moderators than I do working on software for around 16 million end users. Most of the moderators are in the office with me, and I really love having the low communication overhead of just being able to walk over there and ask "what exactly do you want, again?" Almost all of our front-end sites are running a single custom Wordpress theme (PHP) hosted by Wordpress VIP (even with the recent downtimes, nobody is better at hosting Wordpress than Wordpress/Automattic). We send content there through the WP XML-RPC API. We use some extra metadata to identify posts as "voting" or "front page", and our theme is able to filter by that. We've also written some custom wordpress code to do things like display the "you may also like", integrate with your cheezburger.com account to add favorites, etc. Both the content backend and the wordpress frontend are generalized enough so that we can usually get a new site from concept to launch in around a week. Some sites (senorgif.com, for example) require backend changes (support for Animated GIFs). From a process side, we try to be cutting edge without falling into trendy bullshit buzzwords. We use a variation of Kanban, where we visualize and limit work-in-progress to keep things flowing through our system quickly in a way that allows us to respond quickly to new ideas or emergent problems. Our team is distributed, we use Campfire for multiple rolling discussions. Tokbox for video chat, Skype for screen sharing, and Kiln for distributed source control and code reviews. With a few exceptions (only one guy really knows Flash) every one on the team is a multi-technology generalist, working on the full stack, top-to-bottom, front-to-back. We generally work in thin vertical stripes rather than thick horizontal layers. As a result, I'm able to have an idea for a feature on Monday morning and have it coded, reviewed, tested, and deployed by Tuesday morning. We have multiple layers of test automation and monitoring, which allow us to turn around those small releases very quickly with very little manual human testing. We have a goal to do IMVU-style continuous deployment, where every submit to our central code repository would, if all tests pass, automatically trigger a zero-downtime production code update, but we're not quite there yet.
bhiggins 16y ago
How well do you get paid? I only ask because it seems like Ben Huh makes a big deal of not paying a lot of money to his employees.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  Thanks for asking about this. Ben's remarks on that were a reaction to a bunch of candidates for entry level position complaining loudly about entry level pay. He noticed that being hung up on pay was inversely proportional to perceived awesomeness (although some of this may be sour grapes and/or confirmation bias). It turned into a bit of a fiasco and I'm sure he regrets saying anything about it. The truth is, people at Cheezburger are paid at competitive market rates. The entry level positions are entry level. Positions for experienced professionals with specialized technical skills and relevant education are not. I have no complaints about what I earn. Benefits could stand to be a little better, but that's always tough for small companies.
spotter 16y ago
Get used to it. You aren't a founder - or at least haven't been presented as one (hmmm...) To the rest of the world you are no better than the guy who empties the trash. This is also what your boss Ben thinks but he's probably smart enough to keep his opinion to himself - as long as you're making him rich.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  Why should I or anyone else think I'm better than the guy who empties the trash? A lot of what I do is the technical equivalent of janitorial work. I get paid more than physical-world trash guys, but that's just because fewer people can do what I do. It's not because I'm a better person. I'm probably not. I'm fully aware that I'm working to make Ben (and his investors) rich, I went to business school so I know how these things work. I'm a consenting adult. I get paid for doing work that I enjoy and hanging out with people whom I like. I'm totally OK with this arrangement. When I tell people where I work, I get two distinct reactions. "I can has what?" or "OMG! That's so cool! What do you do there!" I think that what we're doing is interesting from both a business and a technical standpoint and I thought I would offer to share with the HN audience.
  - spotter 16y ago
    LOL, don't ask me, you're the one who were complaining about not being recognized by the NY Times for your achievements.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

iamjustlooking 16y ago

I'm sure from a reporter perspective it doesn't appear like there's much of a technical side to what appears to be a wordpress blog with cats on it.

MartinCron 16y ago
That's why I would expect a reporter to, when introduced to a bunch of technical people to ask, "what? there's a technical side?" Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, or how we have a public API so people can submit funny content from their applications. The "wordpress blog with cats on it" is a very shallow view of the company. There's a lot more going on than that.
- iamjustlooking 16y ago
  Are you referring to the lolcat derivative websites you guys have or is there something big going on behind the scenes?
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    A little of both, there's the constantly evolving system that powers ICHC and the ~50 other sites (not exactly lolcat derivative...the content is pretty diverse) as well as the growing niche social network on cheezburger.com. One big thing that we're trying to do is make the users' profile pages more of a destination in themselves, where your account on cheezburger is where you express your sense of humor to the world and consume aggregated funny stuff from the people you care about. A lot of people (myself included) use multiple social networks/online communities for different things. Personal example: Flickr is for my "serious" photos, I use tweetphoto for cameraphone snapshots and bestc.am for more artistic cameraphone creations. Picture using Twitter for current friends and celebrities, Facebook for family and old high-school friends, and Cheezburger for your online humor friends. Naturally there's overlap (we support sharing your funny stuff on Facebook and Twitter) but we already have a growing number of people who use our (very simple) systems for friending and messaging.
- fortes 16y ago
  Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, or how we have a public API so people can submit funny content from their applications. So could you talk about some of that now? I'm genuinely curious.
  - ssharp 16y ago
    Really. If you want your story to be heard, tell it. Start talking here or start an IamA.
- skinnymuch 16y ago
  > Then we could talk about how we make systems to help the editorial team sort through the 16,000 content submissions we get every day, I knew you guys had this and I honestly thought that was as far the technical feats for the company went - to be clear I'm not trying to insult you guys or anything...I didn't know there were 40 employees. I remember I saw a youtube video a while back that made you guys look like a 10 man operation at most. EDIT: Just saw your post down below talking the technical side. Interesting.

greyman 16y ago

Yes, I would be interesting about the technical side, like how the publishing backend works, how do you manage the large number of submissions, etc.

