Ten Questions with Jojo Paderes

This week we continue our quest to get to know well-known Filipino developers and this time I was able to catch Jojo Paderes, one of the founding board members of PinoyJUG, coder-extraordinaire at Viewlocity and father to two lovely twins.

Ten Questions with Jojo Paderes

1.) What's your real name and where are you from?
My "birth" name is Joselito Paderes. My "preferred" name is Jojo. I grew up at the rolling hills of 1st District of Caloocan but currently resides with my wife and twins at Makati.

2.)Who do you work for? Give me a 10 second pitch on them. Why would I want to buy their product or service?
I work for Supply Chain Consulting, specifically with Viewlocity, a product-development company based at Dallas Texas.

Why would you want to buy their product and avail their consulting services? Because we can deliver these features with our cutting-edge products: just-in-time delivery optimization, real-time monitoring of your supply chain, and a good view on how your business contributes to a "greener" world :)

3.) What brought you to your current employer?
Hmmm ... there are three reasons: (1) I got homesick and want to go back to the Philippines (2) I was invited back by my former boss if i'm interested to work with them again (and I really want to work with him again). (3) I heard that viewlocity is an exciting company to work with, so i joined them.

4.) Tell me your "How I got into IT story..."
That's a touchy question hehe. Well, I started out as a equipment/electrical engineer at one of the factories at Technopark Laguna.

Back then, the career path for an electrical engineer graduate was unclear to me. I was scared with the idea that I'll be stuck at a manufacturing factory at Laguna for the rest of my life! Then a colleague introduced me into programming, I took a course at Ateneo Makati and found out that I do like to code. Then the rest is history

5.) How is it like to be a busy coder and a dad of twins?
To be honest, it's two different roles that don't mix well :) Well right now I don't do much coding anymore. I spent most of my time planning the daily chores for the team, providing guidance on technical tasks. Probably I'll just get a few hours to code but not really much.

But at home I make sure that I spend some quality time with the twins. I find it more difficult to understand what my kids want than what to do with a crappy code :)

And oh yeah, I'm still a noob when it comes to changing diaphers! Hahaha.

6.) Describe a typical Jojo day?
I have these reminders stored in my blackberry just to remind me of my daily routines. I always come early at the office to avoid the rush. I usually start off reading some comments and feedbacks from our countarparts at Dallas, then review the daily progress of my team on the project. It's a typical team lead role where I'm expected to plan out things properly and provide direction on most things but I still get some spare time to do technical work. Currently I'm focusing on streamlining our SCM process which I think is too bloated for just a simple project.

I think this blog would best describe my role right now: http://andrewtokeley.net/archive/2008/04/12/do-you-really-want-to-be-a-development-team-leader.aspx

7.) Any non-technical hobbies? What are they and why?
I'm a big fan of metal music. I have these 300+ cd collection of various metal and rock bands. I also like to listen to jazz and blues, but metal is still the best form of music for me.Other than listening to music, I'm doing some sideline learning on stock trading and the financial market in general. I spend some time on my weekend learning chart/technical analysis, and plan out the best financial portfolio for my retirement.

8.) Whats your advice to people who want to shift their career to IT? Any tips on what they should do become great in this field?
Choose the SAP career path! It pays more and they can get most of their time with other useful stuff like stock trading :)

But seriously, they should first check out what really drives them to be passionate about their work. The difficult thing with IT especially with programming is to keep up with the latest trends and advancements in computer technology. It's a never-ending cycle of learning and re-learning.

My tip on what they should do to become great in this field? Practice a lot (i.e. contribute to open source projects, or write your own foss project). Read up on quality books (especially those listed at the Jolt Awards site). Also, find a good mentor and company that would help you in building up those programming skills.

9.) What's your advice to developers on how to save their well-earned money for the future?
Well it depends at which country they are currently staying or plan to settle at :)

For a typical Filipino developer working at his/her homeland, there's no easy way to save up for the future. Unlike with countries like Singapore where citizens enjoy a fixed-income retirement fund from their government, Filipinos can't rely much from their government to support their financial needs.

The best they can do are (1) learn personal finance planning and take charge of their own financial fitness (2) learn how to invest in various financial products, take up courses and read books about investments (3) be frugal (and don't try to impress people with material things with diminishing value/returns.

10.) Last question, what's your message to the person who used to sit beside you in your last job?
Haha, go and get a life Lah!

You can read more about Jojo's life and exploits in his blog at http://jojopaderes.blogspot.com/