Too much time since I wrote something here. It’s been two years. In the meantime I used more twitter than the blogs now.
What’s new ?
I’m the father of two children now. That really messed my little life. And of course, COVID-19 occured. And I’ve been apointed lead tech (!) recently.
And yes, I’m still at Arolla
The outbreak of remote work in France IT
It’s been really “fun” to observe how much remote working was impossible in France before the pandemic.
And suddenly - MAGIC - business had to continue despite being the lock downs, so remote working became the norm.
One can explain that magic by system theory. If you put enough constraint on a system, then the system finds a way. If people couldn’t work, the company wouldn’t have money and shuts down. It was just a matter of having enought force to constrain companies.
Since we like procedures here in France, more funny things appeared. I saw “the contractor have to come but not the non-contractor can do remote work”. I put an “Expandables” wallpaper on my computer that day.
I ended up doing 100% remote work. It was fine, it was fun. It was at Natixis until 2022. 3 wonderful years with great peoples.
Discovering the lead tech work
That’s the real new thing in my life. I arrived at Bouygues Telecom at the beginning of 2022. I joined the radio performance department. I took over the role with no contact with the former lead - just during the job interview.
Our flagship apps are based on angular and APIs. We also have a bunch of legacy applications.
2 months after my arrival, the team is entirely renewed with 90% of people from my company. It was cool and not cool. Cool because we share the same values, not cool because we had to gather a lot of knowledge.
In a legacy zoo
I feel like I’m living in a legacy zoo. I see all kind of anti-patterns at tactical level - code - and strategical level - system to system.
Human organization is so heavy that teams are writing wrappers for everything. Also data related projects are database-centric, no APIs, buses etc … . Almost everything is in the database. Changes are almost impossible to test.
It’s good for me to have the opportunity to observe this organization, how peoples adapt and survive. But the environment deals a lot of damages to my colleagues. The burnouts are my main ennemy.
No code this year
The complexity of the organization dragged me out of coding. I circle around my team to intercept and protect them from the outside world. It’s meetings, repeating over and over again how scrum works - luckily we have a world class scrum master.
What’s coming ?
Well, I’m involved in training at Arolla. I’m trying to be a speaker. I should remain lead tech for this year at minimum.
I should be back in Crafts Your Skills meetup when my wife will be developper. I registered for NCrafts 2023. Hopefully, I’ll be having BBLs, talks etc … .
CU.