Hi! 👋

Let me introduce myself. My name is Santiago (as you already have guessed). I was born in Mendoza province, Argentina, and I am (what is more or less equivalent to) a Computer Science Engineer. I started this blog a little bit late in my life: I have seen that many developers and engineers recommend starting a blog sooner in life, along with a portfolio. To be honest, I never had the need to do it. My first job was in the company where I did my internship. After that, to get to a new company, I usually was contacted via LinkedIn and "just" had to pass an interview to land my new job. To advance my career, I began by simply spending time in a company learning the technologies we were using. Over time, I realized that was not enough. Failing a few interviews was a teachable moment. So I started reading up on technologies and digging deeper into solving the challenges I was facing at my job at the time was. Attending tech meetups was another way to improve my knowledge, where I could meet others devs willing to share their wisdom. At some point, I knew a wide variety of technologies with sufficient mastery, but, as I started to aspire for better compensation, I got back to failing interviews. My solution was (and, at this point, is) to study and learn not only about technologies, processes, patterns, languages, etc. but learn how to pass interviews. This led me to review data structures, algorithms (that I have barely used in any of my jobs), and to practice, practice, practice. Some of this practice was with HackerRank, Codewars, etc., and some of it was to try new technologies on new projects that I never finished. That is why my GitHub account is a graveyard of half-finished projects. After this new approach, the pay started to be to my liking, the tech stacks were good and I met really smart and nice people. Until...

I need to land in a good company

My last few jobs didn't last more than a year. In the beginning, I thought that was normal, or even more, a good thing: the pay was increasing and the working conditions (flexible hours, PTOs, etc.) somehow were improving. It took me a couple of years to notice: the companies I was working for were not the best ones: either they fired me or I quit. (They all have something in common: management was terrible. The lack of a North, a sense of priority, poor communication, etc.) I need, again, a new approach, to take a new course. So, my first attempt was to apply to a seem-to-be a good company, with good values, a vision, a fine product, an amazing tech stack. Spoiler alert: I couldn't even apply. The requirements were to show an app that I am proud of (remember my zombies GitHub projects?) I don't have any. Another one was to refer to some documentation, text, paper, anything that I have written. I indeed like to teach, I have given some talks, but I don't have any of those.

My plan

As I like to think: sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I learned. I will stick to my idea of applying to a company that I like. For that, I will:

1. Write a blog. This blog.
2. Upload a portfolio, a small one to start with.
3. Think, design, develop and deploy a project. Again, a small one, but one that I will be proud of.
4. Keep reading to learn. If that leads me to review data structures or algorithms, that's fine. But I will stop memorizing just to pass interviews.
5. Improve my English.
6. Enjoy the journey.

About this blog: it will be, at first, part documentation, part a project log. I will try to cover what my idea is, how I plan to carry it out, the technologies involved, and the roadblocks that I will discover.

Thanks (if anyone is reading this).