In Loving Memory of Our Friend Mateus Del Bianco

This page is meant as a tribute to him and a place to share memories

How Mateus joined Yipit

Mateus was in New York for a conference and he contacted me to hang out. He visited me in Park Slope and we talked about life, work, etc., and I noticed he wasn't very excited about his current job (in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). I talked about Yipit and our future challenges and he seemed interested. This was May 2014.

I talked to Zach Smith (former CTO) and Steve Pulec about my great developer friend that was in town and they thought it was a good idea to bring him to the office and have an informal conversation/interview. Mateus met us at the old office (3 W 18th St), then we went to Beecher's. I thought I'd make Mateus nervous if I was present but he thought it was a good idea because of the language barriers. The talk was great and Zach and Steve liked him. In the following weeks, more people interviewed him over Skype and everybody had a good impression. He was a great talent at Globo.com (we both worked there with video delivery) and one of the smartest people I've ever met.

Mateus needed a work visa to come to the United States, but the application process starts every April and if everything goes well and you win the visa lottery (at the time it was ~30% chance), you are allowed to move to the USA in October of the same year. Well, this was May, so the next application window was in 11 months. There was another possibility with the J-1 visa, but it could require him to go back to Brazil after working two years in America and stay for two years in Brazil before he was allowed back in America (visas aren't easy), not a very good option. Jim Moran explained the situation to Mateus (this was around August/September 2014) and Mateus agreed to proceed with the H1B process, which would require him a total of 16 months before joining the company! Sixteen months of waiting and a 30% chance... Well, Mateus agreed to the process and the waiting game started. That's how excited he was about joining Yipit.

In October 2015 Mateus joined Yipit and had an amazing impact during the 15 months he stayed with us. He took over training for different areas of the company, libraries and tools that impact all data product engineers, and he also created and maintained many data products (he was a solo developer in the Macro team for a while). He was a unique person, always positive and ready to help anybody.

Miss you, my friend.

Hugo

At our company, we have a tradition of sending an email to the whole company recognizing someone that has done something above and beyond expectations. Usually it involved someone going out of their way to help someone out. We call it a praise email.

I knew Mateus went out of his way often for his co-workers so I spent some time looking through these praise emails to see if it showed up. The average person at our company got this type of recognition, a praise email sent about them, 8 times a year. Mateus was recognized 30 times by 20 different people. Not only did we all know how talented Mateus was but we also knew that he would stop what he was doing to help us. That’s the kind of person Mateus was.

Mateus was also so much fun to work with. Other people will get into this but I'll always remember his crazy Halloween costumes.

The first Halloween, he had been at our company for less than 3 weeks, so you might expect him to come with a more muted costume. He showed up in a crazy state-puff marshmallow man inflated full adult costume that actually had it's own battery operated fan. He won funniest costume. The second year, he showed up as a full Mario from the video game and then proceeded to walk around the party asking everyone if they had seen the Princess.

He had been at our company for less than a year and half but had already become such an important part of us.

So, last Thursday morning, I had to walk into a room and tell everyone at the company that Mateus had passed away. I knew it was going to be so hard because I wasn't telling a room of his co-workers but a room full of his friends.

I know Mateus is no longer with us but Mateus is not forgotten. We will all remember him for many things including his talents, selflessness and love of life.

Vin

How Mateus got here

We asked Mateus to join Yipit in June 2014, and were really happy when he accepted. Soon after we learned that due to the way our visa system works, he wouldn’t be able to join for sixteen more months, October of the following year. Not only that, he had to win the H1-B lottery to even have a shot - that’s a 33% chance. I told him all this and asked if he still wanted to accept out offer. He was disappointed, but said he just really wanted to join us so he’d wait and take his chances. Turns he won. After waiting so long, it finally worked out and in October 2015, he flew to the US. He flew all night from Sao Paolo and got in early in the morning. Even though he was really tired, the hotel wouldn’t let him check in until later. He didn’t have anywhere else to go, so he just showed up at Yipit. That was the first time most of us got to meet him, and he’s been our friend ever since.

When I first realized Mateus was a much better teacher than I am

I used to do the training session on Productivity. Whenever classes of people would join, I’d go through my spiel about being in ‘the zone’ and how great Asana was. It was pretty easy to sound like an expert, especially with all those econ consultants who were used to getting paid by the hour. That all changed during Mateus’ Productivity Training. He asked questions. Great questions. You like Asana? Which apps do you use to control Asana? So you recommend the book Getting Things Done? Which app to manage your 43 folders? So which custom hotkeys have you built out? I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. That session was mostly Mateus training me. That was the last training I taught. I basically felt like a fraud, he took it over afterwards.

He was so funny

He was a hilarious person and brought that sense of humor to his relationships. But also brought it to how he contributed to the company. My two favorite small examples are: 1) Helping Terri cut our “poo pouri” expense by 50% per gallon. 2) Emailing his teammates that "Preliminary SQL data shows Homebuilders scrape time below consensus”. He contributed a lot and made work a lot more fun.

It’s going to be really sad without him.

Jim

The first time I met Mateus, I was interviewing him and we were sitting at Beechers, a place in Flatiron where they make cheese. It wasn't until later that I realized how appropriate this was for someone whose nickname is Coalhada or Curd.

The first time I really started to appreciate the uniqueness of Mateus was a little under a month into his time at Yipit. He showed up to the office Halloween party in a head-to-toe Stay Puft Marshmallow Man costume. It had some sort of fan inside... The idea that he had only been with the company for a couple weeks, only been in the country a couple weeks, and that he was still comfortable enough to wear a ridiculous costume like that ... that really sums up Mateus in my mind.

His technical ability was phenomenal, from his understanding of low-level computer architectures to the highest-level of abstractions. A few months ago, he took over ownership of one of our most core libraries and pushed it to new levels.

Even more amazing than his ability was his eagerness to share all that he knew. I distinctly remember a moment when he came up to me after a couple weeks at Yipit. He came up to me with a grin ear-to-ear and said, "Did you hear about my class?" and I said "I don't think so Mateus. What are you talking about?" (Mateus occassionally had a habit of talking ahead of what you could keep up with). He said, "Guess who Jim asked to run the productivity training now for all new employees going forward?" and you could just tell how proud he was. He was always happy to help train new employees and share his vast wealth of knowledge, in technical matters or otherwise.

His technical ability was only matched by his kindness and willingness to help. It never stopped amazing me how a new employee could join the company one day and I would see them joking around the next day like old friends. He just had that way about him. His goofiness would break down barriers and welcome you into his world.

I'm trying my best to remember the good times he gaves us in the office over the past 15 months. The times he made us laugh with his uncontained excitement and goofy antics; The times he impressed with his excellent engineering skills; The times he made us happy to have him as a friend.

We'll miss you

Steve
If you would like to contribute to this page, please email john@yipitdata.com with your stories and photos