MartinCron 16y ago
So, our core backend system is a SQL database with two ASP.NET MVC (C#) web site front ends 1) cheezburger.com, the one that our users use to make content via our tools (Caption tools, graph builder, etc.). It's also a niche social network, where people curate their favorites, message with friends, etc. 2) The internal site that our moderators use to sift through submissions. Nothing shows up on any of our voting pages without having been screened by a moderator. Nothing shows up on any of our sites' front pages without having been voted on by the community. A lot of what makes things work is the mix of editorial guidance and community feedback. It's not a pure democracy, but it's not a pure dictatorship, either. It turns out that a lot of deliberate thought and hard work goes into running a funny web site. I'm constantly amazed at how our editorial team is perpetually refining their process and sharing knowledge. The software does things like automatically filter out duplicates and allow moderators to filter by items that have been added as a favorite by members of our community, etc. We also try to automate as many mind-numbing brute force things as possible, to let our humans do what only humans can do (answer "is this funny?") so the submission engine does things like automatically resizes and watermarks images. I personally spend about as much time working on software for around 16 moderators than I do working on software for around 16 million end users. Most of the moderators are in the office with me, and I really love having the low communication overhead of just being able to walk over there and ask "what exactly do you want, again?" Almost all of our front-end sites are running a single custom Wordpress theme (PHP) hosted by Wordpress VIP (even with the recent downtimes, nobody is better at hosting Wordpress than Wordpress/Automattic). We send content there through the WP XML-RPC API. We use some extra metadata to identify posts as "voting" or "front page", and our theme is able to filter by that. We've also written some custom wordpress code to do things like display the "you may also like", integrate with your cheezburger.com account to add favorites, etc. Both the content backend and the wordpress frontend are generalized enough so that we can usually get a new site from concept to launch in around a week. Some sites (senorgif.com, for example) require backend changes (support for Animated GIFs). From a process side, we try to be cutting edge without falling into trendy bullshit buzzwords. We use a variation of Kanban, where we visualize and limit work-in-progress to keep things flowing through our system quickly in a way that allows us to respond quickly to new ideas or emergent problems. Our team is distributed, we use Campfire for multiple rolling discussions. Tokbox for video chat, Skype for screen sharing, and Kiln for distributed source control and code reviews. With a few exceptions (only one guy really knows Flash) every one on the team is a multi-technology generalist, working on the full stack, top-to-bottom, front-to-back. We generally work in thin vertical stripes rather than thick horizontal layers. As a result, I'm able to have an idea for a feature on Monday morning and have it coded, reviewed, tested, and deployed by Tuesday morning. We have multiple layers of test automation and monitoring, which allow us to turn around those small releases very quickly with very little manual human testing. We have a goal to do IMVU-style continuous deployment, where every submit to our central code repository would, if all tests pass, automatically trigger a zero-downtime production code update, but we're not quite there yet.

bhiggins 16y ago

How well do you get paid? I only ask because it seems like Ben Huh makes a big deal of not paying a lot of money to his employees.

MartinCron 16y ago
Thanks for asking about this. Ben's remarks on that were a reaction to a bunch of candidates for entry level position complaining loudly about entry level pay. He noticed that being hung up on pay was inversely proportional to perceived awesomeness (although some of this may be sour grapes and/or confirmation bias). It turned into a bit of a fiasco and I'm sure he regrets saying anything about it. The truth is, people at Cheezburger are paid at competitive market rates. The entry level positions are entry level. Positions for experienced professionals with specialized technical skills and relevant education are not. I have no complaints about what I earn. Benefits could stand to be a little better, but that's always tough for small companies.

spotter 16y ago

Get used to it. You aren't a founder - or at least haven't been presented as one (hmmm...) To the rest of the world you are no better than the guy who empties the trash. This is also what your boss Ben thinks but he's probably smart enough to keep his opinion to himself - as long as you're making him rich.

MartinCron 16y ago
Why should I or anyone else think I'm better than the guy who empties the trash? A lot of what I do is the technical equivalent of janitorial work. I get paid more than physical-world trash guys, but that's just because fewer people can do what I do. It's not because I'm a better person. I'm probably not. I'm fully aware that I'm working to make Ben (and his investors) rich, I went to business school so I know how these things work. I'm a consenting adult. I get paid for doing work that I enjoy and hanging out with people whom I like. I'm totally OK with this arrangement. When I tell people where I work, I get two distinct reactions. "I can has what?" or "OMG! That's so cool! What do you do there!" I think that what we're doing is interesting from both a business and a technical standpoint and I thought I would offer to share with the HN audience.
- spotter 16y ago
  LOL, don't ask me, you're the one who were complaining about not being recognized by the NY Times for your achievements.