Where were you living and working before Wizeline?

Luis: I was working in Santiago de Chile as a developer, and had been living there for five years. Before that, I was in Colombia.

How did you hear about Wizeline?

Luis: From a friend of mine, Cesar Reyes. We met each other in Chile, we worked together for three years there. A friend of Cesar’s knew someone at Wizeline. Then, after his fourth year living in Chile, he applied to Wizeline, did the process, and moved with his family. He reached out to me one year after he started working in Guadalajara and told me it was a really good place to live and all the perks and great projects they do.

Why did you decide to move to Mexico and Guadalajara?

Luis: Why not? The tourist opportunities. Here you have Cancun, Vallarta, Chiapas, and a lot more very nice places. My big brother’s honeymoon was in Cancun. There are people who have to save a lot of money to come to those places, and if I lived here, I could go whenever I wanted. In Chile, there are great places to visit but the water is too cold. 

One way that Cesar convinced me was he showed me pictures of the food at Wizeline. Amazing breakfast and lunch for free. 

How has your role or career changed while working at Wizeline?

Luis: The type of projects I work on changed. Before, I was working with small companies, 10-15 people, and only 3-4 developers. I had to do a little bit of everything… web apps, desktop apps, mobile. I had to do it and do it as fast as possible. Those were like website factory, where each month we had to launch as many websites as possible, each one similar to the other, mostly changing the visual elements of them.

Here, I work on more focused, fewer projects. I still have to get it done as fast as possible, but working on the Wizeline website and a client’s project. And I have the opportunity to work with cloud technologies.

With the size of the company, you can meet a lot of people with similar interests in technologies. That’s not something you are going to find at most new companies. There are so many people to chat with and learn from.

Walk us through a typical day in your role. What do you typically work on?

Luis: I try to arrive every day at 8 AM, and start between 8 and 9 AM. I usually get breakfast and study. I am studying to get my AWS certification.

After that, I have client meetings. We have daily standups. Then, I have a list of tasks I have to achieve throughout the day. Sometimes I have free time and work on the website or support Wizeline Academy. Sometimes I also help people on other projects, like Stello. A lot of the time, people come to me for help on projects related to WordPress.

Then it’s time for lunch, which is always a nice surprise. I like the food here.

In the afternoon, I have a couple more standups or meetings. Clients usually communicate changes, I apply code changes and deploy. On some days, Wizeline Academy hosts internal panels or talks.

What is your favorite part?

Luis: I enjoy the internal meetings and tech talks that we are able to take advantage of and learn something new.

Every Thursday, we play soccer matches. I am the person that organizes soccer matches at Wizeline. I try to make it happen more often, and it has become a weekly activity. 

I am also part of Wizeline’s Emergency Brigade. I am firefighting and first-aid certified.

You’re a regular Wizeline hero! And our resident WordPress expert.

What opportunities do you have access to by living and working in Guadalajara that you didn’t have before?

Luis: First, I was able to buy a car here. In Chile and Colombia, cars have higher taxes so they are more expensive. Sometimes being foreign is a barrier to getting credit. Banks in Mexico have been very good to me. 

Second, I was able to buy land near Chapala lake. I found out another Wizeliner was also buying in the same project so I will already have a known neighbor.

Any clubs or activities?

Traveling. I try to visit a new place at least once or twice per month.

I like to ride bikes on Sunday. I go out and ride around Vía Recreactiva, sometimes with friends.

There’s a car club, the Jalisco Miata Club, since I bought a pretty miata, it’s a sport car; and this past Monday was my first time meeting up with them. We ate chicken wings, we shared the modifications made to our cars and took a ride together through the city. It was pretty cool.

Can you tell us about a cool or challenging project you’ve enjoyed working on at Wizeline?

Luis: The new Wizeline website. It was challenging due to the time we had to launch it. We needed to deliver a good amount of features by a certain date. We had to control what features we were going to launch. And also I needed to take care of most of the infrastructure setup and design, as well as the code base. Happily, I later got some help from other coworkers that joined the project. It allowed me to learn a lot about Docker and AWS. 

What is the best part about working at Wizeline?

Luis: The people and it’s culture. The community and how people treat each other. At some companies, you are competing among your coworkers to be the best. Here, we work altogether to achieve a common goal.

What advice would you give to someone else living in Latin America thinking about moving to Mexico for a career?

Luis: I would tell them that if you can do, do it. There aren’t that many companies in Latin America doing what Wizeline is doing, what is happening here in Mexico is special.

Luis has had an amazing experience since joining Wizeline and relocating to Mexico, and he’s not the only one. Our team members come from all over the world. If you or someone you know are interested in working at Wizeline, check out our open positions.

We can’t wait to show you Mexico, our tech communities, and everything this opportunity has to offer.