Cem Vardar

I have worked in technology companies in the US for a long time developing systems for making better decisions. I wrote a lot of good and bad code and led teams well or badly. I learned a lot in this process. I try hard to keep learning. This my hub for sharing what I learn.

I am interested in complex systems of all kinds. People systems, software systems, optimization systems, logistic systems, production systems. I am fascinated by emergence of higher level behaviour that cannot be deduced from the parts. I am amazed by similar type of strange quirks emerging in unrelated systems.

My educational background is in industrial engineering and operations research. I have BS and MS degrees from Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) and a PhD degree from Arizona State University (ASU) all in industrial engineering. In my career I have mainly focused on building software systems for decision support based on optimization, simulation and heuristic algorithms. I have worked at Intel (2002-2010), Revionics (2010-2015) and Carvana (2015-2021) in engineering, product and engineering management roles.

After working for US tech companies for 20 years, I quit my awesome and high paying engineering job at Carvana in February 2021 and moved to Izmir, Turkey.

Like Travis McGee I am taking an installment out of my retirement and become a parttime Flaneur like Nassim Taleb (with much much less money and a kinder twitter game) and work on exactly what I want and as much as I want to in a mediterranean pace for a few years.
My plan there is to start a company doing some consulting for US tech companies in partnership with Turkish startups and work on a few web and data science product ideas of my own.



Wrote first lines of code for the filtering and optimization of the vehicle acquistion systems of Carvana. Later built and led the team of data scientists and engineers who owned these systems. (screenshot taken from public Carvana investor info deck - Feb 2021)



Wrote first lines of code for automating and optimizing operational decisions for coast to coast logistics network of Carvana. Later built and led the team of data scientists and engineers who owned these systems. (screenshot taken from public Carvana investor info deck - Feb 2021)


Wrote first lines of code for automating and optimizing operational decisions for last mile logistics operations of Carvana. Later built and led the team of data scientists and engineers who owned these systems. (screenshot taken from public Carvana investor info deck - Feb 2021)

Blogs
Amerika’da çalışmak
Uzaktan Çalışmanın Kitabını Yazanlar 2013-08-27
Amerika’da Çalışmak — Endüstri Mühendisliği 2020-08-20
Veri Bilimciliğinin Çeşitleri 2020-08-20
Yeteneklerini Evinden İhraç Et 2020-08-20
Amerika'da Çalışmak Veri Bilimciliği - Genelci (Generalist) 2020-08-21
Veri Bilimi Mühendisi (Yazılımcısı/Geliştiricisi) 2020-09-02
5 Ideas From
5 Ideas from "Deep Work" 2020-08-10
5 Ideas from "Lean Startup" 2020-08-10
5 Ideas from "On Writing Well" 2020-08-29
Colab Notebooks
Colab Baby Steps 2020-08-20
Understanding Monty Hall Problem with Simulations 2020-09-07
Understanding Ergodicity with Simulations 2020-09-07
Notion Notları
"Herşey birbirine bağlı" okuma listesi 9/7/2020
Suskunlar - İhsan Oktay Anar 9/7/2020
Nuri Bilge Ceylan Videolari 10/4/2020
Favorite Leadership Books 10/4/2020
Yüz: 1981 - Mehmet Eroğlu 8/1/2021