Nubank was born to help people recover control over their financial lives. Its simple and technological solutions inspired me so much that I was willing to play any role within the company.
That feeling was what guided me from a Customer Service Analyst towards becoming a Technical Writer. In order to do that, I had to learn important lessons with more than one mentor. If you want to know how Nubank helped me to make a career transition in only 2 years, keep reading this article!
Day One: The Xpeer Experience
In 2019, at the beginning of my career, I joined Nubank as a Customer Service Analyst (internally known as Xpeer). Years before, when I was in college, I remember passing through Nubank’s office almost every day and thinking how nice it would be to join the company. I ended up joining because I saw Nubank as a powerhouse in terms of empowering people. I was so passionate about the purpose of the company that I was able to join it in any position. When I received my hiring process approval email, it took me 30 seconds to accept the position, even though I was working in another company at the time.
I was an Xpeer during June 2019 and March 2020. My role was simple: answering clients’ calls, emails and chat messages. To me, that time was, perhaps, the most significant in terms of understanding the basis of Nubank. The company is highly client-focused and having an overview of the relationship between Nu and clients gave me the knowledge to take different steps.
The Day After the Day One: IT Analyst
Ten months later after starting at Nubank as Xpeer, I moved to the Engineering chapter to work as an IT Analyst in the IT Engineering team. I started working in the Governance Squad, which is responsible for preparing laptops and gadgets for employees.
A few months before I started to work with André Romeiro, team’s Product Operations at the time, who started to mentor me during that time and included me in his projects within the IT Engineering team. Without changing my role, I moved to a more strategic position to take care of the financial aspects of IT Engineering.
I was in this role from April 2020 to August 2021. This time was absolutely meaningful because it was my chance to learn deeply about how IT management works: my daily tasks included contacting external vendors, making contract renovations, creating documentation and analyzing how we could make a better budget allocation.
Inspired by my mentor at the time, I tried to join the Product Operations chapter in an internal hiring process. At the time, I had to present a business case that was a total disaster and I never joined the team after all. It was sad at that moment, but today I thank this moment for everything that happened after, because it was my chance to find my real vocation within another career in tech: Technical Writer.
The Game Changer: Technical Writer
After the failure in joining the Product Operations chapter, I was willing to learn even more new things within Software Engineering. That was when I found André Sato, one of the first Technical Writers at Nubank, and asked him to teach me some practices of writing to leverage my work as an IT Analyst. He accepted and mentored me for 6 months. During that time, Nubank was planning its IPO and it was a crucial time in terms of creating and organizing internal documentation. For this reason, after 6 months, I was invited to join the Technical Writing chapter.
Besides being super common in Europe and in North America, the technical writing field in Brazil isn’t really solid and only a few tech companies have technical writing teams. At Nubank, we are considered pioneers of Tech Writing in Brazil.
Being a Technical Writer is more than just writing: it’s assuring that Engineering teams have a full understatement of their practices, processes and projects.
We use to say that technical writers have the “Bird’s eye view”, which means that we have an overview of the company from high above. Documenting things is magic because it makes really clear what is complete, what is incomplete, what is working, what isn’t working and so on. Through documentation, it’s possible to see the past, the present and the future of a team, and also make strategic decisions on how to leverage a team’s scope.
The Lesson: How to Win in a Tech Company
The first lesson was given: no man is an island
A great part of my success within Nubank was thanks to the mentors I found during my time here. However, be aware that hardly someone is going to mentor you without you asking for it. Have the wisdom to identify people you admire and the courage to ask them to teach you what they know.
The second lesson is crucial: feedback is a gift
Nubank has a great culture of providing feedback constantly and the meaningful part of it is that you have the chance to improve your skills every day. There is no shame in making mistakes, but it’s important to fail fast and understand how to make it right the next time. Ask for feedback, always.
The third lesson is simple: be the owner of your career
Nubank is a company that has grown fast since day one and there’s room for growth in the company. But it’s necessary to identify opportunities and be open to studying and learning new stuff constantly. When we don’t use our potential to do so, the odds are that we don’t grow as professionals. Be your own hero and identify what you’re really good at doing and pursue it for as long as it takes.