The big advertising dream job!
In 2026, you have to be metric-ready and outcome-friendly. I get it: there are a lot of people trying to get a job in a crowded and unstable market, so we need a person-schema of ourselves in an “up-to-two-page” CV. But wait—what about all those stories that lie adjacent to that? Here's one.
The year was 2008, and I was giving Red Hat Linux sysadmin courses, as well as implementation and support, through LinuxParaTodos.net, one of the biggest GNU/Linux forums in Mexico and LATAM back then. That's another interesting story; I’ll leave it here if you're curious.
One day, a good old friend called me. Alan Millan, who was working for a prestigious advertising agency in Mexico City: Comunicaciones Alazraki, a big-deal hit maker in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Carlos Alazraki was one of the most recognizable names in the advertising world. They had some of the best TV spots I had ever seen. They were creative, funny, and incredibly memorable. The ad trifecta.
I was at home when the phone rang.
- Alan, mi chingón! What's up?
- Hey man, I remember that you’re in software development, right?
- Sí, a huevo!*
*At this moment, –Sí, a huevo!– communicated: “Yeah, I do programming,” but in reality meant: “I’ve done some basic stuff, but, yeah, I can’t resist a challenge.”
I was overconfident. For the past four years, I had been working as a Linux sysadmin. I had taken one, yes, one PHP/MySQL course with Sandino Flores, who at that time was working at Ximian. Sandino was, to me, one of the best developers I’d ever had the chance to learn from, work with, and share deep conversations with. Of course, I felt the urge to try... why not?
Alazraki was taking aggressive steps toward adopting and innovating with technology in advertising. They had on their side a key character for this, Alberto Levy, a visionary like I had never met before. So, of course, I wanted the gig!
I did an interview the following week and got hired on the spot. My job title was a relaxed: "El chico de sistemas" — “The IT kid,” since I had always looked younger than I actually was.
By 2012, I was the IT Director at Comunicaciones Alazraki, but that's another story.