Last Thursday 03, December 2020, I was invited to join and share my personal history at the Youtube channel GoldengateBR (If you don’t know anything about it check it out here : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJmOZ4iNh4mE9gMsNq9Oz8g where you can find the presentation in Portuguese about this channel).
However, even though that the majority of the interviews in this channel is made in Portuguese where Gilson (the owner and the creator of the OraSIM tool) has been interviewing many people, you can find several other interviews in English with many Oracle Product managers and DBAs well known in the Oracle community. So before I do the summary about the interview here are my thanks to have had the chance to share my history on this Youtube channel (These videos were made in one of my favorite places that I mentioned in my interview: gym) and my recommendation on who should be interviewed in the future – Rodrigo Righetti:
— English:
— Portuguese:
So, long story short, I was interviewed on the 45th GoldenTalks and I could share my path before I started my career as a DBA where I shared my childhood struggles due to alcohol problems of my father and everything that my mother , a cashier, was doing to raise 2 kids alone (me and my twin brother) and all the struggles of a working class family being raised in a poor neighborhood in Brazil which also comes with a lot of social differences. A country that had slavery for more than 300 years and left their black community without any compensation. So during my interview I could talk about my experiences about racism worldwide but it sounds a bit odd when I come from a country that still has racism in its society.
My first international trip which was a language exchange in Chicago, USA where I had the opportunity to learn English and it gave me the confidence to believe more in myself hence when you are born in a place where I was born , a neighborhood where you could clear see how the drug business influenced lives around you and raised in dramatic situations as I was, I must say that I never imagined to travel abroad and Chicago was the city to help realize this dream hence I only chose the city because I am a Chicago Bulls fan. I didn’t know anything about the city, only about the team haha but after my trip where I had the opportunity to live with an American family I can say that the city is one of my favorite worldwide. As I mentioned in my interview and not here , I started at IBM Brazil when I was 18 years old and when I was 22 years I went to do my Exchange and it was in fact life changing because like I said already it gave me confidence to try more opportunities overseas.
I could also share the story of my sister who was born in 2004 from the second marriage of my mother – which I must say has been the motto of who I am and the reason for everything that I have today. She gave me all the motivation to study and work hard to try to help her lifetime. She was born with a disease called Hydrocephalus and unfortunately she passed away when she was 11 years, exactly 2 weeks after my Exchange in Chicago, due to problems over a surgery and me and my twin brother with our 22 years could choose 3 paths when things like this happens : 1- Give up on everything; 2- Not take action over everything anymore or 3- Keep working on our goals even more because this is how she would like to see her brothers. We opted the third option. The best part of my participation at this live was the opportunity to make the world know about my sister who is really the person behind who I am and everything I am. Laura is the best!
My sister was the main reason that I took many IT and language courses since the age of 11 years old. I also shared that my uncle-father Cleber Martins played a big role in helping my mother raise me and my brother together with my former stepdad and my aunt. So I will always give big thanks to my family!
But yes, a bit more of 1 year after my sister was no longer with us I got a promotion from IBM Brazil to IBM Hungary due to my performance in Brazil where I worked hard in many projects and in October 2016 I landed in Hungary where I worked for 2 years – I must say that I have never imagined that I would work in Europe especially coming from where I am from but I realised that the sky is the limit and anything is possible as long as I keep working towards what I want!
I worked in Hungary from October 2016 to October 2018, where I had the opportunities to work in projects locally or remotely in Spain, the USA and Germany. It was a very good experience where I had to deal with 4 languages every day – I had to work in English and Spanish, hear Hungarian all the time and think in my mother tongue that is Portuguese. Another great achievement at this period was that in September 2017 I was awarded the first Oracle Ace Associate of Hungary being only just 24 years old.
After my experience in Hungary, I got a promotion in Sweden where I had been working since October 2018 and have had the opportunity to work in projects in the USA, Denmark and India. I am very happy about this new phase of my life here and in June 2020 I was promoted from Oracle Ace Associate to Oracle ACE becoming the second one in Sweden being just 27 years old, Mathias is the first one and in the interview I could also share that I joined the company EpicoTech (https://www.epicotech.se/)) , former Miracle Sweden.
There were many other things I shared during the interview. For instance my hobbies like working out almost every day, attending dance classes , Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, travelling and learning languages despite my eccentric taste in music. Another very important topic we discussed was for me to describe how it is to be a black man all over the world and share my experiences regarding this matter. I shared that as a black man I see a huge discrepancy when it comes to black people in IT jobs all over the world and also some episodes that I faced in some of the 30 countries that I have visited so far. So as I mentioned in my travels I will share below the picture of one of my favorites trips which was in Ibiza, Spain in 2017.
I also mentioned my past and current acquaintances, colleagues, relatives and friends and once it finished I received a great picture from Alexandre Frias that I met in 2013 while I was attending one of my Oracle courses at Nerv provided by the Oracle ACE Brazil Ricardo Portilho and we met again at the Oracle event GUOB 2013 or 2014 in São Paulo, Brazil.
Overall, I must say thank you again for the opportunity to show myself. People see us writing articles, posts, providing lectures but they don’t really know our path and Gilson’s Youtube channel (GoldengateBR) is a great opportunity to share these types of topics. So my interview below:
Click on the image below to see the interview in Portuguese (As I said that it has been easier for me speak English than Portuguese nowadays and you will see that I think or try to remember words in Portuguese during my interview but everything is there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39DmZqxmJYw
Hi! I am Bruno, a Brazilian born and bred. Former Oracle ACE, Computer Scientist, MSc in Data Science, over ten years of experience in companies such as IBM, Epico Tech, and Playtech based in three different countries (Brazil, Hungary, and Sweden) and joined projects remotely in many others. I am super excited to show you my interest in Databases, Cloud, Data Science, Data Engineering, Bigdata, AI, Programming, Software Engineering, and data in general.
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