ESC BEHIND THE SCENES: A few words with Matthew Mota on his work anniversary

This week we celebrate our longest-serving employee: Matthew Mota, whom everyone calls Matto. We digitally chatted about his start at ESC Partners, what he loves about the job, and just what’s kept him here all these years.

?

KATHLEEN: How did you get your start at ESC?

MATTO: Pats and Ruthie—a couple of former colleagues in a previous company—referred me for a tech role here.?It was that simple—a good reference.

?

KATHLEEN: What has kept you at ESC all these years?

MATTO: The culture of belonging to a family and the feeling of being able to contribute to the company's success.? I love being part of ESC's growth from just a handful of people to the hundreds of employees that we have now. I’ve also loved watching us grow from just supporting utility companies on Oracle CCB to now where we work with towns and cities, enabling their transformation into smart cities with an expanded Oracle focus on ERP/EPM, HCM, OFS, and even WAM.

?

KATHLEEN: Who is your favorite ESC coworker and why?

MATTO: This is a very hard question. Truly. I honestly don't think I have a favorite coworker really, as I like everyone equally. I especially love working with the people on my team, as they're all really knowledgeable and very dependable.?

?

KATHLEEN: What advice would you give to new employees just starting with the company?

MATTO: Be like water. You should always be ready to adapt and to go with the flow.?

?

KATHLEEN: What's your favorite part of your job?

MATTO: I love learning and working in cloud computing, especially being exposed to the different cloud providers like Oracle, AWS, and Azure.?

?

KATHLEEN: What's your average day look like?

MATTO: First, I check the health of all the servers that we manage, to ensure that the different teams that work on these servers are able to access them and do their work. Next, I do a quick touch-base with the Philippines and India techs to talk about any priority tasks for the day and the week. After that, it's time to work on actual tasks like setting up servers, refreshing databases, and troubleshooting performance issues, among many others. At night, sometimes we have another quick Teams meeting for the tech team members that work during U.S. business hours, just to hand over any tasks.?

?

This is where Anne, Matto’s wife who also works with ESC Partners, joins the conversation to talk about not just what ESC has brought their work life but the changes working here has made to their daily life.

?

ANNE: Can we add here our usual daily life? Since both of us are working from home, we are able to travel a lot even during weekdays. We do road trips to different coffee shops near our place and do our work there. ESC also gave us the opportunity to travel to different countries and experience the culture there while working.

?

KATHLEEN: That is an awesome addition to the conversation, Anne. Thank you. I think Anne should be your favorite ESC employee, Matto, but I’ll let y’all sort that out at home because I do have more questions.

?

KATHLEEN: What are your favorite stories from past projects?

MATTO: One of my fondest memories was the CCB 2.5 upgrade project we did for Veolia Energy NA (now Vicinity Energy) back in 2016-2017. It was quite the experience, as the different Veolia subsidiaries were going to migrate to CCB 2.5 at different times in the year. So, we essentially had multiple go live dates, with at least one subsidiary going live every 1-2 months.?

?

KATHLEEN: What would you say directly to RJ about your work anniversary? Any special thoughts and feelings on this milestone??

MATTO: Words are not enough to say how thankful I am for everything that RJ has done for the company, and directly/indirectly for me and my family. I would not be the person I am today without RJ's guidance and all the opportunities he and the ESC family has provided for me.

?

?

A final note on this article’s accompanying art: All photos were supplied by Matto and Anne. We used them with permission, but they retain all rights to the images of their family and their travels.