I'm a person who fooled the statistics - if they were right, I'd be dead or in prison -

I grew up poor but I didn't know it. That was just the normal where I came from, everyone was poor. In the midst of the violence, poverty, and corruption one learns that a lot of things are out of control, and one can only adapt to deal with the challenges it has been given to.

Our education was precarious, incomplete, and, unfair. I was born with this inner voice that was telling me I didn't belong to that place. I wanted more! People will look at you differently when you want more in a place that everyone was conditioned to want so little, I couldn't help myself though, I'm a rebel!

My mom lived it all, I saw her teaching at school, working at bars, working as a house painter, building stuff, even mining crystals. Extremely intelligent, driven, and honest.

My father was an alcoholic, mathematician, farmer, and, gambler. Very competitive, intelligent, impulsive, and, aggressive. We would see him around a couple of times a year if we were lucky he wouldn't be drunk to start a fight or threaten us.

I started working early, I was selling ice creams when I was 14, I ran a bar way before I was even legally allowed to enter one.

One day around 2005 I was surfing on the internet when I came across a phishing page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing), I was stunned by it. How that works? How is that even possible? I was curious, I wanted to know how that worked, I wanted to learn what was behind it. Then I started looking for answers, I learned they were made with something called PHP, that websites could be easily "cloned" as they were just "code". That was the beginning of my journey.

A few weeks later, I was writing phishing pages using HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and, ASP.NET. Building keyloggers using C, Delphi, and, Visual Basic. I was looking for security breaches, testing websites against SQL Injection, sniffing networks, and, learning. I've learned a lot!

I left my home when I was 17 and went to São Paulo, that was a shock! I was 1000 kilometers away from my family and my tiny village of 4000 inhabitants. My first job there was in a repair shop for broken glasses. After that, I worked in some Call Centers, until I started studying and got an internship in IT.

Sao Paulo was a nightmare, I lost 15kg, was pretty depressed, and had to wake at 5 am and go to bed at 1 am, every single day, for 5 years.

Fast forward to 2020, I work with companies around the globe, I'm doing well. I'm an excellent professional and that was only possible because I've transformed all the bad things around me in lessons.

From a tiny village to the world. That is me!

If you want to know about my professional life check my LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmagnum/