1/4/2000 to 1/4/2025: Director

This post concludes my 2000-2025: 25 years in ICT series with a bit of a shameless plug: I've made it to Director!

The 9 years at Proemion have been a breathtaking climb: from part-time software developer, to devops, to Team lead devops, to Group head devops and datacenter, Head of R&D, and now Director of Product of Engineering.

To celebrate this, I decided to reflect on how I got here, perhaps it will be useful to others too.

I did it

Not to sound ungrateful or arrogant, but the first thing I should acknowledge is that I did this. I got help and support but it was ultimately me who put in the hours, went for the uncomfortable challenge ad asked for the additional responsibilities.

I'm very proud of what I've accomplished, and I'd like to remind all of you that you should be too. Always!

The only question I sometimes ask myself is where would I be if I started sooner. Since I don't have a time machine, I'm just content I got where I am right now and also remind me that I am where I am because of the path I chose. Maybe I had to take the longer road to accumulate the experience.

Behavior

There's of course plenty of things that I did (or did not) which contributed but if I had to pick one, I'd say it's my relentlessly asking: “What contribution from me do you require to make your contribution to the organization? When do you need this, how do you need it, and in what form?” (Drucker)

Help I got on the way

Robert Michaelides, Proemion's CEO and Manager for pretty much of all my time, has always made space for me to fill/grow into.

Luca Rossi's Refactoring community which helped me realize my own value.

Joel Chippindale's coaching program which helped discover and oftentimes re-discover the resources I already had.

Aviv Ben-Yosef from whom I stole the idea of Profitable Engineering.

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