> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://aftermath.site/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What It's Like To Work For Hasan Piker - URL: https://aftermath.site/work-for-hasan-piker-assistant-interview-hnd-productions/ - Published: 2026-10-30T19:59:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-30T20:44:11.000Z - Description: Due to his pro-Palestine politics and off-the-cuff style, Hasan Piker has become a national lightning rod for controversy. But he's not in it alone - Author: Nathan Grayson - Tags: Inside Baseball Week 2026, hasan piker, twitch, Politics, Feature, Interview, Labor When Hannah and David Hollings first started watching Hasan Piker back in 2020, they never expected to one day end up working for him. Both were employed by Blizzard at the time, with Hannah doing production on *Overwatch* League while David was a product lead on *World of Warcraft*’s esports arm. Suddenly stuck inside due to the pandemic, they began watching Piker, then a relevant but burgeoning name on Twitch—still far from the national, [Scott Jennings-suing](https://kotaku.com/twitch-streamer-hasan-piker-launches-72-5-million-lawsuit-again-cnn-contributor-scott-jennings-for-defamation-2000750497?ref=aftermath.site) figure he would later become. At the time he was covering Trump, as you’d expect. But not long after Hannah and David began tuning in, Piker’s coverage hit much closer to home. “He starts covering the sexual harassment lawsuit stuff that Blizzard is enduring \[in 2021\],” Hannah, now Piker’s assistant, told Aftermath. “These lawsuits happened,” David, who now handles the production side of Piker’s operation, told Aftermath, “and I go to the the [walkout](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/28/activision-blizzard-walkout-allegations-harassment-frat-boy-culture?ref=aftermath.site), and I find out that a lot of the victims of the sexual harassment were my friends, were my coworkers. I had no idea. So I was just looking for answers to why the company that saved my life and I owed everything to was acting in the way it did. How did power allow these men to do what it is that they did? And what other things am I biased to?” David regards himself as having been "politically incoherent” at the time, but the leftism-informed, systemic slant of Piker’s coverage helped put things in perspective for him: “\[Piker\] was making a lot of sense, and he was connecting a lot of dots for me, and that kind of drove me towards even more leftist theory: how the economy is organized, how the power dynamic that allowed something like the sexual harassment at Blizzard to happen happens everywhere, and how I felt motivated to want to get involved.” So Hannah and David started making fan edits of Piker’s gaming streams [on their own channels](https://www.youtube.com/@HasanAbiAdventures?ref=aftermath.site). Eventually, in early 2023, Piker’s editors took notice and asked them to run [his gaming YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@HasanAbiGaming?ref=aftermath.site). It would be a common enough origin story in the social media era, if not for what happened not long after: One day in 2024, Piker’s computer broke, and David offered to fix it. Piker accepted, at which point Hannah and David went over to Piker’s [now-infamous multimillion-dollar house](https://www.tiktok.com/@hasandpiker/video/7603862664443448607?ref=aftermath.site), met Piker’s mom and brother—who often stay with him—and ended up befriending the Piker family over dinner and a museum trip Piker’s mom invited them on. “We became friends with his whole family and him, not just him,” said David. “We started hanging out with his brother, and so just being in proximity to \[Piker\] as problems arose, we would fix them for him.” Hannah and David ended up leaving Blizzard to work for a startup called Esports Engine, which proceeded to get acquired by a company owned by the Saudi Arabian government. Neither of them were thrilled by this, but Hannah had her sights set higher: Piker had been saying for years that he needed an assistant. Hannah wanted that job. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist yet. > “He's like, ‘Hey, we gotta share her.’ And then \[Piker\], when he actually hired me, he didn't share me.” While some popular content creators maintain a payroll of dozens between employees and contractors, straddling the line between individual and production company, Piker has always preferred a relatively lean operation. But Hannah kept, in David’s words, “throwing her resume at \[Piker\] every day” until opportunity smiled upon her in 2025: Piker’s brother was getting married, and Piker needed help planning the bachelor party. It was to be “a trial by fire” in Hannah’s recounting of Piker’s words. Piker, by that point very established, had no issue dropping a considerable chunk of change to celebrate his brother’s big day. The party would take place in Las Vegas, and attendees would “fly planes, do truck stuff, \[and\] shoot guns,” according to Hannah. It went off more or less without a hitch. So much so that during the party, Hannah said Piker’s close friend and podcast cohost Will Neff threatened to hire her if he didn’t. “So eventually \[Neff\] did try to ask \[Piker\],” said Hannah. “He's like, ‘Hey, we gotta share her.’ And then \[Piker\], when he actually hired me, he didn't share me.” Finally, Hannah had her dream job. And then, the same week that she started, Charlie Kirk, who Piker was set to debate mere weeks later, got assassinated. ## **Never A Dull Day** The honeymoon period was over before it had begun. Out of the trial by fire, into the frying pan. “\[Piker\] just got inundated with so many press requests \[after Kirk’s death\],” said Hannah. “We became a lot more incorporated with what he was doing right when shit was exploding for him,” said David. Piker’s star has only continued to rise ever since, with [politicians on both sides of the aisle condemning him](https://aftermath.site/hasan-piker-bipartisan-house-resolution-candace-owens/), using association with him [as a convenient cudgel against candidates they’d prefer to see lose](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/us/politics/el-sayed-piker-terrorism-comments.html?ref=aftermath.site), and generally [treating his pro-Palestinian views as one of the greatest threats currently faced by our nation](https://aftermath.site/podcasts/hasan-piker-twitch-politics-kat-abughazaleh/) despite the fact that he is, at the end of the day, [just a Twitch streamer](https://aftermath.site/hasan-piker-twitch-ban-rick-scott-medicare-medicaid/). The Republican National Convention also [posted his hog](https://aftermath.site/rnc-hasan-piker-meat-pic-thirst-trap/). If you work for Piker, that leads to a unique cadence: normal days followed at unpredictable intervals by the most insane shit you’ve ever experienced in your life. And even when things are relatively calm at Piker HQ (read: his house), they’re never boring. “I'm here \[at Piker’s house\] every day trying to make sure he's not late to things,” said Hannah. “Basically, keeping track of his day-to-day schedule, and of course watching \[Piker’s dog\] Kaya, helping his family, helping with things around the house. There's never a day that's the exact same. Sometimes he'll have a \[political\] candidate on, sometimes he'll have a YouTuber on, sometimes he'll have one of his streamer friends. It definitely varies.” > “He’s constantly getting inundated, and it’s me and his manager \[going over\] requests like ‘Hey, can he cover this?’ or ‘Hey, can he interview this candidate?’” On a given day, Piker will stream anywhere between six and ten hours, and Hannah bookends each day with morning and evening standups in which she outlines his schedule and opportunities. “\[Piker\] definitely is a person who loves to build his habits,” she said of Piker’s—and by extension, her—day to day. “He wakes up early. He's listening to the news. He's getting his coffee, and then he's gonna work out. … He usually has time in the morning about an hour before his stream. 10 AMs are his interview hours or photoshoot hours or family hours—his one hour before stream that I can book something for him.” “He’s constantly getting inundated,” Hannah added, “and it’s me and his manager \[going over\] requests like ‘Hey, can he cover this?’ or ‘Hey, can he interview this candidate?’” Since becoming more openly involved with various political candidates, Piker has made a point of professionalizing his on-stream look. That means suits, and suits require upkeep. “\[There’s\] a lot of dry cleaning, picking up and dropping off all the suits,” said Hannah. “He’s gotten really into suits.” David, meanwhile, has helped turn Piker’s stream setup from an endearingly janky hodgepodge into something functional, versatile (with *multiple* camera angles), and currently, Halloween-y. "I'm in charge of all production for \[Piker\] at this point," said David, who recently rigged Piker’s setup to [frighten him every time he gets a Hype Train going on Twitch](https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/1xb28i9/hasan%5Fpiker%5Fgets%5Fjump%5Fscared%5Fby%5Fhis%5Fhype%5Ftrain/?ref=aftermath.site). "I built his computer. I set up his cameras. I set up his lighting. I do his IRL \[streams\]. I do his encoding. I'm his main conduit to any production vendor that we may hire. ... When it comes to how he looks \[on stream\], that's me." > Okay, I'm pretty sure [@HnD\_Productions](https://x.com/HnD%5FProductions?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=aftermath.site) took a year off Hasan's life 😭 there was no intro today at the start of stream and Hasan was caught completely off guard omg [pic.twitter.com/4J61Q0EPJc](https://t.co/4J61Q0EPJc?ref=aftermath.site) > > — adri ♡ (@socialistadri) [October 29, 2026](https://x.com/socialistadri/status/2115869254688063857?