I’m wondering myself about the title of this post, 2 days ago… The first title I chosen was “I’m finished school… and I’m scared!”, but it was not really geeky, and pretty pessimistic. The next I chosen was “The Legend of k0pernicus: A New Scary Adventure”, which was pretty geeky but also pessimistic (again). Finally, “I’m finished with you, Charlemagne!” refers to the end of my school period and, depending on who is reading this post, might be felt as a pretty good thing, or just pretty scary thing…

So, here’s the deal! After two bachelors (in Cellular Biology and Computer Science domains), I finished my University years 3 week ago, obtaining my Master’s degree in Computer Science, speciality “Machine Learning, Big Data and Optimization Algorithms”. As a parenthesis, I invite every person interested in studying machine learning and optimization algorithms to take a look at this Master, which was hard to follow but really interesting. During all those years, I contributed a lot to research and open source projects, as some student organizations, and I’ve made 4 internships in different research laboratories: LIFL, IRCICA, INRIA (twice), and LATECE - a research laboratory in Montreal - to work on bioinformatics, artifical intelligence and IoT.

During my school career, I never worked in a tech’ company that develops his own products, or a tech’ company that develop some products or propose services for other companies. Technically, I’m good - not great, just good. My favorite programming language is Rust (I’m using it since 1 year now - I admit it was hard to learn by myself this language but I find it fascinating to work with), and I use 3 others in daily life now: Python, Elixir and OCaml. I used few months ago Golang, but it became boring to develop with this language - and I just prefer Elixir to work with for concurrency! Also, I love contributing and testing new things like computers, smartphones, operating systems, programming languages, softwares (like Docker), … So yeah, pretty inquisitive and ready for an academic carrier, or to work on R&D! Personaly, I am interested in exploring possibilities to solve computer science problems. It means searching and reading research papers about new technologies or algorithms: #ThatIsWhatILove.

Today, I want to explore more and cross startup boundaries. Since I am 16, I am interested in startups, and how innovative can be a new fresh company. Google, Facebook, Kiip, Snapchat, Docker Inc.,… All these companies are AWESOME and have successfully skip some strong startup difficulties, in order to develop “new new” things and make the world a better place. So, between working in a giant company and a startup, I have no hesitation in choosing the startup.

DernierCri is a startup/agency for digital innovation, based in Lille. The startup is born in 2016 under the name Nectify, and more than 15 brilliant people are working now at this one. Those people are working using great trendy technologies like Phoenix, Elixir, JavaScript or Ocaml. The place is really great, employees I met already there are nice, and I had some good echoes on how is it cool to work there. Also, they have a R&D service! :-O I applied for a job in R&D and software development in DernierCri, and both awesome CEO and CTO of this one proposed me a job next that mixed up my research skills and pure web/software development, for external companies. We discussed about this proposal and, as I found this opportunity really interesting: “Awesome! I’m in!”. :-D

Today, I’m really excited about joining DernierCri to learn new technical things, make new contacts, back home after work and passing my time in developing new things and not passing this time in “doing my data extraction and combinatorial optimization homeworks”. But, ‘cause there is always a but, I’m scared. Scared to be slow in developing solutions for my missions… Scared to think as a research scientist and not as a web/software developer… Scared to ask sily questions about softwares architectures and “how is the better architecture or design pattern to do that?”… Scared to discover how to work in a company… To sum up, just scared to move off the research world I contributed on during all those school days! The positive thing here is that I am confident in my desire to make good things, the better as possible, and I’m sure that those scary things will disappear at the end of the first week. :-)

So, my job starts Monday morning, and I will channel all my energie in developing strong and innovative things for the company. :-) Also, I will use this opportunity to develop new relations with people, organize some events, propose to participat at meetups (I’m working on organizing the first Rust meetup in Lille), do sport (where are my rollerblades…?), watch 3 movies per week at the movie theatre (just got my unlimited card :-p) and develop a personal project that can be really awesome next!

Finaly, I think that the most appropriate title for this post must be: “The Legend of k0pernicus: A New Exciting Adventure”!