Welcoming Vitor Domingos as our new Head of Technology

We are glad to share with you that Vitor Domingos has joined as our new Head of Technology here at YLD. He will be taking over the work of our lovely colleague Julie-Laure Mikulkis while she is on maternity leave. Vitor is passionate about technology and strategy with a vast amount of experience in digital transformation, software development and driving innovation.

Welcome to your current role as Head of Technology at YLD. What attracted you to it?

Ah! That’s an interesting question! I would say that it was a chance to work with some of the smartest folks in the industry and deliver world class tech and projects for even more interesting customers. The balance between challenges and opportunities was clearly the attracting proposition.

What strengths do you think are most important to succeed in this role?

Roles are just a manifestation of a company hierarchy and serve as a technical purpose of being the escalation point for something; the buck stops when it comes to responsibility. But actually I do believe that management roles are there to help the team and company, not the other way around. So for me it’s all about how I can help YLD, the team and our customers. That’s the important metric for me.

How do you see working at YLD will differ from other companies you’ve worked for (switching from corporates to start ups)?

It’s a different scale and market, for sure. That’s important because you’re often attached to something you do for so long that you forget how the other side of the market works and what it needs. YLD sits in the middle — an interesting startup that wants to scale and grow. Tackling real market problems and delivering the right solution, not for us, but for our customers, being transparent, leader in its area and with a great team — those are important and relevant key aspects of the YLD value proposition that made me accept the challenge.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given in your career?

No one can do everything alone. You always need a team, a group of people that you need to work with. That’s a capital mistake for unsuccessful teams and companies. The moment you realise you’re doing it all alone, then it’s not going to work and you’ll only beat yourself even more. Delegation — the right one at the right time — is one of the most important skills people need to learn and practise.

What professional accomplishment are you most proud of? Why?

Ah! That’s almost impossible! For me every project or company I worked for was always very interesting. Successes can be very rewarding, but failures are even greater learning experiences. But then, like on every mutual fund prospect, “past performance is no guarantee of future results”. From delivering a banking platform, managing elections voting systems or the national citizen ID cards, building a startup, working for a world leading cloud company, doing rich and guerrilla marketing and communication, to working with FTSE100 companies, I can’t just pick one. That can be featured on another video, for sure!

Do you have a specific mantra you live by?

What can I offer to help? What can I learn? That’s the most important thing for me in my career — offer my experience, from fixing problems to thought leadership, but also asking ‘what can I learn from it?’ Finding that balance is important and sometimes really hard to achieve. As Churchill once said, “success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.

What three words would you choose to describe yourself as a tech leader?

I’m a technologist, strategist and evangelist. That’s exactly how I would describe myself throughout my career, especially now. I do love technology to the core — understand how it works, experiment and put it into practice, helping customers dealing with complex problems, fixing them. Strategy comes easily, as in the past 10 years I have been advising companies, teams, leaders and stakeholders on the best journey for them to get results and thought leadership. Then the evangelist comes right after, as I do like to talk and motivate these teams, companies and individuals with a solution focused communication and technology bias.

How do you keep your technology skills current?

It’s really hard nowadays. There’re so many things and so little time. But like a teacher that every year needs to adapt, learn new things so that he can teach his students, tech people should also spend some time learning new skills or new ways of doing things. I find that if you’re active in tech — work-wise — then those new skills appear by necessity. You need to adapt and evolve. But if you’re on the business side of things, then having side projects can really help you achieve those new tech skills, by doing it yourself. For me, keeping myself in the news loop, engaging with interesting people, doing my pet projects are motivations to keep moving forward (then actually applying the knowledge to my daily work).

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out their career in tech?

Never settle. Keep challenging yourself. If you have a goal, a direction or a motivation different from what you’re doing now, then go for it. Life is too short to be sorry. A good tech person, in my opinion, is someone who can thrive from difficult situations, and change is the most harsh of them all. Not only in tech, but also in life. The more you practise, the better you’ll be at it.

What are you looking forward to in future with YLD?

Driving on a motorway with a fast car can be a very rewarding experience, but actually, going off-road, passing over bumps and hard situations is even more interesting, fun and memorable. The first situation is how I would like the market to see us, and the latter, how internally we can and must be. But most of all, at the end, it’s about the ride and the company — we’re just starting.

Welcoming Vitor Domingos as our new Head of Technology was originally published in YLD Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.