Written by Lorenzo.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius- 

We spend most of our lives studying and working, so how can we be totally happy? The answer is really simple: find a job we love

When I had to choose which course to attend during my university studies, the first question that I asked myself was: “How can I make big money?”, I started thinking about being a doctor, a businessman, or a politician, but actually I didn’t like any of those jobs. So I immediately asked another question: “What would I like to be?”, an artist, an archaeologist, an architect, a designer….mmmm…too many options…I thought and thought about it, and finally I made my choice: computer engineering, that was the answer.

I started my studies and I didn’t even know what a computer engineer does, but I didn’t care about that, I loved computers, math, technology, what else? I really wanted to be an engineer.

So I finally started programming. I liked it but at the beginning I found it very difficult, I spent most of the time feeling stupid, everyone around me knew how to program but me, I had never studied it before, and it was the discovery of a new world for me…..Hello world!

I found the whole experience very confusing, until the end of my third academic year, when I started to develop on Android. It was not just a project, it was the project for my bachelor’s degree thesis, I worked on it all summer long and the weird thing was that I didn’t have an android device to test it, so I always used the simulator, it was so painful (all android developers can feel my pain).

Finally it was time to go back to university and there I met a friend of mine that owned an Android device, I built the app on his device and when I ran it, I got my first experience of what I would like to be in my life: a mobile developer, it was so exciting, seeing my app working on a real device.

At the beginning of the studies for my master’s degree I got a MacBook and during my spare time I started to study how to develop iOS applications, I loved it, and each time that I had to do a project in order to pass an exam, I asked to my professor to work on Android or iOS, I was really addicted.

During my last year of studies I went to the University of Hertfordshire in order to attend an internship for my master’s degree thesis, and it was there that I fall in love with London, one of the greatest cities in the world, and I decided to do everything I could in order to work there.

But it’s easy to dream, everyone can do that. The hardest part for me was in February, after I got my master’s degree, in that moment there were few spaces for the dream and a wild world was waiting for me. I got many good permanent job offers from different parts of Italy, also near my hometown, but no one of these excited me, I really wanted to go to London, I also got a position for a PhD at the University of Hertfordshire, but at the end I decided to discard this opportunity as well, I got a lot of opportunities but in the end I decided to discard everything.

Then I thought: “I want to be a mobile developer and I want to work in London, so let’s start to search for this job”. I left all my fears and I started sending my CV to different companies based in London, hoping for a positive answer.

A change may be just around the corner. 

It was March when I was finally contacted by Leto, I completed the test and the interview, my english wasn’t that good and I was scared of giving a bad impression, but then I received an email saying “we really enjoyed ‘meeting’ you over skype” and “we were very impressed with your skills and thought you may be a great fit for the team” and the most important “we’d be keen on having you join ‘our family’”. It was exactly what I was looking for, a family, not just a big company to working for, and those words sounded like “giving an ice water drink to somebody in hell” quoting Steve Jobs.

I started calling all my friends to tell them about this great news, my dream came true but the best was yet to come.

I joined the Leto team at the beginning of April, I was so shy and scared, but after a few days all the guys make me feel like a member of the family. I was impressed with how many things I learnt in such short amount of time, from every member of the team, not only in the mobile field. It was exactly what I was looking for: London, the job that I love, a relaxing work environment and really amazing people to work with and to learn from.

Every day I’m happy when I go to work, and every day I spend different hours after work working on my personal projects in order to improve my skills and become a better developer every day, that’s the only way to have success and become the best in your field.

I still have loads of things to learn, but thanks Leto I think that I’m on the right track, because if you don’t like your job, you’ll never be good at it, but if you love it, nobody can stop you.