I understood about one word in eight from Ross Ryding, the VP for Engineering at Sonic Solutions, who was trying to explain segment re-encoding to me. It's true that my grasp of audio technology gets me just about far enough to find the "play" button on a tape recorder - but the other reason I had trouble following Ross is because he's a real engineer, not a manager, a salesman, or a PR hack.
At Sonic, that's par for the course: The company built its reputation not on hype but on delivering tools designed by professionals. With just forty engineers on staff, Sonic has been ahead of all the major audio trends of the last decade. Virtually every major record label and professional mastering studio currently works with Sonic's digital technologies for music editing, mixing, and CD premastering; more than 2,000 Sonic Studio systems, the industry standard, are in use by companies from Abbey Road to Warner Brothers.
Lately, Sonic has been branching out into DVD premastering systems and high-speed networking solutions for multimedia.
"Right now," says Ross, "we're doing a lot of work in algorithm and systems development for DVD. So some people look at us as a DVD company, but the point is we're a tool company. We're not a networking company either, but we build tools that work in a workgroup environment." And now Sonic's going after corporate markets with the same determination it put into winning over broadcast journalists, record producers, and movie, television, and multimedia professionals.
Ross says there's "always an opening for the right person" at Sonic: "and if there's no job slot, we'll make one." By "right" Ross means an engineer with 10 to 12 years of professional achievement, experienced in system design and algorithm development. Audio or video background is a help, says Ross, but not essential. Along with top technical skills, what Sonic's really looking for are "people who can take a lot of responsibility. We give real authority to engineers, and the people who do well here tend to take pride in doing their jobs well."
They also tend to stay: Sonic has virtually no turnover, and employees (who work in two- to three-person teams) tend to bond tightly with their co-workers. Based in Novato, Sonic's small, casual offices are an oasis of sanity in the hyper world of big high-tech companies. There's no corporate bureaucracy, no office politics, no time clock - just a bunch of self-directed grownups whose mantra is professionalism, whose habit is hard work, and who know, nonetheless, that there's more to life than algorithms. "The people we hire have lives outside of the office," explains Ross. Quite a radical concept - but given the results, it's a concept that bears watching.
Engineers earn from US$70,000 to $120,000, with benefits and stock options, and would-be employees can get a leg up by showing initiative. "Headhunters are useless," says Ross. "They just push paper across your desk. The people who seek us out are the ones I'm interested in."
Location: Novato, CA
Salary: US$70,000 to $120,000 with benefits and stock options.
Skills: 10 to 12 years of professional achievement, system design, and algorithm development. Audio or video background helpful.
For more information, email resumes@sonic.com.
This article originally appeared in HotWired.
