Career on Og Maciel's Journal

Built To Last

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Built To Last

On learning by building, lowering the bar to entry, and the quiet legacy of useful work

Built To Last

From the very beginning, when I first got my first computer—around the age of 11 or 12—I felt inclined toward building things that were helpful and useful to others. Like many of my friends who eventually went into the computer industry and became software engineers, it all started with games. The thrill of writing your own game—something other people could use and that you could show off to your friends—was incredibly exciting to me.

The Day I Didn't Quit

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Day I Didn’t Quit

On Ego, Alignment, and the Power of Pausing Before You Leap

The Day I Didn’t Quit

After working for 2.5 years as a consultant at a governmental agency in New York as a software engineer, I took advantage of the fact that my position was eliminated after a silly argument with my then-manager and started looking for something new. My wife and I were expecting our second daughter, and the thought of continuing with the same schedule and routine I’d had for the last 2.5 years felt unbearable—something I simply wasn’t willing to do anymore.

The Role I Wanted—and the One I Left

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Role I Wanted—and the One I Left

This is a cartoonized rendering of a real photograph. All names and identifying details on the shirts have been removed to respect the privacy of the individuals involved.

It was July 16th, 2019. In the photo above, I’m standing with the quality engineering managers who reported to me at the time. Together, we represented what I believed—earnestly—to be the future of quality engineering at the company.

My Origin Story: The Job That Broke Me

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My Origin Story: The Job That Broke Me

Photo by Rudi Endresen on Unsplash

You can now read My Origin Story in order — from the very beginning — on its dedicated page:

👉 Read the full series here

There are moments in life when you don’t notice the ground shifting beneath you until it finally cracks. Leaving Synaptic wasn’t a dramatic exit. Nobody threw a chair. There were no fireworks, no screaming matches, no dramatic firings. It was quieter than that. Heavier than that. It was a slow unraveling.

The Student in Me Never Left

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Library in the morning hours

This morning I started work late because I had to run a couple of errands. First, I was supposed to pick up my dad and take him to the mechanic so he could get his car, but it turns out the place only opened later and I couldn’t wait for it. So it was on to the second task of the day: taking my 18-year-old daughter to her school for an in-person exam.

Crawl, Walk, Run—Rest

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was a day of quiet time and reflection for me—a forced slowdown after my body decided it had had enough of my constant multitasking and ignored warnings. This entire year has been a relentless stretch of challenges and tight deadlines. Every time someone said it would be impossible to complete a project by a certain date, my response was always the same: hold my beer. Yes, the chaos was self-inflicted. I own that. But what can I say—I have an almost reckless amount of belief in what can be achieved when a group of capable, autonomous engineers who trust each other come together around a shared purpose.

My Origin Story: Baptism by Fire

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

When I walked into Synaptic Pharmaceuticals for my first official software developer job interview, I had never written a line of professional code. I had no GitHub profile (it didn’t even exist yet), no computer science degree, and just a vague idea of what a design pattern was.

But I had something far more dangerous: momentum and an unlimited supply of hubris.

A few weeks earlier, I had built a working software system from scratch in a pharmaceutical lab despite having zero formal training. If I could do that, what couldn’t I do?

If You Want to Grow, Get on the Bull

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Dulcey Lima on Unsplash

I can’t remember exactly when I first heard the advice about taking ownership of your own career and destiny instead of leaving it up to chance. Maybe it came from a book, maybe a talk—I can’t remember. But I do know the exact day when it finally hit me.

It was around 2008, during a really hard phase at work. Back then, I blamed all my career woes on external forces—unsupportive teammates, bad leadership decisions, bad luck. None of it was ever my fault, of course. I was convinced I was doing everything right and the universe was conspiring against me.

My Origin Story: From Syringes to Software

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Ousa Chea on Unsplash

“Sometimes the path finds you long before you recognize you’re walking it.”

I didn’t plan on becoming a software engineer. In fact, if you had met me as a teenager in Brazil—hunched over one of the many Encyclopedia Britannica volumes we had at home or scribbling chemical equations on scratch paper—I would have told you I was going to cure genetic diseases and start my own research lab in Australia. People from all over the world would fly there to be treated. All free of charge. That was the dream. Technology wasn’t even in the picture.

How a Thumb Drive Saved My Sanity

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the early 2000s, I worked for a government agency in New York as a software engineer using Visual Basic .NET and Crystal Reports — which, in retrospect, was probably one of the less brilliant ideas of my career. I was young, overconfident in my programming skills, and let my ego and emotions take the wheel. I ended up leaving the company I’d worked for nearly four years to become a consultant.

Nods, Lightbulbs, and Why I Still Love Being a Builder

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last month and a half, I’ve spent considerable time giving presentations at work on how AI tools can help people in their day-to-day activities. Most of these sessions focus on software engineering tasks like writing code, automated testing, setting standards, and using tools like Jira more effectively.

The Art of Presenting

Whenever I’m asked to present, I try to imagine what I’d want as an audience member. My core principle is simple: “if someone asks me to sit through a presentation, they’d better capture my attention quickly and show me what’s in it for me.”