How a Brazilian young man became a software developer using broken smartphones
Cézar Pauxis challenged logic and poverty to become a prodigy in the software development field. At the age of only 17 years old, he was hired by the biggest Brazilian electronic payments company.
“I had a device that would overheat so quickly I had to put it in the freezer. There were others I could only use part of the screen.”
Cézar Pauxis describes the routine of “problematic relationships” with many of the second hand mobile phones he had during his teenage year — the only ones that fit his family budget.
But it was through workarounds and perseverance that the Paraense (Native of the state of Pará, Brazil) challenged logic and poverty: Pauxis became a self-taught programmer and, at the age of 17 years, saw the biggest Brazilian tech companies competing for himself after a tweet became viral by the end of 2020.
“I was asking help to buy a better smartphone because the one I was using was broken as usual.”
Viral Funding
In a matter of days, his tweet was liked more than 90 thousand times and shared more than 20 thousand times which resulted in many donations. The visibility also arouse professional interest in his case.
He was contact by a series of companies, including PicPay, the fintech based in Vitória (ES) and that was being used by Pauxis in his online funding.
“Learning programming from scratch under the conditions Cezar was is very difficult. When he told his story in Twitter, the tech community started watching.” Diogo Carneiro, CTO @ PicPay.
Programming in a smartphone is more complicated than programming in a computer due to the size of the screen and the fact that you need to type a lot, which might be uncomfortable under the best conditions, let alone using a broken phone.
Since March 1st, Pauxis is the newest developer of the company. Working remotely from Belém, Pará, he lives by himself in an apartment because his family moved to the countryside a few years ago.
Pauxis’s story crossed the borders of the tech world and reached the website Razões para Acreditar (Reasons to Believe) that organizes funding for inspiring people.
A new virtual funding raised more than R$ 80 thousand (US$ 14 thousand) that will be used to finish building the house his family lives in Carutapera, MA.
“We didn’t have money to live in a finished house, so we had to live in a unfinished one.”
Interest on Bots
The Paraense (Native of the state of Pará, Brazil), who learned to read at the age of three years old, was 14 when he got interested by “bots”, autonomous applications that perform any sort of pre determined task.
Pauxis had special curiosity on Telegram’s bots and he started, always with the help of a second-hand mobile phone, to research on developers communities online.
“The last time we had a computer at home, I was around 5 or 6 years old, so I had to use a mobile phone. Other people I talked to warned me about how difficult it was to develop in a phone, but my curiosity was greater than that.”
The problems in the device were another obstacle. Failures made Pauxis lose all of his work several times and often stopping him from working on his projects for several months.
“This was very demotivating. I never thought of giving up, though.”
Nevertheless, he was able to implement two bots for Telegram that would respond to researches. Pauxis, however, hesitated on asking the people he met online for financial help. He avoided making his story public during years.
“I’m still afraid people will get me wrong and start thinking I’m trying to play a victim.”
“I have been creating software projects all these years using only broken smartphones. This is what I love to do and I always did it for free to simply help users. This is the reason why I avoided asking for donations or charging the services.”
Since then his world turned upside down, but the Paraense (Native of the state of Pará, Brazil) don’t want to forget the obstacles he overcame and wants his story to encourage and help other people who live in similar situations he lived.
“I like the idea of inspiring and motivating people not to give up. I want them to see we don’t need much to pursue a dream.”
“Many people have old devices and phones they don’t use anymore forgotten in the closet. They could donate these devices to help people who need them.”
This story was originally published in Portuguese via BBC Brasil. You can check the original here.
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