About me

October 24, 2023October 24, 2023

Here’s 3 things about me.

1 – Skin in the game and ownership

2 – Action over theory

I care more about takeaways than big names and “years of experience”. Tell me your life stories. I love them.

In a technical discussion, we shouldn’t agree to disagree. If you introduce info I didn’t know, I’ll agree with you – no drama. I also expect that if I introduce new valid information, you’ll do the same. More likely, we’ll reach a third better conclusion together. That’s why people say they love chatting with me.

I can also disagree and commit, and know when to apologize and shut up. It’s part of hurrying up. And I don’t hold grudges – they are a waste of time, everyone can become an ally.

3 – Products

Category design or category harvesting? Both have their merits.

Products win over projects.

And then miscellaneous facts:

I have a personal dream – all I do, career included, is to achieve it and provide my contribution. We’re getting there, even though the steps cost effort.
As I said, it is by constantly sharing information with friends and colleagues that I keep growing fast and continuously. I get involved in communities and events. And we get opportunities to start fun projects or businesses.
I am very lucky. I met exceptional mentors who inspired me with their insights and experience. Without them, I wouldn’t be the person I am. I’ll dedicate a few lines to 3 superstars:
- Vincenzo Fabio – He started using C when it came out, as an upgrade over Assembly and BASIC. One of his least accomplishments was creating a CPU architecture emulator that used a spider hardware inserted into the CPU socket of a motherboard, that output to a parallel port to a PC, where an assembly program ran an architecture emulation, translating instructions to Zilog Z80000 and fed back the output to the motherboard. I and Vincenzo spent 15 days pair programming and performed the work normally done by a team of 15+ engineers in 6 months. When Certification Authorities analyzed our source code, they said this was the best code in that market.
- Daniele Torchio – He is really good. No, you have no idea. I am at a loss of words. So an example may better explain. You may have heard about that Amazon employee who made a cat door that only opened for his own cat, using ML? Daniele invented this device before ML was even possible. He can get one creative idea like that and one working prototype in a day of work (+ components shipping time). His lab is wonderful, with components, tools, and a tidy organization. On shelves lie all sorts of prototypes and he has a story for each. If every person in the world were like Daniele Torchio, mankind would technologically be one millennium forward. You’ll think this is a figure of speech, when in fact I am 100% serious.
- Rahul Subramaniam – An intrapreneur and entrepreneur with over 20 years as CEO, a master at innovation: running hiring campaigns, managing a deep organization, starting projects, driving them all the way to accomplishment, and importing the new features into existing products, as well as building verticals from scratch, over and over. Rahul knows everything: people, business, and all technology. He’s ahead of the curve. In the words of Steve Brain, EVP at ESW Capital (a Private Equity Group with over 300 products) “We interview SMEs because they know what nobody else does. Then we ask Rahul and he knows even more than the SME. I don’t know how he does it. It’s the same story every time. Just go directly ask Rahul next time”. Rahul is the manager everyone would want. I’d rate him a nonexistent 11 out of 10. But to get things done, you must be present. Rahul is in very high demand (I mean this as a compliment), so he sometimes disappears and his collaborators must be ready to parallelize and continue their tasks while Rahul is gone. Either way, considering his availability of 70% of the time, his score drops to a nice 7.7 out of 10. Rahul embodies and teaches one final lesson: Execution is about prioritization.

For me, this is a lesson of humility. 95% of Engineers and Entrepreneurs can’t dream to reach this level in their lives — I definitely pushed myself forward thanks to my friends.

And as a curiosity, some of non-obvious specialties of mine include:

UX – With a lifetime commitment and field experience
ML, AI – ditto
IoT
Very low-level machine programming including hardware and electronics
3D programming – I can use Quaternions, not just Euler angles like 99% of people. It’s not necessary I know. But I once got a job offer because of that (which I had to decline).
AWS and Cloud FinOps (also called Cloud Financial Management)