I would describe myself as a jack of many trades, master of some1. Way back, when I was still a teenager, the being good at one thing mantra did not resonate with me2 so, instead, I took a more holistic approach to life, work, and social relationships.
Since then, I have spent all my life learning from many different practices, disciplines and roles in sports, at work, through hobbies and from people. This has turned me into a very versatile person, that easily adapts to change, with a broader perspective and a more open mind. I share John Carmack’s holistic understanding of technology.
The most important thing is to have a broad understanding of technology. You can be a specialist in one area, but you need to have a good understanding of the whole system. If you don’t, you will never be able to make the right decisions.
As a manager, I strongly believe in the power of transformation through good leadership. Across my career, I have successfully worked with, and within, non-technical departments such as product, marketing or support, and also operations, administration and finances. From my experience, these are the pillars I try to work with:
- Plan ahead and lead by example.
- Try to encourage independent problem solving and decision making within a well defined framework.
- Empower team members to take ownership while avoiding micromanaging.
- Provide constructive feedback using clear, honest and transparent communication.
As a systems engineer, I am, mostly, a back-end guy: systems, platform, devops, site reliability, REST APIs, but I also have great interest in good software development practices and software architectures. I am a huge fan of TDD, VSA and DDD, and agile methodologies.
TL;DR, if you are interested in using open source technologies on premise or on the cloud, this is what I do.
If you want, you can have a look at my curriculum vitae a Kickresume.