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Three years in Latin America: how I left for a dream and returned after a total “reset”

Hi, Habr, my name is Sasha. After 10 years as an engineer in Moscow, I decided to change my life drastically - 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 in Uruguay, how I pulled up two languages ​​(Portuguese and Spanish) in a “combat environment” to a good level, how it feels to work as an IT specialist in a foreign country and why I ended up returned to the same place where he started. I’ll tell you in details and colors (all the photos in the article were made by me), so get comfortable - and drive!



How it all began…


To leave work, of course, you must first acquire it. I joined the CROC in 2005, studying in my last year. We had a Cisco Networking Academy at our university, I took a basic course there (CCNA), and IT companies who were looking for young employees with basic knowledge of network technologies turned to the same course.

I went to work as a duty engineer for Cisco technical support. I received requests from customers, fixed problems - replaced failed equipment, updated software, helped set up 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 for which it was necessary to work in atypical conditions were especially remembered: configure the equipment at a temperature outside of -30 ° C or change a heavy router at four in the morning.

I also remembered the case when one of the customers had a network in a running state, which included programmable 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 just impossible to turn off and configure everything from scratch, and the harsh customer even kicked out one of my predecessors, who allowed a little simple work. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a plan of small steps, gradually reconnecting. All this was reminiscent of the Japanese game "Mikado" or "Jengu" - it was necessary to carefully get out the elements, and at the same time ensure that the overall design did not collapse. It was not easybut I had a ready-made answer to my favorite HR question: "What kind of project are you proud of?"

There were also many business trips - this is always interesting, though at first I saw almost nothing, but then I began to plan better and managed to see both the city and the nature. But at some point I “burned out”. Perhaps this is due to early employment - I did not have time to collect my thoughts and justify for myself why and why I am doing what I am doing. 
It was 2015, I worked at CROC for 10 years and at some point I realized that I was tired, I want something new - and better understand myself. Therefore, I warned the leader for a month and a half, gradually handed over the case and left. We warmly said goodbye, and the boss said that I could return if it would be interesting to me. 

How did I get to Brazil and why did I go to Uruguay afterwards?



Brazilian beach

After resting a little less than a month, I remembered about my two old dreams: to learn a foreign language to the level of free communication and live in a foreign country. Dreams fit perfectly into the general plan - to go where they speak Spanish or Portuguese (I studied both of these languages ​​earlier as a hobby). So a 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 in Sao Paulo and in the coastal city of Santos, which many in Moscow can know by the same brand of coffee.
Briefly about my impressions, I can say that Brazil is a multicultural country in which the regions differ markedly from each other, as well as people with different roots: European, African, Native American, Japanese (there are surprisingly many of them). In this regard, Brazil resembles the United States.


São Paulo

Six months later, according to Brazilian rules, I had to leave the country — I hadn’t been pulling back to Russia yet, so I just got on the bus, waved to neighboring Uruguay and ... stayed there for several years.

Almost all this time I lived in the capital Montevideo, periodically traveled to other cities - to relax on the beaches and just take a look. He was even at City Day in San Javier, the only city in the country founded by the Russians. It is located in a deep province and few people from other cities move there to live, therefore, locals still look like Russians, although almost no one speaks Russian there, except that the mayor is habla un poco de ruso.

How can a Russian engineer find work in Uruguay?



Uruguayan detective. Handsome man!

At first, he worked at the reception in the hostel: he helped guests get settled and find the right places in the city, and in the evenings he cleaned. For this, I could live for free in a separate room and have breakfast. Lunch and dinner were prepared by myself, often from what guests left in the refrigerator. The difference compared with the work of an engineer, of course, is felt - people came to me in a good mood, told me how they had fun, and they usually come to an engineer when “everything is bad” and “urgently needed”.

Three months later, the hostel closed, and I decided to look for work by profession. Having compiled a resume in Spanish, he sent it out, went to six interviews, received three offers, and eventually got a job as a network architect in the local free economic zone. This is such a “business park” of warehouses and offices in which foreign companies rented space to save on taxes. We provided tenants with internet access, I maintained and developed a local data network. By the way, at that moment I needed to restore KROK'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 are leaving for the best living conditions in Spain. When applying for a job, I was not asked complex technical questions, because 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 competencies of the candidate. In CROC, in this regard it is easier, if the team has five engineers, the most experienced of them will interview the sixth and ask him difficult questions in the specialty.
 
