My Career - Level 3

2008 May 21, 11:15 h

That’s for all my friends who don’t speak portuguese. I’ve met outstanding people from all over the world who’ve been very supportive and believed in my goals since the very beginning. People like Satish Talim, Geoffrey Grosenbach and many many other visionaries. Thanks to you all and I hope you keep appreciating the efforts we’re doing here in Brazil.

So, this week I’ve had the worst/best weekend I can remember of. First of all the good stuff: last week the #1 Brazilian hosting company, Locaweb decided to support and invest on Ruby on Rails and its first move was to launch a trial period of a mod_rails based shared hosting plan. But they won’t stop there.

Last week I started conversations directly with Locaweb’s CEO and founder Gilberto Mautner and Product Director Joaquim Torres (a.k.a. Joca). Which means that Ruby on Rails is coming from both ends: the top and the bottom of the chain, recognizing the value of both the technology and the growing community in Brazil (congrats to us all!)

One of the strategy pieces is a new hiring not only to help them revert their bad reputation around the brazilian Rails community but also make them the best Rails services provider on the market. That’s a bold goal and a huge challenge. That’s where I am in, starting on mid-June, I’ll become Rails Product Manager at Locaweb with the sole mission to outdo those expectations. Not only by creating outstanding products but also helping to speed up the growth of the Brazilian Rails community.

That’s the ‘worst’ part I mentioned: on Monday I reported my leaving from Surgeworks LLC. Those who’ve been watching my career know that I spent the last year being part of the Surgeworks family with enormous proud. Since then the trust bonds grew as well as great friendships solidified, specially with our ‘commander-in-chief’ Carl Youngblood.

As a result of this excellent partnership our Brazilian crew have grown, starting with Marcus Derencius, Carlos Brando, Rodrigo Kochenburger, and Renato Carvalho. We’ve been through several projects. By now you understand why I said ‘worst’: how do I leave behind everything we’ve accomplished in the last year?

It is easy to leave a crap company, but it is impossibly difficult to leave great partnerships such as with Surgeworks. But this time I was in a crossroad, with very different paths to follow. It never was because of the easy money or any other benefit – and actually, money-wise I will still receive the same amount anyway. It’s the promise that comes with this new opportunity. Locaweb has the resources to accomplish what they intend and the order came from the top of the chain. With this promise alone I decided to step forward and accept the challenge to help both Locaweb and the Brazilian Rails community to reach such bold goals.

Repeating myself again, as always, the best piece of Ruby on Rails is its community. Specially true in Brazil. We all helped each other in one way or another. Again, I am counting on you – be from Brazil or any other country. Your collaboration is gold. I need critics – even the worst ones matter -, ideas, suggestions, feedback. What do you want me to do in order to achieve our goals?

And why I consider this important? Because it is the very first time a really big company decided to invest on Rails here in Brazil – and in Latin America for what I know. We inherit their visibility and credibility on what we’ve been doing. If we do it right, others will follow. Trainings, classes, books, products, customers and, specially, jobs right here in Brazilian soil.

When I wrote my first book in 2006, very few of us were using Rails, and almost none full-time. I wasn’t the first but the community was not one. My goal was to be able to make myself work full-time with Rails, even if I had to rise my whole market around it. That was Level 1.

In 2007, around this same time, Level 2 came to be, when I was finally able to start working full-time on Rails because of the trust Surgeworks had on me. Now, it is the turn of the tide with the arrival of Level 3, where I finally have the resources to fulfill the goal I set to myself more than 2 years ago.

I am very very thankful to Surgeworks for their unique opportunity and I still recommend them to anyone who wants to work in Rails consultancy and to any client who needs high-quality and well cared projects. I’ve spent years in Brazilian consultancies and I wouldn’t recommend any of them, actually I would highly recommend against most of those ‘big iron’ consultancies here. Surgeworks is the first I will keep actively recommending. I am still friends with all of them, including my Surgeworks coleague and partner Carlos Brando in our weekly Brazil Rails Podcast. The translation projects will keep going as before. Level 1 had a great closure as well as Level 2. Mission accomplished so far.

Now on to Level 3, are you with me? Let us all go to Level 4?

tags: biography locaweb english

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