In 2014, following a 20+ year career in the technology and finance (fintech) industries, I had reached the point in my career where I could choose what kind of work I wanted to do. I had led many teams, built and run many systems, both personally and with my teams, and been a successful technology manager and executive at numerous companies in the US and Asia, managing teams on every continent except Antarctica.

As I rose through the executive ranks, I enjoyed success, but I was increasingly concerned with high-level management issues and removed from the work that I enjoyed and which I thought created the most value. That work was working directly with software teams to make great software. I had seen in my career that hiring and training teams was usually the key to successful projects. I knew, from my experience in both Wall Street and technology startups, that the best talent was often under-appreciated in the labor market and offered superior value, even when you paid well for it.

I also knew that, if you train talented people in how to take responsibility well and effectively, then you can unlock a lot of latent value in those people, helping them and helping the world. I founded Brick Abode with the mission to build and run great software teams. I believed then and I believe now, if we can do that effectively, then we can solve many problems and create great value for the world.

Given that access to premium talent was a necessity, the first question was, where should Brick Abode operate? I was living in Singapore at the time, but I knew that Singapore wasn’t the right place. Typically for an engineer, I built a spreadsheet. I was looking for four attributes:

• A deep population of intelligent, well-trained engineers
• A strong culture of personal responsibility
• A time zone conducive to working with clients in Europe and North America
• A good quality of life for myself and for our people

At the end of a long research process, somewhat to my surprise, Brazil was by far the leading candidate. The more my wife and I studied Brazil, the more impressed we were with its possibilities for having a great life. We got on an airplane and flew to Brazil, a country we had never seen, with a language none of us spoke, in the hopes of that better life. We have lived here ever since. I would not be surprised to spend the rest of my days here.

We moved to Florianópolis, a city of approximately 1 million people, located on an island off of the southern coast of Brazil. Surrounded by beautiful beaches, Florianópolis is home to many international sporting and cultural events, from surfing championships to a leading triathlon, computer conferences, and concerts. One of Amy Winehouse’s last concerts was in Florianópolis. Elon Musk decided to start SpaceX while on vacation with Peter Diamandis in Florianópolis in 2002. It’s a lovely city with a wonderful quality of life; see our Instagram channel or search for photos on your favorite search engine.

Florianópolis is also a technology hub within Brazil, with a strong computing culture, a strong computing program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), numerous startup companies, and several technology hubs, all bringing computing people together with a strong web of relationships. I started calling and introducing myself to people at the university and technology hubs, and I was very quickly introduced to technology companies around the city. I told them that I was looking to build relationships and trying to start a technology company, and they welcomed me warmly, with several inviting me to consult for them.

During my first years in the city, I hosted dinners for CTOs in Florianópolis and learned much from them about how technology companies operate in Brazil. At the same time, we received our first development contract from Royalty Exchange, in Denver. They were our first customer, and we were their first contractor. We built Royalty Exchange’s core systems, helped them hire and train their in-house development team, and eventually reached the point that they no longer needed our service, making them also our first “graduate”, a tech company whom we helped bootstrap and make self-sufficient. We view graduating our clients to self-sufficiency as the highest level service we can provide, and we remain very proud of this achievement.

Our first hiring in Brazil focused on developers with a background in functional programming: Haskell, StandardML, and OCaml, as well as traditional programming languages. For my advice on how to think about hiring, check out my three-part LinkedIn series: 1, 2, 3. I was immediately struck by the quality of the talent, and as new clients came in, we continued to grow.

For the first several years, we operated an office in Florianópolis, but with COVID in 2020, we were forced to shut it down and transition to remote work. Remote work has been very good to us, allowing many of our engineers to return to their home towns and be near their families, which matches well with our mission to create a great quality of life for our people as they build lives and families in Brazil. We increased our discipline about communication, status updates, and work coordination, and we continued serving clients, now with the increased ability to attract talent because of our flexible working.

We maintain our annual Christmas Party and Corporate Retreat, where we bring our people and their families together for almost a week’s worth of meetings, events, and fun activities. Santa visits us every year with a bag full of presents for the children, and the adults get to enjoy adult time with each other, talking about work but also about life with the people we share every day with online. Click here to see more from our past parties.

Today we have over 30 people. We continue to grow, but more importantly, we continue to improve in our ability to build great teams, serve clients, and help our people create good lives. I now serve as Senior Engineer at Brick Abode, helping our teams serve our clients carefully, responsibly, and with the best technical solutions possible for their business problems. I am pleased by what Brick Abode has become, our ability to serve our clients, and our having created opportunity for our people, including myself, to have a happy, productive life in Brazil, doing work we can be proud of.

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR 2019

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