I recently had the opportunity to work with a company that truly values learning and growth. From the very beginning, I felt like I was given the tools to succeed. My mentor would often send me emails with suggestions for things I could learn to help me in my future roles, and I was always encouraged to ask questions and seek feedback.

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I received early on in my job was to not be a "what-if" person. My boss asked me what the best advice I had ever received, and I shared that it was to focus on taking action rather than getting bogged down in hypothetical scenarios. This really resonated with me, especially since I was scared about leaving 13 years of experience behind to start anew.

When we have meetings, I like to bring a sense of calm and humor to the table. If my colleagues are stressed, I'll often remind them to "breathe" and suggest that they look at their feet – it's amazing how much of a difference a simple suggestion can make! My mentor even joked about being a "flip flop" person, which made me laugh and realize that there was no need to be too serious.

One of the things I love most about my job is the culture of giving feedback. When I make mistakes or do something right, everyone in my team knows it, and they're always willing to help me improve. My boss even asked me to write a blog post about my experience, which was a great opportunity for me to share what I've learned with others.

I currently work on the billing team as a backend engineer, primarily working with Python and Spring Boot. While there's still plenty I need to learn, I feel like I've made some rapid progress since joining the company. My first tasks were relatively simple, but I quickly became more confident in my abilities as I learned how things worked.

My boss was keen to give me challenging projects from the start, which allowed me to apply what I'd learned and grow even further. The most recent project I've been working on is a big one – it's related to handling user information, and I'm excited to see it come together. My mentor has always encouraged me to take ownership of my work and push myself to deliver high-quality results.