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=aftermath.site) The past year has also seen Piker travel more, which necessitates management, sometimes of the “micro” variety. “We're flying to Minneapolis soon,” said David. “We're planning a trip to fucking Japan and China and Australia. That's gonna take three weeks. And apparently I have to have cameras there and lighting. It's nonstop. There was a time when, especially when the Abdul \[El-Sayed\] campaign was happening at the same time as \[Francesca Hong\]’s campaign, we were traveling every single week for at least half the week.” “\[Piker\] hasn’t missed a flight since I have started working for him,” said Hannah. “He missed a lot of flights beforehand,” said David. Before Hannah officially became Piker’s assistant, his operation was relatively ragtag for someone who makes millions and competes with major news networks in terms of viewership. "There were a handful of people behind the scenes that made it work," said David. “Like, they would take initiative to be manager of the editing team, or there'd be an individual who \[Piker\] would give access to the YouTube channel, and they took the initiative and then would manage that channel. It wasn't until Hannah was hired that there became a hierarchy of communication and actual delegation of responsibility where people can be recognized for that work and compensated." > “He yelled at me a lot for not charging enough money.” "Not that he wasn't compensating people," David continued, "but there were a lot of people who really appreciated what \[Piker\] did and would go out of their way to support him without an expectation of compensation. Whenever \[Piker\] caught wind that they were doing something, he would immediately compensate them. But because of how hands-off he was on his product and his distribution of his content, a lot of people had the opportunity to just kind of do whatever they wanted for him." The issue of pay is one that has followed Piker since his ascension to the throne of Twitch politics himbo king. His own hands-off approach and claims from big names who revile him—like perennially aggrieved debate lord Steven “Destiny” Bonnell and [cheating scandal](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ethan-klein-remove-ownership-h3-podcast-wife-accused-affair-1235647518/?ref=aftermath.site) [hall-of-famer](https://www.reddit.com/r/Hasan%5FPiker/comments/1xdj3yi/ethan%5Fklein%5Fdressed%5Fhila%5Fand%5Fhis%5Fmistress%5Fup%5Fas/?ref=aftermath.site) Ethan “h3h3” Klein—have coalesced into a pervasive belief that Piker, despite his class-conscious messaging, cheaps out when it comes to paying those who work for him. In Hannah and David’s experience, at least, that is decidedly not the case. “The first time we started working for him, he was telling David, ‘No, you need to make sure you charge me for your labor.’” “He yelled at me a lot for not charging enough money,” said David. When Hannah became Piker’s assistant later on, she proposed a number she was certain he’d turn down. “He didn’t flinch,” said Hannah. “When he eventually did officially hire me, he moved us to LA. He helped us break our \[old\] lease. He helped us move into our apartment. He was like, ‘You want health insurance, right?’ I was like ‘Yes, I would love health insurance.’” ## **Occupational Hazards** The pay is almost certainly warranted, because working for Piker has turned Hannah and David’s life upside-down in more ways than one. “From a high level, we try to take as much off of \[Piker’s\] plate as humanly possible," said David, "because his schedule is absurd to the point where we all are in the back of our minds saying, 'This is not sustainable. We can't do this forever.' But we're gonna do this until the midterms happen, and then we're gonna take a recoup and get back at it." On a good day, helping clear Piker's plate means the aforementioned work-adjacent tasks. On a bad day, well… “We want to ensure that deterrents that people put forth towards him, if they can be tanked offline and never actually affect him and his product, we ensure that they are,” said David. “If that's a theoretical swatting, we ensure that they don't hit his studio. We make sure that \[the situation\] is explained \[to him\] before anything actually gets to him. Same with his dog, same with those types of threats—and also in regards to mail, PO box, and people who are contentious.” > "I had people randomly emailing ‘@blizzard’ emails saying that I was a terrorist and I was going to bring a bomb to Blizzard. Blizzard put me on a two-week suspension to investigate." “He still gets death threats,” said Hannah. “He talks about that very publicly.” “We can’t protect him from all of it,” David agreed. “People can still get to him in their own way, but we try to be a filter.” This sometimes comes at a steep personal cost. “One of our first introductions to this life was when I was still working at Blizzard,” said David, “and I came over and I fixed \[Piker’s\] PC. People caught wind of me doing that, and I had people randomly emailing ‘@blizzard’ emails saying that I was a terrorist and I was going to bring a bomb to Blizzard. Blizzard put me on a two-week suspension to investigate.” > I asked Kaya how she is feeling with everything going on right now > > Her response will surprise you [pic.twitter.com/5eW1fq5JhP](https://t.co/5eW1fq5JhP?ref=aftermath.site) > > — H&D Productions (@HnD\_Productions) [April 12, 2026](https://x.com/HnD%5FProductions/status/2043182942982373785?