Careers in Tech: My name is Federico

My name is Federico Gomez-Suarez.

I'm originally from Pueblo, Mexico.

Most of my family are engineers

but they are engineers who do things

with their hands

I turned out to be an engineer who codes

I write software which scans images

looking for bad images. Images that we know are illegal.

I work very closely with organizations
like the national center for missing children

at the end of the day the kind
of content that we work on is content

we just don't want to have online and we are
impacting the people who have been

affected by that content

I'm just making sure it doesn't get distributed again. When I was about 12 or 13

there was a research lab close to where.
I used to live. Turned out that they needed.

Someone who could code, I really couldn't code at that time but I said I'll do it.

I'll work on this for the summer so I
started working at the lab and I had

there my book of C language that I was
just reading through trying to learn how

to move this little engine and it took
me forever to just figure it out but

eventually worked. I just enjoy doing it

I would stay late at night until I
started working and I realized that

there was something I really liked doing. When I
was in my freshman year in Mexico, in a

small school I decided I wanted to work
for any other big companies in the US so

I sent my resume to every company I knew

and I didn't hear anything for a year.
All of the sudden, I got an email saying

Microsoft was coming to recruit and I
prepared, went all in and I didn't pass

the first interview but they saw that I
was so passionate about doing something

with code that they interviewed me the next
year and after that I ended up coming

here to Microsoft. To solve a real-life
problem is not only about the code, the

code is a piece of it but you need to think
about the whole in a system. And Microsoft

has people who have expertise in all the
different areas so I meet with lawyers

I meet with business analyst. I meet with
different people in the company to be

able to understand the problem better
and together trying to really find a

solution. Usually I spend the mornings meetings
and do that kind of work and then in

evening I just put my headphones on and
you start coding. Find something that

you're passionate about like a problem
in the world that you think is important

and then look how you can partner
with nonprofit or find people who are

already working there and help them. You
know use your skill, use your passion, use

your energy to help solve a problem. You
will realize that you can bring a lot to

the table, come up with new ideas on how
you can have impact, just keep knocking

doors eventually one does open.