From Automation Engineer to Data Platform: Victor Fernandes on Brazil Tech Talent

Welcome to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I'm your host, Brian Samson. On this podcast, we talk about all things nearshoring, and one of the most exciting things is when we talk to engineers doing real work like we're going to on this show today. Before I introduce our guest, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. Victor Fernandez, we are so happy to have you, a real life amazing engineer based in Brazil. Thanks so much for joining.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks for letting me take time. I'm glad to be here.

So tell us just a little bit about what you're doing today. Just a little bit, and then we'll rewind the clock and, and go through your, your career journey. What are you doing today?

I'm a data platform engineer. I've been doing data platform engineering for the last 6 years. I work helping other teams doing their stuff. I'm, I'm working developing new features for the engineers. So I'm a, I'm a computer engineer. I have a bachelor's in that. So yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a good, good endpoint for us to build into. Um, well, maybe let's just start off with the basics. Where did you grow up?

I grew up here, uh, in Fortaleza, but, uh, I, I was not born here. I born in South Brazil. I'm Northeast Brazil, far away from where I was born. Um, here's a pretty nice city to, to live because we have a stable, uh, weather. Uh, it's sunny all over the year. So yeah, I grew up here. I've already traveled to other places, but I like to be here. I like to have grown here.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the things I think is really interesting about Brazil is it has had a lot of different cultures and immigrants, you know, come from all over the world. Um, you know, huge Japanese population in São Paulo and so on and so forth. Were your parents born in Brazil?

They were born in Brazil. My grandparents and great-grandparents, they came from other— came from Italy. I've not met him, but I know that my family came from immigrants.

Yeah, amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I think Brazil is really famous for that as a melting pot of really, really, you know, amazing backgrounds that have built an amazing country. Now, were you always a technical guy? Were you always kind of tinkering and putting stuff?

Yes, yes. I was thinking about that other day. I was the guy that break the stuff to see how they work, but I was never able to put it back to work again. So yes, I grew up like this. I've always been curious. And I remember when my brother bought our first computer, I fascinated about that. I think since I was 5 or 6, something like that, I was always fascinated about computers and how it works. My brother used to scripting a little. Now he's a lawyer, but I think he introduced me in some way of the, about like the engineering stuff, computer engineering stuff. So I really liked that since I was a kid.

Do you remember, um, the model of your very first computer?

K6-II, something like that. 100, but look, I was 5 or 6. My brother was 13. He was 7 years older than me. So I barely remember the model.

Yeah. But you, I mean, um, big, big moment, I think in your life, you know, probably is you.

Yeah, totally. I remember when 256 megabytes of RAM was too much and I couldn't open like 2 browsers. Screens, and when I upgraded that, I was able to run some stuff. I was, oh my God, it's perfect. Today, this is nothing. So it's funny to think about this.

That's so funny. Growing up in your, in your neighborhood, did you meet other, other kids that also shared an interest in computers and coding?

Yeah, mainly from school. Uh, I was, I was like, I was new, a lot of people, but I, I got some closer friends and not so, it was a few friends, but they all used to like to play games and computers, like RPGs and board games. We both like computer stuff, like to do as well. So yeah, I grew up with this kind of people, which is, I really enjoyed.

Yeah. And what were some of the early computer games that you used to play with your friends?

Tibia. I love, I played a lot of Tibia, Ragnarok, Gunbound, Need for Speed Underground. I remember the first time I could turn in my car. Oh my God, that was amazing. I have a lot of great experience and remembering. I used to go to a friend's house. At the time I was, I had, I didn't, I didn't get the cable internet. I got after midnight on a Friday and Saturdays after 2. I don't know if where you live was like that. But here, I had that kind of problem. My, my, I remember my friend having a good internet. We played gumball for 24 hours straight. Oh my God, that was amazing. I really loved doing that in front of the computer, just talking to guildmates. Good times in my childhood.

That's amazing. And then how about English? When did you first start to practice that and learn that?

I think with games, like for sure, because I used to play Pokémon on the Game Boy and I, like, you know, I know today that we have to read stuff to understand what to do in the Pokémon, but I wasn't able to understand what it was saying. So I remember trying to go to the dictionary and see the words, what they were meaning. And I think that it helped me a lot. At the time, there was not a lot of translations to Portuguese. For the game, so I had to learn what everything was saying, and I think that helped me a lot. Then I went to, like, when I was 15, I did a course, uh, English, so which helped me a lot. In the school, we had also classes, English classes, so putting all this together, I think it made a good base for what I know today.

I think what you brought up is really interesting because, you know, we, um, you know, growing up, like, we all kind of take a language in high school, secondary school, but you had a, you had a real reason to do it.

