Hello World
I’m Hugo Fonseca, and I’m a SRE/DevOps for a betting company, passion about software, tech.
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I was looking for the photo that could describe me the best and I think this is it! I’m a hard working, self motivated, highly focused, determined and competitive person. I’m not afraid of challenges and I will get my hands dirty If I had to to get the job done and win. By looking at the photo you could think “Hey ok, but he also looks alone…” Yes, and that’s also true. I don’t have many friends, I get anxious often when I’m talking to stranger or to groups so it’s hard for me to know new people. But I really really enjoy helping and sharing what I know. When I’m part of a team, I want to be the best, but the success of the team is my greatest goal nevertheless! |
My Story
Childhood
As a little boy I liked to destroy my toys 😅 I wanted to see how they worked from the inside. So, as many kids of that time, I used to disassemble the toys and remove their little engines to connect them to some batteries just to watch them spin. I did the same for lights of course. I remember one day I got crazy and disassembled a TV… Ok, actually I didn’t got far. I felt one of my first shortcuts on my own hands and gave up scared that I could have broken it 😄
So yeah, I was a curious boy and a pain the neck for my parents
Education
As a student I wanted to be a game developer. I started learning programming in the secondary and that’s when I “learned” Pascal, Visual Basic 6 and C++. Man… I loved programming so much that I often read the books upfront the classes (mostly Pascal and Visual Basic, C++ I didn’t liked so much or maybe I just got personal issues at the time I don’t know…)
Of course, I would create a game anytime I had a school work that I could fit that in 😄
First Job
I didn’t went to college. Can’t explain that. While my friends at college were going to the parties and having fun while I was just… looking for a job…
My first job then came up. In a factory of female footwear 😅
I worked there for about 6 months and got fired. I got fired, I think, because the expectations when they hired me was that I was going to fix their stock problems. Which of course didn’t happen. They had a huge issue there… They closed down the factory some years later.
First Unemployment - Sad One
My parents were divorced at that time. I was living with my mom and my bro. We needed money and my mom was pressing me to get a job. Those were maybe the most difficult times I had in my life. No friends, no job, no money… Very sad and depressing
I remember answering any opportunity I knew about. Once I went to an interview 40km away from home… I was desperate.
Second Job
There was this place in a town nearby that had a church sisterhood (I’m not sure that’s the correct term in english) and they were helping children and poor families. At their place they run a nursery school and a elementary school (so they had children ~since they were born until they were ~10 years old) and they had almost everything on paper so they wanted to go digital. My father knew that they were looking for someone and told me and talked with them. This was how I got my first paid internship with a position that was related with was I had in mind when I was a student. Something related with computers.
But, unfortunately they made it very clear from the beginning that the position was temporary. So after 12 months I was unemployed again…
Second Unemployment - Happy One
I had learned a lot during those times. I was really determined to not going through the same path as before! So I had an idea, but could not tell mom about it, because we were needing money…
I was going back to school!
Yeah! I saved some money from the internship and without telling my mom I sign-up for a sort of bachelor course in the Aveiro University. I got in!
All the money I had at the time was already reserved to pay the school. I knew I probably would have some help down the road (Portugal gives money to students that can not afford college) but it would take some months to get it. So yeah… First months were really hard. All my money was to put gas on the car and to buy some food like, apples, canned tuna, canteen soup, etc. I must say, I was forced to do a quite a diet during those months… I remember feeling hungry and having headaches during classes. Sometimes during the lunch time, to get unnoticed to my colleagues, I often went to my car to eat my tuna can and apple there peacefully.
Uh… but I was so so motivated 💪 I was studying every day. I was organizing everything. I wanted to be the best I could because there is not chance I was going back to the “looking for a factory job” life. No f*** way!
be.ubi startup
I made to be the best student and I got an internship in Aveiro. Be.ubi was a software development company that developed custom solutions in PHP and Symfony. That was my shot. I had to look good and get the job. So I did.
I’m very thankful to be.ubi staff of that time for the opportunity and I think they are happy too. They opened the doors to the tech world for me and I worked there for ~7 years. That’s a lot. be.ubi will always have a special place in my heart.
I learned so many things there. I started in tests automation and ended as devops/SRE. because it was a small company, a role in tests automation does not mean the same as if it was in a big company. In a small company / startup, every role, means 2 or 3 roles at the same time 😄
At some point be.ubi changed a bit and started to do more and more consultancy work. I didn’t much care at the beginning but later on I realized it was not something I was comfortable with doing and thought that I had to do something about it.
be.ubi is “gone” now. The company was bough by the winning group
That’s when RHO opportunity appeared.
RHO / betting company
RHO is a really good place to work. Nothing compared with be.ubi (though I can compare RHO with my first years of be.ubi).
Working here felt really refreshing. It has really good co-workers, good conditions, happiness during work and a bunch of great side work activities (running, eating, playing, etc)
I really loved that they have all this bunch of activities. It’s really something that brings the people together and we all laugh a lot every time we’re together. It’s really good.
Next Challenge? Who knows
For my next challenge, the bar is set really really high. I know I have a lot yet to improve and a lot to show to you. I don’t know what will happen, but I am motivated to keep pushing, keep learning and someday we will see 😄