Career
Everyone said Abu Dhabi was crazy
At 27 I got an offer to work in Abu Dhabi. Everyone said it was crazy. Stable career, wife, friends, family. Why risk it? I went anyway.
For the first three months I felt like the worst person in the room. Meetings in English with Indians, Arabs, Filipinos, Europeans, Americans, Russians. Different accents. Different cultural references. Different ways of shipping work.
Technical competence was the floor. What separated people in a global room was everything around it.
Listen before you speak
In some cultures silence is not agreement. Disagreement is not always direct. If you wait for a Brazilian-style pushback, you will think you have consensus when you have politeness. I learned to ask twice, then write it down.
Say the same thing five ways
Feedback that lands with a Brazilian teammate can offend someone from another culture. I had to keep the point and change the wrapper. Same truth. Different temperature. That is not weakness. That is the job when the team does not share a default.
Kill implicit context
When the team is distributed, nothing can be assumed. Everything has to be explicit, documented, and boringly clear. “You know what I mean” is how production incidents get a second chapter.
Stay in the discomfort
Real growth lives there. The hardest months taught more than any course. Patience with that feeling is a skill. Most people treat it as a signal to go home.
When I came back to Brazil I was a different professional. Not because of the tools I picked up. Because of the mindset those rooms forced.
If you get a chance to work abroad, take it. Even if it scares you. Especially if it scares you.
Discomfort is still the best teacher I have found.
I told the longer version, with the part people skip, on Coffee with the Dev.