Management Development

Michael Foley

Software Development Technical Specialist

ab9b6p@r.postjobfree.com

Summary

I spent the last 18 years programming in C on AIX to process financial market data as quickly as possible.

Maintained and improved the throughput of systems and processes that have lived through a ten-fold increase in

financial market data traffic since the mid to late 90's.

Wrangling higher performance from older hardware by improving the software.

Taking processes that were initially written for uni-processor systems and rewriting to spread the load across

multiple processors/cores/systems.

Maintaining and improving the maintainability of my products and development environment as I have had to

deal with multiple generations of operating systems, compilers, hardware, source control, developers, managers,

office political environments and the unrestrained growth of both the financial markets and Moore's Law.

Quotes to live and work by:

"You can't do something unless you can prove you've done it but you can't let not being able to prove it stop you

from doing it." is NOT a contradiction.

"You haven't truly taken ownership of something until you make a change of which the previous owner

wouldn't approve" Addendum: "You have to tell the previous owner without being defensive."

Plan and in some cases get to implement the transition of products from 32 to 64 bit, and one interesting hybrid

case.

Daylight Savings Time change as mandated by U.S. Congress Energy Bill. As big an effort as Y2K.

Y2K transition mitigation, reviewed over a million lines of code as a team, found deficiencies, planned, made,

and tested the changes. Worked with our suppliers and dependents on end to end testing. Prepared for the worst

case including multiple developers having the ability to release changes from their homes.

Already concerned about the end of the 32bit UNIX Time Epoch on January 19, 2038.

Specialties

Improving the performance of C code programs to extend the operational lifetime of legacy systems.

Proposing, designing, and implementing necessary changes of which my predecessors would not have

approved.

Decoupling dependent systems.

Move the boundaries of your domain to engulf adjacent domains in friendly efforts to "be the rising tide that

lifts all boats"

Instrumenting code for performance tracking and error detection.

Y2K, DST, and similar all encompassing projects.

Experience

Development Technical Specialist at Thomson Reuters

March 1994 - December 2012 (18 years 10 months)

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Last man standing in the group that maintained the infrastructure systems for the wealth management product

Reuters Plus that was originally Quotron terminals long before my time. I grew to be the benevolent dictator

of the code base and the development environment, ruling change management with an iron fist in a velvet

glove.

4 recommendations available upon request

Programmer at Argos Computer systems

1988 - 1994 (6 years)

Developed Automated Voice Response systems and their supporting infrastructure on a variety of systems

and architectures.

Skills & Expertise

Designing

DST

Unix

Program Management

C

Market Data

Solaris

Release Management

AIX

Agile Methodologies

Data Center

Software Project Management

Debugging

Grokking

Knowing where my towel is

Shared Memory

Software Development Life Cycle

Software Design

Performance Improvement

Education

Ryerson University

Applied Computer Science, 1983 - 1987

Ecole Secondaire Penetanguishene Secondary School

Secondary School Honours Graduation Diploma (SSHGD), N/A, 1979 - 1983

Grade: 13

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Michael Foley

Software Development Technical Specialist

ab9b6p@r.postjobfree.com

4 people have recommended Michael

"During the two years that Mike reported to me, he had a strong work ethic and went the extra mile to get

assignments done correctly and on time."

Scott Campbell, Technical Director, Thomson Reuters, managed Michael at Thomson Reuters

"During the time when I managed a product team, Michael was a systems developer working on a component

of our product architecture. I always found him to be highly knowledgeable, helpful and motivated to deliver

on requirements. He went above and beyond to offer useful suggestions and find creative and timely solutions

to problems. He worked very well with other members of the team and collaborated effectively with

colleagues, especially when trouble shooting issues that involved the interaction of his component with

systems managed by different groups located in various global locations."

Barbara Miller, Director, Equities Product Management, Reuters, worked with Michael at Thomson

Reuters

"Michael is a very dedicated and resourceful person. Michael always enjoyed a challenge to enhance product

lines and his abilities. He looks outside the box for solutions and comes up with very innovative solutions."

Ray Giffen, Director Equities development, Reuters, managed Michael at Thomson Reuters

"I've managed Mike more than once and I think I'm actually responsible for hiring him into Reuters in the

first place. When Mike joined us in ARTS Development back in the 90s, he took on responsibility for the

most important element of our systems, the code that captured, parsed, and stored the streaming market data.

He made it rock solid while always looking for ways to make it faster and better. But the real value Mike

would bring to any team is his intellectual curiosity and his joy in working with others. His virtual team was

spread across the globe and I believe that anyone with whom he worked would agree that he was always

willing to do whatever it took to make the entire team successful."

Laura Trumbull, SVP/Technical Director, Equities Transactions Development, Reuters, managed

Michael at Thomson Reuters

Contact Michael on LinkedIn

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