(Published on May 10, 2020 by ApprenticeCTO)
I’ve always loved learning. Improving. Being better than I was. I don’t know why, but this “inner engine” always pushed me towards new challenges.
I am passionate about IT since I was a teenager. Commodore Vic 20 was (one of) my best friends. I realized back then that I loved translating problems into algorithms and watch them working with code. Basic and even Assembly later become daily tools I learned to use.
At this point, you’ll have argued that I’m not a millennial. But I still feel like that (or probably I like to see myself like that).
Today, when my forties will soon say goodbye, I am a CTO at a Financial Institution, after working with similar roles in various business sectors (such as Transportation, Utilities, Public Sector).
Being a manager also revealed to me a passion for leading and empowering people and mastering personal productivity.
Today I resolved to start a blog on these topics. I started to think about this project last summer, but I could finally put it on the ground in these days: Covid-19 emergency is, unfortunately, giving me more time than usual, being and working at home, locked-down away from my family.
But what do I think I can write about which can have some value for someone else too?
A few years ago, I started to realize I was missing something. There was a “new way” emerging in the IT world, headed by the DevOps movement and the public cloud opportunities (and challenges), which I could not understand properly, because, as I soon realized, I had a “constrained vision of IT”, which was limiting my understanding and my willingness to challenge what I knew.
Concepts as shift-left, everything as code, automation, unlimited and abstracted infrastructure, shared operating models, just to mention a few, were challenging the vision of traditional on-premise infrastructure processes and service models. And more importantly, perhaps, they where quicky making obsolete my organizational model and the skills of my teams.
I realized I had to move and put some change: so I started, as I always do, to learn about these things, luckily supported by two excellent mentors, which helped me to challenge my vision, skills, and role in the Organization. It was, and it still is a very transformative and enriching journey.
With this blog I wish to share the path I have started and what I’ve learned so far, mistakes included. I also convinced that trying to explain something easily is the key to learning more effectively.
“I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”
Richard Feynman
Posts are organized in mainly three areas: Tech, Leadership, and Personal Productivity, topics I’m truly passionate about.
You don’t see my name here: I think it doesn’t matter, while contents do. I chose the “ApprenticeCTO” as it’s how I see myself.
I wish you’ll find my posts interesting and useful for you too.
The ApprenticeCTO.
(Photo on top by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash)