Life at Skype

Mihkel is a Skype developer. Working on the Mac version, no less. He’s travelling a bit with his mobile office. A Skype friend in Italy did this mini-interview with him.

Mihkel, is this you first time in Italy?

Nope, that’s the fourth already. All times by car btw.

Nice, so the first time you went here you was not able to use Skype right? How do you feel to use Skype to call every one at home for free?

It’s great indeed.

Continue reading "A developer in the bush" »

Skype folks are so busy delighting our users that we get to pack almost half a week into one single day:

We love to work hard, but Ants, our developer support technician, decided to take a few days off. On the very first day of his vacation, this was found in our office:

Join the fun!

Here’s an actual door sign from Skype. Spot some irony?

No really… we DO have better quality assurancE and testing (and proofreading) for our software than we have for our door signs.

Today our Tallinn office hall was again loaded with desk and chair components. They are assembling new furniture and shipping old one across various locations, so it’s like work live in a major transport/storage hub, not a software company :-) The situation is getting sillier by the day, as we grew past our current office capability … umm… some three months ago or something. But no fear, we know there will be an end to that as we’ll be relocating to some new nice place… some time… really. And it’s kind of fun to put up with that. None of us like too corporate or polished stuff anyway.

So until then, I realized I had some old pictures laying around to illustrate the situation. We didn’t stage these. These are all real-life settings from a while ago. I don’t think it can really get more “startup” than that?

The person on the left was lucky to have a chair. The one on the right, not so much…

Continue reading "The desk and chair situation" »

Here’s what Mast at Skype had to say about Skype video. (He’s an engineer working with new and upcoming Skype gadgets.) Since probably not too many of you read Estonian, here it is in English :)

Although I work for Skype, I never thought too much of this video thing. However, recently I had an enlightening and you could almost say religious experience with this feature.

Continue reading "The Revelation" »

What do you do when the user count of your creation hits 100 million? Celebrate, obviously.

So we had this little picnic.

Continue reading "The 100 million picnic" »

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to the Skype blog readership. My name is Scott Indrisek, and I handle public relations and user outreach for Skype in the United States. What does this mean, exactly? It means that I get to talk to a fantastic variety of Skypers on a daily basis, from tech-savvy soldiers stationed in Iraq to long distance lovebirds who stay connected from coast to coast. Along with Jaanus, I’ll be posting some of the most intriguing stories as I come across them, as well as keeping everyone updated on what the Skype team in the Big Apple is up to. In the meantime, if you’ve got a unique Skype story you’re eager to tell, I’d love to hear from you. I’m excited to be able to share the creative and inspiring ways that our users have been staying connected!

Introducing the Meeting room PRO. No whiteboards. No beamer. No boardroom or desk. No coffee. Just folks, the corridor and beanbags. Helps you get stuff done and discussed quickly as otherwise you’d ache from being in an uncomfortable position for too long :-)

(Or perhaps we were just out of proper meeting rooms.)

These are big days for the whole of Estonia and our Tallinn office too. The winter olympics are huge in the Nordics. We won 3 olympic gold medals in a week, two of them by our skiing queen Kristina Šmigun (but she likes to be called “Kiku”), and just now, a third one by Andrus Veerpalu in men’s 15 km. Productivity is horribly down in many offices across Estonia, including Skype Tallinn site, as everyone watches the event :-) congratulations to our champions.

Photo credit: Marko Mumm, Eesti Päevaleht

We’re happy that Skype has contributed its small part in keeping Kiku’s family together and informed.

“My mom and sister are very happy for me”, said Šmigun whose family in America is watching her Olympic performance over internet.
“I heard that during the competition, they called our neighbours in our home town Otepää with Skype, who then used a tiny webcam to “broadcast” the show,” Šmigun told. “The picture was not very legible but they are up-to-date and informed.”

Do you remember Ms Selecta, the caffeine manager? Apparently even she needs maintenance from time to time. And when developers spot something needs maintenance, they’re quick to file it in the bug tracking system. Here’s a screenshot from the actual ticketing system which we usually use to track ways to make Skype better for you by squashing bugs and adding new stuff, but occasionally the ticketing has to take more esoteric requests like this one. (“Anum täis” means “Tray full” or something like that. :)

• what: Guinness Record — most people calling with Skype on beanbags in a row (see the headsets!)
• when: just this Monday
• where: Skype office
• who: three random Skypers, working hard to bring you the next version

Straight from my inbox this morning.

From: Tallinn office manager
To: all Skype staff
Subject: new hire in Tallinn office

I hereby have the honors to introduce the newest hire to Skype Tallinn office. As of today, you can meet Ms Tiiu Selecta (second from left on the picture below) in our kitchen. We had to move the lasagne-stuffed fridge you all know and love to another corner to make Tiiu some seating room.

This intergalactic-looking colleague is capable of filling itself with water, order fresh beans from corner shop to ease our other office assistants’ load and hold intelligent conversations with you while waiting for hot beverages offered in wide assortment.

There are some embedded development and usability test tasks for new hires in preparation by respective teams. As result, new shiny icons and SkypeNet compatibility will be there, with release date scheduled to Q1.

Welcome.

PS: the two gentlemen are likely to see a harrasment suit in their mail soon, if you inspect the picture closely.

Lester just posted a video with Skype’s Gadget Inspector James Peck in the Skype Learning Zone, which I thought is educational not only for developers, but for a wider audience as well.

In this video you see and hear an overview of how the Skype device certification and partnership works, and get to see some cool actual gadgets, like the recent Linksys phone, as well as some other available and upcoming stuff — a speakerphone, a Bluetooth headset, the noisecancelling Jawbone headset and more.

For more in-depth developer info, subscribe to our Developer Blog.

