That’s a long time with no posts here! I must say that I had
been amazed during the last six months, after I joined TW.
As I wrote in my last post, I couldn’t ask for better
opportunity - I was totally right! I
like this feeling of “no regrets” that I have everyday when I reach the office.
I’ll start talking about what happened after I wrote my last post. In that time
I was working in a project in the national institute for space research. I got
a scholarship for Jan. 2011 to Dec. 2012, the duration of the project I was
working on. During my time there I applied to some master’s degree classes
(Artificial Intelligence and Applied Computing) and I my job in that project
was develop a framework in Java, using web services. I learned A LOT during the
18 months I worked there.
Although I was enjoying that, I was really looking
for new challenges and opportunities to grow.
I found this opportunity at
ThoughtWorks, I applied for a QA role, and I got really really happy when I
received my job offer. It was on start of March. However, I was submitting a
paper for a conference and I had a
deadline to deliver part of the framework in the next months… for this reason,
I asked for some time till get my new job. So, finally June came and the time
to become a ThoughtWorker as well! Then I left the project before the end of
that.
The thing is, joining ThoughtWorks was not only associated
with leave my family in Sao Jose dos Campos, fly to another city (Porto Alegre)
and start a new life over there… Accept the offer meant being hired in a day
and fly on the next day to India for a 6-week immersion program called
ThoughtWorks University (TWU)… It sounded a bit scaring in the beginning
(mainly for my family – “whatta hell is this company that wants to send you for
too far in your second day as an employee???”) _ but this opportunity made me
wait desperately for June. I don’t have words to express how much happiness and
anxiety I was feeling that time.
I joined TW on June 4th, and started my journey
to India on June 5th… I’m writing
another post about my experience at TWU.
My first day in the company was really funny – people
invited the new hires to walk around the office, to meet the co-workers and
know about the projects. It was weird – so many new faces observing us… They
seemed to be planning something… maybe… wish us welcome, by launching hundreds
of nerf darts in our heads? Yeah, exactly that! \o/ Definitely, it was the best
way to welcome us, and it made me figure out how amazing is my co-workers
We had a day with a bunch of new hires orientation and we
took the time to finish what was pending to our trip.
Six weeks later, I was back to Brazil. The company gave me
some days off to organize my stuff to move to Porto Alegre. Actually my stuff
were already organized, I took these days to stay at home recovering from
jetlag and enjoying the time with my family and also to eat barbecue and my
mum’s meal which I was missing so much!
So I moved, found a new place pretty (small) close to the
office! I got assigned to one of the projects from the office and started my
job as a QA.
During the first weeks it was a bit hard for me… I was far
from my family, Porto Alegre’s winter is pretty different from the one I was used to, spend the weekends
cleaning my place instead take my time to study and rest was not so cool, cook
for myself, pay my bills, do the dishes, the laundries (mainly that time when I
haven’t bought a laundry machine yet)… everything was new and hard! =)
But after a month I got used to everything. People are used
to be excited about their new job just during the first days or weeks, after
that everything becomes a routine and starts to let you bored… In my case was
completely different – everyday in the office I face a new challenge, I meet
new people (new hires and expats), I have the feeling that I had in my very
first day! And that’s what makes me so happy and passionate about my job. The
environment in the office is awesome, my understanding about Agile has improved a lot after joining the company - we really do Agile - it's not only about daily standups, work in pairs, send code to the CI server..it's about the way we work, the team is
very collaborative, we're always sharing knowledge and another stuff that make us agile.
People in the office are really friendly, it’s
possible to hear people laughing and some hipster songs playing during the day…
people send spams by email inviting to a beer, to foosball and video games
competitions. We work hard, but we can also have fun during and after work time!
Among the role we play into the project we get assigned to,
we also have the opportunity to get involved with another activities, such as
social impact programs (SIPs) that sustains TW’s third pillar – Social Justice.
In general these SIPs are projects that aim to help people
and make the world a better place. Some recent projects from ThoughtWorks Porto
Alegre were to help citizens to interact with the candidates on the last
elections, and another one to help a village from Porto Alegre with their
recycle program… that’s much more than deliver software – the coolest part of
these projects certainly is to figure out
how this software can change lives, make people grow and get new
opportunities to make their lives better.
I’ve been a member of our women in IT group – that’s also
part of TW’s third pillar, and that’s our space to discuss actions to make the
company a better place for women and to attract more women to IT. I flew to Baltimore – USA on October, to
attend on Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing – the world’s largest
event for women in computing. There was another opportunity TW gave me to spend
a week at the event, attending to some talks, generally about women’s right,
leadership and technical themes. I’ll post a post about GHC soon.
I’m also having a great time working on the project I’m
currently assigned – and I hope I can finish what I’m writing about my job as a
QA soon! (Yeah, I’ve splitted this post in another three that’s not ready yet!
This is just the first part! Hahaha)
I’m having a great time as a ThoughtWorker, working with
amazing people and having such amazing opportunities.
I’ll share my experiences here more often, write reviews for the
books I’m reading and technical stuff that I’m learning.
. I got surprised with the huge responsibility that I was assuming by saying ok for that, because I was not preparing myself, and my lack of experience with Waterfall model (and Agile as well!) would made my life hard to compare both models clearly and detailed, following the content of the slides, or talk some bullshit and would not be able to explain! hehehe 
