My two cents on Cidadania
After seeing this post from Kenneth Reitz, I thought I should make my own also, so everyone knows that not only the US and northern Europe has great companies to work with.
I’ve been working for two years now at Cidadania, a very small SME from Santiago de Compostela, Spain and we are just 9 people there. I must say that even if it’s not the best paid company I worked with, they compensate that with very good working conditions, which are not very common in Spain except for maybe… 20 companies in all the country?
Since I entered in Cidadania, I didn’t have any schedule, I’ve had a 7h shift and I can work remotely if needed. I also learned huge amounts of stuff related with my work and traveled a lot. I’ve been at Lleida (Catalonia), Helsinki (Finland), California (US), Chicago (US), Tallin (Estonia) and lot of different places around Spain.
Some details about this two years:
- I’ve travelled more than 28.500KM
- 25 days spent in hotels.
- 8 meetups attended
- 3 talks given.
- 3 countries visited.
- I’ve met hundreds of people.
I’ve met also tons of people from other countries and other ways of thinking (which has opened my mind quite a bit). Cidadania is a great place to work, people is ALWAYS nice to you, and you get angry at some points like “don’t you have blood in your veins or what?” (just joking).
Of course being a non-IT consultacy sometimes it gets in the way, because they don’t know how to handle IT stuff or projects, and this sometimes is annoying, but believe me if I say that I won’t leave this company unless I create my own company or I get out of Spain (well, maybe if Igalia hires me I’ll stay).
Things I’ve learned
- You’ll get pretty fucking lonely sometimes (I agree with Kenneth in that)
- Get some time to rest, believe me, you’ll have to put order in your mind sometimes.
- Don’t be shy. DON’T. You have to loosen the ropes that tie you to the habits and prejudices of yourself and/or your country.
- Don’t hesitate to ask whatever it is. (I’ve been told that a lot in school, and I’m applying it 20 years late)
- You may think that you’re no one in the world and the programmers around you are the greatest. Don’t be a fool, surely in the same room there someone who thinks the same and he/she is taking you as an example to follow.
Probably my workmates won’t be reading this post, but I just want to say them that they’re awesome. So, here to 2013, kippis!