I’m Gabriel, a Brazilian software engineer currently based in Germany.

I started my career at ZeroPaper, a small startup that was acquired by Intuit three months after I joined. I found myself moving from a 10-person company to an enterprise with over 8,000 employees almost overnight. That transition taught me a lot, mostly about what good engineering looks like when you’re surrounded by people who care about it. One person who shaped the engineer in me is Daniel Garajau. We were around the same age, but he was a decade ahead of me in terms of experience. Having someone like that around early in your career is rare, and I got lucky. This blog is, in part, my attempt to pay that forward.

In 2017, the project I was on at Intuit was deprioritized and I was already looking for something new. A startup in Berlin reached out, the timing was convenient, and I packed up and moved to Germany. Today I work at Pennylane, focusing on tax returns for companies in France. Outside of work, I mentor engineers on Codementor, study at 42 Wolfsburg, and spend whatever time is left with my wife and two daughters.

This blog is a way to consolidate my knowledge and serve as reference for future me or anyone that might be facing similar issues. If something here saves you some time or steers you away from a mistake I already made, that’s good enough for me.

Cheers,

Gabriel