My story, as some may know, doesn't fit inside the standard path towards success. But, really, which story does?
In my case, after spending most of my time dedicated to art in Argentina, I found myself as a 30 year old immigrant with no college education in the harsh job market of Philadelphia. My first couple jobs were paying around 8 dollars an hour and were still presented to me as opportunities. It was mind blowing to end up realizing that my life, all of a sudden, had become the raw representation of what happens after several mistaken choices: not going to college, dedicating to art in the underground scene and having a daughter with a girl from the US. But soon enough I've learned: choices don't matter as much as who you are.
When I was ready to jump fully into the delivery business (because of more freedom and a slightly better pay) I got the email from Pursuit telling me that my application was accepted. My family was visiting at the time so we all celebrated. This, after a lot of "scams" that sadly our system still allows, felt like a real opportunity and it clearly was. Dealing with Javascript or React wasn't the most difficult, after all I already had been able to deal with music, writing and theatre on a complex level and also always been good at math.
To me the real challenge was to fit in. To communicate with a potential employer in a way that showed something that I don't have. Ambition, desire to grow financially. I don't have it, I was never interested in being part of the high class. The same as "Che Guevara” defined as the most important quality of a revolutionary, I’m able to feel the injustice against any human in any part of the world. So I was never interested in a better life just for myself, or even for my daughter who was the reason for me to come to this country. All I ever wanted, and I guess the reason I became an artist, was to help people wake up to the fact that the only real solution for this world’s problems is communal, with everybody onboard, never individual or segmented.
That’s why Pursuit’s mission to reach forgotten minorities is so aligned with what I believe in. And honoring that is to stand towards the future with the same honesty and human values that I had from the start. Because what matters at the end is not how much you earn or the lifestyle you're able to afford. What matters is that you really become the best person that you humanly can be. And what a company, or the world, needs in order to be a good place is good humans. That's when the equation turns the opposite, because at the end we don't need to fit in, or surrender to any logic that we don't naturally agree with. That’s also why coding challenges are meant to disappear. The most logically gifted person could easily be the most selfish or the worst team player. Being able to solve a puzzle or having a high IQ doesn't really mean that much anymore, what we’re actually bringing to companies today is not intelligence (computers are already surpassing us in that field anyway) but our values and transformation power, fueled by nothing else than human sensitivity.
And after all, that’s the most important thing that I found in Pursuit, incredible human beings of all kinds. So I want to give a big thank you to everybody that helped me along the way, especially Dessa (kindness), Alejo (perseverance), Wynter (energy), JR (style), Ray Chu (faith) my Google mentor, the whole 6.2 class, and leave this final remark: Society doesn't shape us, we shape society, so never be afraid to stand up for who you are.
