Long after the lights have dimmed and the hustle and bustle of a regular ATÖLYE workday have died down, it’s not unusual to find Jak Akdemir diligently working at his station well into the late hours. While it largely has to do with the time zones of his remote engineering work for Tumblr (headquartered in New York), Jak would also be quick to tell you that he’s perfectly content with his current set-up. Boasting an impressive track record that also included working for GittiGidiyor, Jak’s skillset in the computer sciences is versatile and proficient, also incorporating machine learning, information retrieval, data migration, and more. Having spent over five years in his engineering role for Tumblr, Jak is involved in core aspects of the site’s ongoing development and continues to grow within a role he seems to truly enjoy.
Jak took some time to share his experiences on what it’s like behind the scenes at one of the world’s biggest microblogging and social networking communities, the pros and cons of remote work, as well as the complexities of back end infrastructure and within the field of engineering.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Sure! I’m Jak Akdemir, I was born in Istanbul. I attended Bilgi University’s Computer Science department in 2002 where I got my Computer Science degree. Then I started working at GittiGidiyor, known as the eBay of Turkey. I worked there for more than three years. I had a chance to work with public APIs, one of their first APIs. It was my first job and I was still trying to graduate, so I was a junior java engineer. When I was working, I was involved with search projects like their search engine. I was working on the maintenance of infrastructure in regards to searching. After that, the API was a big project and then I also worked on the mobile web project of GittiGidiyor, but that wasn’t really my favorite. After I got involved in the search, I liked it. You can effectively use your knowledge that comes from a Computer Science degree.
Then I went to New York in June of 2010. I got my Master’s in Computer Science from SUNY Albany. I finished my thesis and graduated in a year. Then I joined Tumblr as a first search engineer. They’re based in Flatiron, Manhattan. This was before the deals involving Yahoo and Verizon. When I started there, they built a team… now it’s around 20 people. I was engineering manager of the search back end team. After working that position for more than a year, I decided to be remote. So currently I’ve been working as a remote engineer for over a year now. As a remote engineer, I go to New York once in a quarter to sync up with the team, follow up with projects, check in on ongoing things, meet new members of the team, etc.
Do you also work on other projects or does Tumblr take up most of your time?
I’m only working for Tumblr for now. It’s a little bit hard to get other projects on the way when you’re working intensely on core projects for Tumblr. I’m currently working on some performance improvements on search services. When I was in New York I was working on building the search infrastructure — indexers, search services, offline data processing pipeline, and the Explore page. I predominantly focused on that while there. When I’m working remotely, I have two major projects. The first is data center migration from our data center to Yahoo’s. It’s a big one. The other is performance improvements. If you improve performance you definitely improve engagement. There’s a correlation there. Even if you’re not enhancing the content, just the performance improvements effects engagement.
When you talk about content, is that mostly user generated?
Tumblr is a microblogging platform. It’s mostly visual content. We call blogs Tumblelogs. One user may own multiple Tumblelogs. Each Tumblelog may have multiple posts. Each post may be an original post or reblogging someone else’s original content. It’s mostly visual based. Tumblr is known as the home of gifs. There’s tons of gifs going around. If you see memes, there’s a good chance it came from Tumblr. There’s something like 350 million blogs and 150 billion posts on Tumblr.
So what I do, is when you search for something like “cats”, I’m trying to find out what are the best cat posts for you and ranking those in your search results list. We also try to introduce you to the best-fitting blogs as well.
Who are you collaborating with on this sort of project?
There’s a search team there and I mostly collaborate with the search back end team. We brainstorm and come up with projects. We have a very elegant way to actually choose projects. First everyone brainstorms, around 100 people are involved. Tumblr is around 400 people. Then we filter highlights, maybe 30 or 40 ideas. Within the search team we determine if they’re already implemented, if they’re low hanging fruit, what the contribution of those would be and how difficult to implement they are. We come up with a subset of those ideas and then the board and senior directors join and they pick out a list based on the company’s direction — which can be based on revenue, increasing user engagement, increasing user base, encourage collaboration, aiming to improve gifs, and so forth. Based on that, the management chooses and then I collaborate with the back end search team to implement.
What is your day to day like?
Currently as a remote engineer, the first thing I do is syncing up via e-mail. When it’s 6:00 PM in New York, it’s 1:00 AM here. So I check on last minute emails that have come in. I see if there’s anything I am missing. I do some code review. If there are any data points or investigations needed, I take a look at those. Then I jump into my project. Usually I’m alone when working here, I’m not collaborating with anyone. I keep working on my project until around 6:00 or 7:00 PM to sync up with the New York team. I don’t have too many meetings, around three or four a week at most. They’re not too long, they’re just quick sync up meetings. They focus on the direction of the projects and looking at numbers. This is my typical day to day workflow.
How has ATÖLYE fit into this?
There are multiple reasons. First of all, I love Istanbul and being here. I get to spend time with my friends and university professors and more time with my family. So it’s an opportunity that I wanted to take.
So, interestingly, while here, I was listening to a podcast called Adaptasyon. It’s a Turkish podcast with a really large audience. There are two authors behind it, Mahir and Onur. I used to know Onur and we had a podcast together. Engin and Kerem [ATÖLYE co-founders] also did a podcast with them before I had decided to work remotely. Onur recommended that I check out ATÖLYE. It’s one of the only places you can really hang out and do work. There’s a cool crowd, the Makerlab has its 3D printers, there are visionary people and the environment is friendly. You can feel like you’re working in an office. It’s my third round here. Whenever I come here I know there’s a desk I can come and work at. It’s open 24 hours and close enough to Taksim for me to commute.
Could you tell us a bit about some of the challenges you’ve faced in your work, especially with a project like Tumblr?
Being a remote engineer has some challenges in that you can’t sync up face to face with your team day to day. It can be challenging. You need to push yourself to stay on track. You can sometimes lose your direction on a project. For example you need to motivate yourself and focus on specific parts. You need to mentor yourself actually. In New York it was easier, there are skilled people around and you can directly ask questions. Here, you need to dig into yourself and this is one of the main challenges of working remotely.
Any projects you plan on pursuing? What does the future hold?
Everybody has their startup ideas that they want to work on. Currently though, I’m really happy with the projects I’m on. I still feel like I’m improving myself. I want to keep working with Tumblr, even though I’ve been there for five years. It’s actually quite a long time for an engineer. Sure, I could maybe work on other projects one day. For now, I’m happy with the team and don’t have any side projects I plan to work on.
As we’re an advice publication for foreigners living in Istanbul, are there any lesser known places you’d like to share with our readers?
I discovered a bar recently. It’s called Ağaç Ev just off of Istiklal. They have live bands playing really quality music around four of five days a week. They have a foosball table and a chess board, one of the very few places with one. It’s a great place to go with friends and hang out. Drinks are also not that expensive.
ATÖLYE Spotlight is a new series on the inspiring community members of Istanbul’s most creative space.
Featured image courtesy of Ayşe Esin Durmaz.
