Lee Littlejohn

Application Developer, Food Genius

Chicago

I’m an Oklahoma boy at heart. I got my BA in Physics and Cello Performance from Macalester College, equidistant from the Twin Cities’ respective downtowns, and I’ve been a cook and restaurant chef for the better part of a decade now.

Running a kitchen and data or engineering work are surprisingly similar: they both require constant adjustment based on feedback, they both require thinking creatively and algorithmically, and they both require constantly breaking problems up into smaller pieces in order to solve them in different ways.

As a chef and manager, I always tried to improve the lives of my coworkers and employees by improving working conditions, and I always tried to tell educational stories with food, highlighting humble origins, unique sourcing, and turning waste into something of value (using all parts of the buffalo). However, I’ve made a transition to tech in order to more effectively make an impact and support my family.

If I could subsist on chocolate ice cream and wine alone, I would. At work my focus is natural language processing, modern database design, and machine learning.