Interview ‘Jóvenes con Futuro USA’: “The best thing about Silicon Valley is working with extremely talented people in the biggest tech companies in the world”
The Banco Sabadell Foundation is taking part in the ‘Jóvenes con Futuro’ programme together with Stepone, in order to help recent engineering graduates from Spain to have the opportunity to showcase their talent in the top tech companies in the United States. Thanks to this programme, these young professionals can take part in a six-month internship.
Some of them have already started their internships and are living their American adventure… as is the case of Antonio Borrero, originally from Mazagón – a small coastal town in the province of Huelva – who has started his internship in a start-up in San Francisco working as an engineer in Quiri, a tech company that provides analytics to the retail sector…
Antonio, you have already worked in tech companies in the UK and you are not new to the sector… what differences have you found between these start-up ecosystems and in terms of the work culture?
The biggest difference is in terms of size. London has a good ecosystem of strong start-ups and talented people, but the concentration here in San Francisco is incredible. You can easily walk down the street and go to an event and meet people who work for Amazon, who are engineers in Google or other companies which are known throughout the world. As regards the work culture, I can’t generalise, but I think the biggest difference is in the importance of the role of engineers over here in terms of decision-making processes.
What do you like most about working in California?
What I like most about living and working here is, without a doubt, the fact that I am working side by side with extremely talented people in a place where the most important and most well-known tech companies in the world started out or are currently based. I’ve had the chance to have lunch in the Heroku offices, to go to events at the Uber offices and take part in Hackathons in the GitHub offices. This is something I never would have been able to do if I hadn’t come here.
What do you think about the fact that organisations and programmes like Jóvenes con Futuro are promoting talent in young people such as yourself?
I think it’s great and I am very grateful to them. Jóvenes con Futuro is doing an incredible job in promoting this type of opportunity, and they make it easier for Spanish developers to go to Silicon Valley or New York (another incredibly significant ecosystem). I never thought of coming to this part of the world until I read about the programme, and I am very grateful for the smooth process that they have and the efforts that they go to to create and maintain a community among the engineers who have come here with the programme.
Do you think that this opportunity will open doors for you in your career, both if you come back to Europe or decide to stay in the United States?
I am quite sure that many doors will be opened for me, as well as for others taking part and who have taken part in the programme in the past. I also think that I will be offered opportunities because of the prestige and experience that you can get as an engineer after working in Silicon Valley, but also because I am learning so much and there is still so much more that I’m going to learn. I still have another 12 months here! This is a very special place for engineers.