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:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2433023