Two months ago it was an important day for me. It was the day that I finally told my partners at Igalia that I’d be leaving the company, after almost seven years. It hasn’t been an easy decision to make and so this hasn’t been an easy post to write either… yet one I’d like to write anyway.

But let’s push the rewind button for a moment now…

I’ve joined Igalia on November 2005, initially as a trainee while I was finishing my studies of Computer Science Engineering, and got quickly hooked by the company, the people that was part of it back then and the kind of project they were trying to build.

Igalia as a company is one of a kind, you can be sure of it, and I felt enormously lucky for having found it and having been granted with the privilege of being part of it. And best of all… it happened to have its main office in my own town! I just couldn’t believe it…

I even still recall now how many mates of mine in the Faculty were telling me, back in the days of the University, things like “that Linux thing you like so much is not worth it”, “forget about Open Source, you won’t ever make a living out of it” or even “well, maybe there’s a chance for you to work on that, but it’s definitely not going to happen here”.

I have to say I never believed much in any of those statements (well, maybe a bit the last one), but I swear I couldn’t have ever imagined that I’d be able to prove all of them wrong at the same time without even having to move out of the country, let alone the town.

It was too good to be true. But it was true and real… it definitely was real.

And turns out that what started as a 3-month internship in late 2005, became my first permanent job (and the only one so far) when I became a regular employee on February 2006, to finally become a partner of the company in 2010. Not bad.

I worked on many different projects across all these years, from system administration tasks and pure web development to application development over the GNOME and the Maemo platforms, to end up working on what it probably became the most challenging and interesting thing I’ve ever worked on: the WebKit project and, more specifically, the WebKitGTK+ port.

Additionally, I also met a lot of awesome people while there, both inside Igalia and outside (e.g. at conferences), in some cases  becoming closer to “actual friends” than to “just work mates”, which is yet another great thing I will always feel lucky and grateful for.

In other words, I grew up there, both at the professional and the personal level, and I feel endlessly grateful for that. I’m sure my life wouldn’t have been the same now without that stage in my life, so I don’t have more than good words and thoughts about it.

However, and even if I still think Igalia is an awesome place to be part of, I’ve been lately feeling like I needed a change, to try something new, to move on…

I’m not sure about how much that could be related to the fact that my life is now quite different than seven years ago, and that perhaps my priorities could have shifted now I have my own family, but the fact is that at some point I very clearly saw that I would need to try something else, to change some things and patterns in my life, kind of a “fresh restart”.

And after so much thinking, I suddenly realized such a  change couldn’t ever happen if I stayed in Igalia, since it would probably require that the company stopped being as it is in some ways. And that’s something I don’t think I should ask for “just because I felt that way”. That would be too selfish, don’t you think?

So I made the only decision I thought it made sense: to quit.

Sure it was hard, and even tough at some moments, to make such a decision. But once I made it for real, I have to say I felt very well about it, as if everything was making sense once again, as if the puzzle I was trying so hardly to solve was finally complete.

In any case, this doesn’t mean I want to work on something completely different either. In my lollipop world, my plan is to keep working around the Open Source world as much as possible, hopefully also around GNOME and WebKit, the two platforms I learned to love during these years. Well, actually for the case of GNOME I must say it’s a platform I already loved before joining Igalia, but I can’t deny that being part of that company played a major role to help me get more involved on it, so that’s why I think it deserves some credit.

Fortunately, I’m a lucky guy and I can already say that, just two months after making that decision and starting looking for new opportunities, I already found a job where I think I’ll be able to keep working in what I love (see paragraph above) while, at the same time, being also able to try something different and new compared to what I’ve done so far.

Additionally, I think this new job will also help me find answers to the questions that have been crossing my mind lately, let alone learning new stuff… I’m sure I’ll learn a lot of new stuff as well, something I already can’t wait for.

Anyway, I won’t start working there until January, so let’s go step by step.

First I needed to write this post to tell the world about my new situation (check). Second, I need to use these “two months in nowhere” to re-organize my life and arrange many different things related to the short-term (work in progress). Finally, I’ll start that new stage in my life and finally announce here where I’m going to, something I’d rather keep for another post.

Surely I know all this will mean big challenges for both me and my family (we’ll be moving abroad, to begin with), but those are challenges we’re willing to face and can’t wait for. In a way, I kind of feel like I did 7 years ago right before joining Igalia, when I just finished my studies at the University and still had no clue what I was going to do with my life. Back then, the future looked uncertain and full of opportunities at the same time, and if I now look backwards I can clearly see it was even better than what I’ve would ever have expected. Really.

And you know what? That’s exactly how I feel right now, and that’s a feeling I’m liking a lot. And believe me, I’m pretty much aware that my current situation (married and with two children) is quite different compared to 7 years ago. Yet it doesn’t scare me well enough not to feel thrilled about this new stage in our life, a stage I’m already eager to deal with.

So it’s time to move on. I won’t ever forget the great time I had at Igalia, all the people I met here and all the good things that being part of such an special company brought to my life, but I also think now it’s time to look forward and focus on the future.

I have the most amazing family in the world and we’ll be together on this through thick and thin, so I’m already sure we’ll be fine. It’s just a matter of time we’ll get there, so what else can I ask for?

Just wish us good luck. That should do the rest :)