Is unusual for me to celebrate and even review the places I work in my anniversaries.
But this year I decided to change this, the following is my review on first year at Taqtile.
Summarizing:
- Worked in 3 apps (Ponto Frio, Extra and Casas Bahia)
- Lost account of scrum cycles (dailies, plannings, sprints, reviews, retrospectives)
- Became team leader at least 4 times
- Got happy, sad, mad, tired and passionate all at the same time, but the outcome was happiness most of the times
- Met lots of awesome people and felt sad when some of them had to go
This is only one part of the myriad of experiences I had in such a short time.
To understand how and why this job is currently fulfilling my soul, and I’m not exaggerating, let’s go back to june/2014.
june/2014
After Das Dad broke I got a little disoriented in my life regarding the time and effort I was spending and also which goals I had in mind for both short and long term.
Just about a few interviews I landed at CodeMiner along with my friend Rafael Almeida, I was supposed to change technologies from working with mobile to web applications. That didn’t seemed a problem to me, I’ve worked with web before it just wasn’t my most recent jobs focus before CodeMiner.
Well in the end it didn’t worked out, to put it simple ROI wasn’t good in their point of view. At least I use what I’ve learned and it helped me to become better.
By that time I was tired and devastated, my investments were not paying me back and got disoriented again…. until linkedin presented me a job application for Taqtile.
That was my chance of getting back on track.
To my surprise it was a young team leading a “small” Brazil+USA company with excellent mobile apps, they had the spark in their eyes.
From that moment I was decided, if they wanted to we would work together.
So how it was until “that moment”
I usually say that to be happy at work you need at least three things:
- to work in something that is meaningful to you
- work with people that inspire and make you happy (be them better in what you do or with better character)
- loose track of weekdays (instead of desiring friday to come sooner)
Well, the first few months I checked the three of them.
No, it was not perfect, I also had to cover a lot of ground in being a team leader, I had been in that role before during a short time only so upgrades in my way of working were needed.
Although I felt we used scrum more correctly than in previous jobs something was still missing and I tried to apply everything I knew the way I could to enforce it the right way on my team. That way I’ve learned more.
Furthermore my english got more in shape as we had foreign interns in the teams I worked with.
I even had the chance to pass some knowledge forward with two workshops (I love teaching).
Between those nice feelings of accomplishment and knowledge absorption/sharing were the feelings of sadness and madness when things got wrong or when I made mistakes, I’ve learned with my failures, I always try to do so, yet sometimes I can be really harsh with myself. To make things worst I was seeing lots of smelly problems that I couldn’t repair or expect others to do so.
And that ladies and gentlemen was “that moment” when I got in love the second time.
What?! Are you crazy? No I’m not, read on.
From new year to the present
As if by magic Rodrigo Serradura landed at Taqtile to put it back on track and start some big changes.
Why did I felt in love again with Taqtile? My entire work life I heard people promising changes or pretend listening to you just to dump all the good things that changing could bring.
But not at Taqtile, they have listened, they were aware, they were planning to get better, and Serradura’s hiring was their response to our needs.
We started the changes and together with all the knowledge I had about agility in software development I started to grow more and more, I started to enjoy working again, to be part of something I believed once more.
Is not like I had gave up at some point, but things aren’t perfect all the time and eventually they even smell really bad.
We are now on our second quarter of changes targeting the next people on the chain, and my practice in leading and being led got much better.
Finally here we are, happy anniversary!
I could spent more thousand posts on my experiences from this first year, and indeed I hope in doing so. Yet here I rather finish thanking to a factor that is responsible for most of my happiness and growth, not only at Taqtile but also in the previous works I had: the team.
My team is absolutely great, from the newest intern to the #1 employee and I’m proud to say they are my second family.
Finally happy anniversary to me, but also to all of you that made me learn and change so much. Let me conclude with Theodore Roosevelt words.
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
I would say myself so and add at the end: “… with people that worth working with”.