Hello there!
My name is Henry Aguilar, and I’m a life-long technology enthusiast, introverted-but-social, and a quietly spiritual individual.
I like to build things that make people’s lives easier. In another life I’d probably have orbited toward being a blacksmith.
I tinker with stuff just to see how it works, and I love working with diverse teams. Whenever I find people who are curious and as happy to learn and grow as I am, it feels like I’ve found my tribe.
Oh, and I love SciFi, fantasy books and Origami!
Wanna hear more?
I felt like saying a bit more about myself. Follow along if you like! This was an enjoyable exercise, looking back at my career, the choices I’ve made and, the blessings and challenges I faced.
The start of the journey
Well, I’ve always loved technology, but I started my professional life as an ESL instructor. I’ve always thought this was a very fortunate first job, as the soft skills I developed have always been one of my pillars of support, in all of my roles.
Getting to know many different people, developing strategies to teach in different ways, listening and understanding people’s difficulties and finding ways to help them to learn and overcome frustration on specific issues in their language learning adventure… It was all very educational.
You develop useful skills when you do your best in teaching others: empathy leads to better understanding, which in turn allows you to find more effective ways of explaining and demonstrating a topic. And then you iterate, both teaching the student better ways to learn, and you, yourself, learn better ways to teach.
I’ll always be thankful for having the opportunity of sharing in my student’s language learning journey.
They really did teach me as much as I taught them.
After a few years, I moved on to a technology-oriented career path. My family was growing, and a teacher’s salary would no longer be enough.
That first tech role
I’d been attending college off and on, working towards a degree in computer science. An opportunity appeared and I was able to work in a data center as an operator in a regional financial institution. My first step into my technology career!
It was somewhat difficult, for that younger version of myself. A late shift, a stressful role (besides tending to datacenter-focused tasks, we were also tasked with phone support for field techs, and monitoring several critical systems), a few “difficult” coworkers.
I am not ashamed to say that I once considered quitting due to stress. When I slept I would sometimes dream of past emergencies, like juggling four callers at the same time while checking on ATM connections at the request of the security officers (because they were suspected of being broken into) late into the night. Or watching consoles panic all around me.
I was also living alone in a tiny appartment, my family in another city, due to the cost of living. I’d see them on the weekends. It could get very lonely.
But I overcame the stress. I learned how to detach myself from the tasks, and discovered a new, stable plateau.
And when that happened, my curious-tinker-self emerged once again.
The service techs always wanted the same information. Why not develop a tool that could get that for us quickly and efficiently?
“Hey boss, would you let me create a tool like this? I’d just need an SDK to develop it in my down time!”
“No”, said the boss, “I don’t want you installing anything. Just do your job.”
Well… I wasn’t about to give up. “I’ll just do what I can with what’s available on the workstations,” I thought.
So I learned how to code in VBA (because that was all that was available in those Windows workstations) and whipped up some bash scripts along with it. That initial application saved a ton of time, I shared it with my coworkers, and work was much less hectic because we now had more time in between calls.
When a new manager came in, I was relieved to see that they seemed much more open to new ideas. So I asked again: “Hey boss, I have some ideas to streamline some reports, along with X, Y and Z tasks… would you mind terribly if I could request a Visual Studio installation on my workstation, to work on this stuff during my down time?”
“That sounds great! Just make sure to test things thoroughly and show me what you have before you start using it in production,” she said.
Wow. OK!
I made improvements to what I’d built with VBA, made it more capable, secure and reliable.
I built several other tools for myself and coworkers that made life easier for all of us. I loved the feeling of building something that was effective and immediately useful.
About a year after that, my boss approached me and said “You know, there’s a role opening up in the development team, you should apply.”
What a boss. She was always looking out for us (as a leader should), and I always admired her earnest effort to be a good manager.
Ivania, if you ever read this, just gotta say I’ll always remember your work ethic and the quality person that you always showed yourself to be.
I was interviewed, and selected for the role.
The developer promotion
My development “world” opened up in an interesting way. See, the issue with financial institutions is that often things change very slowly due to regulatory constraints, the sentiment of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and, a large-ish burocracy.
But in this ecosystem I found a wide array of software in various stages of obsolescence, and I found it deeply interesting, just because I enjoy getting to know and understand complex things.
Now, even though I enjoyed getting to know this ancient stuff, I was still careful not to fall into the trap of immersing myself only in legacy tech. If I couldn’t learn new things at work, I learned them in personal projects. Whatever happened, if the time came to leave, I would be ready for my next challenge.
I did pretty well, I’d say. I spent several years as a developer, gradually taking on greater responsibilities. But again, the time for change had come.
Leaving the company
I’d spent almost ten years at that company, three promotions.
I’d had many interesting experiences there. I also did freelance work every once in a while, just to keep myself current.
But, it was time for a change. My son was diagnosed with autism, and he was non-verbal. Suddenly his needs required much greater income, and so I went looking for remote roles to be able to handle this new way of life.
It’s true what they say, you know. Developers will get better raises by switching roles than by sticking to one company.
New beginnings
I interviewed in several places, but an unlikely opportunity raised itself and I took it immediately. I was not very familiar with the programming language or frameworks, but they took a chance with me after interviewing me. It was just a matter of learning the language and frameworks as quickly as possible.
I appreciated the faster pace in a startup. Quick turnaround times on features and fixes and updates were a breath of fresh air, as the last couple of years in that financial corporation were just overseeing projects that other people would develop and it would take many months before anything ever came to be released.
It felt good to have a clear impact on the product. To learn new things at a faster pace, to improve and see the improvements in action.
So I’m out here again, doing contract and freelance work, putting more than one hat on to help make that business succeed, and to give it my best effort. It’s invigorating.
I do not regret my time in a corporation. It was eye-opening and educational in many, many ways. I can only ever be thankful to all of the people I worked with, throughout the years.
It’s been a blast, and I’m excited for what the future can bring!
If you’ve made it all the way down here, thanks for reading!
Sometimes I think that it’s hard to convey who you are in 30 seconds, and that maybe, if given the opportunity, people are willing to spend the time to know more.
Perhaps you and I can work on something together in the future!
Whatever happens, I wish you well, and, even though it may sound cliché, I sincerely mean this:
May you live long and prosper!