About Mel Abutin

Hi, I’m Maria Amelia II Abutin, “Mel” or “Melski” as what my friends would call me. I’m a single mom to my two tweener boys, Amiel my sonshine and Dave my adorable nephew. I’ve always wanted to be a writer and joined school papers grade school to college. I’m a journalism graduate at University of the Philippines but never got to officially practice writing as a profession.

Right after graduation, I wanted to be in a high wage job to pay off my family’s debt and of course, drama aside, to uplift my family from financial challenges. Since most of the writing job offers were below from my target (they put more premium on seniority), I decided to have training to beef my credentials. Thus came the free IT training from DOST (Dept. of Science & Technology) co-sponsored with other private companies. Simply thinking that information technology is synonymous with communication (heck! it was the late 90s, IT was the new buzz word then), I applied for the training and  miraculously passed the highly technical exam. The interview wasn’t also that specific or maybe I dismissed the other details due to excitement. It was only on day one of training that I realized it was a three month computer programming training. Gulp!

The second miracle was that I passed the training! Mind you, I did give my all to the training. Studying in UP developed the analytical thinking in me which I’m sure supported me a lot to survive the training. I was hired for a two-year contract programming job. No other writing work offered higher than the IT position, so I accepted it, and yes, for the money.

I’m a naturally motivated person and have risen to team lead role in three years. I was in the heat of the Y2K scare, which didn’t turn out to be that scary in the end. After Y2K which was our core business, our company went down and retrenched majority of its manpower, including me. Because I was not a computer science graduate to begin with, I was automatically in the list.

That was year 2000. I was a new single mom and jobless. Being a mom brought forth the fighter in me and I took that situation as an opportunity for change. From Mainframe technology (Cobol, CICS), I shifted to Web Application. I started from square one and became a junior web programmer for a small dot-com company. Everything was new and exciting. I had fun learning open source technology. Not long, I was promoted to senior web programmer and was a team lead again. Yey!

The fun soon ended due to Dot-com bubble burst in early 2000. I have a family to support and a son to raise, I had to act fast. I applied to another web company who’s pioneering in security solutions in the Philippines using advance technology. Even though the office culture is different, I still took the job. People there can openly play games, chat, smoke in their workstations, work is graveyard shift (because they’re for the US market). It was a soho (small office/home office) type of company where everything is allowed so long as you deliver. They’re using Adobe Flash, ASP (soon became .Net), C++, C# to develop security software. The company is triple A – aggressive, advance and ambitious. I found myself drawn to them. I don’t smoke, I don’t play pc games, I’m a morning person, but I’m result-oriented and always hungry for learning.

The company’s triple As which drew me to them in the first place became my triple reasons for unhappiness. The agile way of doing things was not sustainable for the people and our company. We were burnt-out, exhausted, full of angst and we lacked funding to compete with Symantec, TrendMicro and Microsoft. While we achieved momentary success when we tied with Microsoft in the top3 slot for the best anti-spyware software in download.com, it didn’t last long.

I admit that due to my extended hours in the office, I in the process neglected my son and family. I may have financially supported them, but not much beyond that.

Three years sped by, fast enough for me to finally understand my priorities, my son, my family, myself. Before the end of my third year with this company as manager of the Web Applications and Systems Administration groups, I resigned. I transferred to another company – stable,  corporate, multinational.

I’m now over six years with my present company initially as a QA Manager, now a Project Manager. I at first struggled with the culture since it’s different from my previous employers and people there have known each other for a long time. But I just focused on my work and responsibilities, learning to adjust along the way. I have also gained a lot of skills and knowledge in my current company, most important of all, becoming a project manager and getting PMP certified.

Like everybody else, I’m a work in progress. And this blog is for me to go back to my roots, writing; to share what I know, to impart the lessons I’ve learned in life (not just with work) and to simply tell my story as I go through my adventures in life.