I changed my job. Here’s the story.
Hello there! four months have passed since my last post, time goes fast, isn’t it?. I changed my job from working in a corporate company to a mid-size startup, I started learning a lot of new things, and I’m really excited about it.
In this post, I’m sharing why I decided to leave Oracle and my journey to Wizeline.
I started working for Oracle at the MySQL organization, back in 2011. I joined the MySQL Connector/Net team. I couldn’t be more proud and happy at that time. It was in many ways something that I wanted for some years in my professional life. Working in Open Source has always been something that I have a lot of respect for. I see it as something really good in our industry, and hopefully, something that will continue growing in the future. I stayed at MySQL for 5 years. I really enjoyed implementing a lot of features added from the MySQL server, the .net framework, and my favorite one, the Entity Framework provider. After these 5 years, I was eager to try and learn new technologies, so I decided to look for opportunities at the Cloud organization in Oracle. After some technical interviews and searching if I was a good fit in different teams I finally got a chance at the Database Tools and Cloud at the Oracle MDC in Guadalajara. Again, I was really excited about the team I was about to join. Eager to learn and ready to be away of my comfort zone.
From working mainly in Windows, to change all the way to Linux, it took me many weeks between frustration and joy. I did a lot of automation, REST services, and integration testing for a couple of services in the Oracle cloud. I enjoyed that too. But there was something that I felt I was missing: the chance to innovate and experiment with more freedom. That took me to decide it was time to look for new job opportunities. But this time I also wanted to move to a different company.
I had heard about Wizeline a lot. I started to have an interest in the company because of the great workshops that they were conducting. One of them was about Project Management which I happened to attend. There, I had the chance to see how passionate the people were, which I was really glad to see. It totally motivated me to start the interview process. And yet again putting myself out of my comfort zone after 6 years at Oracle.
To prepare myself for the interviewing process, I started reading about cloud technologies, doing online courses at different learning platforms on the things that interested me, and coding new things, which was finally paid off. I was just doing what I wanted to do: learning and discovering the potential of new technologies.
After a couple of “on site” interviews and technical sessions, I was hired. I joined Wizeline July 9th, 2018. Of course, the interview process had its challenges. Putting yourself out of your comfort zone is most of the times painful, to say the least. It requires dedication and effort. And especially, when you are new at something, asking for guidance to younger people, is something a lot of people find difficult to deal with. During this process, I also found out, that you can be creative in the way you learn. You can learn a lot about yourself when going through such learning curves. Managing time, approaching new technologies, and the challenges you face when migrating from one to another.
Today after three months at Wizeline, I’m still out of my comfort zone, learning new things in so many ways. But now I know how to manage my time better, how to approach the challenges, and how to not be ashamed of being learning new things and asking about the most basic things sometimes!. I take my time to learn new things. And I also know that everybody learns at a different pace. The most important thing is to be in a place where you can have the freedom to develop yourself and learn the things you are passionate about. You also need to have the resources to do it and be surrounded by people, who are equally passionate as you are, willing to share with you the journey of learning, which is not always easy to achieve.
I enjoy the dynamism of Wizeline. The people here are always looking for ways to improve and questioning themselves if they are doing the best they can. There are still things that need to be improved, of course. But as long as we are open to constructive feedback, we will always be on the right path. Wizeline’s culture is amazingly diverse, with people of so many different countries, all looking the same thing: delivery value through technology. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Thanks for reading!
If you want to share how or why you changed your job or any other story about your professional life, please share it! I will love to read it.
PD. Feel free to reach me at Twitter @gabrymartinez.