Hi, I’m Thomas. I know you’re in a hurry, so I’ll keep it short.

TL;DR Today I’m a Ruby Software Engineer & Team Leader at Telepass (Padua, Italy) and, labels aside, I solve problems with software: I live among the Ruby on Rails microservices that run Telepass Assicura and the team behind them.

If you’ve got a minute, here’s how I got here: through the problems I’ve solved over the years (starting from the beginning) and the hat I was wearing each time. Because job titles tell you what I can do — not why or for whom. I even wrote about it.

One bit of context, because it helps later: I describe myself as a T-shaped profile — a lot of depth in one thing (the vertical) and breadth across many others (the horizontal). The term is from 1991, by David Guest; Morten Hansen and Bolko von Oetinger tell it well in Harvard Business Review. My vertical is programming; the horizontal is everything I’ve built around it, driven by curiosity. I’ll show you both — first the problems I solved by programming, then the rest.

The problems I’ve solved

I started at IKS (2013–2016), on very concrete problems: a web application to map a client’s banking infrastructure, REST APIs for a ticketing system used by mobile and web apps, integrations between enterprise systems, and a bit of R&D on MongoDB.

Then came the seven years at SeeSaw (2016–2023), the chapter where I did the most. Everything revolved around a payments management platform: a microservices architecture in Ruby on Rails, with infrastructure managed via Saltstack and development environments in Docker and Docker Compose. I handled the integrations with the various payment gateways and all the troubleshooting a distributed system inevitably brings. (It’s also where I widened my scope toward product and business — but I’ll get to that in a moment.)

And today, at Telepass (since 2023), I work on the Ruby on Rails microservices on Google Cloud that handle quotes, policies and customer records for Telepass Assicura, and that have to talk to internal systems and partners without missing a beat.

Beyond the code: business and people

Here’s the horizontal. Programming stays my depth — the craft I know best and the one I always come back to — but I’m curious by nature, and curiosity is the engine that has always pushed me beyond the code and kept me questioning myself. So, over the years, around it I’ve built the rest.

The first step outward was toward business. At SeeSaw, alongside the code, I moved into product management, business development and leading the team: understanding where the product could grow, spotting opportunities, holding the group together and keeping a direct line with clients — listening to them, turning their needs into solutions, and checking that those solutions actually solved the problem. It’s the same work I do when I have to get business and the technical team to talk: turning a “we need to ship now” into sustainable choices, explaining the trade-offs, and when needed protecting the project from one shortcut too many. I wrote about it in Flight2Oasis with my “FDD”, and it’s the spirit of my “Simplicity Pathfinder”: simple, functional solutions — because simple doesn’t mean easy.

Then there are the people, a part that grew along with me: what I had started doing at SeeSaw became, at Telepass, the role of Engineering Manager of the Ruby team — a hat that’s a direct result of that path. I enjoy helping those around me grow outside the company too: I’m a mentor at the University of Padua (the testimonials are among my publications), I’ve run the Programmers in Padua community since 2016, and since 2017 I’ve been on conference stages sharing what I learn (it’s all in the talks).

And finally, something you wouldn’t expect: theater. For some years now it’s been my testing ground — a safe place to face fears, moods and emotions, to get to know myself better and train listening and communication. It comes in handy every time I talk to a client, a colleague or a manager.

In a nutshell

In the end the “T” is all here: deep where it counts — programming — and wide enough to understand the business and people. Maybe that’s why people who talk to me often say I “don’t seem like a programmer”: probably because I do a lot of things and I’m curious by nature. I take it as a compliment.

If you’re after a different perspective — technical, but with an eye on the business and on people — get in touch. The best things usually start with a good question.

We do not desire what is easy to obtain. Ovid

The greatest danger for us is not that we aim too high and miss our goal, but that we aim too low and achieve it. Michelangelo Buonarroti