Born in Maryland, but having grown up in San Francisco, Lucas started programming at age 16—his first language was Pascal. A self-taught Engineer, he worked at American Express (travel and technology) for seven years before leaving to join an Intel spinoff company, DevelopOnline, in 2000.Lucas started working at Facebook in August 2005 as one of the organization’s first Engineers, focusing on PHP and scalability. He left in 2009, and is now a technology angel investor in companies such as GetAround, Postmates, Crittercism and Earbits. He has been a featured speaker at various PHP tech conferences, including DC PHP Conference, PHP|works, PHPTek, OSCON and Geeksessions. He co-founded Signal Media Project in 2013.Aside from technology and accuracy in popular media, Lucas is obsessive about skiing, home automation and watching documentaries.