The previous post described how I started into software and a summary of the different jobs, challenges, and tech I picked up along the way. If you want to read more follow this link.

To set the context, up to this point I have been working in software for 5 years, all of them in Argentina, mostly for more public organizations modernizing their processes. Sometimes I worked as part of a team, other as a single contractor.

I had to set up servers, do requirement gathering, project managing and development. It was super fun and gave me lots of different perspectives on each aspect of building and maintaining software.

Up to this point I never had formally any mentors or managers, no 360 reviews or goals to aim for. I was learning on the job, collaborating with colleagues to discuss approaches and keeping up with what the rest of the dev community was doing to guide my decisions.

Moving...

The first job was back in 2009 in my hometown: La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sort of halfway in my Computer Science career, I got connected to a professor from the university that was looking for developers to work in a small consultancy. It was three founders, and two developers (a friend of mine and me).

We had to wear all the hats, designer, system operations, developer, project manager, customer support and sometimes sales. It was exciting, finally starting to see how theory meets practices. Also quickly figuring out that building software is a lot more than just writing it.

The following two and a half years were full of learning, understanding how to deal with all sorts of different people wanting and needing different things, and how software was the meeting point to all this equation.

Tools of the trade: MySQL, Linux, Apache Servers, PHP, Symfony framework, SVN and vim.

Hi, I’m Alvaro Lara, a software person that is going through a journey starting in 2009 as a software development to my current engineering management position at Onfido.

I decided to start writing a journal. The initial motivation is purely a selfish one, where I am trying to put my thoughts into writing and help me digest them. The second one is one where there may be some of the stuff I been going through that could help others in a similar situation.

My intention is to write every day and do a summary I can publish in this blog every two weeks to start with. Why two weeks? Excellent question, I am not sure I have enough interesting things to share in a shorter period of time.

I have already in mind a first few posts:

• The Developer Years - Part 1, a summary of my first years as a software developer back when I was studying and living in Argentina. The different hats I had to...