So you want to know a bit more about me? Well, my name is Miguel and it’s lovely to meet you! My parents are Spanish but I grew up in Belgium and then moved to Scotland to study Chemical Engineering. I am fluent in Spanish, French and English.
I will never understand why I picked that degree, but I do love Legos and a bit of at-home DIY. After university, or ‘college’ for the Americans, I began working as a Research Engineer in the Netherlands. The lonely ‘lab life’ wasn’t for me and I quickly moved to London to join the Tech grad scheme of GSK.
Big Bad Pharma was actually great fun, I travelled the world for three years non-stop pretty much and got to go to some incredible places like Cape Town, Karachi, Rio de Janeiro, Puerto Rico and Nashville. As a functional consultant, I migrated ERP systems as a result of mergers, acquisitions or divestments, and learnt a ton about all sorts of systems. I got to learn about some pretty old tech like JD Edwards (black/green screen, you get the idea) as well as more trendy Big Data and Process Data Mining tools. I had great mentors, a top manager, and an amazing team which always had my back and was there to support me when I needed it. And when I did not need their support they would give me a lot of crap in many many ways.
Fast forward to 2019/20 and Covid grounded me. No more earning air miles or hotel points. No more business class flights or memorizing the Top10 restaurants at a new destination. Being at home was bizarre after 3 years on the road so I decided to change jobs and joined Amazon.
I sort of got fooled by applying to a tech-y sounding job ad when, in fact, the role was in a non-tech Operations organization that had been recently launched: Capacity Planning for Last Mile. I have spent the last three years building processes and systems to drive accurate and cost optimal modeling of Amazon’s labor needs throughout the year, which exceed $1B/yr in cost. In a very simplistic way, my job is to ensure my internal customers’ job is as easy as possible. My core customers are 50 short term planners, 50 medium term planners and 1000 Ops personnel.
Today, I lead a small cross-functional team of 8 people. We do everything from data engineering, front-end engineering, backend systems , APIs, GenAI implementation, Excel, Data Analysis, Business Analysis and above all, have a good time.
This is all for now, it’s midnight. If you want to know more about me, hit me up in the comments
My Favorite Sunset Spot
Arpoador, located between the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro is, without a doubt, the best spot to watch the sunset. Trust me, it’s magical. The sun hides itself between 2 peaks (Dos Irmaos, GREAT hike btw). There are surfers riding waves until it’s dark. Fit people are always playing volleyball for viewing pleasure, there’s Acai bowls if you fancy a healthy-ish ice cream, and the temperature is always phenomenal. Finally, shout out to the Brazilians, or Cariocas de llama, people on the beach are always such a good vibe. There’s always some music, dancing or games going on here!
My Favorite Word
Slogan. It does not sound sexy, but it’s history sure is. It originates from “sluagh gairm” in Scotch Gaelic which means “army shout.” These were shouted when people went to battle, unlike nowadays where we associate them to marketing campaigns or brands. Whenever people mention we need a slogan, I picture in my head a bunch of very manly vikings yelling “rah ar rah ba da da da” as they advance towards the enemy, not a bunch of suits designing the next Big Mac campaign! I’m lovin it 😛