Introducing Next Play, the LinkedIn Band!
From left to right in main pic: Michael Olivier (keyboards & vocals / director of eng), George Sleiman (drums / recruiter), Michael Scheinholtz (guitar / senior software engineer), Caitlin Crump (vocals / analytics scientist), Peter Frueh (guitar / web developer), and Tim Lynn (bass / senior web developer). Not pictured: Eric Heath (guitar & bass / director of legal).
My hometown, Dearborn, MI, is currently the center of a lot of media created controversy. Terry Jones is in town. Regardless of your opinions on him or what he represents I think the topic offers an interesting insight into how social media platforms are used.
Fox2Detroit had a live stream of a court case regarding a protest he wanted to hold in the city. At one point they had embedded both a Facebook live chat tool, and a Twitter widget that simply filtered on the #TerryJones hashtag. It was obvious to me when I first saw both that the Twitter stream was alarmingly racist and had degraded to the Twitter equivalent of a flame war. Facebook wasn’t a model for public discourse itself, but it was markably better. When I came back today, the Twitter stream had been removed from the site.
I think this provides some interesting insights into how both platforms are used and can be used effectively by media organizations. It reminds me of the TechCrunch facebook comments debate.
Moving to The Valley in pursuit of greatness.
I was pretty much born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan — the home of Ford World Headquarters. It’s hard to find a municipal building in the city that isn’t named after the humble founder. It was probably a compromise that the city even retained a non-Ford name.
Since graduation I’ve been a fourth-generation Ford employee - my great grandfather earned his scars during the union busting days; my grandfather retired off the assembly line; and my dad and uncles all either work directly for the company or very close within its orbit. It’s easy to say FoMoCo has a rich heritage in my family.
For the last year, I’ve been lucky enough to work on the software engineering side of the AppLink product doing mobile application development with a fantastic team. While working in an IT department that serves at the pleasure of a car manufacturer, I somehow landed within an incredibly innovative and unique microcosm of the company. Taking a job at Ford was the best decision I could have made with where I was when I graduated. It’s been a year and I have grown tremendously, finished half of my masters degree, and enjoyed living in a beautiful apartment in Downtown Detroit overlooking the Detroit River and Canada.
But last Friday was my last day. A little over a year after my first day on the job I say goodbye to Ford and hello to LinkedIn! If my exclamation point didn’t say it for me: I’m really excited.
When I first graduated from undergrad I had a few big goals, but one big one: to get out of Michigan. Somehow I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one from my graduating class with that objective. It’s not that Michigan is a bad place or Ford a bad employer (Quite the contrary Ford is a great employer). There was another goal motivating my wanderlust.
The other goal I had when I graduated — and still have — is to become a great software engineering generalist. Great takes more than a couple diplomas and the opportunity to write cool software. Great takes always being in a little over your head. Great takes being immersed in a highly technical culture. It takes being around really smart people, preferably smarter than you. It takes being in a culture that celebrates failure, exploration, intellectual honesty, and innovation. It takes more than a good job, but being in a region that is saturated with the best and the brightest in the tech industry. In a sentence: great takes playing in the Big Leagues.
Silicon Valley is the Big Leagues and LinkedIn is right in the middle of it. The contrast with the Detroit area is huge. In Detroit, when people find out I’m a software engineer, I’ve come to accept that the average person will respond with something akin to: “oh, so you can help me install Microsoft Word.” I’ve even had a manager before, while working in a position where I was essentially repeatedly teaching them how to use Outlook, respond with “Oh, you mean this isn’t what you’re studying to do?” when I informed them that I needed to put in notice so I could start an internship in my field. As someone recently said to me while describing their move for a job at Google in the early days, “The dinner parties in The Valley will be filled with very smart people — maybe even names you know — who are all talking about incredibly exciting and innovative things.” They are actually trying to draw a contrast to dinner parties in NYC (Hint: there’s a more eclectic crowd in NYC). But I kept thinking of home. Not to idealize The Valley, but it’s certainly got something to offer that Detroit does not.
In my pursuit of my “Dream Job,” I interviewed at a number of cool and interesting places. In fact, I originally wasn’t entirely sure that the Bay Area was where I would end up. Starting with a post I discovered through Hacker News and through the generosity of the author, Matt Mireles, I met some pretty compelling startups in NYC. Due to some former college recruiting, I even had some opportunities working for some secretive portions of the government in DC. Ultimately, however, the government sounded stifling and NYC startups sound a little ahead of where I was in my career. Silicon Valley is the place I need to be to hone my skills and maybe even make a name for myself.
Among the places I interviewed with in The Valley, LinkedIn stood out to me. I did two phone screens, the first of which I was sure I botched. When I finally did an in person interview it was a full day, 9-hour set of highly technical interviews. It was challenging and I loved it. The last person I met with was at the director level of the team I was meeting with. He grabbed a dry erase marker and mocked up some of the challenges a company that works at Internet scale faces, and the types of problems I’d get to play with. He ended by asking me if it sounded like something I wanted to learn. I was sold.
