Joining Icalia Labs

I had a wild 2017, not exactly in a good way. Many sad events happened to my family in that year, thankfully our newborn helped us a lot. It gave us those moments of joy we needed.

During many months I lost focus in my training and work, but I needed to get back on my feet. So I started a new business inspired by the trend of productizing your services, aimed to create websites for small companies. Like with all new ideas I was very excited and I was sure it was going to work… It failed miserably.

No time to complain, I learn some and went to learn some more (one of my favorite things). On May I was listening to a podcast where they recommend a book called Sprint written by a designer from Google showing a new way of work to solve problems. I was intrigued, so I bought the audiobook because I was running daily to get myself back in shape. I really loved the book that I went for a copy now in Spanish when was available in my city bookstore.

A couple of months later I was surfing on dribbble when I saw a shot by a team in my city named Icalia Labs, I was surprised as I haven’t seen product design teams in my city. I went to their site from their profile and encounter that they offer Design Sprints as a service for their clients, I wanted to know more.

I found out they were a young software agency working with the new and best practices of the industry, even that I’ve been working on my own most of my career. I like challenges and being part of big things, so I sent them an email and they answered the same day. By next Monday I was having a job interview.

It went well but they didn’t have an opening at the time but they’ll keep my info to call me the moment they have space, of course, I was suspicious 🙄. After that experience I started looking for similar places to work, maybe I was living under a rock and Monterrey is growing its digital presence.

I found some kind of software companies and went to other interviews but they still had the old school mentality with strict hours, no remote possibilities and even in one company, they told me that they prefer buying templates so designers can tweak them as it is faster and safer… Those places were clearly not for me.

Then, Icalia Labs called again and on January 2nd I joined the team. Now 2 months and 3 sprints later I couldn’t be happier, great challenges, flexibility to manage my hours to keep working with my freelance clients and I’m even in the process of building one of two personal projects I have for this year.