Hi Habr, my name is Sasha. After 10 years of working as an engineer in Moscow, I decided to change my life dramatically - I took a one-way ticket and left for Latin America. I did not know what awaited me, but, I confess, this was one of my best decisions. Today I want to tell you what I faced in three years in Brazil and Uruguay, how I pulled up two languages (Portuguese and Spanish) to a good level in “combat conditions”, what it is like to work as an IT specialist in a foreign country and why I ended up back to where he started. I'll tell you in detail and colors (all the photos in the article were taken by me), so get comfortable and let's go!
How it all began…
To leave a job, of course, you must first acquire it. I got a job at CROC in 2005, in my last year of study. We had the Cisco Networking Academy at our university, I took a basic course (CCNA) there, and IT companies applied there, looking for young employees with basic knowledge of network technologies.
I went to work as an engineer on duty at Cisco technical support. He received requests from clients, fixed problems - replaced failed equipment, updated software, helped configure equipment or looked for reasons for its incorrect operation. A year later, I moved to the implementation group, where I was engaged in the design and configuration of equipment. The tasks were different, especially those in which I had to work in atypical conditions: set up equipment at a temperature of -30 ° C outside or change a heavy router at four in the morning.
I also remember the case when one of the customers had a network in a running state, which included programmed machines, several default gateways in each VLAN, several subnets in one VLAN, static routes added to desktops from the command line, static routes configured using domain policies... At the same time, the company worked 24/7, so it was impossible to just come on a day off, turn everything off and set it up from scratch, and a harsh customer even kicked out one of my predecessors who allowed a little downtime in work. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a plan from small steps, gradually reconnecting. All this was reminiscent of the Japanese game "Mikado" or "Jenga" - it was necessary to carefully remove the elements, and at the same time make sure that the overall structure did not collapse. It was not easy, but I had a ready answer to my favorite HR question: “Which project are you proud of?”.
There were also many business trips - it's always interesting, however, at first I saw almost nothing, but then I began to plan things better and had time to see both cities and nature. But at some point, I "burned out." Perhaps this is due to early employment - I did not have time to gather my thoughts and justify for myself why and why I do what I do.
It was 2015, I had been working at CROC for 10 years, and at some point I realized that I was tired, I wanted something new and to understand myself better. Therefore, I warned the manager for a month and a half, gradually handed over the case and left. We said goodbye warmly and the boss said I could come back if I was interested.
How did I get to Brazil and why did I go to Uruguay afterwards?
brazilian beach
After resting for a little less than a month, I remembered two of my old dreams: to learn a foreign language to the level of fluent communication and to live in a foreign country. Dreams fit perfectly into the overall plan - to go where they speak Spanish or Portuguese (both of which I studied earlier as a hobby). So another month and a half later I was in Brazil, in the city of Natal in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, where for the next six months I worked as a volunteer in a non-profit organization. I spent another two weeks each in Sao Paulo and in the coastal city of Santos, which many in Moscow may know by the coffee brand of the same name.
Briefly about my impressions, I can say that Brazil is a multicultural country in which regions differ markedly from each other, as well as people with different roots: European, African, Indian, Japanese (the latter are surprisingly many). In this regard, Brazil resembles the United States.
San Paolo
Six months later, according to Brazilian rules, I had to leave the country - I didn’t feel like going back to Russia yet, so I just got on a bus, waved to neighboring Uruguay and ... stayed there for several years.
Almost all this time I lived in the capital of Montevideo, periodically traveled to other cities to relax on the beaches and just stare. I even attended City Day in San Javier, the only city in the country founded by Russians. It is located in a deep province and few people from other cities move there to live, so outwardly the locals still look like Russians, although almost no one speaks Russian there, except perhaps the mayor habla un poco de ruso.
How can a Russian engineer find a job in Uruguay?
Uruguayan owl. Handsome!
At first he worked at the reception in a hostel: he helped guests get settled and find the right places in the city, and cleaned up in the evenings. For this, I could live in a separate room and have breakfast for free. He prepared lunch and dinner for himself, often from what the guests who had already left in the refrigerator left. The difference compared to the work of an engineer, of course, is felt - people came to me in a good mood, told me how they had fun relaxing, but they usually come to an engineer when “everything is bad” and “need urgently”.
