Visa to acquire Brazilian startup Pismo for $1B

Our public (state-owned) education system (pre-college) is doing very bad, scoring poorly on PISA[0] year after year. On the other hand, the public tertiary education system is very advanced, but getting into it is tough and supporting the academic environment is also difficult (we have very high dropout rates in most STEM courses). Most upper middle-class families also expect that their children will study at a public university, so they're forced to study hard to pass in the admission exam.

Also, keep in mind that most Brazilians don't speak a second language and those who do, are generally from a more affluent background or from a poorer background but with a good academic track record that granted them a scholarship to a private institution in high school or earlier.

So, those brilliant engineers he mentioned are probably some of those people: smart people that got into the top-notch of our education system (by either being gifted or because they just got used to studying for long hours because their parents demanded it). However, the inequality within the country is abysmal. For every talented, smart Brazilian engineer, there are hundreds of functional illiterates - a 2012 study estimated that 38% of our college students are functional illiterates[1].

A classic tale of South American inequality.

PS: The government has admittance quotas in the public universities for students coming from poorer backgrounds (income, race or coming from public high schools). This helped shift the balance in those institutions, but since the admission is based on an exam[2], you can still expect those students to be above the average since there are always more students taking the test than there are available vacancies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...

[1] https://guiadoestudante.abril.com.br/universidades/pesquisa-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_exam

The public education system is not very good, when it comes to schools(from elementary to high, to use US terms).

However, from my experience with the US public school system in the Bay Area, I'd say that many public schools in Brazil outclass those in the US. The standard curriculum definitely seems better - I am constantly surprised by how many subjects US schools do not cover - at all. Of course, the standard deviation is horrendous, so there are public schools that can hardly be called schools. The best private schools in Brazil are amazing (more so for 'STEM') - although their workload is pretty heavy. Every single person that I've known that participated in international interchange programs and spent some time in the US had real issues catching up when they came back. Many advanced subjects in math, biology, chemistry (organic chemistry in general, specially naming) didn't seem to be covered at all. Since my 'high school' was quite some time ago, I had expected things today to be different. But just comparing my kid's textbook (and homework assignments) to what I had... it seems like a perpetual vacation in comparison, it's so easy.

Public universities are free and there are excellent ones(but difficult to get in). Private universities can be more of a mixed bag. Since there's no real 'general education' at universities, almost all your time is focused on your 'major' (there's no 'minor', although in many cases you can use some of your credits for 'unrelated' classes). There's no real college/university distinction - in Brazil the distinction is not course length or type of degree, the distinction is that a 'law college' would offer law school degrees (bachelor's and up), while a university would have law, computer science, math, medicine, etc.

While studying for my BSc in Computer Science, I've often compared and used materials from US universities when I needed more sources, but I've found in several instances that the material was lacking, and I had to actually look for graduate level and up.

For as good as the education itself is (and %@#$!@ harsh!), what they do lack, and the reason they are underrepresented in many fields, is integration with the private sector and the outside world in general. There are some projects here and there, but you don't see anything close to, say, DARPA(in either scope or funding). Other than a few outliers, research output doesn't even compare to even relatively unknown US universities. There's great research being done and incredible brains, but not enough incentives or funding.

The above holds for undergraduate programs. There are good graduate level and up, but those are less common. It's often the case that people will end up at US universities to further their education. Almost all my teachers did their doctorates in the US (and then came back to their cushy and decently well paid 'tenured' positions).

When it comes to US universities, the whole mindset is very different – and, in my opinion, orders of magnitude better. I literally shed a tear at Berkeley just from hearing them talk about their university at their 'welcome day' or whatever it's called (and I wasn't even the one going to attend, it was a family member), just from learning what the university does to help students with their interests outside the university and with the community, plus that vibe that 'anything is possible'. I didn't have that. It was tests, grades, more tests, in a microcosm. You won't see many Bill Gates or Zuckerbergs that way, and specially not dropouts.

I've tried to compare the bar exam before but, not only the tests are very different, the way they are graded is different, pass/fail stats vary wildly between US and Brazil depending on what year we are looking at. And, obviously, the legal system is different. Not sure if it's a fair comparison, when you consider all those variables. What I do know is that friends would study for a long time, sometimes for multiple years(often enrolling in extra, private courses just for that). It's said to be difficult, but I have no real experience or way to gauge.