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=aftermath.site) More recently, following [the comically trumped-up nontroversy that was collargate](https://aftermath.site/hasan-piker-dog-collar-kaya-nontroversy-twitch/)—which still dogs Piker to this day—Fox News snapped creep shots of Hannah and Kaya for [an otherwise-unrelated article about a subpoena](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/feds-subpoena-hasan-piker-medea-benjamin-over-cuba-trips?ref=aftermath.site). “Fox News took pictures of me and Kaya going for our walk and then in and out the door, and I think about that now whenever I’m coming in and out of his house because he’s doxxed,” said Hannah. “I’m just like ‘Oh, is someone taking a picture of me right now?’” As caregivers to Kaya, the whole collargate moment was an especially bitter pill for Hannah and David to swallow. “In all reality, something I learned from that whole situation is, it doesn't matter what the truth is," said David. "The people who were pushing that narrative as hard as they did were gonna try to find literally anything.” Nothing physically dangerous came of either incident, which Hannah and David think is kind of the point. “Honestly, most of this is scare tactics,” said David. “We have yet to encounter a real threat. We have encountered a lot of things that are trying to scare us.” > “You never know what can happen. You know Charlie Kirk and everything that happened with him. … We joke about it; we say that America is a PvP zone, but no, it really truly is, and we are painfully aware of it." Which makes sense, given the number of people who clearly wish Piker could be cowed into complete silence. But so far, at least in Hannah and David’s estimation, Piker isn’t budging. “You never know what can happen,” said David. “You know Charlie Kirk and everything that happened with him. … We joke about it; we say that America is a PvP zone, but no, it really truly is, and we are painfully aware of it. Me and Hannah might take initiative to reduce \[stress\] as much as humanly possible, but from \[Piker’s\] perspective, sometimes I would say that he leans on the side of refusing to live his life afraid.” In the longer-term, the plan, ideally, is for Piker to move to a new home where the whole world doesn’t have his address. But that comes with challenges of its own: “There's a lot of moving pieces to this man's life, and he's very close to his family,” said David. “Also, the last time that he bought anything, he [leased a car](https://kotaku.com/twitch-hasan-piker-hasanabi-porsche-taycan-socialist-st-1848492801?ref=aftermath.site) and got canceled by Fox News.” Piker also continues to regularly venture beyond the walls of his LA compound for various public events, which necessitates an even greater degree of risk management. Case in point: Piker’s decision to [speak at UT Austin at the tail end of September](https://www.kut.org/education/2026-09-30/hasan-piker-ut-austin-texas-twitch-democrats-university?ref=aftermath.site). Democrats and Republicans alike called for the event to be canceled, and some online figures made thinly veiled threats. “It's one of the first questions we ask anyone—any school, any venue, event, rally—about the security,” said Hannah. “Basically, can he stream this, and what does the security look like? … There were a lot of eyes on \[UT Austin\] because online stalkers had made some death threats; they had implied ‘Oh, the best place to watch \[Piker’s\] speech is \[a vantage point\] where a real shooting took place in the past.'” David, who was on the ground at the event, noted that it had been organized by students, so he and others in Piker’s camp made sure to consult organizers on security vendors and help with costs beforehand. Local police also got involved. “The police can't decipher whether or not this is an internet group \[trying to get an event canceled\] or a serious threat, so they had to take it as seriously as humanly possible,” said David. “We created an entry and exit strategy, and we had the fucking blueprints to the building that we were in. We minimized how much vulnerability he would have to being outside the venue, where we would make sure that the car would drop us off directly next to the entrance to the underground tunnel, which we then