The Fantasy Factory
What it’s like to work at Dyrdek Enterprises
A few years ago, I got the opportunity to work at Dyrdek Enterprises, the company of DC skate pro and entrepreneur Rob Dyrdek. You may know Rob by some of his TV shows such as Rob & Big, Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, and Ridiculousness. I have so many people regularly ask me what it’s like to work there, how I did it, what I do, and what the culture is like.
Note: This post is all a shameless plug. I have enjoyed working here and simply wanted to share this with anyone who’s interested because the team at Dyrdek Enterprises has given me some of the best times of my life.
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I had just moved from Vegas to Los Angeles, so the network of people I knew was rather small. I had also just lost an account because the company’s CFO began experiencing health difficulties. Things seemed bleak, so shortly after I began quietly looking for a new client through what resources I had, Hack Murphy happened reached out to me one day and asked if I’d like to interview for a developers position at Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory.
“Uhhh… Fuck yeah!”
To be honest, I hadn’t seen any of his shows before I started working there. That’s not a problem of course, it’s not like they want to hire fans, but once I started working there, I became surrounded by everything Dyrdek and my interest rose as well.
The Work
The initial project I was brought on board to develop was called Di.tl (pronounced dittle), which stood for “A Day in the Life”. It was a social URL shortener in which the user could earn money by placing advertisements on their own links. It consisted of a normal LAMP stack. I used PHP, MySQL, Redis, and of course your necessary JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Ditl went through many iterations. First, it was based off of the open source URL shortening platform YOURLS, but we quickly discovered that YOURLS was nowhere near what we needed. We needed a platform more custom and efficient than it. The following iterations brought social aspects to the platform, which by the third iteration were removed completely. Some open source repos were fortunately born by reworking it so many times, and my interest in JavaScript began to rise. After Ditl, we (Hack and I) slowly moved towards building out the websites for some of Robs brands. First we did Street League, then Wild Grinders, then DTA Posse, as well as Dyrdek’s official website. I have worked with WordPress before, but never to the extent I experienced at the Factory.
As time progressed, my skills and abilities as a developer increased. I started using version control, Git and GitHub (follow meh). While at the factory, I created some of my most successful open source repos to date: Snap.js, Behave.js and Shadow, to name a few. This is where I truly begin to hone my skills.
Initium was a PHP framework I was developing while at the Factory. Simply put, is was a no bullshit MVC framework, easily extendable, but it was lacking overall in terms of feature sets, which at the time, proved useful in writing boilerplate code wicked fast. Enter SpringClick, Initium’s first real stress test and an ad management platform that uses HTML5 to serve ads. Ad click heat maps, ability to manage ads directly from the site running them, analytics and statistics with HighCharts, and a blazing fast stack utilizing Nginx and Redis, I guess you could say it was fun to make. It was certainly a challenge because my role at the factory not only consisted of pioneering profitable ideas, but filling in the gaps of knowledge between me and my uppers, so there was a lot to learn about ad management platforms. I wouldn't recommend building one, it’s kinda hard and boring. Springclick (at the time of writing this article) is still up, and has currently served 967,954,598 advertisements, that is almost one billion ads served in roughly 6-7 months, a feat that makes me proud to say I have made.
“Wow… Code… Do you skate?”
Hell no. I skated briefly at one point, not enough to ollie if my life depended on it but hey, I could push around easily enough. Interestingly, my mother was a pro and didn’t tell me.
“Can I come get a tour?”
Dyrdek Enterprises is closed to the public, but every so often, people are given tours of the Factory. Sometimes they are just general public, other times they are celebrities. It has always been fun to show off the office to anyone who is interested. Many children walked through these halls excited to finally get to see what the Fantasy Factory is like and of course Rob and our colleagues don’t want to disappoint.
The amount of important business-minded people, influential celebrities, and names that have run through the hallways of Dyrdek Enterprises is mind boggling. My role didn’t consist of networking that much, but my colleagues say they they have done more networking within the Factory than they have ever done in their life, period.
Oh the fans! Before my office moved down into Drama’s old studio, I was up top near the front facing window, and boy have I seen some crazy shit. People love to wait for Rob. I have seen people in leopard outfits stand on top of cars and wait for him, I have seen super tall dudes in all white with blonde wigs dance for a few hours, mobs of homies waiting to see “Deerdrek”, and grown adults waiting with their children.
The worst part is when people make it within the blue gate. They think they’re in but we just gotta escort them back out! My favorite story is when a man pops his head into my office.
Me: “Can I help you?”
— Him: “No no, just taking a look.”
“Oh, ok, no problem! Are you looking for someone in particular?”
— “Yes, Rob.”
“All good! Do you have an appointment?”
— “No, but see… It’s ok because… because… Well, I’m not a fan.”
“…How did you get in?”
— “Just ran through the gate as it was closing…”
“You cannot be here, sir, we’re not open to the public.”
— “But see… it’s OK though because I’m not a fan. I just want to talk to Rob…”
Hah, not a fan, right. This happens regularly at the Factory.
The Schwag
Working at the Factory came with some pretty sweet hookups. All I do is walk around wearing Young and Reckless clothing and IVI sunglasses. Nixon at one point sent us a few watches as a gift, which was totally fucking rad of them to do. Occasionally, there would be events hosted at the Factory. One of which was MLS afterparty, Major League Soccer decided to get Gucci Mane and Chris Brown to rap at the Factory. Pretty cool if you’re also the one receiving VIP all access passes (it’s my damn office, yo!)
The Corporate Humor
Moving Onward
For two years, this place has been my home, and although I am sad to leave such a unique, exciting, and talented team, I am looking forward to taking what I have learned here and creating something bigger than I could have ever imagined, something Rob knows all too well.
I have decided to take the next step in my career as a Software Engineer with Maker Studios, one of the largest YouTube networks in the world, and I am looking forward to honing my craft even further.
If you’d like to see what I’ll be up to, follow me on Twitter, GitHub, Forrst, Instagram, and Dribbble!
