Technology refers to any number of machines or tools driven by a non-human force. These machines could be from small items such as calculators to cars, planes, satellites and space ships.

​

Technology, with its pros and cons, has developed marvelously and has allowed life to be prolonged, it improves the health care and has improved our methods of production and distribution of goods like food and clothing  Technology has also contributed to the development of new manufacturing techniques and has made communication and transportation faster and more efficient.

​

My name is Victor Vargas and I love technology. I work as a Enterprise Architect in Hewlett Packard Enterprise, I am a futuristic enthusias a passionate student of aeronautics and a non-stop dreamer. My first job was with Banco Nacional de Costa Rica in 1998. Banco Nacional was founded in 1914, at that time also began the First World War anticipating a possible contraction in exports the government needed to boost domestic demand therefore it was decided to create the first state-owned bank, which was originally named Banco Internacional de Costa Rica. Between December 1998 and March 2000 I worked as a code programmer in COBOL for Mainframe computers and AS400. One of the things I remember the most from my time there, was the dreaded Year 2000 anomaly also known as year 2000, millennium bug, computer problem 2000 (PIA2000) or the numeronym Y2K, which was not more than a software error caused by the first programmers that omitted the century in the year to date storage (usually to save memory) assuming that the software would only work over the years whose names begin with 19.  This would mean that after December 31st, 1999, it would be January 1st, 1900 instead of January 1st, 2000. As we approach the year 2000, there were many rumors of economic catastrophes in the world. Correcting the problem cost billions of dollars worldwide. I remember how beautiful San Jose looked that night from the tenth floor of the main bank bulding, the highest building in Costa Rica at that time, twelve midnight arrived and nothing important happened, the systems were ready just as we expected, only some minor adjustments were necessary but everything looked good, we had survived the turn of the millennium.

​

By March 2000, I had adquired enough experience to draw the attention of consulting services firms in Costa Rica and it was through one of these that I said good bye to the bank and started working for the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. The ICE is a state company that provides electricity and telecommunication services in Costa Rica, it was born on April 8th, 1949; just after the Civil War in Costa Rica, to solve the problems of power shortages that occurred in Costa Rica in 1940. Due to my experience in financial systems and mainframe equipment, I was assigned to projects related with two critical applications: The Corporate Operations System (SIMO) and the Integrated Telephonic System (GITEL). My services were provided by Sysco Consultores, a technical consulting firm, its founders Richard Rodriguez and Cesar Camacho became very good friends of mine, my six years with them were certainly very helpful in the development of my career. 

​

During my time in these two companies the bulk of my studies were also happening in parallel. It began in late 1997 and ended in the same period of 2005 when I finish my Post Grade in Computing Engineering. These five years under the blanket of the academy was a very happy time in my life. The Universidad Latina de Costa Rica is one of the pioneers in the development of private higher education in the Costa Rica part of the Laureate International Universities network conected with  80 universities in 28 countries around the world.

​

By 2006, I was ready to take my career to international fields and it was when I started to work ing for Hewlett Packard, better known as HP, one of the largest companies in information technology in the world, based in Palo Alto, California. In Hewlett Packard I was initially assigned as middleware engineer for General Motors, position that I played for three years in which I had to use my best of my knowledge in Weblogic, Websphere, IIS, Apache Tomcat and others. General Motors Corporation was a car and truck company founded in 1908 and headquartered in Detroit. During the twentieth century and much of the 2000s, it was the first industrial group of automobile production, losing its leadership in 2009, as a result of a crisis that led to the bankruptcy of General Motors Corporation and leading to the General Foundation Motors Company.

​

By December 2009, I started working for Bank of America as an Midrage Desing and Build Engineer, responsible for the design and construction of Midrange environments particularly focused on virtualization projects. Bank of America Corporation is a bank-like business and financial services multinational headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets. In 2010, Forbes magazine listed Bank of America as the world's third largest company. The acquisition of Merrill Lynch made Bank of America the largest wealth management company in the world and plays an important role in the market for investment banking.

​

In October 2011, I started a 4-year journey with Cenovus Energy, Cenovus was formed on December 1st, 2009, when the Canadian corporation EnCana split into two different companies, Cenovus step by becoming a purely oil company, known as a responsible developer, with an emphasis on innovation, safety and environmental care. This assignment required me to stay in Calgary, Canada for a period of two months, where I could see firsthand the technology behind the responsible explotation of resources. My role as a Solutions Engineer led me specialize in tools such as Tibco Portal and Sitecore with whom I got three certifications in New York in mid-2013.

 

By 2015, I was promoted to Chief Engineer and assigned to Symantec Corporation. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Symantec has operations in more than forty countries. It was founded in 1982 by Gary Hendrix with the backing from the National Science Foundation and initially focused on projects related to artificial intelligence.

 

In 2016, Hewlett Packard and AVON Products initiated business and I was assigned as a Chief Engineer for their account, giving me the opportunity to learn more about a whole new industry for me: cosmetics. AVON popularly known as Avon Products was founded in New York in 1886 by David H. McConnell. Currently, the brand is present in over 135 countries worldwide and has 6 million distributors globally.