April 1st, 2016 was a big day for the advancement of Richard Hendricks' career.
Together, HBO and X, the moonshot division of Alphabet Inc., crafted a Silicon Valley-themed April Fools' stunt to help continue Alphabet's annual tradition.
Taking advantage of the Alphabet/Google Family's favorite holiday, HBO and X set out to create a humorous April Fools joke in the form of an in-story video announcing that X is hiring Thomas Middleditch's character Richard Hendricks from Silicon Valley. X's experimental moonshot division…to lead their new real-world compression efforts.
On the morning of April 1st, X announced that Richard Hendricks had been hired as X's Chief Compression Officer to make the company's biggest moonshots smaller. The announcement was published on X's company website and Google social profiles, along with a video featuring Astro Teller and Richard Hendricks.
Fans were delighted by the announcement and video, which were picked up by industry blogs such as the Hollywood Reporter and lifestyle blogs such as Hypebeast.