And that was to, you know, like, totally, totally. And I used to play one game called Bristle Tail and the best updates came from the Korean server. I tried to play to learn Korean. Today I know the, how to speak, but I don't know what I'm reading, what I'm saying. I just know how to pronounce the symbols. But I tried to learn that, but that was hard.

That's so fun. Uh, okay. So did you go right into platform engineering? So you studied computer science and straight away, or tell us more about your career.

No, not then. That's why, because when I was in the graduation, this data world was not a thing. It was still like, um, this data is a new oil is, was kind of something that we used to hear. But I, I grew up like, I graduated in computer engineering, but my first work, and I worked for that for like 7 and a half years, was like an automation engineer. I used to work in power plants, factories, commercial buildings, and I, what my work there was to automate some machines, some machinery, and adapting that machinery to safety standards and creating supervisory systems for the, for whatever I was automating. We had a team there. It's a company near my place. And I worked 7 and a half years for this company. So I did not start it as a data engineer, but it crossed my Beth in 2021.

Okay. Okay. And then, you know, as an automation engineer, that's interesting, you know, working in power plants and things like that. Were you, were you like interviewing users and trying to understand the process first before you automated it?

Yeah. Yeah. We had to understand what was going on there and it was always something different, which is kind of nice, right? Because you go from power plants to steel factories, like I said, to, uh, sewer treatment plants. Also. So we always learned something new. This is a pro of the job, right? But there was a lot of cons of that job as well.

Yeah. Yeah. What kind of languages were you programming in?

Today? I program—

When you were in the, the automate, the original, yeah, automation, 7 years.

Yeah. We used to program because we program not a usual computer like you imagine, maybe we used to program PLCs. Is a programmable logical controller. It's a kind of industrial computer. So there's a specific language for this kind of computer, 2 or 3 languages. I used to program instructional lists. Yeah. And for, but for the supervisory system, which is SCADA system, uh, we used to code in VBScript, basically.

Okay. Okay, great. And then 2021, uh, we're right in the middle of COVID Yeah. Yeah, tell us this shift into platform engineering. How did that happen? And what were some of the first projects?

Yeah, it was kind of, I was not expecting a call from my friend. He lives in São Paulo. I, we graduated together. Today, like, luckily it is for my family today because some of our relatives got married and so We are from the same family, but he called me saying, I have a friend which is looking for someone. I think that we worked together in the past and he liked the way I worked. So he said, uh, I know that you're not able to move to São Paulo and usually the jobs that we have here, you have to move, but this one is totally a work from home and they were approaching the work from anywhere. So I think this is a good opportunity for you. And I said, of course. Of course, man, let's go. Let's, let's try it out. And I was not, at first I was even not aware of what was the data platform. And I was not into this data world. I was more of a data producer sending data to the cloud and that stuff instead of all the governance side and consuming that data. So that's how this data engineering came to my path.

Yeah. Tell us about, um, just some of like the very first projects, like what were you trying to make sense of?

Yeah, I remember first project and I was lucky to get this project at my first experience. It was building an ingestion engine for like to bring data from databases, APIs, and different sources to a data lake. At that time, we didn't, like I didn't have a lot of experience on this data consumption part. So that's what I did. Like I created this ingestion engine purely in Python and I got a great experience with my teammates because they were like extraordinary people and taught me a lot about governance, taught me a lot about software engineering as well. So I was blessed by this experience for sure.

Yeah, that's amazing. And tell us more about the project that you're on today. What are you doing?

Yeah, today I work a lot with CI/CD pipelines and automating stuff for the data engineers to deliver faster and with good governance in the background. Data platform team is a lot of working with people for people. And I like this position because our clients, they are not directly the clients of the company. They are engineers from the company. So we kind of create some bounds, right? And I like to work with people. I like to say, can I, can you have a quick call and hear the people, the person, you know, and I think that I like this kind of synergy with people, this warm way of working. Yeah. So I create, I basically create automations and develop new services for internal portal that we have. Everything usually I do with Python and a lot of scripting as well. Yeah.

And the other engineers that you're working with and building for, where are they all based?

They are based in US or India, which is pretty common there. I work with a guy from Sri Lanka and he's like, imagine the time zone difference that we have. He's working 10 hours and a half from, from the state that the company space, which is 8 hours and a half from where I'm living now. When I, it's like, it's morning for me and almost afternoon from him, you know, almost evening. So it's, I say sometimes in the Friday, I tell him, dude, go away, go take a rest because it's late night for you, 11 in the night. Come on, let's just stop working. But it's all of me.

Yeah. How about when you're working with people in the States? Tell us about, you know, the cultural similarities, the cultural differences, how you all kind of, you know, put it together.

