The Last Day
I come from a family with many civil servants and I had already been one myself when I worked at the University of Lavras. Still, Brasília takes the subject of public-service entrance exams to another level. This is partly because a large part of the city’s population is made up of civil servants, but also because the culture of civil service exams is extremely ingrained in local daily life. So, not only are conversations about these exams very frequent and normal for residents of the city, but the job market is also very much affected by the fact that a large share of jobs is in public agencies.
When I moved to Brasília, I didn’t have much desire or expectation that I would go back to being a civil servant. Little by little, though, my view began to change. I noticed that most jobs in IT basically fell into two categories: working as a civil servant or providing services to public agencies. My experience as an outsourced worker at BRB, Gisele’s experience as an outsourced worker at other agencies, and a better understanding of how the local market worked led me to consider once again the possibility of taking a civil service position.
Back when I took the university entrance exam, while researching possibilities to decide what career I wanted, I had come across information, by chance, about the exam for admission to the diplomatic career. A career at Itamaraty begins, in fact, with a long training course that all diplomats go through. To get in, you already needed to have a university degree, so it wasn’t the right time to think about it and I set the idea aside. Right after I moved to Brasília, a cousin of mine passed the Itamaraty exam and I started thinking again about whether it could be an option for me.
Combining the culture of civil service exams in Brasília with this long-standing interest in the diplomatic career, I decided to take the Itamaraty exam. I bought some books to study and started taking evening and weekend prep courses, because the exam required several subjects I hadn’t seen since high school: things like history, geography, and reading comprehension. The exam is pretty hard and used to happen more or less once a year. I took that test about three times, but I never got past the first stage. The exam has a very strong focus on the humanities, which wasn’t very compatible with my Computer Science academic background. I ended up concluding that, to pass, I would need to study almost as if I were doing another undergraduate degree, which would require an amount of time I didn’t want to commit.
Despite not doing well on the Itamaraty exam, that experience helped me better understand how civil service exams work, which is quite different from the exam I had taken back in Lavras. After Itamaraty, I started trying other exams aimed at IT professionals. The first was the Controladoria-Geral da União exam, which had a specific information security test. In that exam, I got all the security questions right and ended up placing second in the IT area. With that result, I talked to my boss and they offered me a small raise in the form of a bonus (in the end I only got part of the bonus). Since I still had some personal reservations about becoming a civil servant again, I decided to stay at the job.
Some time later, Gisele decided to start preparing for the Central Bank exam. My brother, who is also in IT and was already living in Brasília, decided he would take the same exam. The two of them started studying together pretty regularly. Every so often I’d join them and we’d discuss some questions. Since I had already studied a bit for the Itamaraty and CGU exams, I had a good grasp of some subjects that often show up on several exams, such as procurement law and the laws defining the rules of the federal civil service.
The three of us took the exam together and we all passed. In that exam, I placed first in the final ranking for the IT infrastructure area. At that time, in 2006, I was already kind of tired of my job and also a bit regretful about having stayed instead of going to CGU. I already knew several people who worked in the IT area of the Central Bank and it always seemed like a well-organized and structured environment. So the decision was easy: I would switch jobs as soon as the Central Bank called me. I just waited to be sure when they would define the starting date for the new hires so I could let the company know.
After a wait that felt longer than it actually was, the Central Bank called the three of us for the onboarding course, which was meant to introduce new employees to their future workplace. After that training there could still be a bit of waiting time before the actual start date, but I decided to give notice anyway. I still had lots of accumulated vacation days that year and figured that, as severance pay, I’d get enough to keep us afloat until we officially started at the Central Bank.
I worked a few more weeks until my last day finally arrived. At the time, the company was trying to sell some appliances for secure web and email access. They had one piece of equipment that was going to be loaned to a client in Brasília and they needed someone to do the installation and initial configuration. I wasn’t a specialist in that product and had never received training to install it. Even so, I was assigned to the task. They handed me the box with the equipment and the manual, and my task was to install it and get everything running. I spent the whole afternoon trying to follow the manual and kept running into problems. If I recall correctly, the issue was related to a digital certificate the client needed to provide and that didn’t seem to work properly on that equipment.
Since it was my last day, I figured they wouldn’t give me any major new task that day. I was wrong. I had even planned to take my son to the mall later. Around seven in the evening, with the problem still unresolved, I called my boss to say that I wasn’t able to finish the installation. His answer was that I should call the manufacturer’s support in the United States, because the problem had to be resolved. I wanted to leave the company on good terms, so I decided to try a bit longer. I called the international support number using the company cell phone. An Indian technician with a very strong accent picked up on the other end. The call was bad and we couldn’t understand each other. After several attempts to call again to see if the connection would get better (or if I could get another agent whose accent was easier for me to understand), it became clear that communication wasn’t going to work. The client’s technician who was with me also didn’t have authorization to make international calls from the company’s phone.
In the end, there was no way. We had to abort the installation and leave the problem for the company to resolve the following week. When I left the client, it was already late at night and I couldn’t take my son to the mall as I’d promised. Even so, I still thought I had done what I could to leave a good impression during my last days at the company. Some time later, when I tried to negotiate payment for the vacation days the company still owed me, I realized I was wrong. The effort I put in during my last days made no difference. They ended up paying me only half of what they owed, and even that took a lot of negotiation.
The following week, the Central Bank training course would begin, and so would a new phase in my professional life. But that’s a story for another chapter.