brunops

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I had enough of not doing what really inspires me, coming back home without the will to study more about my work. To work with exactly what you like and keep studying it more without urgent necessity, only because it’s fun. I had that before, and I want it again.

Not saying that this is somebody else’s fault, I have to be fair, it was my choice. I’ve been in the comfort zone for two years, and that is too long, it’s unacceptable.

I don’t have anything to complain about the company I’ve worked on. It is awesome. I have worked with many great people, made very good friends and would recommend it to anyone who wants to work with technology and wants a great work environment. It’s just that I need different experiences now. I want more, and I want it faster.

I was working with Drupal for a bit more than three years. And that was it, I was only working, with no projects besides my own particular random studies. No focus. No clear objectives. I was in my comfort zone and it took me some time to notice it.

After reading about investments, entrepreneurship, motivational stuff, methods to get things done and many other things, I realized that I needed a change in order to be able to look back with no regrets. It’s impossible to accomplish everything you want at once, and the hardest thing is to avoid that this urge to do everything, become the very reason of not doing anything.

So in the beginning of 2013 I started to write down everything I wanted to do in a piece of paper and to plan what I was able to accomplish. That’s essentially how to get things done. The chosen topics were:

1. Work with a different technology
2. Get a Masters degree
3. Risk everything for something better while still able

The common thing between them, which is the most important, is that all of them involves learning. I didn’t think that everything would be successful, so here’s what I did. I applied to a post-graduation subject as a special student (so I could still work), told my manager that I wanted to work with something different (should’ve done it before), and applied to an intensive Ruby on Rails course in San Francisco.

Then everything went better than expected. I was accepted on the Neural Networks subject, got the chance to change technologies at my company (many thanks to my manager, who helped me so much) and started to work with Java, and I was accepted at DevBootcamp.

Long story short. I couldn’t handle it all at once, tried really hard, but Neural Networks while still working turned out not being the brightest idea. Got passionate about the subject and intend to study it on the future, but for now it served as learning that I can’t do everything at the same time. Kinda frustrating, nevertheless, a good experience.

Work with back-end Java is really different from Drupal and I liked all the learning that came with this experience. And it’s a great plus to be able to stay in the project for three full sprints that finishes a deliverable version of the application. So I can leave with an accomplishment feeling.

Last, but not least. the time has come for the third point. I found DevBootcamp while studying RoR (one of my particular random studies), and it just seems the right thing to do. People that are passionate about their craft, about software quality and efficiency. It seems to reach so many important levels, and is just beside Silicon Valley, the world center of technology, I want to be there.

It was the hardest decision I’ve ever taken, I’m leaving my three year and a half job this week, postponing my post-graduation, and still, I’m really excited about it. I’m investing on myself. Why did it take so long to take decisions? Well, it is what it is. It’s hard to be great, it’s easy to accommodate.

I’m pushing forward to have 100% focus on the DevBootcamp course. I’m going to be part of the cohort of August 26th. I’m leaving my job because of that, don’t know what is going to happen. The only thing I know is that I’ll do my best, and it will be fun.

Really hard decisions, but I’m decided now and I won’t look back. Wish me luck.

Read the first part.

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Enough! That is enough! I got tired of doing the same things over again, and have finally gathered all the courage to make something about it. And this time it is for real. One of the hardest decisions ever.

In 2010, I started working as an intern at CI&T, a development offshore company in Brazil. I do love it and I am very grateful of everything I had there. It was my first job. It is the only job I’ve ever had.

Back then, everything was new. I was still studying and never intended to work at a company. I wanted to be a researcher and a professor. I didn’t have anything figured out yet (still don’t). So you might ask “why did you start working?”.

It was a big coincidence. I had friends that already worked there and heard great things about it, and as a student I fantasized about having my own money as well. One day, I was at the university and half an hour before, discovered that there would be a talk from CI&T. So I went there thinking “It’s only a talk, why not?”.

I can’t remember exactly what they said, but they were talking about the company, about software development and agile methodologies. Right after they’ve finished, they start to recruit, some tests were applied (english, logic and programming) to anyone that was interested about joining them. I guess it was a good presentation ‘cause I thought “It’s only a test, why not?”.

Maybe a month later, I got an email saying I was approved to the second phase, and should go there to some group dynamics. So I went there, there was around 40 people, and that was happening throughout the week, so lots of people. Everything went fine and got back home. Some months later I got the second email telling the date that I was going to start. That made me really happy.

First week was Drupal training with Scrum methodology, both of which I had never heard of. It was awesome, really fun, although a week is far from sufficient to learn Drupal, the agile methodology stuck in.

I hated web development back then. I wanted to be a C programmer. It was a preconception. As soon as I started working with web development I got passionate about it.

Second week I was an official developer on a scrum team. Awesome. I never had real responsibilities before that. Learned about schedule, being committed to a project, work as a group, to help team-members  to be helped by them and how details matter a lot. Great things. I still can remember how happy I was the first time that the guy who was supposed to help me asked the first technical question to me. Learned many things, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Drupal, MySQL.

A year later, I graduated and got hired. My academic career was postponed. No regrets, I was learning a lot and really enjoying everything.

Two years passed by, things started to get repetitive, but I was still motivated doing my best. Had the chance to work at the Argentina base with different people in a different culture. Worked really hard for around 40 days, it was a great experience.

Back to Brazil after a month and a half in Argentina, some months passed and I became a technical leader. Had the chance to give lessons of JavaScript to a class of 20+ people. Really awesome.

Often times I wouldn’t stay with the same team more than a month, teams were created and disassembled for projects. It’s kinda demotivating to “invest” on the people of your team and suddenly be working with a bunch of new people again. The good side was meeting great new people. But there’s no such thing as velocity this way.

Projects started to get repetitive. Things as “challenges”, that usually motivated me to work as hard as I could, started to seem as bad planning that the team would have to work after hours to deliver. I got bored and was becoming a complainer.

All this time, I never stopped studying, but although it should be the opposite, It’s hard to have the same discipline when working for yourself.

Three years later I was accommodated and unhappy. I started to read “Getting things done” and to put stuff in practice. Started to read motivational blogs and things on entrepreneurship. I started to motivate myself and the little things that I put into practice (still far from ideal) showed me how much I’m able to accomplish. This is the biggest motivator. To know your capabilities and limits. I was urging for a change.

Read the second part.

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I was having fun with the cowsay (yeah, for me this is fun) combined with fortune to give a nice touch to my bash. Suddenly I discovered that there are many available cows :O (“cowsay -l”) , so I started seeing them all. It was kind of repetitive job to print each one of then (20 in total), so I combined cowsay with awk to write a command to print ‘em all, yay.

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When working with Drupal the need to test some different configurations, testing or developing new modules occurs often times, and this is no argument to break the site for the rest of the team. So the need of create a sandbox appears.

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