It could. Imagine anyone who couldn't run a 13 second 100 meter dash was fired, but they only hired people who ran it in 11 seconds in the interview. Nobody's really going to be too worried.

What US has in superior is the mentoring culture, the business people interwoven in the university culture (like the extra courses offered in Sloan with real companies!), the sharp focus on patent, other things. But technical knowledge in top Brazilian universities will compete or outclass technical knowledge in US. But there are many things important, supporting things, a whole infrastructure beyond the technical people required to advanced technology.

100% this. I've visited Brazil as a tourist and if I did not go with a Portuguese speaking friend, I would have been lost on day one. English is pretty much only spoken by people who can afford private education there.

Not exactly. Different realities exist among the many states and high school public education levels. Most English-speaking people in Brazil might come from affluent or high-middle-class households, but that doesn't necessarily determine their interest in pursuing a career in tech. More to the point, having an interest in tech can motivate learning English, as that makes you instantly able to tap into the wealth of free information and learning material out there. Most excellent professionals I know didn't even have a degree for their first 2 or 3 years of experience, let alone formal training in English, but they all could communicate adequately. I would also add that formal education "support" you way less than other fields. Experience is the critical component, imo.

I can illustrate this perfectly, albeit anecdotally: I come from a very disadvantaged background, a poor family, both parents didn't even finish high school, got public education all my life. My first PC was assembled from old parts that my father could salvage after he left his job as a bus driver to fix computers for a living. He got me a magazine one day with a CD that came with visual basic 6.0, he installed it, and I started messing around, knowing almost nothing of what I was doing. I just liked that when I dragged some things and put them in that grey window, it looked like the other programs I used to draw on (mspaint). I was 11-12 at the time, and from that moment on, I was hooked. I began understanding how to put behavior into things and what code was, mainly from the magazine pictures, then from other books my father started to get for me. Fast forward 5 years, I got my first internship 2 years before getting into an IF because I made a PHP website for someone, and they referred me to someone else.

10 years later, I had more experience than people who were almost twice my age, having worked for 4 different companies and building a clientele myself, because trust me, I needed that extra money. All along, I learned how to read and listen because of all the studying needed to do things in my job. Then I discovered forums, then Reddit, which made me start to write. That came in handy when I decided to apply for positions in foreign companies. 2 years ago, I started working for a company in Central Europe.

Now pair that trajectory with one from a friend of mine the same age as me, born into a wealthy family in Rio, both parents highly educated, always had access to quality equipment, internet, etc, graduated from a respected federal university, learned to speak 3 languages since he was a kid.

Because he spent so much time in uni, when he joined the company I was working for, he had no professional experience. Because of that, the way he progressed was slow, much to the incompetence of leadership, who saw people like that as always green, regardless of talent or skills acquired. He couldn't recognize that he was being held back; he had never worked for anyone else before, so he stayed and stayed and stayed, lured by derisory raises and false promises. He didn't have the drive to pursue clients outside the company, so he kept to his hobbies most of his free time. Anyway, long story short, all the other teammates left (interestingly enough, with stories similar to mine) for foreign companies.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: incentives are different depending on your background and the market tends to reward experience over formal education for relatively good paying coding positions.

Sorry for the wall of text.

The proper phrase is "add value." You're welcome.

Pix is an existial threat to banks and their idiotic TED transfers which they charge actual money for. "Banking services" they call it. To that, I say good riddance. Why the hell should anyone pay a bank even one cent for any reason? They should pay us. They should be competing to see who can pay us most for the money we deposit into their fractional reserve scam. It offends me that these banks think they can charge money to update records in a database.

CBDCs are a substrate. There will always be integrations to the substrate.

Ideally protocols are as simple as possible and applications utilize them to build bespoke services. If the protocol itself is too customizable it becomes extremely difficult to interop.

> You should actually look stuff up first before an immediate reaction.

It's a whole different world when you choose to stay blind, what's the saying again, "ignorance is a bliss"?

You perhaps are the one who should "look up things"

https://www.pismo.io/blog/pismo-explores-the-future-of-crypt...

Digital fiat = Visa is out of business

One more link for educational purpose: https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency...

Oh, a last one to seal the deal: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/our-common-agenda-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment