My story: I like breaking things (to make them better)

I turned in my graduate term paper on information processing and clustering. It was a topic suggested by my advisor that didn’t really interest me apart from the fact it involved programming and tweaking code to solve a meaningful problem (my hacking definition at that point).

My Masters was a bit like that as well. I didn’t know what subject to pursue so I instead chose the Professor I wanted to study with (the most hacker-like). I ended up studying distributed systems and logic programming and working on a computer cluster system that had multiple network connected machines. Again what I liked about this work was solving what appeared to be a meaningful problem (or hack a solution for it) by using programming and scripting, servers, networks, etc to achieve the end result.?

During my Masters, I got an interesting invitation from a colleague (Tiago Bilou) to work for a company he had recently joined. He was a hacker at heart too and he knew me well, so I was all in because he knew what kind of stuff I liked to do. We had met during the degree and we immediately became friends. He liked computer security as well, although he wasn’t obsessed about becoming a hacker or anything like that. He just wanted to have fun and learn stuff. Once we skipped Friday classes all together to go kite-buggy riding on the weekend. We also worked on developing a new website for the computer science alumni group and that was when we worked more closely together and tried to implement an unbreakable login system for it. Boy, those were the days.?

Anyway when he told me about the opportunity at the company he was working (YDreams) at I was very interested because it seemed fantastic. It was a tech company that was receiving a lot of PR at the time. The work culture seemed very informal and relaxed and they were looking for interns, so I applied.

After a year working there and my internship was over I got offered a contract. At that time I also updated my CV and started posting it online everywhere I could find. I started getting phone calls from headhunters and booked two job interviews in London.?

I went to the interviews and both came back with a job offer (life felt so good back then). One was in central London and the other was for a job in a UK company but for a position in Darmstadt, Germany.?

The position was for a junior software engineer and to work as a contractor for the European Space Agency that has its operations center there. I took the job and moved to Germany the next month.?I chose this because I figured the European Space Agency must have a lot of resources and super technology and smart people would be there and it would be fun and exciting to work.

Going to Germany was a big step for me. Somehow it seems that while I was living in my own country, where all is familiar, I kind felt “safe” and was expecting a job and work my way from there.?

When you move into a new country there is an initial rush that lasts for a while. After all, everything is new and you have the desire to see, explore, visit and get acquainted.?But I soon missed my friends and family.

I was providing software support for the mission control system used by three satellite flying missions: Rosetta, Mars Express and Venus Express. The main part of the job was providing support, like a helpdesk, to issues reported by the scientists operating the spacecrafts through the software we supported. They would upload commands to the spacecraft and download telemetry data from them. In this process some things would not go as expected and so one person on my team would investigate and report back. Occasionally we would also implement new features and improvements to the software.

Because of the nature of our job, most days we would be on site (ESOC) along side scientists, management and staff (most of them experienced contractors that had made the jump). Making the jump (getting hired as staff) seemed like the biggest dream among contractors. With a staff position you get better benefits, a higher pay and the thought around it said you were pretty much set for life.?

For me it wasn’t that much of a deal. I had just recently joined anyway and the prospect of becoming staff simply did not interesting me. Staff positions were mostly management positions and I was looking instead to get my hands dirty with exciting technologies and eating pizza with fellow hackers.?

After the initial rush of moving to Germany settled (probably after a year or so) it wasn’t long until I become quite bored with work as well and lost any sense of purpose/joy. I became angry, mostly at myself, and lashed out at people and at home after a day’s work. I started dreading going to work and complaining about it to friends and family. Those were tough days. I somehow stayed another few months before I turned in my resignation letter. In retrospect it was way longer than it should have been. I didn’t want to disappoint the people that had believed in me and I was afraid of what would be of my future career.?

Lucky enough I had met a couple of friends that were very supportive and encouraging. I clearly remember discussing the possibility of quitting and doing something on my own and one of them replied “Yes, I think you would be very good at that!” – oh that really sparked the flame inside. Someone believed I could do it. Maybe she was right, maybe I could.?

I discussed this possibility heavily and I clearly remember talking about it in an outdoor cafe one day.?The rationale was something along the lines of “if we don’t do it now we’ll never do it” and also “we’re at a time where we can risk it, in a few years it won’t be so easy”.

After that, some of my most enjoyable “work” days followed. I would sleep in, eat at the local University canteen and then work in the afternoon on stuff I liked and blog about it. I was in heaven!?

I started playing again with the idea of starting a business in my head. The idea had been there all along, even while working for ESA, I would drift off and think about what possible applications I could build and how to make money off of them.?But now was the moment to make it happen!

(to be continued..)