Making a quick pit stop to mark this milestone in my professional career: today is my 3-year anniversary at Red Hat! Time has certainly flown by and I really cannot believe that it has been three years since I joined this company.

I know it is sort of cliche to say "I can not believe that it has been this long..." and so on and so forth, but it is so true. Back then I joined a relatively new project with very high ambitions, and the first few months had me swimming way out in the deepest part of the pool, trying to learn all 'Red Hat-things' and Clojure for the existing automation framework (now we are fully using Python).

I did a lot of swimming for sure, and through the next months, through many long days and weekends and hard work, tears and sweat (you know, your typical life for a Quality Engineer worth his/her salt), I succeeded in adding and wearing many types of hats, going from a Senior Quality Engineer, to a Supervisor of the team, to eventually becoming the Manager for a couple of teams, spread over 4 different countries. Am I bragging? Maaaybe a little bit :) but my point is really to highlight a major key factor that made this rapid ascension path possible: Red Hat's work philosophy and culture of rewarding those who work hard and truly embrace the company! Sure, I worked really hard, but I have worked just as hard before in previous places and gotten nowhere really fast! Being recognized and rewarded for your hard work is something new to me, and I owe a great debt of gratitude to those who took the time to acknowledge my efforts and allowed me room to grow within this company!

The best part of being a Red Hatter for 3 years? Being surrounded by an enormous pool of talented, exciting people who not only enjoy what they do, but are always willing to teach you something new, and/or to drop what they're working on to lend you a helping hand! There is not a single day that I don't learn something new, and thankfully I don't see any sign of this trend stopping :) Have I mentioned that I love my teammates too? What a great bunch of guys!!! Getting up early in the morning and walking to my home office (yeah, they let me work remotely too) day in, day out, is never a drag because I just know that there are new things to learn and new adventures and 'achievements to unlock' right around the corner.

I am Red Hat!!!