It's funny you ask me that because when I first started working for a US company, it got me by surprise how the things work, how the people talk to each other and how the people behave in the meetings. I was used to something more warm, approachable, more informal way of talking with each other. Usually here in Brazil, when you join a meeting, like the first 30 seconds, people are already talking and asking, how was your weekend? What you did? How are your family? And to be like warm way of talking, right? But when I started in the US company, like I joined the first daily, no one talk. And there was a silence and I was, what is happening here? Am I not hearing the people? Are they talking? So, and they just stopped. Okay, let's go. Let's do the daily. And you know, I felt it, but it shocked me, you know, a little. Today I am totally comfortable with trying to have this prior conversations with the team. Know the team better than I used to. So I have friends there now, which which is good. We have a good time talking to each other, but you know, that got me by surprise how things work.

Yeah. Well, hopefully you're able to maybe bring some of the warmth of the Brazilian culture to the team. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

And, um, uh, you know, maybe, um, you could talk a little more about just like Brazilian culture for those who've never had a chance to visit, you know, what, what should people know if they, you know, they're say from the States and they visit Brazil or they're from the States and they, um, start working with an engineer from Brazil, what are some things that they should be aware of or, or, or ready for?

Yeah, I think that we like to talk, we like to have good conversation and that stuff, but it also depends where the, because Brazil is huge, right? We have different cultures from all over Brazil, so people from the south, they are more self-contained, let's, let's say that way. But here in Northeast, we are known by our irreverent way of talking and do some jokes with another. So kind of depends where you're hiring the people from, uh, and where you're visiting. So if you come to Northeast or North, you have a great time. Mostly in Brazil, you have a great time, have great landscapes, we have great people. I think that Brazilians are very receptive, so you will not, like, regret coming to Brazil, having some time here, or even hiring someone from here, because I have an idea that we are hardworking. So when you have an opportunity to work speaking another language or knowing someone different from our daily lives, we kind of put our hearts on the job and put our heart on what we are doing. So that's the feeling that I have. That's the way how I try to behave daily and how I feel.

Yeah, a lot of passion for everything, business, family.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah. And sometimes there are myths, you know, like things that we hear, but we don't know if they're true. Sometimes there are myths about working with Brazilians and they're always 2 hours late or 3 hours late. Can you confirm or deny your experience?

This is a myth, I think. I think it depends a lot of the person itself. But I can say some people usually get, I mean, late for some stuff, but for jobs is different. If I go, it's common sometimes here where I live, if you schedule something to someone, And like be here at 7, sometimes they, they show up 7:30 or 8 sometimes, which is not good. Some people just got used to it. Some people just get mad with that. Uh, but it's different with jobs here. We are kind of punctual.

Yeah. Victor, how is AI changing the way you, changing the way you work, the way you approach your job?

Oh yeah. Good question. And what I can say. Is AI is saving a lot of time, but when used by the correct people, right? So in my job, when I have a well-scoped work, so AI helped a lot on delivering faster, but it also brings some responsibility of what you were doing actually and what you're putting in production, because sometimes it can provide you some code or some advice that may not fit well with the company, you know, with the system that you're building or what is already running in production. So you have to basically judge a lot when using AI because sometimes the advice is not good enough or not well suitable for the problem. It is good if you're Building something from the, from the scratch, but adding some stuff on something that is already running and producing value, you have to judge a lot of what AI is doing. So it helps a lot. And all the companies are pushing the employees to use AI to be faster, but you have to be careful.

Yeah. Yeah. Good advice. As we start to wind down the show, I'd love for you to tell us more about your current city and, you know, play tour guide for a minute. If anybody listening is like, oh my gosh, I have to visit, what should they do? What should they eat?

What should they know? Yeah, here we have a lot of options to go out. We have a pretty active nightlife here because I live in a touristic city. Fortaleza is the 6th most populated city in Brazil. So it's a huge city. We have great landscapes. We, uh, we are next to a lot of beaches. So from where I live, I live like 20 or 30 minutes away for 3 different beaches. So we have a lot of things to do, to see. We have Japanese food, Italian food, Arab food, all kinds of foods here. So you never run out of options of where to go during the night or have a great lunch. Yeah. So like from hours from here, you can be in another another state with also a lot of good beaches. So, uh, if you have any opportunity, come to Fortaleza and have a great time here. We are always, always like acceptable with new people and just come visit us.

It sounds like a warm place in weather and, and yeah, we are kind of 84 Fahrenheit, which is 32 Celsius all over the year.

Even if it's raining here, it's rainy and hot. So you don't have to bring your jackets and all that stuff.

That's great. Well, Victor, this has been such a pleasure. It's just really interesting how you've gone from automation and into data engineering, platform engineering, how you're incorporating AI. I've learned a lot and I think our listeners have too. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Brian, for this opportunity. And always that you need, you can join me again and we can have a great talk here together.

Absolutely. Well, let me thank our sponsor again, Plug Technologies, plugg.tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. I'm your host, Brian Samson, and this is the Nearshore Cafe podcast. We'll see you again soon. Next week for a new episode featuring another special guest.