would follow and then come up \[into the building’s main area\].” > “We created an entry and exit strategy, and we had the fucking blueprints to the building that we were in." Ultimately, despite a small crowd of protesters outside (and additional chaos born of the university’s decision to shunt the event into a much smaller space than originally anticipated), none of the possible worst-case scenarios manifested. But that doesn’t mean Hannah, David, and co are going to let their guard down next time. “Wherever we go and whatever we do, we get the layout of the building, and we consult with professional security on the best way to go about reducing risk,” said David. “It's become a huge logistical resource sink, and it feels wasteful 99.99% of the time, but it's that 0.1% of the time that we have to negate, you know?” ## **Living The Stream** Travel has brought with it other challenges as well, but more of an interesting—albeit time-consuming—variety than anything perilous. Earlier this year, for example, Piker went to Cuba and filmed what ended up being released as [a mini-documentary on his YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvqeXFnqXCo&ref=aftermath.site). That was not always the plan. “The Cuban government was very open about ‘Hey, you can't use Starlink. It's sanctioned here,’” said David. “So I called and emailed and reached out to every single company that has ever done a live production in Cuba—it was about 180 different companies—just to find out that it’s all been completely monopolized and outsourced to Starlink. We simply could not broadcast it.” So he made do with what he had at his disposal. “We decided instead of using Starlink in secret like everyone else is, we would be good and make it post-produced,” said David. “I sent the camera operator to Cuba with a full encoding setup, and we just basically switched it from encoding to local recording, and just did the same thing \[we otherwise would have\], and then gave it all to our editors afterwards to make a cohesive narrative. If I were to go back and do that all over again, the way that I approach documentary filming is very different to how I set someone up for a live production.” “So there was definitely a lot of learning lessons with that trip,” David continued. “That pivot was very much an emergency one and not one that created a product as polished as I might want, but still a very meaningful product nonetheless. And at the end of the day, it's all about just getting that message out as much as we can.” > "I think at one point we had over 100 people tailing us to that festival." Not every trip has been a fraught exercise in crisis management, though. In September, Piker and members of his team went to Belgium for an annual festival organized by the Workers’ Party of Belgium called ManiFiesta. The event really put the magnitude of Hannah and David’s current jobs into perspective. “\[Piker\] and I walked through the crowd to get to the different locations that he needed to get to, and he would get inundated by fans,” said David. “That was the first time I think that \[Piker\] and I realized that he will get completely swallowed up by a crowd if we go into a crowd. … I think at one point we had over 100 people tailing us to that festival. The other day, \[Twitch streamer\] Austin \[Show\] had to pull me aside, and he’s like ‘You know he’s reached a different level of fame now, right?’ It’s still just now hitting me.” “My sister is messaging me \[about Piker\],” said Hannah. “Yeah, my mom messaged me about \[Piker\] [on the Trumpapalooza](https://aftermath.site/rnc-hasan-piker-meat-pic-thirst-trap/),” said David. “My cousin is messaging me,” said Hannah, “like ‘Oh yeah, your boss.’ And I was like ‘Yep, that’s my boss.’” [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-22-145651-2.png)](https://aftermath.site/tag/inside-baseball-week-2026/) ****Welcome to Inside Baseball Week**, our annual excuse to explore topics so niche and weeds-y that no other video game website would touch them. [****We're also having a sale**](https://aftermath.site/aftermath-subscription-sale-discount/), so if you're yet to make the jump to helping support independent games media, [there's never been a better time](https://aftermath.site/aftermath-subscription-sale-discount/)! [READ MORE ](https://aftermath.site/tag/inside-baseball-week-2026/) ## Recommended [Amid Era Of Unprecedented Authoritarian Overreach, New Bipartisan House Resolution Condemns Hasan Piker For Some ReasonSome politicians continue to think that the greatest threat facing America today is a Twitch streamer![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/icon/favicon4-676b8094-7782-41a3-8eb3-882f22c23bea.png)AftermathNathan Grayson![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/thumbnail/hasan2-a6855e36-eb3c-4136-a48d-6143172763ed.png)](https://aftermath.site/hasan-piker-bipartisan-house-resolution-candace-owens/)