Hello there,
My name is Jorge Calle. I live in Quito, Ecuador.
I work as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic (yep, that’s my dream job).
At home, I share my life with my waifu and 3 awesome cats 😺
While I work, I enjoy listening to music. The rest of the time I listen to podcasts.
During my free time, I enjoy watching anime, TV shows and playing video games.
Photography, and Japanese culture aficionado.
Some background
It all began with my first computer. I was starting high school and my mom thought it would be an appropriate tool. Looking back at it, it definitely was.
It was a beautiful Pentium IV with one of those fat computer monitors (CRT), equipped with all its accessories, all in black. Certainly, I succeeded in doing great homework assignments. Most importantly, another world was unleashed. First, it started with gaming. The first game I played on that computer was an RTS known as Age of Mythology. It wasn’t only fun, but it helped me to develop my English skills—which at that time were very low. Can you imagine someone playing a video game with a dictionary at hand?
I developed a huge curiosity for computers, I started reading magazines about news and tricks. There was so much to explore! Back then, the Internet hadn’t been so democratized as it is now, so I would go to a cybercafé and do some research just for fun. There weren’t any smartphones back then, so I usually wrote down the tips I found in little pieces of paper that I would carry everywhere inside my wallet.
By the time I had to start university I knew for sure I wanted to study Sytems Engineering.
Into the blogging world
There was a project at the university that gave me a new perspective. We were asked to create a blog using Google’s tool: Blogger. I loved the experience and decided to stick with it by creating a new blog. It was the perfect solution for my wallet full of little pieces of paper with tips and tricks about computers. Therefore, Atrum was born on September 27, 2010. A blog about “Technology, knowledge and more”—that was actually my tagline.
I really enjoyed writing and researching about technology. After two years I decided it was time for a big improvement and I migrated my blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org site.
Once again, a new world was unleashed. I enjoyed (a lot!) building the new home for my blog. And after that the opportunity appeared, a small school wanted a new website. I was able to pitch the experience I gained building my blog and was granted the project of building the school’s website. It was really exciting! Once I delivered the project I knew what I wanted to do for a living.
Katana
I was very lucky. When I was starting the second half of my university career I had the opportunity to start working in the IT Department at a Toyota’s car dealership. It was a great new experience, but (after 4 years) I grew tired of the corporate world. As soon as a got my bachelor’s degree I quit my job and moved to the capital city to search for opportunities.
After one year of doing some freelance work (WordPress.org websites), I decided to create something new that would fulfill my conception of a great place to work. I had a serious talk with one of my best friends—an economist—and we decided to start Katana. It was conceived as an agency centered on building high-quality WordPress.org websites to empower the business of people. It was one of our best adventures in which we learned a lot. However, we did not have as many clients as we expected, even though we considered our prices were fair for the high-quality service we offered.
The dreams of creating a company with a great work culture started vanishing and eventually my friend and I had to go separate ways. He was offered a job as COO at a promising analytics startup and I got a developer job just in time to save money for my girlfriend’s arrival to Ecuador.
The (distributed) work–culture dream
I’m an idealist. I don’t settle down when I feel deep within myself something is not right. I don’t give up. If I fail, I improve and try again.
I kept improving to fulfill my dream and goal of working somewhere meaningful where I feel I belong. This blog was born as part of my path to that goal 🙂
The smartest people in the world are going to want to work this way.
Matt Mullenweg
My dream and goal are working for Automattic.