In general, during the course of my work, I noted that in Russia, technical specialists primarily seek strong hard skills. That is, if a person is gloomy, difficult to communicate with, but knows a lot and knows how to work in his specialty, is able to design and configure everything, then you can close your eyes to his character. In Uruguay, on the contrary, it’s important 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 “businesslike”. Many Uruguayan offices have a tradition of baking on Fridays in the morning. Every Thursday, a person is appointed who goes to the bakery at seven in the morning of Friday and buys baked goods for everyone.


Bucket of croissants, please!

Another pleasant thing - in Uruguay, according to the law, not 12, but 14 salaries per year. The thirteenth is awarded for the New Year, 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 about the same.

Of the curious moments - at work, among other things, I helped maintain street wi-fi. In spring, bird nests appeared at almost every access point. Ginger stoves (Horneros) built their houses of clay and grass there: apparently, they were attracted by the heat from the working equipment.


A pair of birds takes about 2 weeks to build such a nest

From the sad - in Uruguay there are many people 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 get a job at the same level as their parents, whether it is a housekeeper or the head of a department 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 we could learn from the Uruguayans. For example, the culture of carnivals is not necessarily “like in Brazil” (I didn’t find them, and judging by the stories, it’s too much for me), you can also “like in Uruguay.” Carnival as a time when it is considered normal to dress up in something bright and crazy, spontaneously play musical instruments and dance on the streets. In Uruguay there are many people singing and playing drums at crossroads, passers-by can stop, dance and go on about their business. In the nineties we had raves and rock festivals in the center in the open, but then this culture did not. There is a need for something like this, you could feel it during the World Cup. 


Carnival in Uruguay

Three good habits that I have acquired over three years of living in Latin America



Uruguayan market

First, I began to build communication more consciously. I worked for a company that was almost entirely local; no one was used to multicultural communication here. 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 imperfect, and they left their mark on six months of communication in Portuguese. As a result, they often did not understand me, 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 the word, but do not understand all the shades, you begin to think more about intonation, facial expressions, gestures, simplify the design. When you work in your native language, you often neglect it, it seems that everything is so simple and clear. However, when I transferred my more scrupulous approach to communication to my homeland, I realized that he helps me a lot here.

Secondly, I began to better plan my time. After all, communication was slow, and it was necessary to have time to do their work on the same time as the local employees, although part of the working time was consumed by “translation difficulties”. 

Thirdly, I learned to build an internal dialogue and became more open to a new experience. I talked with expats and migrants, read blogs and realized that almost everyone has a “six-month crisis” - about six months after getting into a new culture, irritation appears, it seems that everything is not around, and everything is much more reasonable in your native country 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 know yourself better, learn something new.” 

How to pull up two languages ​​"in combat"?



Wonderful sunset

In both Brazil and Uruguay, I fell into a kind of “vicious circle”: to learn to speak the language, you need to talk a lot in it. And you can talk a lot only with those who are interested in you. But with level B2 (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 not boast that I came up with the perfect solution to this problem. I went to Brazil, already having friends among the locals, it really helped. But at first I was alone in Montevideo, I could only communicate with the owner of the room I was renting, but he turned out to be taciturn. So I began to look for options - for example, I started going to couchsurfers meetings.

I tried to communicate more with people when there was such an opportunity. I carefully listened to all conversations around, wrote down words and phrases with non-obvious meanings on the phone, and then taught them on cards. I also watched many 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 pondered over all the phrases I heard, sorted them out to myself, checked if I understood every word, and not just the general meaning, caught the shades of meanings ... By the way, I I still watch every episode of the popular comedy show Porta dos Fundos in Brazil on Youtube. They have English subtitles, I recommend!

Honestly, I used to think that learning a language is comparable to the usual process of gaining knowledge. He sat with a book, studied, and you can pass the exam. But now I realized that 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 CROC)



Take off!

In 2017, for family reasons, I returned to Russia. At this point, the mood in the country was still post-crisis - there were few vacancies, and the available 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 leader, and he called me to the office to talk. CROC was just starting to develop the direction of SD-WAN, and I was asked to pass the 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 corporate data networks with a high level of automation and visibility of 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, give presentations, collect test benches for them. I also partially engage in unified communications projects (IP-telephony, video conferencing, software clients).

My example of returning to the company is not the only 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 participate in it. We invite them to the holidays, to business events as experts, they continue to receive buns for recommending people for vacancies and participating in sports activities. I like it - all the same, creating a new one and moving the industry into a brighter future is more pleasant with those with whom informal, human, and not just business communication is established. And who, in addition, knows and understands how everything is arranged 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 ultimately came to the point where I’m most comfortable right now. Everyone, of course, has a “reboot” in different ways - someone would have had a two-week vacation for this, but I needed to completely change the situation for three years. Whether or not to repeat my experience is up to you.

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