Thanks, Optare!

10 May 2019

Today it's a very sad day for me: it's time to say goodbye to all my colleagues in Optare. I internally announced it four weeks ago so I should have enough time to process it, but I didn't yet :-(

I started to work in Optare in 2007 as an intern. It was a great experience. I learnt so much. I always will be thankful for that. After 4 years and 5 months, I left the company to work as a project manager in a big consultancy firm. I didn't like it. That experience put my ethics and professionalism beyond my limit so, after that, I was completely lost.

And again, Optare came to the rescue offering me to be the tech lead of a new team: NetApps. Cool people called it intrapreneurship or something like that. That has been my major professional success in my career and I don't ever deserve the merit. I resigned the first day as the tech lead to be just another software engineer in the team. It was a team effort from the very beginning and, because of that, it's so special. It isn't one person against the world but a team of highly-skilled engineers collaborating and doing great things.

Once I discovered it was possible to have a happy team, a happy customer and earn money at the same time, I started to evangelize about it. And that's how I ended as technical director. I learnt a lot in this role too. It's easier to build things from scratch than change them once they are built but, sometimes, small impacts are enough to change things in the long term.

So, after 6 years and 1 month, I decided I would look for new challenges again. 10 years and 6 months in total. Wow! I changed a lot. Also the company. But I'm very proud of both things. In the case of a company, it's amazing how it has evolved. In my case, It's amazing how my wife and my manager have been able to make me stay in the correct path for so long.

And no! I wasn't unhappy in Optare. That isn't the reason to leave. In fact, I am extremely happy with this company. Honestly, I can't think in any place better to work. Maybe there are some teams which I wouldn't recommend for a specific person, but most of them are great. It's a friendly environment, modern and full of interesting technologies applied to real and challenging architectures.

Also, it has a brilliant future ahead. For a company which has grown so quickly, there will be always up & downs. But Optare is a modern company: medium size, highly-specialized and full of great talent. Any Telecom operator in the world will pay good money once they know what Optare can offer.

But 11 years is a long time, I need a new challenge and I found one where I think I can have a real impact on things I care about: the Tech community and my area. Also the opportunity to work with some cool open-source technologies and continue learning.

So, it hurts a lot but it's time to say goodbye. I'm really going to miss you.