By Tom S. Noda
Published in the March 2008 print edition of Computerworld Philippines
April 01, 2008

“The easiest thing in the world is to be you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”

This advice from the late Dr. Leo Buscaglia, renowned book author and lecturer, is well reflected in the professional life attitude of Peter Que Jr., president of the Philippine Computer Society (PCS), also currently the vice president for operations at the Philippine National IT Standards Foundation (PhilNITS), formerly known as JITSE (Japan IT Standard Examination).

A veteran IT practitioner at 50, Que says he continues to pursue his IT career for himself and not for anyone else—an attitude he considers to be right and true. He says: “I pursue it for myself and not for anybody else. Some people do it for their parents or their girlfriend. What if you break up, or that person dies?”

By simply following one’s real passion in life, Que says one’s work, no matter how busy or demanding, never becomes a burden.

“I like this job. If you like your job it’s not a job. It’s like playing,” he says. “I’m still pursuing my IT career like a doctor pursues his. The only difference is, in my line of work, you don’t get jailed for killing your patient, the machine. You can always replace it.”

Tech Devotee
A real technology lover, the PCS president once did stints as a radio and TV technician. He also worked as an automobile electronic engine diagnostic technician during his late high school and early college days.

Que recalls completing in just one year the laboratory requirements of his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Education (BSIE) course, which normally takes four years. “The laboratory part is five hours a day. It is supposed to last four years but my only interest is the laboratory, so the four-year requirement I completed in one year,” he explains.

And even while he was still a student with no computer of his own and no formal training in programming, Que learned how to program using only a programmable calculator.

Upon finishing his BSIE course, Que enrolled in the Mapua Institute of Technology (MIT) school and took up Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) while serving as the school’s computer laboratory technician. Immediately after graduation, he became part of the MIT faculty, teaching computer languages.

After teaching in MIT for two years, Que was sent to Bochum city in Germany in 1985 to take up a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. It was a one-year scholarship program arranged by both MIT and Ruhr University in Germany.

Que then taught for another two years at MIT before joining the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) as head of its network engineering department, a position he held from 1989 to 2000. He then joined JITSE (now PhilNITS) in 2003 where he has been serving as vice president up to the present.

“At RCBC, I was part of the team that converted branches from stand alone to online,” he recalls.

Who’s Who
Since 1999 to the present, the popular Who’s Who book by Reed Publishing Inc. has been featuring a short biography of Que. His profile has been chronicled in the Who’s Who in the World book, available in local libraries in the US.

Que attributes his IT career’s success to his plain curiosity about new things and in exploring them. “I like new things,” he says. “When there’s something new, I like to know about it.”

Aside from attending to his duties and responsibilities at PhilNITS and PCS, Que spends most of his time nowadays doing technology transfer, which he terms as “other stuff” and refuses to detail. “It’s very new, and I cannot disclose it,” he points out.

And although he worked for many years as a college professor, Que says one important lesson he learned in his professional life is that one should not rely entirely on what is learned from school.

“You should not rely on what you’re taught in school. They only teach you theories, some things, but not everything,” he explains. “Most of the things you would learn, I would say 5% comes from school, the rest you learn outside. Because what they teach in school is true but not really applicable when you go out.”

Presenting an example, he elaborates: “As a student, I was always taught that modems are 9,600 bps (bits per second). But when I went out, I found out that it was 19.2 (bps). And there were two-wires, four-wires, a lease-wire modem, and many more types of modems. In school, they only teach you about the dial-up modem.”

In 2005, Que became a founding member of the Information Technology Professional Examination Council (ITPEC) in Tokyo, Japan and became part of the Association of Overseas Technical Scholarships (AOTS) also in Tokyo. In 2007, he sat in the board of directors of the Information Technology Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP).

Tidbits:

Name: Peter Que jr

Title: Vice President-operations

Organization: Philippine National IT Standards Foundation (PhilNITS)

Favorite Technology: Anything new primarily in IT and secondary in Medicine.

Favorite nonwork pastime: Photography, golf, animals, and computer games, also going to malls to look at the latest gadgets.

Philosophy in a nutshell: Work is not work as long as you enjoy doing it. Do something because you want to do it for your own future and not because you want to fulfill somebody’s wishes or dreams.

Something people don’t know about you: I like dogs.

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• Henry Aguda Chief Information Officer Globe Telecom
• Mariels Almeda Winhoffer: First Female President of IBM Philippines
• Jeffrey Uthoff
• Keeping IT Positive
• Harnessing Excellence

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