Brasília, here we go!

Everything was going very well. I had a good job and was relatively well-regarded inside the company. Still, while attending conferences and meeting people from other companies in the field, I caught myself thinking about what it would be like to work in other environments. The grass is always greener, right?

At that time, I started to take notice of a few infosec companies in Brazil. Some still exist, others disappeared or were absorbed by bigger groups. One of these companies had a particularly strong presence in cryptography, which was exactly my area of training. That caught my attention as I have always wanted to work on that. It’s worth remembering that I was still trying to finish my PhD. I worked during the week and, in my spare time and on weekends, I read papers, wrote little by little, and kept an academic output going that moved slowly, but resulted in publications at national and international conferences.

My master’s had been in cryptography, and so was my PhD. I obviously wanted to pursue a professional path in that area. I heard this company was hiring — I don’t remember whether it was through an ad or a referral — and I applied. There were two openings: one for an engineer and one for a manager. Since I was already a senior engineer at BMS, I decided to apply for the manager position, seeing it as a possible career step up.

I got in touch with the company, was called in for interviews, and even went to São Paulo to talk in person. The selection process included interviews, a psychological test, a handwriting analysis, and a few other tests that, at the time, seemed a bit weird to me.

Some time later, I got the response: they thought I wasn’t yet ready for the manager position, but wanted to offer me the engineer role. There was, however, an important condition: I’d have to move to São Paulo. That meant leaving Belo Horizonte with the whole family. We already had two kids, and it would be a radical change for all of us. I got the offer and asked for some time to think about it. I explained that my son needed to have surgery, already scheduled, and that I needed to wait at least two months until we got through that before making any decision.

During that interval, we started to gather information on how life was like in São Paulo, especially with kids. We started asking what life was like in São Paulo: where we could live, what life with kids would be like, whether the salary would cover rent and expenses. Many of the people we talked to didn’t reassure us that São Paulo would be a pleasant place to raise our children. We had already lived in Campinas and had had a bit of experience with urban violence. The stories about São Paulo were even more worrying.

We were even told stories of women who put a real size doll in the passenger seat to simulate that there was a man in the car and avoid theft attempts. At the same time, we led a comfortable life: we had our little house, with a little backyard, in a quiet neighbourhood. We felt we’d lose that and that the move wouldn’t be good for the kids. In the end, I had to overcome my embarrassment and shyness and call the company saying I wasn’t going anymore. I had already accepted the offer and was about to give notice at BMS, but I called and said I couldn’t go through with it. It was awkward. Going back on my word wasn’t easy. I probably got a bad rap with that company, and I never knew to what extent that went around the job market.

I’ve often thought about that decision. What would have happened if I had accepted the job and moved to São Paulo? My life would surely have been very different. Maybe I would have adapted and even liked the big city — I know several people who went and liked it. But the decision was not to go. It was one of those moments when life’s line forks definitively. A path that, once not taken, cannot be retaken, as in the figure that illustrates the home page of this site.

I stayed at BMS. My son had his surgery and everything went well. Life got back to normal. A few months later, we went to visit some friends who lived in Brasília. I already knew the city, since I have family there. Ever since I was a kid, Brasília had been part of the route between Belo Horizonte and Belém, where my father lived for many years. We used to pass through almost every summer, even if most of the time we only stayed for a few days.

This time we went as a family. Our friends welcomed us, showed us around the city, we took walks with the kids, went to the zoo. We spent a long weekend in Brasília. On the last day, while we were getting ready to head back, Gisele asked me: “Should we move here?” I said: “How? We don’t have jobs here.” At the time she wanted to switch jobs and her answer was: “But we can arrange that.” My reaction was: “Okay, if we can find jobs that pays well here we can think about moving.” We talked it over and it seemed like a good place to live with the kids, a really good place for the kids to grow up.

So we started looking for opportunities. One of the friends who hosted us worked at a company that outsourced IT labor to BRB, the state-owned bank of the Federal District. We sent our resumes and he pitched them internally. We were both called in to interview. In the end, they made offers to both of us: Gisele would work in the development area and I’d go into infrastructure and security, specifically network security. The salaries weren’t bad, but we would be hired as independent contractors with all the implications regarding vacation, benefits, and labor rights.

Even so, we accepted. That’s how, like João de Santo Cristo, we decided to head to Brasília. We believed it would be better for the kids (and it really was!) and both of us would be employed, which made financial sense. That’s how we decided, instead of going to São Paulo, to move to the federal capital.