Three months later, the hostel closed, and I decided to look for a job in my specialty. Having compiled a resume in Spanish, sent it out, went to six interviews, received three offers and eventually got a job as a network architect in a local free economic zone. This is a "business park" of warehouses and offices where foreign companies have rented space to save on taxes. We provided tenants with Internet access, I maintained and developed the local data transmission network. By the way, at that moment I needed to restore CROC's corporate mail in order to transfer some account to my personal mailbox - and they allowed me to do this, which pleasantly surprised me.
In general, in Uruguay there is a shortage of qualified personnel in almost all areas, many good professionals leave for better living conditions in Spain. When applying for a job, I was not asked complex technical questions, since there was simply no one to ask them, there were no specialists working in similar positions in the company. In such situations (when one programmer, accountant or network architect is needed), it is, of course, difficult for the employer to assess the candidate's competencies. In CROC, in this regard, it is easier, if there are five engineers in the team, then the most experienced of them will interview the sixth and ask him difficult questions about his specialty.
In general, in the course of my work, I noted that in Russia, first of all, they look for strong hard skills in technical specialists. That is, if a person is gloomy, difficult to communicate, but knows a lot and knows how to do it in his specialty, is able to design and configure everything, then you can turn a blind eye to his character. In Uruguay, the opposite is true - the main thing is that it is pleasant to communicate with you, because comfortable business communication motivates you to work better and look for a solution, even if you can’t figure it out right away. Corporate rules are also "company". Many Uruguayan offices have a tradition of eating pastries on Friday mornings. Every Thursday, a responsible person is appointed, who goes to the bakery at seven in the morning on Friday and buys pastries for everyone.
Bucket of croissants, please!
More about the pleasant - in Uruguay, according to the law, not 12, but 14 salaries per year. The thirteenth is given on New Year's Eve, and the fourteenth is paid when you take a vacation - that is, vacation pay is not part of the salary, but a separate payment. And so - the level of salaries in Russia and in Uruguay is approximately the same.
From the curious moments - at work, among other things, I helped maintain street wi-fi. In the spring, bird nests appeared at almost every access point. Red-haired stove-makers (Horneros) built their houses there from clay and grass: apparently, they were attracted by the heat from the working equipment.
It takes about 2 weeks for a pair of birds to build such a nest.
Sadly, there are a lot of people in Uruguay with low motivation to work. It seems to me that this is due to the fact that social elevators in the country do not work well. The vast majority of people receive the same education and take the same level of work as their parents, whether it be a housekeeper or a department head in an international company. And so from generation to generation - the poor are resigned to their social status, and the wealthy do not worry about their future and do not feel competition.
Although there is something that we could learn from the Uruguayans. For example, the culture of carnivals is not necessarily “like in Brazil” (I did not find them, and judging by the stories, this is too much for me), it can also be “like in Uruguay”. Carnival is like a time when it's normal to dress up in something bright and crazy, play musical instruments spontaneously and dance in the streets. In Uruguay there are many singing and drumming people at the crossroads, passers-by can stop, dance and go about their business. We had raves and rock festivals in the center in the open air in the nineties, but then this culture disappeared. There is a need for something like this, you could feel it during the World Cup.
Carnival in Uruguay
Three Healthy Habits I Picked Up During My Three Years in Latin America
Uruguayan market
First, I began to build communication more consciously. I worked for a company that was almost entirely local, and no one here is used to multicultural communication. In general, Uruguay is perhaps the most monocultural country that I have visited, everyone loves about the same thing: football, mate, meat on the grill. In addition, my Spanish was not perfect, and it was marked by six months of speaking Portuguese. As a result, I was often misunderstood, although it seemed to me that I explained everything intelligibly, and I myself did not understand many things, especially those related to emotions.
When you have learned the meaning of a word, but do not understand all the nuances, you begin to think more about intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and simplify constructions. When you work in your native language, you often neglect it, it seems that everything is so simple and clear. However, when I brought my more rigorous approach to communication back home, I realized that it helps me a lot here too.
