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Loading...Working with developers in different countries can make it hard to build trusted relationships. With that in mind, we introduce a rising star in Pentalog Mexico, developer Mario Diaz.
Meet Mario Mejia Diaz
Mario is a former Amazon Java developer who works in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has been a member of the Pentalog team since January 2021, and he is proud to be part of the accelerating trend of IT outsourcing in his home country.
Although he loved the experience of working for Amazon, Mario decided he needed a different kind of environment to take his skills to the next level. Pentalog may be a fraction of the size of Amazon, but for Mario, the company is the perfect place to do the work he loves with a team of like-minded colleagues.
“To be able to work for Amazon, yeah it was cool, but it wasn’t something I was really passionate about. Living in the U.S., far from my family, friends, and the many things that made me happy, it made me think, “Is this what I really want in my life?”
Once he accepted a position with Pentalog, he began applying all he learned at Amazon to start forging robust relationships with Pentalog’s partners. His time at Amazon broadened his view from simply developing a product to understanding holistically the business value of each product and how it will be used.
“Amazon is already a tech giant, with a lot of tested working processes and tools. You only have to learn and adapt to those when you join them,” Mario said.
“At Pentalog, most of our clients are startups, so you enter the client’s team thinking, ‘How can MY work help this company to grow?’ You improve the company’s software development processes, build in a way that can scale along with the company, and share your knowledge with other team members to increase overall team skills.”
He has even built new development systems for clients using the insights he gained from working with the top-tier development talent at Amazon.
Lessons Learned From His Time at Amazon
One of the first things Mario learned when he began working at Amazon is that when you work with the best of the best, you push yourself to rise to that level. Mario had to step out of his developer silo and become part of an integrated project team working on everything from DevOps to deployment.
Another culture shift he encountered was how — instead of simply developing a product to spec — Amazon developers focus relentlessly on what the customer needs from a product.
“Being ‘customer-obsessed’ means that sometimes you have to make decisions that will impact the final product. As a software engineer, you get used to building after all of the product-related decisions have been made. At Amazon, I had the power to change those decisions into something that I considered better.”
While new to Mario, this approach permanently shifted his perspective to include the human side of developing software. To this day, he finds himself considering things such as whether the product he is working on will help people or take jobs away from them.
Despite the valuable skills he was learning at Amazon, Mario found that the fast-paced development environment left little time to innovate and put his mark on high-quality products he could be proud of.
These days, Mario feels that he has mastered most of the technology that inspires him. He now uses that knowledge to create valuable IT solutions that benefit Pentalog’s customers and the people those customers serve.
The Best of Both Worlds
The family culture at Pentalog allows Mario to grow and refine his soft skills and forge deep connections with his co-workers and clients, neither of which was possible when working for a giant enterprise.
“At Pentalog, I participate in more meetings and I’m more responsible for the whole development cycle—from planning to development and deployment to monitoring and operational excellence. This requires you to develop all your soft skills so you can communicate effectively, argue your case with others, decide what needs to be done first, etc.”
Joining the Pentalog team also gave Mario the chance to move back home to Mexico, which has been a great choice for him personally and professionally.
Surrounded by friends and his teammates at Pentalog, Mario is able to achieve the kind of work-life balance he always wanted and continue his challenging work as a developer.
When he isn’t working, Mario enjoys learning about nutrition and fitness, spending time with friends, and restoring old video games.
“I had been watching videos to learn about retro technology—how it worked, what challenges the engineers encountered, how that tech evolved into what we have today. For me, it was magical to see stuff that was practically trash look brand new again. So, I bought a lot of broken Game Boys and gave it a shot.”
Mario’s love of learning turned even his hobby into an opportunity to improve his development skills.
“When I did those restoration projects, I realized that hardware is just a bunch of components working together, and the same applies to software. Every app, every system, every OS is just a bunch of software components working together. When you build software from scratch, you try to keep this philosophy in mind and split every piece of logic into its own component, isolated from everything else. This increases software quality.”
Mario joined a team of world-class IT talent at Pentalog’s Mexico office, and he is proud to be a part of this community. The technology sector is booming in Guadalajara, and this fast-growing metropolitan area is quickly earning a reputation as Mexico’s IT outsourcing and technology epicenter.
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