We wouldn’t be where we currently are without our partners. Although you as the user may only see “Skype”, we have many partners who help us be great, while at the same time maximising their own business through opportunities provided by working with Skype.

We have many different types of partners: technology, hardware, software, online, access, retail… the list goes on. And it was difficult to navigate the opportunities. Up to now, at least: we have a brand new partner page, at skype.com/partners, that outlines the options you have to work with us. So if you have a great portal business in some country, or would like to resell Skype certified products, or are operating a WiFi hotspot that you’d like to be Skype-friendly, or… then just visit the new partner page to find out how you can work with us.

Let’s look back at what really happened a week ago, how it was received within Skype and what we make of it. First things first, we now have a FAQ to answer some of the questions we received through the past week.

Continue reading "Skype+eBay: a retrospect from within" »

Skypers all over the world are big into sports. There aren’t many things we haven’t tried (wife carrying might be one of them) but one of the biggest things with our Tallinn crew is Xdream adventure racing. If you’ve never heard of it before then it’s an event where teams of three people pass through checkpoints by trekking, biking and canoeing and complete special challenges. Important part is navigation as there are no fixed courses and you have to find your own way from one checkpoint to the next one. Adventure races vary in length with a course that might take 4-5 hours seen as “sprint”.

A few weekends ago, the most recent race in Estonia was held and total of 7 Skype teams participated. It was my first time so I wasn’t very sure what to expect but the whole thing turned out to be great fun. To achieve the best results it helps to have strong all-around team - one person to navigate, other to be the “engine” in the canoe and third one to be good with steering, someone to keep up the morale etc. I found out that good navigation skills were more important than anything else and it doesn’t really matter if you cover one section of the course a bit slower than competitors, next section could be where you win everything back.

I cannot wait for the next event :) Below is a selection of photos from the last race here in Estonia. If you’d like to read more about adventure racing then Wikipedia has a thorough post about its’ history, rules, equipment etc.

Continue reading "Skypers and adventure racing" »

Sometimes we hear people think that Skype is a rockstar-only company and that you must have three PhD-s to work here. This is most certainly NOT the case. Many of us are just starting their career or are here for the summer as interns. This is also true for Steve, today’s featured staff, who came to Skype as part of a student exchange program.

Download this interview as MP3 or OGG (length 4:22).

Continue reading "Steve Zhang" »

It’s the first birthday of SkypeOut today. As the news from a year ago said:

July 27, 2004. Today Skype launched its free, Skype for Windows Version 1.0 software, which includes SkypeOut, enabling Skype users to pre-pay and call any phone number in the world at highly competitive local rates.

It’s been an eventful year and SkypeOut has served us and you well. Happy birthday, SkypeOut! And to celebrate, we got some goodies for you. We’re lowering prices to many destinations. We have to increase some a bit, too, but those don’t kick in until September 1. (Lower prices are effective immediately.)

For more info, see the press release, service announcement with price change details and SkypeOut rates page.

Continue reading "Happy 1st birthday SkypeOut! The present: lower prices." »

We have a very active French community among Skype staff. And as July 14 (whoops… had June 14 here initially, thanks guys for pointing it out) is an important day for France (why? well go read the history books :) ), we had a Bastille day organized by ze hard-working Skype French Sans-Culottes featured on this picture.

Continue reading "Ze Bastille Day" »

There are bad things happening in London at this time, you may have heard about the bomb explosions on London’s public transport network. Many of you are asking us through all channels if we are safe. Quick answer: yes, we are. Some of Skype people are/were very close to the tragedies but no one got hurt. Many thanks for your concern.

Skype is working and our services are operating as usual.

Tip - Add additional information to the name field in your Skype profile to add additional information about your whereabouts or status. Helpful to let others know your timezone, location, or even that you are ok in a moment like this.

On the weekend of June 18-19, the Skype team had two concurrent outing events in different parts of the world. We do have them once in a while with the engineering crew, but having two at the same time doesn’t happen that often.

Continue reading "Sailing and hiking" »

Today’s Featured Staff is Dirk who works as a mobile tester in Skype’s Quality Assurance group. These people make sure that our releases work as expected and don’t contain any nasty bugs. Also, they work with technologies and features that may not reach the public for many months to come, until we’re sure they’re ready and work well.

Download this interview as MP3 or OGG (length 8:10).

Continue reading "Dirk Röthig" »

Michael Jackson is Skype’s Director of Operations. As you hear in the interview, it has nothing to do with surgeries or pop singing, but it does have a lot to do with ensuring that Skype is continuously available to our global user community.

Michael is also a proud member of the “People visiting Skype Tallinn office” community — his home is in Denmark, but he spends a lot of time, days and often weeks, in Tallinn, working with the operations, systems administration, customer support and other groups of people here.

Download this interview as MP3 or OGG (length 10:15).

Continue reading "Michael Jackson" »

Video is a massive thing, even though Skype doesn’t have it yet. It’s no secret that we are working on it and keeping a close eye on many of the video add-ons already out there for Skype. So today’s Featured Skyper talk is with one of the Skype video developers, Andrei Jefremov, who spends his days tinkering in our Research Labs on core video and sound technologies.

Photo by Siim Teller

Continue reading "Andrei Jefremov" »

Stefan is Skype’s Director of Product and highlights aspects about his work at Skype and also experiences as a regular daily user in this interview. The whole Product function at Skype encompasses all the people responsible for bringing out new versions of the software and making sure you’re getting a high-quality enjoyable experience, and Stefan is the one leading them.

This interview is also the first in our “People visiting Skype Tallinn office” series — Stefan is based in London, but spends a lot of his time in Tallinn where all of the engineering happens, where we also took the pictures.

Download this interview as MP3 or OGG (length 7:05).

Continue reading "Stefan Öberg" »