So, why the big move? Why drive my dad crazy by moving across the country? Because I believe LinkedIn and Silicon Valley are key enablers in that lifelong pursuit to become great at what I’m passionate about. I’m excited to be joining their team next month and look forward to the challenges ahead.
TLDR: I left Ford Motor Company for a job a LinkedIn and am moving to San Francisco. I think the Bay Area is cool, and will be great for my professional growth. I’m excited about this.
Just after graduation and before starting at Ford I did a tour of The Valley taking pictures in front of the places I thought would be Dream Jobs. Here’s one from that series of pictures. The sign reads: “CIS Grad, PLEASE HIRE”
Other pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/romancingthedream/4279873481/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/romancingthedream/4279874611/
If you’re a HackerNews reader, please consider up-voting this post:
Sample Work on GitHub
Having recently changed my landing page I decided to organize myself around a few select websites and services, namely: GitHub, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter. For the most part all of those are completely up-to-date and ready to fully represent me. GitHub, however, is a new tool to me and doesn’t have a lot of material up. Until today it was completely sparse with the exception of a partial tool I built for a homework assignment last semester.
Throughout the last year or so I’ve collected a number of little puzzles and code samples that I’ve completed. These include old interview puzzles, programming competition practice problems, self tutorials, etc, that don’t serve much practical day-to-day use. I’ve decided to sanitize them by removing any references to companies or people that they may have been originally submitted to, and upload everything thats a decent code sample and doesn’t fall under an NDA.
I uploaded three old samples today, and will continue to upload projects moving forward. Feel free to check them out!
Starting to read up on my project ideas for my distributed computing class. Good crash course into “What is Hadoop” and why big data cares about it.
All New lukejduncan.com
The transition is complete. Check out www.lukejduncan.com to see the new site. The landing page itself uses flavors.me, the blog portion is obviously tumblr, my twitter and my github feeds are included as well. Photo credits for the current background go to CAVE CANEM for their picture titled CAN YOU DIGG IT! (Found Art) Ding Dong The King is Dead!
Transitioning My Web Presence
I’m slowly transitioning from the original MovableType based www.lukejduncan.com to using a combination of tools for my web presence. In undergrad maintaining a server, CMS, blog, and doing everything on my own made sense. At the time I started I had no idea how to do it! The only way to learn was to jump in and get your hands dirty. Now all my time is spent learning other things and I really just want a place to post stuff and point to my LinkedIn and Twitter without having to manage the entire software stack that makes that possible.
In the meantime I’ll be migrating content that seems appropriate and backing up the old site.
Graduate School - Statement of Purpose
As defined by UMD: Software development, much like carpentry, is a creative trade. Similar to the carpenter, software developers have tools unique to their trade. It is familiarity with these tools that define the master craftsman.
The Academic Statement of Purpose should be a concise, well-written statement about your academic and research background, your career goals, and how this graduate program will help you meet your career and educational objectives.
My Statement:
Currently, I work on a research and development team at Ford Motor Company. My responsibilities include coming up with and implementing proof-of-concept software for in-vehicle solutions. In this position I am able to create and explore solutions to new problems. This position has helped solidify my goal to be a leader of innovation as either a research and development team leader or software entrepreneur. It has also helped me understand the exciting power of my trade.
I began my studies at Henry Ford Community College, where I received my associates degree in liberal arts. Soon afterwards I enrolled in the Computer and Information Science program at the University of Michigan, Dearborn where I graduated with a 3.5 GPA. While there, I studied the fundamentals of my field by taking classes such as Operating Systems, Database Management Systems, Computer Architecture, and Artificial Intelligence. Outside of the classroom I was an avid participant in many algorithmic competitions including events sponsored by the Consortium For Computing Science in Colleges and the Association of Computer Manufacturers’ International Collegiate Programming Competitions. I have competed on teams that have ranked in the top 10 in multiple competitions including a second place victory.
The programming competitions were a passion of mine while I was attending the university. As I continued to seek them out, my abilities as a programmer grew tremendously as well as my general understanding of the science. What I found in these competitions I am now seeking at the University of Michigan - depth of understanding and expertise. What is unique about the Rackham graduate school, is the availability of quality education with the option of online study. While I currently work in the Dearborn area, I fully realize that my goals may take me elsewhere during the course of my study, or may even limit the number of regular hours available for study. Rackham offers me the opportunity to hone my craft in an efficient manner that can account for any changes that my future may bring.
With a concentration in System Applications and Computer Graphics, I will be able to become an expert in computer science fundamentals and study an exciting growing area of the field. It also allows me professional opportunities in traditional, as well as the maturing computer gaming and digital imaging, industries. By choosing this academic degree, I can also explore doctoral studies in the future.
The Rackham Graduate school gives me a more robust and fully featured toolset for creation, empowering me to become great at what I do - to become a master craftsman. It allows me to gain and grow expertise as I begin an exercise in lifelong learning.
