You can feel the pressure when releasing a new feature

Only a few people are lucky enough to find a workplace that matches their interests with their daily commitments. I am deeply grateful to God and life for giving me a job where I can combine interest, growth, and passion in one place.

Although I have shared some details of my professional journey, I have never experienced the freedom to choose my own goal at work. I remember clearly when I was welcomed, and they explained that my first development challenge could be any feature I wanted to add to the system. The purpose? To let us, as developers, get to know the system through our own experiences. The risk? The chosen feature might not be added to the system. Luckily, I made a good choice.

I'm working at a US university specializing in medicine-related careers. They believe technology is a great tool to improve quality and productivity. A few years ago, before this job, I had the opportunity to work for eight years at what I consider the most important private university in the Dominican Republic for engineering. This detail is important because my experience there influenced my decision to work on this challenge.

So, what did I decide to develop? I wanted to create a feature that allowed students to see what stage they were at in their careers. Sadly, the system did not have enough information then to implement this idea. I faced the same question again. I could let that feature disappear or face the challenge of dealing with the unknown as the team's newbie. What was my final answer? Simple: What do we need to make this possible? That is how the feature was born: a mechanism to generate the student's curriculum and thus have the necessary information to show their current status in their career.

Even without enough context at that moment about the project, I trusted myself to accept a complex challenge. I relied on my past project experiences and the mindset I built during hard times. I was searching for this job during my career development time, so I was fresh and confident about navigating this new codebase. But my most powerful tool wasn't my knowledge; sometimes, this can backfire because you underestimate your most valuable resource: time (I'm awful with time estimations, a skill to improve). But even with all this confidence (at least at that moment), I believe my most powerful tools are those soft skills we need to work as a team player: honesty, transparency, communication, always telling the truth, and asking for help whenever needed. Remember, the project and your client are the priority.

I want to highlight another essential aspect of accomplishing this goal: teamwork. My manager understood the overall picture of this feature from the beginning. When finishing the first part of the Builder, he decided to build a mini team to accelerate the development. That's how my teammate Hector started working with me on this project. Without him, I wouldn't have been able to see the light of this project at this time. He built two critical functionalities: the presentation layer of a term and the launcher. Thank you, man.

A year later, here we are... making sure all requirements are met to launch the first version of the Template Builder and continue working on a mechanism that allows students to see their progress.

Although this is not the end of the journey, I am proud to have contributed to a mature system, working with an exceptional team of outstanding, multidisciplinary professionals who challenge and help me improve daily.

Today, the development of the first version concludes, and the real work begins. Remember: every system starts to live when users begin to use it.

Let's go! The launch date has arrived.

Fun Facts:

• My team leader's name and last name are the same as those of one of my old colleagues (also a team leader) at INTEC. What a coincidence to have teammates working at universities in related positions with all these similarities. I like this coincidence. The cool thing is that both are excellent leaders and very responsible.
• I work with a World Gold Medalist in Gymnastics, and he is not only an outstanding athlete but an impressive senior software developer. How can he do this? What an example of knowledge and discipline.
• It is incredible how similar two universities can be in their operations.