You may have seen that I took an impromptu family-ish weekend vacation to Chicago earlier this month. While there I had the opportunity to celebrate Savannah's birthday with her and her family and check out the city as we tried to figure out if we could imagine living there.
Oh and I had a little meeting with the fine folks at GrubHub.
My Time with Cheezburger
If you've been following me, you've seen my professional path shift from web development and computer science to machine learning and ultimately now to data, web analytics, and business intelligence. I was lucky enough to work for a company like Cheezburger that supported the kind of organic growth I needed to find what role I feel the happiest in. Being a software engineer, while I could do it well enough and enjoyed it, it just felt too hollow to me when I wasn't immersed in data about how my features were doing. If you've worked with me for any length of time then you know I'm not working on anything unless I truly get "the vision" and know what metrics we're trying to move. If my team didn't have that information... well we would by the time I finally acquiesced. To me, the software was something to be minimized a means to an end to get to see results.
When I was asked if I'd enjoy working on Cheezburger's (Notorious) Business Intelligence Team I was ecstatic. I learned an immense amount from the mentoring from both Delen Heisman and Loren Bast (who's now the Director of B.I. at Cheezburger). Delen taught me more about statistics and experiment design than I thought I'd ever care to know and Loren taught me the importance of weaving a coherent story with data. I eventually wound up being labeled "Sr. Developer/Analyst" and was more proud of having analyst in my title than I thought I would have been.
How does that lead to GrubHub?
When I left GrubHub's offices I wouldn't let Savannah's family even ask me questions about the job and I was afraid to admit to Savannah how much I wanted it. I was too excited. No place is perfect but damn. Let's just say I walked away very impressed and very happy to have had the day to talk with many of them.
So I had no choice.
Starting February 4th, I am joining GrubHub as their first Product Optimization Specialist. That's basically a fancy way of saying I'll be combing over the data from their products and services and looking for ways to improve them in a quantitative fashion. Everything from standard funnel analysis to split testing. I'll be helping to come up with the leanest experiments I can in order to effect the maximum improvement. I'll have a direct impact on the company's success and revenue in a real and quantifiable way and I'm immensely excited about that. In case you can't tell, I'm also very proud to have been offered the opportunity.
This means I'll no longer be a remote employee and will be relocating to Chicago. Savannah will be closer to her family (who live in Grand Rapids, MI) and her sister (who lives in Chicago). I'll be closer to Corey Haines #swoon and apparently there's a Fry's Electronics just outside the city limits!!
Adventure is ahead! Stay tuned.