I’m leaving ThoughtWorks Brazil.
Not today — my last day is at the end of November — but today is the day I tell you. A while back a friend of mine wrote one of these and I never forgot it. Short, warm, looking forward, no melodrama. That’s the shape I want for this one. Big feelings, small post.
Almost five years. I joined TW Brazil in August 2014. Teams across multiple cities and countries, clients I’m still proud of, friendships I’m carrying forever. That’s the fast summary of a slow, good four-and-some years.
If I have to compress what made ThoughtWorks Brazil the place it is, it’s this: the talented people on a TW project aren’t here because of the project. They’re here because of each other. They call themselves TWers, and what they pass between them is a particular formula for passion — strong enough to keep me focused on people, on value and quality, on challenging the status quo and challenging myself. I first heard of ThoughtWorks back around 2007, drawn in by the technical excellence and the agile practice. The people I met through that orbit taught me a lot long before I ever joined. These last almost-five years, I’ve been passing the formula on the best I knew how.
Last month, at our annual Brazil offsite, the team I lead ran the company-wide team-building track. The format was something I’d cooked up, half-seriously, in the months before — and the team made it real, took it to the room, and trained everyone through it.
(my team — and me underneath the camera — closing my last year at TW Brazil with the team-building activity we’d built together)
The faces are the reason this is hard. I love these people.
What’s next: product, and Berlin.
In a month I’m moving from Porto Alegre to Berlin to join the team at GoEuro , helping build the platform a lot of Europeans use to travel between cities. The work looks meaningful, the people I’ve met so far feel like TWers in spirit, and the timing — for me, for my family, for the kind of work I want to do next — felt right.
Thank you, ThoughtWorks Brazil. Valeu mesmo. These have been almost five of the best years of my life — and I’m going to miss walking through that door and hugging the people who made me so happy in it.