Early code
Demos, family-business software and independent commercial projects before I had finished university.
MADRID ↔ GREAT BRITAIN
Carlos
Aganzo.
A few things.
In considerable detail.
I'm from Madrid, although I’ve lived in the UK for a long time now. I still carry quite a lot of my city with me: the dry humour, the impatience with anything too grand, and a certain affection for things that are a little rough around the edges.
I tend to be drawn to the same qualities in music, films and places. Things with some darkness in them, things that leave room for interpretation, and things that can be melancholy without trying too hard to be moving. I’m probably more interested than I should be in memory, passing time, and the strange way places and songs end up attached to particular versions of ourselves.
Most of what is on this site comes from that: places I’ve been, photographs I wanted to keep, music and films that stayed with me, and the occasional attempt to understand why.
A PERSONAL MODEL / UNPEER-REVIEWED
Mental load, approximately.
I have a tendency to build mental models for absolutely everything, including myself.
Mental load ≈ uncertainty × emotional importance × irreversibilityability to verify + ability to intervene
At work, the worst-case scenario is usually that I get fired.
Apparently, my brain considers that less serious than not knowing how something will turn out.
This model has not been peer reviewed.
Now
Subject to change without notice.
Follow a thread
01
03
Travel
A personal atlas. Long walks, several chapters and plans in unnecessary detail.
02Photography
Places, weather, light, and the occasional strange thing.
Lists
The films, music and other things that keep returning.
04The Aganzo archive
A surname, and the stories behind it. An archive taking shape.
WORK
Also, software.
Low-level by instinct. Generalist by management.
I wanted to work with computers from about the age of nine — roughly when I gave up on becoming an astronaut. By university I was already making demoscene-style demos, writing software for the family business, and taking on small commercial projects for companies on my own.
As a software engineer, I naturally drifted towards the lower layers: data access, systems work, banking and payments — more interested in the machinery underneath applications than in the applications themselves.
Management broadened that considerably: mobile software for managed service providers, analytics and business intelligence, payments at Sage, product engineering, and eventually the shared platforms underneath multiple products. Today I have management responsibility across several engineering teams and technical domains.
The conventional version → LinkedIn ↗Engineering
Data access, systems work, banking and payments. I generally preferred the plumbing underneath applications.
Management
Mobile MSP software, analytics and business intelligence, payments and product engineering.
Now
Management across multiple teams and domains: identity, authentication, permissions, shared services and distributed systems.