It’s 6:00 PM. My first day at work is over.
I leave feeling a little exhausted, but it isn’t physical exhaustion. It feels as though an entire world has been poured in front of me in just a few hours.
There is too much information, too much happening inside the company, and too many people talking naturally about things that, to me, seem to come from another planet. They discuss an issue with the CRM, mention that it runs on-premises, talk about business results, alignment meetings, performance, and targets.
To be honest, at that moment, I felt like an alien.
Or perhaps they were the aliens.
A World That Spoke a Different Language
They spoke a language different from mine.
They used terms I had never heard before. They behaved in ways I didn’t recognize. They were direct, objective, and didn’t waste words.
Just a few weeks earlier, I had been interviewing for that position without the slightest idea of what it meant to be an apprentice, how I was expected to behave, or what people actually expected from me.
Now I was there, trying to look less lost than I really was.
It was the first time I had ever followed a real work schedule.
I arrived exactly at 8:00 AM, just as I had been instructed.
I attended alignment meetings, business performance reviews, and discussions about the company’s results.
I didn’t know the world worked like this.
I didn’t know that so many things had to be planned, measured, and continuously monitored.
Until then, my life had rarely extended beyond what I would do the next day—or, at most, later that same week.
Before the Corporate World
When I was a child—and even throughout my teenage years—I lived each day as if it were a surprise.
I didn’t plan much.
The exceptions were school assignments that involved poster boards, newspaper clippings, and magazine cutouts.
That was the kind of planning I understood.
My friends and I would gather to decide whose house we’d meet at to finish the project.
More often than not, the decision had nothing to do with organization.
We preferred the house with the best snacks or a video game waiting for us afterward.
Where It All Began
My first encounter with the world of computing didn’t happen through a computer.
It happened through a video game.
A Nintendo Entertainment System—the old NES.
It was an old console, probably released in Brazil around 1993.
By the time I got to play it, it already showed signs of age.
The cartridges didn’t always work on the first try.
You had to keep trying.
Test.
Repeat the same little ritual.
My friends used to blow into the cartridges.
I had heard that doing so only increased the chances of oxidation, so I would tell them to use proper electronic cleaning alcohol—or at least a soft cloth.
Looking back, I realize my curiosity began long before I ever wrote my first line of code.
I didn’t understand electronics.
Not really.
But today I think something had already started there.
There was a curiosity inside me that was difficult to explain.
A desire to understand why things worked.
And, more importantly, why they sometimes stopped working.
Before Those Worries Became Mine
Life was good.
I didn’t have real responsibilities.
I didn’t have to think about groceries for the month, bills that needed to be paid, or how much money would be left by the end of it.
Those worries existed.
But they weren’t mine yet.
I only heard them in my parents’ conversations, almost always spoken with tired voices.
Things were difficult. Money was running short. It wasn’t enough. We’d have to save more.
The Size of the World
By the end of high school, I began looking at the future differently.
I started taking my parents’ concerns more seriously.
The effort they made to give me the best they could.
And, most importantly, how little I truly understood about the size of the world.
It was enormous.
It was intimidating.
Everything I had done up to that point no longer seemed enough to turn me into a young adult capable of handling responsibility.
Questions
My mind was filled with questions.
- What am I going to become?
- What kind of work will I do?
- How does someone with no preparation even begin?
My parents always encouraged me to read and study because they believed that knowledge was the only thing that could truly stay with me throughout my life.
I have to admit that, for a long time, I didn’t give that advice the importance it deserved.
When we’re children—or even teenagers—we still don’t know how to distinguish the guidance of those who love us from the quiet harshness of adult life.
The Journey
My name is Daniel Andrade Nogueira, or simply Dan.
If I can tell this story today, it’s because there was a long journey between the boy who rarely thought about tomorrow and the young man who walked out of his first day at work understanding almost nothing of what he had heard.
It was during that journey that I began to realize something that would only make sense years later.
Software was never just about machines.
It has always been about people trying to build something greater than themselves while struggling not to lose themselves in the process.