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A simple autonomy test
Story A middle manager at a company I was discussing with was explaining their intentions regarding their team. Among other objectives was to increase coaching done by senior people in the team and to...
read articleAbout the previous guy
A customer told me once: "That's the problem with you programmers - each time I ask one to take over the work, the first thing I hear is how the previous guy did it all wrong and everything need...
read articleThe reluctant freelance
It has been a year now that I've played the "prototypical" role of a freelance developer - doing various missions for several clients and generally enjoying myself doing so. The fun part is...
read articleDon't build a F35
The setup Someone inside BigCorp (which can be a private company but also a public one or a part of an institution, governement, etc - what matters is that it's big) Bob, a manager stumble into a...
read articleTechnology: Come to the boring side, we deliver value
Technical advisor I've been in position to give advice to early stage, usually non technical founder a significant number of time since my move in the startup world. One of the most frequent question...
read article2021 Wrap Up - on the technical side
A year of technical work I blogged last week about my 2021 Wrap Up - this is also a good opportunity to look at what I've learn in this first year of "back to technical work". A few months...
read article2021 Wrap Up
Back to (technical) work Leaving management My main (work) update of the year was clearly my decision to leave my job as Bluesquare's CTO. Not only I had been there for more than 5 years, but this...
read articlePrototype mode
Newscheck Thanks to getting some days off between two missions, I've been able to take one card of my "project idea" board and actually implement it. The result is "newscheck" - a...
read articleJira - Beyond the hate of task tracking software
I've been saying "I hate Jira" several times. In meetings, in emails, probably even on Twitter. I'm far from being alone, and it has pretty much become an industry wide sentiment (or even a...
read articleDear recruiter, I won't accept your invitation to connect
Dear (LinkedIn) recruiter, No, I won't accept your invitation to connect. This is not personal - it's because in my 20 years of career recruiters have been utterly useless. I guess this sounds harsh,...
read articleJust keep it in Excel
A few days ago I was watching a friend working in the construction sector painfully manage a 1000+ lines Excel document representing all tasks and materials to be used in a quite large construction...
read articleNetworking matters
After a small number of long running jobs, I've been looking for work (whether missions, part time or full time) a couple of times in the last few years. While the industry is still good, I can't hide...
read articleTeaching React to blind students
Due to a network effect (network matters - I'll blog about that another day), I was given the opportunity to give a small React Native course to a motivated group of blind students thanks to Eqla's...
read articleMy problem with NoSQL
I've had to work with several "NoSQL" databases those last months (I'm here speaking of using let's say Mongo or Apache Jena as the main storage of your application, not things such as...
read articleTeaching at Open Summer of Code (be)
I've always liked teaching/coaching, especially in my area of work. Thanks to a random tweet about Open Summer of Code looking for coach (and a timely retweet by the ever present Toon), I had the...
read articlePicking a blog engine in 2021
Getting back to a more varied freelance role made me want to blog again. As a good procrastinator, I decided I first needed to give my blog a lifting - toward something simpler both visually and for...
read articleWhat Twitter did for me
I was almost putting "Why I love Twitter" as the title. So: I'm not a big user (consumer or producer) of social media, but Twitter has become quite important to me, not really to amplify my...
read articleLooking for a job
Hi! I’ve been making software, helping people make them and leading development teams for the last 20 years. After 5 years as lead dev then CTO at Bluesquare I’m currently looking for my next...
read articleIntegration and my parking door
I've been looking to explain a bit what integration means for developers - the kind of answer I've to give following exchanges like this: Those are separated systems Let's make an integration between...
read articleMake my job easier: User Stories
Second post mostly aimed at business owners. As the previous about why I won't sign your NDA, this is mainly a summary of experiences based on building various projects in the context of our upcoming...
read articleWhy I won't sign your NDA
Since I started as a freelance beginning of this year, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of business owners, most of them in the very early stages of their venture. Most of them are coming to me to...
read articleA piece of advice to new developers
Third post inspired by my experience as a coach at LeWagon Bootcamp - and by some experience with hiring and working with junior developers or more precisely developers looking for their first...
read articleDelaying Decisions
Second post inspired by my experience as a coach at LeWagon Bootcamp. For those that missed the first, it's just there. Projects LeWagon Bootcamp program ends up with the students working in groups on...
read article10% working is better than 80% not working
For the last 9 weeks, I've been working with a session of LeWagon Bootcamp students. I'm used to coach developers, but this was the first time in many years that I was coaching total beginners again,...
read articleDecision Making
Decisions are an integral part of a development's team work. Whether it is about priorities, methodologies, tools to use, we always have to settle on something. This is even more true for startups,...
read articleNew Beginings!
After three good years at Pull Review, I've started as a freelance developer. Wanted to see more companies, to experiment more too. Right now, this means that I'm coaching 20 candidates-entrepreneurs...
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