by Homero Graco
Two years ago, I started to work at a big four audit and consulting company. At that time, everything was new, I had to make new friends, I had to learn accounting, and I started to travel - a lot - throughout Brazil. I was very excited, because the job required people from IT background (I studied Computer Engineering) to be a systems consultant and auditor. My happiness couldn't be bigger. "I will meet people from high business degrees and learn everything I can about finance! And better, I can be a manager - or perhaps a partner - in few years!". Yes, the enterprise, as most of the big companies, has a good career plan, the learning opportunities are a reality and people seems to be more passionate with the company than with their own football teams.
But - Fuuuuuu - things was not a dream. I cannot explain clearly what really happens with people when working in Brazil, but all the values shown at marketing folders where different in practice. It's like when you order a sandwich only by looking at banners, and minutes later realize that isn't big. In general, people is more interested in how much they can earn per month, than how much they evolved as humans at end of day. Also, the generally long work day - at consulting companies 10h/day is common - is not for me, neither for most of people. This started to annoy me. Checkpoint.
Back to the beginning, I became distant from my friends, university and @. Frankly, I did not cared about this, because I could meet people at weekends. Additionally, all the new things I was doing, like visiting cities at another Brazilian states, was a kind of experience that I never felt at another place. And every week was the same story: get ready to travel to another city, learn about the manufacturing process of the target enterprise, review all the IT process, give a final score and finally go back to home. Like a "do-while" loop. But, as most of the things that are successively repeated, after one year my job wasn't exciting anymore. Now add this to the last paragraph checkpoint to notice that I was working (excessively) at place that I was not liking. Very demotivational.
Ok, see this video now to get happy again. Sorry, this videois a shit probably makes you sleepy, searching for "lolcats" at Youtube is a better choice.
So I decided to go backwards a little and done many efforts to be closer to my friends. I participated at AIESEC events and, specially, made friends from many countries around the world. Even more, I forced myself to ask every people why they chosen to do an internship and what are the feeling of doing a travel to another country. This led me to think in a holistic way about my life, becoming a fuel for me to get motivated again and maybe - "who knows?" - travel to some place around the world. The result explains the title of this post, I got highly involved with the internship - culture - language package that suddenly the only way to continue living this kind of experience is to ask my boss to quit the company and go outside Brazil.
What I'm feeling right now? A sense of recovered liberty. It's like being able to do many things as you can, implement old projects, organize your life and... sleep! And the dangerous part of being an "unemployed" is: stay the entire day in front of computer checking Facebook. To avoid this, I created a schedule and short term objectives to make me up and running. This is the subject for the next post, stay alert!
Two years ago, I started to work at a big four audit and consulting company. At that time, everything was new, I had to make new friends, I had to learn accounting, and I started to travel - a lot - throughout Brazil. I was very excited, because the job required people from IT background (I studied Computer Engineering) to be a systems consultant and auditor. My happiness couldn't be bigger. "I will meet people from high business degrees and learn everything I can about finance! And better, I can be a manager - or perhaps a partner - in few years!". Yes, the enterprise, as most of the big companies, has a good career plan, the learning opportunities are a reality and people seems to be more passionate with the company than with their own football teams.
But - Fuuuuuu - things was not a dream. I cannot explain clearly what really happens with people when working in Brazil, but all the values shown at marketing folders where different in practice. It's like when you order a sandwich only by looking at banners, and minutes later realize that isn't big. In general, people is more interested in how much they can earn per month, than how much they evolved as humans at end of day. Also, the generally long work day - at consulting companies 10h/day is common - is not for me, neither for most of people. This started to annoy me. Checkpoint.
Back to the beginning, I became distant from my friends, university and @. Frankly, I did not cared about this, because I could meet people at weekends. Additionally, all the new things I was doing, like visiting cities at another Brazilian states, was a kind of experience that I never felt at another place. And every week was the same story: get ready to travel to another city, learn about the manufacturing process of the target enterprise, review all the IT process, give a final score and finally go back to home. Like a "do-while" loop. But, as most of the things that are successively repeated, after one year my job wasn't exciting anymore. Now add this to the last paragraph checkpoint to notice that I was working (excessively) at place that I was not liking. Very demotivational.
Ok, see this video now to get happy again. Sorry, this video
So I decided to go backwards a little and done many efforts to be closer to my friends. I participated at AIESEC events and, specially, made friends from many countries around the world. Even more, I forced myself to ask every people why they chosen to do an internship and what are the feeling of doing a travel to another country. This led me to think in a holistic way about my life, becoming a fuel for me to get motivated again and maybe - "who knows?" - travel to some place around the world. The result explains the title of this post, I got highly involved with the internship - culture - language package that suddenly the only way to continue living this kind of experience is to ask my boss to quit the company and go outside Brazil.
 |
| My dismissal letter |
What I'm feeling right now? A sense of recovered liberty. It's like being able to do many things as you can, implement old projects, organize your life and... sleep! And the dangerous part of being an "unemployed" is: stay the entire day in front of computer checking Facebook. To avoid this, I created a schedule and short term objectives to make me up and running. This is the subject for the next post, stay alert!