How One Mission Member Solved a Generations-Old Family Mystery

And discovered a new career path in the process

Every software engineer has their own “Aha!” moment. For Manuel Puentes, it came in the form of a mysterious encrypted message written by his great-grandmother. When he cracked its code, he was rewarded with a new vision for his professional future: he wanted to be a full-time developer.

Born in La Plata, Argentina, Manu began his relationship with coding around 11 years old, when he started playing around with the “really ugly” QBasic. But it would be the humanities he pursued when he began his college education, choosing to study psychology.

For what it’s worth, the surrealists, including Magritte, were deeply fascinated with psychology and the unconscious mind as well. When Robin Westhaver, Mission’s Operations Manager, and I met with Manu via Zoom one afternoon, an illusory painting based on Magritte’s work (done by the contemporary artist @LeanDIY) hung on the wall over his left shoulder. What attracted Manu to the print is the industrial craft on display, with its hand-painted gradient, having had some professional printing experience while in college.

This line of work brought Manu to Argentina’s CONICET — the National Scientific and Technical Research Council. It was there that he learned research techniques and processes that would later help him as a fullstack developer at places like PayPal and PWC.

“At PayPal, there was an issue we couldn’t reproduce. We only had reports with very little information in them. There was no way to check it. We looked through the code and nothing came up.”

The problem had been a source of anxiety in the company for at least a year before Manu joined. He decided to approach the issue just as he would a research challenge at the CONICET.

“I started asking questions. When do people encounter this problem? When they do, are they still able to sign in or not? Still able to use the app or not?”

The method paid off. Before long, Manu had determined that an extension was causing the problem, and although they couldn’t say exactly which was doing so, “We knew the problem was not ours and not as big a deal as we first thought. And that was enough for us!”

When a new government took power in Argentina, one which was not so keen on funding the sciences, Manu was just beginning to seek out a scholarship to continue his research studies. When none turned up, he saw two paths open up: leave the country, and his family, in order to continue his education, or go all-in on the programming work he had up until now only done freelance.

What decided it for him was a fatalistic encounter with an encrypted message written by his great-grandmother.

“My great-grandmother was a fascinating woman. She was a strong character at a time and place when women didn’t have a lot of power. She not only worked by herself, she was the director of her own school. She was also a political activist.”

So when he came across the mysterious message while cleaning out his great-uncle’s home after he passed, he thought for sure the message was something important.

“I stopped taking as much freelance work. For weeks, I was all-in on figuring out what this note said. It was the middle of the pandemic and I didn’t have much else to do anyway.”

When he finally solved it — realizing that it was a substitution code where letters were swapped for invented characters — he laughed.

“It was just a silly note from my great-grandmother to my great-grandfather, scolding him for forgetting something from the store.”

But what he discovered from the experience ended up being very important after all.

“I realized I had more fun working with this code for weeks than I did with research. With that kind of work, I’d get bored after even 6 hours of work.”

Considering the practical obstacles to pursuing a career in the humanities, being reluctant to leave his family behind to do so, he decided to commit to the development work that had financially sustained him through college.

From his freelance work, he learned that “coding is only 10% of the value you add.” You have to be able to articulate what your client needs for them, as many lack the vocabulary to do so on their own. His subsequent corporate experience furthered these skills, and his recent experience at Mission has only furthered the learning he’s done to perform his front- and back-end work at the highest level.

“It’s something that’s unique to smaller teams, as opposed to working at giant corporations. You have the opportunity and need to learn new things.”

These days, when he’s not working hard with his Mission squad, Manu stays busy as a “full-time father”. At nearly 2-years-old, she’s “very demanding, to be honest,” he says with a smile.

His last project outside of officiating working hours was designing an online donation app for libraries to solicit financial support.

“It’s like the Buy Me a Coffee app (biblioteca-ghiraldo.com.ar), but for these institutions in need. Otherwise, here in Argentina, they don’t have many ways of fundraising.” This may be another example of his background in psychology impacting his current work.

“It helped me put myself in others’ shoes. I always ask myself what the user or client is really experiencing. That helps me identify how to really meet their needs.”

A skill from which the Mission member community and our clients alike will surely benefit.