See You Soon, Ironhackers
Two years, many friendships and uncountable moments later
It’s the end of an era. Before I get too sentimental, let’s do this recap Ironhack-style.
User is able to
🐣 Help people change their lives
There are many things I didn’t expect before starting to work at Ironhack. One of them was the incredible evolution some students experience during the bootcamp. We’ve all heard unbelievable stories about students that turned their life around but seeing them first hand, participating in them, is an honor.
👨👩👧👦 Make friends that have become some of the most important people in my life
Hold your tears for now. More on this later.
🌍 Be part of a community in 9 countries (and counting!)
It might not sound impressing, but I could go to any of the 11 cities where there’s an Ironhack campus right now and feel at home there. While growing a lot, we kept the spirit of being a tight team. It’s like having a family all over the world.
🏗️ Build incredible things
I’ve talked about Ask Irene before so I won’t waste your time. If you want to know more about this project, you can read about it in its own post.
Challenges
🚀 Grow and adapt or perish
Since I joined Ironhack in 2017 both the Barcelona campus and the whole company have experienced huge growth. The number of campuses tripled, the local team and simultaneous courses more than doubled… you get the picture.
🤹♀️ Catering to everyone’s needs
Making everybody happy is never easy. Especially when you have to take into account future, current and past students; designers and developers; global and local teams; Education, Admissions, Growth, teachers… 🤯
Learnings
Let’s start by the obvious one. I’ve had the privilege of working with people I admire and learn a lot from them. Without teachers and TAs there would be no Ironhack. They make all the difference, I’ve seen it. But they are not the only ones that have taught me quite a few things — far from it. The list of staff members, students and partners that made this journey a beautiful learning experience is longer than one can imagine.
That said, my most important learning was…
💪 I can do extraordinary things
I can’t help but make a special mention here. Marc, you hired me (without you I wouldn’t be here I guess) and this is not the most important thing you did. Although you changed my perspective on many things, the opinion that has evolved the most is about myself. You never let me get away with my BS and that can be tough, but the crazy faith you had in me from the beginning made me trust and love myself in a way I couldn’t have imagined two years ago. You taught me to see myself through your eyes and I will never be able to thank you enough.
Highlights
It’s been an amazing ride but the most incredible of all has been, as you might have guessed by now, the people — or, as one of the best TAs ever would say, “piiiipol”. Staff, teachers, TAs, students, alumni… you made this fun every single day. I can safely say that I have never laughed so much at work and it’s all because of you.
More than that, when times got tough (and you know they did last year), you were always there to support me and make me feel loved. Remember what I said? Friends.
If I were to start from scratch
I know it’s a cliché but…
🔁 I would do it all over again
Recently I was doing a retro on my 2018 to see what should I start, keep or stop doing and I realized that most of the things that happened to me this year were related to Ironhack: learnings, relationships, joys, pains… even when they were not purely because of Ironhack they were somehow connected. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but one thing is clear: my life was really different before this adventure started.
Demo
No presentation can finish without a demo so here it is 👇
Next Steps
As I said before, this is the end. But not of my relationship with Ironhack — just my queendom. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me and expect me on ironbeers, hackshows and visiting other campuses 🥳 I won’t be a PM anymore but I will always be an ironhacker.
