I'm Gepser Hoil, maybe not the most common name you've ever heard. I am from Guatemala, a small country that is located just below Mexico.
I am dedicated to leading technology teams, sometimes in the CTO and Engineering Manager positions. I have also spent several years of my life working as a Software Engineer and Infrastructure Engineer.
There are two things I plan to do all my life; one is to learn every day about many topics like languages, cooking, technology, etc. And the other thing is to travel, and not just short trips but also long trips, moving to a new country and living in a new one for a few years and taking the opportunity to get to know neighboring countries.
Where do I come from?
I grew up in a family with not so many economic resources, leading me to work informally selling apples from age 8. Other jobs I remember were attending a store, drawing water from a well, being a mechanic, a math teacher, a computer teacher, and a drawing teacher, helping my mom sell street food, being an agent in a call center, and being a building doorman. Not in that order, necessarily.
I learned a lot from all the jobs (and maybe I will write about them later), but the one that undoubtedly changed my life more than any was when I worked helping my dad in the civil registry since it was there that I first had access to a computer. I will extend this story later.
What did I study?
I was about to study architecture but found out that it was a very expensive degree and that I couldn't afford it. The same with medicine, which was another of my options. I decided to study Science and Systems Engineering because all I needed was a computer, or so I thought.
My taste in traveling
Since I was a child, I knew that traveling was my thing. We move more times than I can remember, maybe once a year or more. It seemed incredible to me that you could change your entire context and start from scratch in another place, with new people and new experiences.
As soon as I could and still without money, being a minor, I traveled to Panama, where I lived for a month, and then returned other times, always trying to live there as long as possible. I also visited El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica on one of the trips to Panama
When I had a formal job, I visited the United States for the first time in 2015. Attending technology conferences. The first time I went to Node Interactive, but to be honest, I was more interested in the trip than the lectures.
In 2018, while working for PayPal (in Guatemala), I dropped everything and moved to Mexico with my family to work on a startup. An experience that left me with many lessons and friends for life.
In 2021 I moved back to Guatemala, but to another city where I had never lived before, and at the same time I started working remotely for a German company.
By mid-2022 I moved again with my whole family, this time to Berlin.
I don't think this will be the last time I move, but I still don't know what the next step is. At the moment I plan to visit all of Europe.
Hobbies
When I'm not working, I'm reading, spending time with family, traveling, taking photos, cooking, learning about history, health, cooking, technology, and more, walking (my favorite way to exercise), talking with friends who are usually in other countries, doing a side project (with code or not), watching a series or movie or playing chess.