I feel really lucky to be working with a company that values continuous learning and growth. The apprenticeship program they have in place is truly innovative – by giving us our own projects, they're allowing us to scale up quickly and develop our skills. I'm excited to see how my work will evolve over time and look forward to sharing my progress with others.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni started working the oil field when i was 20 like almost 21 in brazil i worked everywhere i worked here in states i worked in russia and the emirates some places in central america like i worked everywhere it was a very like demanding and stressful job mostly it's kind of like i used to work in an area that if you make mistakes you could lose your life because something could blow up a small mistake it could come back as like a fine of millions and millions of dollars just as in some context like if you think about like a drill ship it costs half a million dollars a day if you do something that took them like four hours from working properly you were just talking about a couple hundred dollars right so it was very stressful yeah i was used to work like 13 hours a day the idea was 28 days there and 28 days home but i was never 28 days home days i would be in like west texas in those like land rigs and i can say like the 80 80 percent of the time i was offshore like i was in a drill ship or like a sam's like i was in somewhere in the ocean i did real-time geological interpretation while drilling like when they were drilling they wanted to know what we were drilling like if we were in the reservoir like the density of the formation we're drilling some information like geological information about the area we were drilling so i was responsible to handle the equipment that would do those checks the sensors and everything that would bring the information to the surface and then i would create like a graphic out of it so the geologist could read and you know decide if we should keep going or not and the other job was with equipment called manage pressure drilling that's kind of like depending on how deep you are the as like when you're drilling the well is collapsing on you because it's so deep and there is a system that pressurizes the well so the walls don't fall it's kind of like you're putting pressure inside a wall so well the well so you keep the walls of the the well in place so you don't get your drawstring stuck and it's kind of like it's called well control so you hold the pressure down there so it won't come up and explode everything i was in a position that i was one of the first ones to know if something like a exploratory will was successful let's say because i was the one giving the information to like the geologists like i always liked computers there were the part where i was like carrying weight and working in the mud but there was also the the part of the job that i was working in front of a bunch of computers you know checking if everything was right and i have never coded before but i knew that was something that i could pick up pretty fast and um after some time being away from home was just i was not enjoying that anymore like anymore because at first i was like yeah i'm gonna get like 20 days off i can travel i can do this and i can do that and like for the past couple years i was getting home and not having energy to do anything my wife would be here like waiting for me to do a bunch of stuff and then when i was home i was like yeah i just want to lay down in bed give me give me like a week and then a week later i would receive a call i need you back when i was growing up i grew up in a city that like i we moved to the city when i was like four and my my father he didn't find a job in that city so he was working in the city that we were living before so he would leave home on monday and come back on a friday so i i grew up with having my father only on the weekends because of that and now that i'm thinking on you know having kids i wanted to be present you know i want to i didn't want to be away six months every year you know when my wife would be by herself growing up you know our child the choice of having you know coached you as the teacher it was a very good decision too at first i thought that the biggest problem i was going to have is not have the right like vocabulary i mean i speak portuguese english is not my main language even though i think i speak good english i speak the english that i use but he makes things look pretty easy even when they're complicated he has a way of making you not worry i think that one thing that helped me a lot was to be friends with my the other students because we would help us like we would go through an exercise together and discuss about i don't know ways of applying for jobs creating cover letters or like hey i'm stuck on this on python can you help me out so people would help like throughout throughout the course i got a really good mentor i was lucky that they had a mentor coach that is a brazilian we would speak in portuguese it was like cool to have someone like to speak the same language as me helping me with everything so she was able to kind of like show what i should focus depending on the moment i was in the course combination of me and her it was pretty good and also with my mentor just meet he's such a nice guy he sends me skype messages from time to time like nowadays just to say like man i'm so happy we're both back engine engineers and and yeah it was really fun i never felt like like i was in a position where i didn't have the you know the tools to learn something even when we're not in in our meetings he would send me emails like hey this is something that you should you know check because can help you out in the future there was a question that they made me when i was in the first week at my my job that they said like what was the best side advice that you ever got and i i said that the advice was like don't be a what-if person like don't get old with a bunch of what-ifs like what if i quit that job what if i decided to do this or do that i mean i'm 33 i'm not that old but i was scary about leaving 13 years of experience in an area to start on another area it didn't take two weeks for me to realize that i did the right choice after i did it so i really like it um i mean when we have meetings i know and i'm pretty sure that everyone in my team they know that i'm kind i'm different i i mean like i i don't take things too seriously and i think that's good i i tell them like there's nothing in this job that can make me stress as much as i was stressing on the other job when i see them stressed i say like hey man just breathe look at your look at your feet are you on your flip-flops or you're using like a big boot or you're using suits all the time like and he was like my mentor he comes and says yeah i'm a flip flop so i'm like yeah so chill it's gonna like we're gonna find a solution for this you're comfy you are at home your your job is just in front of a computer nothing there is no explode button on your keyboard i think i was very lucky on the job i got because i work with people that they're they're like aware that i'm learning so they are always like open to helping me they have this very like good like culture of giving feedback it makes pretty easy to know when i'm making mistakes and when i'm doing things right i wasn't used to that before so i i'm really enjoying the you know the opportunity i was given i even wrote a blog about it like they called they asked me to write a blog about it like the company and i wrote it and they post it on linkedin and um i didn't tell my my co-workers and when they posted i showed them and they were like oh man this is so nice something that you learned today maybe tomorrow can be outdated realize that there is this need of you know continuous growth let's say and and the best way of doing this if we all do it together right i work in a the billings team i'm a backend engineer right now i'm working basically with python with springboard i learned python and javascript right so of course there's a bunch of stuff that i still have to learn but i had a very good like understanding of python and how things worked before i'm not going to say that it was pretty easy to to to get around things but it was scary at first because i was afraid of doing things wrong but with the with the the knowledge that i got from before you know from the boot camp i was able to get things pretty fast in a normal day it's just like we use a jira board you know a jira at first they gave me some tasks to do like pretty simple tasks since i'm on the billing team are responsible to check like next payment dates like to check for due dates if people are supposed to be paying their you know their loans today tomorrow when so all the code that i touch is related to that they're giving me small tasks at first they gave me like tasks just to see if i was going to be able to get around things and now i'm working on a bigger project there's related to how we handle uh you know users information like they gave me small tasks in a way that i could understand how things worked and when they realized that i was capable of doing things they come they came to me and said like i want you to do something that will bring value to the company here's this project i think you're able to do it and it's your responsibility to get it done i'm on the first class for apprentices on a firm they are kind of like creating their way of handling apprentices and the onboarding and how you should pick up more complicated tasks the way that they think it's a good way for you to you know scale up is to have your own project so it's going to be awesome when i finish it and i i don't you know go to the firm website click on the button and oh this is mine this is my code you\n"