Major: Mechanical Engineering
Class: 1995
JJ Schultz '95 has worked as a software engineer at Pandora Internet radio since 2006, despite the fact that he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. "I only took one computer programming class at MSOE; it was Fortran, and I got a D. The only D I ever got in my whole life," he joked. Pandora is a free (and legal) way to listen to music online. Select a song you want to listen to, and Pandora will scan its vast catalog of music and select other musically-similar songs to follow. Users can create up to 100 unique "stations," and refine the stations to improve accuracy.
After graduation, Schultz moved to Detroit where he designed tools and gears for Masco Corp. The word was repetitive, and he realized he could automate much of it using a programming language called AutoLISP. “I got into programming AutoLISP and became fairly decent at it,” he said. Around that point he took a vacation to San Francisco, and never looked back. “I packed up my car, threw out everything that didn’t fit and drove out there.”
Schultz relied on his AutoLISP skills to find a job in San Francisco, working his way up from answering help desk phone calls to building custom in-house apps for a number of companies in the Bay Area. Eventually, he found a job as a java applications engineer for a company called Consilient, before joining Pandora in 2006. “MSOE taught me how to be an engineer, how to be disciplined in my work, how to be detail oriented and thorough and how to get my pocket protector to sit just right,” explained Schultz.
In his free time, Schultz plays in a band and enjoys writing and recording music. “Pandora allows me to tie together my passion for engineering with my passion for writing music. Plus, Pandora is quite popular so there are some very interesting engineering challenges to work on. There’s a thrill to knowing that when you push out some code, millions of people will use it right then (and will immediately find problems if there are any!).”
For Schultz, it’s important to be able to learn new things and adapt to change quickly. “Technologies come and go, so the one skill that I’ve always tried to keep sharp is my ability to learn new things quickly. I think that’s probably been my most valuable skill throughout my entire career.”
Despite his success, Schultz still fondly remembers his time as an undergraduate. “My favorite times at MSOE were hanging at Big Boy with my friends. Iced tea and cheese sticks always made for good times. I loved my classes with Professors Kuhfittig and Dyskow and I still think of them often.”