Juan Pablo is in charge of the data-collection engine.

Interview with Juan Pablo

What is a typical day for you?

I can't really describe one, because it varies a lot. Each client requires different things from us, so you have to use your whole toolbox to solve the range of problems. Java, servlets, Perl, databases, protocols, systems administration—I need to know about everything, literally. Dealing with so many different things, you learn a lot.

What do you like best about your job?

I have freedom. If I come up with a technology or tool or way to implement something, I'm completely free to use it, as long as it makes sense. There's nobody telling me to do it this way or that. You don't find that too often.

I also really like the impact my daily work has on clients. If I do something great, then the client expresses satisfaction, and everybody knows you did something great. But if I screw up, everybody knows that, too. So it makes you better at what you do. I find it really challenging and really cool, actually.

Another thing I like is that we're a pretty diverse group of people. Our CEO is from Norway. Our CTO is from Germany. I'm from Argentina. We have one person from Taiwan. It's an enjoyable place to be, definitely.

When did you first become involved with computers?

When I was 10. My older brother borrowed an old computer that you plugged into the television, and I just started playing around with it. Pretty soon I was coding BASIC.

So you really taught yourself?

Yes. I'd never seen a computer before then and I was just really interested in that little thing. About a year and a half later, my parents gave me one of my own. By today's standards, it was really a crappy machine—20 MHz—but back then it was cool.

I didn't know how to do anything at all with it, but I spent the whole first night just typing stuff. When I typed random phrases, the computer would come back saying "Bad command or file name"—I will never forget that—and then it would show the system prompt: "a:\>".

I bought some DOS books in English, and my English was terrible. But I had a dictionary and my mom, who knew some English, so somehow I made my way through and began to learn programming.

What do you think motivated you to do all that?

I think it was because I could control the thing. I was able to tell the computer to do something and then all of a sudden, or after a couple of hours, the computer did it. That was rewarding. And it's still happening right now. The very first time I run an application or execute an algorithm and it does what it's supposed to do, that's still pretty rewarding.

Do you like living in the U.S.?

I always wanted to come here. For a tech guy, Silicon Valley is like Mecca. Being here is pretty much a dream come true.

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