How Optimum Builds a Top Tech Team | Behind the Scenes with Luciano Ramos [Part 1]

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

My journey starts a long time ago back in Argentina. I left in 2006 and started going north. My first stop was Jamaica, then I moved to the US, then I went to Canada. A few years ago, in 2019, when my kids were becoming closer to high school age, we decided we wanted to go back to the US. I think it was time for our kids to start high school in the US. We wanted to raise our kids here in this country, so we started looking to come south. What attracted me was what we were trying to do here—the transformation, the opportunity to make a big impact, to change build culture, to transform how we service customers, how we have internal conversations, how we build platforms, technology, and solutions. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. What excited me was the chance to take all those little things and accelerate that impact and transformation. So we decided to move to New York and take on this challenge.

I recall our conversation when I took over the role. You said, 'I don't know what you do, but we have to provide stability to the business. We cannot be servicing our customers or employees if our platforms or networks are going down.' I took that very close to heart. We've done so much as an organization and as a team. We reduced outages across the board. You've seen the stats: an 85% reduction of outages in only one year. We took our people, resources, environments, and platforms, and we focused. We created a vision and rallied together. We said, 'Yes, it's tough, but we're going to keep going towards stability and quality.' We rallied the troops. We got together and said the vision is we're going to provide stability to our business. What we provide from technology is the little engine that makes everything run. Whether it's an employee taking a call from a customer, checking emails, or a technician at a customer's home, everything they do daily goes to a platform our team supports. With that vision in mind, thinking we have to provide that availability, we woke up every day, went through every single outage, analyzed root causes, and put safeguards in place so those things don't happen again. Over time, people bought into it and understood what we were doing. You can see the value. I can show you reports and KPIs that show things are getting better, but nothing beats talking to the front line when they tell you, 'Yes, I don't have these issues anymore.' Every time we meet with our business partners, we get feedback that things are improving.

For me, leadership is the number one thing. It's all about the people and getting the most out of them, getting people engaged with what they're doing. I always tell my team that I want people—whether virtual or in the office—to feel they're making an impact. We spend hours and hours working, more time than we usually spend on things we enjoy. I want that time to be meaningful. I want people to go home or close their laptop and feel they had an amazing day and want to come back tomorrow. You only achieve that by creating an environment where people can see their work realizing into a benefit, helping achieve corporate objectives, or supporting others. That's everyday work—a conversation in the hallway with a frontline engineer, an outreach call at 2 a.m. supporting people, a town hall where you tell a story or share the future. All those little things create that environment. Once you create that spark of cultural engagement and transformation, the rest starts to happen on its own, which is amazing. I like to build highly engaged teams that deliver more because they're fully connected with our mission.