The Strange Developer’s Symphony

Strange Developer's Symphony

For Invillia

Get to know Invillia and take your dev career to the next level.

The music clip made for developers that became a campaign.

If you talk to the top leaders of companies developing digital solutions, most will mention the same problem: finding professionals in the market is hard. Worse than not hiring is watching excellent employees leave for another company without notice. This has only worsened after the pandemic, as global corporations are now coming to Brazil, buying top talent with dollar salaries.

Amid this talent tug-of-war is Invillia, a Brazilian tech giant working with 3 out of 5 unicorns in market digitalization. Some may still not know them or assume they’re a foreign company, but they’ve been making waves, which caught the attention of Compass UOL. After being acquired, Invillia grew and, as we mentioned, is actively seeking more talent.

That’s where 3rd PigHouse comes in. They wanted a campaign to attract developers and present Invillia in a stronger light. That’s how, six months ago, the Hello, Strangers campaign was born. With a quirky, geeky tone—different from the stiffness of other tech companies—the campaign immediately resonated with developers feeling out of place at their current tech jobs. You know that feeling of being in a dead-end company, lacking purpose and fulfillment? That’s exactly it. We created five films, a landing page, various social media assets, and the results were incredible. By the way, if you’d like to check it out, click here.

Now, we’re launching a second campaign, still tapping into the sense of feeling “strange,” but it had to be more than just a continuation. Thinking about these developers, often coding in isolation, the idea struck me: it feels like they’re playing a musical instrument on their keyboards.

The idea in a tweet: A developer, alone at his desk, playing a geeky-comic song on his computer keyboard, expressing how out of place he feels at his current tech job.

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Algorithms & Poetry

From there, the idea needed to be developed enough to stand on its own and show its power. The first step was to write the foundation of the lyrics: hacker terms that would fit into an algorithm for developers, while also hinting at a parallel meaning about life.

This incredible process was a collaboration of six hands. Rodolfo Barreto wrote the base, Oswaldo Neto swapped some programming terms for cooler ones, and Júnior Carelli transformed poetry into music. In short, that’s basically how it went :)

Hello, stranger

I’m a dev like you

Feeling completely null

Hello, there’s a code smell in the air

Maybe it’s a magic number

Or a simple bug inside my head

A dev trying to understand

Why do I feel so strange?

Troubles that haunt as waterfalls

We re not following the same paradigm

And, believe me, it really hurts

I’m lost in a bootstrap

Asking myself If I’m human

Or a dongle bad connected?

A dev trying to understand

Why do I feel so strange?

Hey,

There’s a Greenfield

And it’s your Groundhog Day

They’ve launched a new puppet machine

That says your work is just ok

Hey, please, don’t listen to those daemons

that’s all I have to say

Hello, stranger

I’m a dev like you

working on a f* legacy code

Hello, I’m running from a bottle neck

Maybe we can pair programming

Do you know the absolute path?

Code bloats in the middle of nowhere

We aren’t writing the same typescripts

And, believe me, I don’t care.

Hey,

There’s a Greenfield

And it’s your Groundhog Day

They’ve launched a new puppet machine

That says your work is just ok

Hey, please, don’t listen to those daemons

that’s all I have to say

I’m looking for trucks, bikes, cross walking

Am I failing in my captcha?

You are over engineering

Leave me in my shell

Fill your timesheet

[What? No way. They blocked my account again]

A dev that’s trying to understand

Why? Tell me why?

Why do I feel so strange?

Listen here

Playing on a computer keyboard

The second step was to figure out if it’s possible to play on a computer keyboard and, most importantly, if it would actually sound good. On YouTube, I found a guy from Vietnam and another from Russia. After checking out the Russian’s bio, I discovered he was a developer and had created his own music app.

I was on the right track, but the ideal solution was to find a Brazilian geek musician to make things happen. That’s when my wife said, “I know a musician who could do it.” And that’s how I met Júnior Carelli, one of the top keyboardists in Brazil (just ask Google) and a guy so geeky he has a Star Wars X-Wing tattooed on his neck and a daughter named Aria, after one of the major characters in Game of Thrones.

Bo Burnham as inspiration

Bo Burnham is an incredible comedian who, during the pandemic, wrote, produced, and edited an entire musical from his living room. On top of that, his humor is sharp, filled with social critiques that make us laugh at our own tragedies.

The idea here was: "If a developer were to create a song about their disillusionment with the work they're doing, what would it sound like?" And that’s exactly what we did.

all works

Hello, Strangers II
Client: Invillia
Head of Innovation: André Piva
Concept and Creation: Rodolfo Barreto
Music: Junior Carelli, Rodolfo Barreto e Oswaldo Neto
Production, Mixing, and Mastering: Junior Carelli
Direction and Photography: Rudge Campos
Production Assistance: Emerson Platkev e Sara Collins
Design: Thiago Bhering
Web Design: Monique Rossomano
Programming: Erick Amaral e Caio Spoladore
Motion: Tomás Casas
Voiceover: Kadu Torres
Revision: Claudia Motta
Production: Foggy Filmes
Marketing Manager: João Victor de Lucca
Community Manager: Maynara Santos
Approval: Renato Bolzan