Francesca Santoriello

In my life in Italy, my motherland, quite a few domestic evenings terminated around the dinner table with my mum, a coffee or a cappuccino ('cause who has time to follow the rules) and many hours of flowing conversation. To my doubts around life and its curve-balls she would often suggest that "intuition is the whisper of the soul" and although not explicitly mentioned, it was implied how the soul had a certain degree of wisdom. 

But how can you make sure that you hear the whisper? The answer was just about to unfold.

It was the year 2013 and I was a recently graduated high schooler, close to starting my university course and full of unanswered questions - first in line, "why am I doing this?". The choice seemed rational, at the end of the day that's what everyone does, but it lacked passion and a true motivation. There was no whisper, and there was no soul - just an ever growing pile of books to read.

After a semester of Literature & Languages philology classes and with the excuse of my best friend's birthday just around the corner, at least one question had a certain answer.

"Where do we go?" 

"Amsterdam!"

My Dutch story, unofficially, started on a morning walk around De Pijp: I was visiting Amsterdam as a tourist and enjoying the narrow streets full of flowers and greenery when an image of genuine contentment caught my eye: a young curly man was sitting on the mullions of his window, laptop on his tight and sipping from a coffee cup while laughing the start of the day away on what seemed to be a work meeting.

The sun was shining and this glimpse at a stranger's daily life would forever change me. 

Was that what daily life looked like in The Netherlands? Was the workplace a promoter of morning laughs, as opposed to a place to despise? 

Could I also work from the side of the street on a sunny summer day?

“We should come to live here”, I lightheartedly said to my friend while thinking that it seemed such a good way to live one’s life. We then entered the Albert Cuyp Markt, and the smell of Oliebollen let that thought gently fade away.

Back home and fast forward a few months, the academic path was more and more revealing itself in its incompatibility with me, to the point of dropping out. Several months of jumping from job to job would follow, seeing me as a post-production editor, a receptionist, a flyer deliverer.

It took some time and quite a bit of soul-searching, but eventually, I came to realize that professional and practical courses were more aligned with my true calling. The theoretical depths of literature and languages, though enriching, did not resonate with my desire for tangible skills and a clear career path.

That's when I enrolled in a professional course focused on digital marketing and technology. This decision opened the door to my first job in a digital agency, where I discovered a passion for the dynamic, ever-evolving world of digital media and technology.

Yet, the whisper of the soul I experienced in Amsterdam never faded. One day like many other days, I decided to take a leap of faith, fueled by the memory of that sunny morning walk in De Pijp and the vision of a fulfilling. I packed my bags and moved to Amsterdam, ready to turn that dream into reality.

After arriving in Amsterdam, I once again cycled through various service jobs to support myself, all the while seeking a more permanent and satisfying career path. That's when my path crossed the one of Le Wagon, where I studied Web Development for three extremely intense months, living and breathing code and discovered that coding bootcamp are called like that for a very valid reason. 

After three years working in the school as a teacher and coding my way through freelancer projects, I decided it was time to learn from the best in the field: I wanted an environment where I could grow and learn, while being challenged and supported by my peers. A place where ideas flow free and processes are cherished. And this is what I have found at Miyagami, a workplace that has fallen nothing short of my wildest expectations. 

And so I am working in an agency again, this time as a Full-Stack Web Developer: the circle has come full turn. 

What I can tell you, my life in Amsterdam had become everything I had dreamt of, and I sometimes do work from the garden, laughing at the nerdy jokes that open our morning meetings. The intuition was right, and my soul is content. And when people ask me, "Why Amsterdam?" I always start with, "Well, there was this curly man…"