Secondly, I began to plan my time better. After all, communication was slow, and it was necessary to manage to do their work within the same time frame as local employees, although at the same time part of the working time was eaten up by “translation difficulties”.
Thirdly, I learned to build an internal dialogue and became more open to new experiences. I talked with expats and migrants, read blogs and realized that almost everyone has a “six months crisis” - about six months after entering a new culture, irritation appears, it seems that everything is wrong around, and in your home country everything is much saner , easier and better.
Therefore, when I began to notice such thoughts behind myself, I said to myself: “Yes, it’s strange here, but this is an occasion to get to know yourself better, to learn something new.”
How to pull up two languages "in combat conditions"?
Wonderful sunset
In both Brazil and Uruguay, I found myself in a kind of “vicious circle”: in order to learn to speak a language, you need to speak it a lot. And you can talk a lot only with those who are interested in you. But with a B2 level (aka Upper-intermediate), you speak somewhere at the level of a twelve-year-old teenager, and you cannot say something interesting or joke.
I can't boast that I came up with the perfect solution to this problem. I went to Brazil, already having acquaintances among the locals, it helped a lot. But in Montevideo, at first I was alone, I could only communicate with the owner of the room I rented, but he turned out to be taciturn. So I began to look for options - for example, I started going to meetings of couchsurfers.
I tried to communicate with people more when I had the opportunity. He carefully listened to all the conversations around, wrote down words and phrases with non-obvious meanings on the phone and then taught them from cards. I also watched a lot of films with subtitles in the original language. And not only watched, but also reviewed - at the first run, sometimes you get carried away by the plot and miss a lot of things. In general, I tried to practice something like “linguistic awareness” - I thought about all the phrases that I heard, parsed them to myself, checked whether I understood each word, and not just the general meaning, whether I caught shades of meaning ... By the way, I I still watch every episode of the popular Brazilian comedy show Porta dos Fundos (Back Door) on Youtube. They have English subtitles, I recommend!
To be honest, I used to think that learning a language is comparable to the usual process of gaining knowledge. I sat with a book, studied it, and you can take the exam. But now I realized that the language is akin to sports - it is impossible to prepare for a marathon in a week, even if you run 24 hours a day. Only regular training and gradual progress.
Return to Moscow (and to CROC)
Let's set sail!
In 2017, for family reasons, I returned to Russia. By this time, the mood in the country was still post-crisis - there were few vacancies, and the existing ones were mainly intended for beginners for a small salary.
There were no interesting vacancies in my profile, and after a couple of weeks of searching, I wrote to my former manager, and he called me to the office to talk. CROC was just starting to develop the SD-WAN direction, and I was offered to take an exam and get a certificate. I decided to try and agreed.
As a result, now I am developing the SD-WAN direction from the technical side. SD-WAN is a new approach to building enterprise data networks with a high level of automation and visibility into what is happening on the network. The area is new not only for me, but also for the Russian market, so I devote a lot of time to advising customers on technical issues, make presentations, and assemble test benches for them. I am also partially involved in unified communications projects (IP-telephony, video conferencing, software clients).
My example of returning to the company is not an isolated one - since last year, the CROC Alumni program has been in place to maintain contacts with former employees, and now more than a thousand people are participating in it. We invite them to holidays, to business events as experts, they continue to receive bonuses for recommending people to vacancies and participating in sports activities. I like it - after all, creating something new and moving the industry into a brighter future is more pleasant with someone with whom informal, human, and not just business communication has been established. And who, in addition, knows and understands how everything works for you.
Do I regret my adventure?
Mate in dank Moscow is no worse than in sunny Latin America
I am satisfied with my experience: I fulfilled two old dreams, learned two foreign languages to a very good level, learned how people think, feel and live on the other side of the Earth, and eventually came to a point where I am now as comfortable as possible. “Reboot” for everyone, of course, goes differently - for someone a two-week vacation would be enough for this, but for me it was necessary to completely change the situation for three years. Repeat my experience or not - you decide.
Source: habr.com