Sunburned Before the Interview
13 Jul 2026I started working at Brandwatch in July 2014, just a few months after leaving Brazil and moving to England. At the time, I was still trying to figure out how to survive in that new country. New city, new language, new culture, and a British accent that, let’s be honest, sometimes sounded like it was being spoken with a potato in the mouth. 🤣
During the day, I studied programming and looked for a job in my field. At night, I worked as a busser in a very busy restaurant in London. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a busser is the person who clears the tables, keeps the restaurant organised, carries plates around and runs from one side to the other trying to make sure everything keeps working. Or, to keep it simple: I did almost everything except cook. By the way, if you want to know more about my disastrous — and funny — time working as a busser, I wrote a whole post about it: My first job in UK
It was during the summer of 2014 that I got an interview at Brandwatch, in Brighton. I had no idea I would end up spending almost five years there.
Sleeping Was Not Part of the Plan
The interview was scheduled for eleven in the morning. The night before, I worked late at the restaurant. I got home at around two in the morning and had to catch a train to Brighton at around six. Sleeping, apparently, was not part of the plan.
I got on the train completely exhausted and arrived in Brighton a few hours early. Since I still had plenty of time before the interview, I decided to wait at the beach. It was one of those rare sunny days in England. The weather was nice, the sea looked beautiful, and I was completely destroyed after working all night.
I thought: “I’ll set an alarm and rest for just a few minutes.”
I lay down on the beach, closed my eyes and fell asleep. It seemed like an excellent idea. Until it wasn’t. The experienced Brazilian, who had lived close to the beach back in Brazil, managed to forget one small detail called sunscreen. When I woke up, my face was completely sunburned.
Bright red. With sunglasses marks. A masterpiece.
Even so, I got up, fixed my clothes and walked into the interview with my chest out, thinking I looked great. We all know British people love getting sunburned just so they can tell everyone they went to the beach. 🤣
I was simply trying to integrate into my new country.
That’s It. I’ve Arrived in Heaven.
When I entered the Brandwatch office, next to Brighton train station, something funny happened. Before the interview had even started, I already knew I wanted to work there.
There was a dog running around the office. I think they were having some kind of small happy hour that day, because people were talking about work and technical problems while drinking beer.
For someone who came from more traditional companies in Brazil, that place looked like another planet. I looked around and thought: “That’s it. I’ve arrived in heaven.”
I just needed to get the job.
The Kernel Module Question
My first interview was with Steve and Johan, two wonderful people. I still remember one of the questions they asked me: “How would you load a module into the Linux kernel?”
Luckily, I answered modprobe. I’m glad I didn’t decide to test the answer rm -rf /. 🤣
The interview was very relaxed, almost like a normal conversation. Within the first few minutes, I could already tell I was speaking with two excellent sysadmins. To this day, there is one question I never had the courage to ask them: Did they notice that my face was completely sunburned? Or did they simply assume that was my natural skin colour?
A Developer Working as a Sysadmin
My start at Brandwatch was a bit unusual. I was hired to work as a sysadmin, but until then, all my professional experience in Brazil had been as a software developer. It would be the first time I officially worked in systems administration.
My team leader was Dennis, a very experienced sysadmin and an amazing person. Honestly, I was very lucky at Brandwatch. I worked with many intelligent people, but also with some genuinely great human beings. Dennis and I have a few funny stories.
I’ll tell you one.
At the beginning, however, the situation wasn’t always that funny for me. I was living in a new country, speaking English every day and trying to understand an accent that sounded completely different from the English I had learned in Brazil.
Sometimes I struggled to understand the tasks Dennis gave me verbally. So I would always ask: “Could you send that to me by email?”
I knew that if I could read it, I would understand everything and complete the task without any problem. Even so, for a while, I was afraid this might cost me my job.
One day, I decided to talk to him. I said: “Sorry. Sometimes I still can’t understand everything in English.”
He replied: “Paulo, you understand Python. For me, that’s enough.”
I never forgot that sentence. At that moment, he wasn’t just talking about Python. He was trying to reassure me. He knew that, with time, my ears would get used to the accent and the language would stop being a problem. And that is exactly what happened.
After a while, I started understanding British English much better. From that day on, I only spoke to Dennis by email. Just kidding!
But it was like that for around three months. 🤣🤣🤣 Eventually, my ears became trained enough to understand “potato English.”
And the Confusion with the Sellotape
I worked in the IT Team. In the beginning, the team was Dennis, Josh, Toby, Kevin, Christian, Anders and me. As Brandwatch grew, the team naturally grew as well. During those years, I probably made quite a few cultural and language mistakes.
One of the best happened while we were putting together a physical Kanban board to organise our tasks. We were sticking pieces of paper to the wall, and I needed some sellotape.
So I asked out loud: “Kevin, do you have durex?” He replied: “I do, but keep your voice down.” 🤣🤣🤣 He was messing with me.
At that moment, I still didn’t understand the problem. In Brazil, many people call sellotape “Durex” because of the brand. In England, Durex is mainly known as a condom brand. In my head, Durex was an international sticky tape brand used all over the world. It wasn’t. At least not in that way.
I Left to Learn Go language
In 2016, I decided to leave Brandwatch. At the time, several of my friends were working with Go, or Golang, and I wanted to learn the language too. I received an offer from Sainsbury’s Digital Labs to work with Go, and I accepted it.
The decision wasn’t exactly logical. I would have to commute every day from Brighton to London and earn less than Brandwatch had offered me to stay. But I wanted to work with Go. So I went.
It wasn’t a very smart decision from a financial point of view, but it was a decision that made sense to the Paulo of 2016. I have always prioritised knowledge over money. After around six months, Dallas, another amazing person I had the pleasure to work with, who was Brandwatch’s IT Manager at the time, made me an offer to come back.
This time, I would be able to work with Go inside the company. So I came back. I worked on a Go project for around six months. When the project finished, I did something even more unexpected: I became a frontend developer.
Yes.
Me, the person who used to make jokes about Javascript, now had to use Javascript every day. I was never a big fan of the language, but I don’t regret the change. I started working for James, another amazing person, and I learned a lot during that time.
That was basically my journey at Brandwatch: I started as a sysadmin, worked with Go and Python, and then spent some time working as a JavaScript developer.
Nothing very linear. But that probably helped make everything more interesting.
Work Hard and Be Nice to People
Brandwatch had a huge impact on my professional life.
At the Sovereign House office, there was a sign on the wall that said: “Work hard and be nice to people.” I still remember that sentence.
It represented a lot of what I experienced there. It was at Brandwatch that I learned to enjoy spicy food, curry and IPA beer. It was with the people there that I started enjoying rugby. They were also the ones who taught me the word “douchebag”, which I later used affectionately to refer to my friends on the team.
International friendship is also about that. Learning new languages so you can insult the people you like.
Today, I live in Brazil again.
I still speak from time to time with some of the friends (Christiam and Kevin) I met at Brandwatch, and I keep everything I experienced there very close to my heart.
If I could go back in time, I would love to live it all again.
The lack of sleep. The interview. The sunburn. The English spoken with a potato in the mouth. The beers in the office. The career changes. The bad jokes. And, most importantly, the people.
I didn’t know it that day, when I walked into the office with a red face and sunglasses marks, but I was starting one of the most important chapters of my life.
This is only a small part of my time at Brandwatch. I met and worked with many incredible people that I didn’t even manage to mention here.
I still have many stories to tell.
Thank you, Brandwatch!
