There’s a few more topics I still have for blogs, but at this point, I know I’m writing into the void, and most of the stuff in this section is some sort of autobiography anyway. But yeah, earlier this year, I realised I reached the grand milestone of 25 years of uninterrupted employment, mostly in the same company (in its different names). This still feels like a kind of minor miracle to me, and it’s not impossible that this stops sometimes soon, and if not by choice, then I would still have to consider ‘what next?’.
And so maybe a chance to reflect on not just my career but my whole relation to both work and studying. The thing is, I was a reasonably gifted pupil at school, but to this day, I have no idea how much was due to gift and how much to my Mum making me work (not THAT hard though, I think). Everything felt easy schoolwise untile maybe the age of 14 or so. Bordeaux was just the first years so I don’t even remember marks or anything. The first marks I remembered clearly was in St Germain, scoring a 200/200 mark. At the time, if I remember correctly, the assessment was different every half-trimester. One half had only five subjects (don’t ask me, but at a guess: maths/physics/history/geography/French) and the points multiplied by two (or were marks out of 40? I don’t think so, 20 is the normal system – or was, again no idea now- in France), while the other half had lots of other topics (drawing? sports? again absolutely no idea, but we definitely didn’t have foreign languages until the age of, I don’t know, 10? ) at the time. Anyway, so it’s on the ‘easy half’ that I got 200 obviously but the principal came to congratulate me and say it was the first time he’d seen that. So yeah I got top marks on all 5 topics, but that didn’t seem so extraordinary to me, just normal, and for most of my scolarity I have often wondered in fact why others didn’t find easy the same things I found easy. And given later years, and that this was a good school with a good reputation, I still feel that’s odd. And the guy wasn’t young either. But no, I don’t think it was a lie, certainly nobody else got it while I was there. Anyway, yeah that was my main first ‘achievement’ in a way. But later in collège and especially lycée (I remember, essentially, the first bad mark on my scolarity being a physics assessment in seconde, the first of the year, and it was the teacher’s way of putting down a marker, honestly I don’t know how much of that was subjective or objective, but it certainly pushed me to conform to different demands or more demandings ways, and I didn’t get a bad mark from her after that). History, etc, my Mum basically made me learn it all by heart, so yeah, that wasn’t necessarily ‘clever’ but I had a good memory and decent logic. I was mostly the quickest in finishing assessment and well. But things started to change a bit on the few occasions I vaguely realised that work was needed. Also the vagaries of my own mood/private things, sometimes spilt over. French teacher took me aside once, and also the Sciences Naturelles one, after a ‘devoir’ when I felt really down and basically instead of answering the questions I knew the answer for and not answerings the ones I didn’t know (answering incorrectly with a guess has never been appealing to me, I must admit), I just wrote down my despair/frustation/and emptiness. Or something like that. Anyway, she took me aside and said it wasn’t the done thing, not a normal thing. Sure now I see it all from a different angle of someone who never felt he could properly express his emotions and feelings. Anyway, I got decent marks in the next paper and she congratulated me. On the bigger scheme of things, I think it just showed that sometimes work is needed and that when I put my head round to it, I am generally good. Problem has always been to find a motivation, a reason to perform. I was generally good at assessing myself (I do realise that in this page there may be elements that have been mentioned elsewhere on this site, maybe in the books sections or in other blog posts), except one big time when I felt absolutely terrible and was completely shocked to get an amazingly good mark at a maths or physics paper (can’t remember now but possibly got 19 when I thought I’d get less than 5…how is that even possible?).
One big moment (at the time anyway) in anyone’s school years in France in the baccalauréat. Because I was initially refused to my intended ‘classe préparatoire’ school (which my eldest brother had attended many many years before), for reasons that may have been political and certainly unclear (oddly the other ‘historical’ best pupil in my school/class, though she was going for the literary way also got refused, while people with lesser (but excellent, I haste to add) results who’d joined our school later were admitted directly), but thought I might have a chance to convince (or was I sold that as a possibility?) with good results, I was very motivated for the exams. The French part is done in the year before Terminale and I got 16 in written French, but only 13 I think in the oral version, but there were enough subjects left to try and reach the overall average of 16/20 to get the infamous ‘Mention Très Bien’. The system was also made so that you had a couple of optional topics (IT and English in my case, yes until then German was my first foreign langage) that could give us pure bonus points added to your total. So I made sure for once that I worked on my weakest topics (well mostly Sciences Naturelles, because it required actual work to learn, not just logic like maths and physics (at the time, more on that later, when it became complicated), not pure ‘learning’ (like history and geography), and not just instinct and gift (like languages in general). Came result time, I remember getting to the place when they handed you the result (on a piece of paper, of course, those were the days, you had to go there), and literally jumping for joy on seeing I had Mention Très Bien. Just about, I think my overall means turned out to be 16.04/20 but never before had I actually felt that I had achieved anything. As a bonus to my pride, it was also the best from my class (second best got exactly 16/20, I think two of them got that, including my fellow ‘refused’). In the end, it didn’t change anything to the choice of Classes Prépa, which led to briefly feeling distraught, but I think that turned out OK, and going to a public school rather than private, open my mind to much better people, well that’s what I think. Anyway, that’s the end of the ‘easy’ part of schooling.
On joining Lycée Hoche, I was aware that I was in one of the best Lycées around, and so of course the level was much higher, with bona fide geniuses, some proper hard workers, but also really a lot of people I got on with. I mean yeah I’m already writing a lot, trying to keep it on the ‘relation to work’ topic, but as a pupil at school, despite always being le ‘premier de la classe’ (save for the odd trimester here and there in the last three years), I was never your usual nerd or whatever, I liked playing football, I liked hanging around at the back of the classroom and hanging out with the ‘cool’ people. Looking back, I think though that leaving a few miles away and having my Mum drive me to/from school most days both was a curse and a blessing. It limited my social life and so I had more of a sheltered life, not having the life of most children/teenagers my age, but probably saved me from being even less motivated at work and getting the resulsts I got. But there, I theorise, I don’t know, I’ll never know, all I’m convinced of, is that would have been very different in Bordeaux.
Anyway, so I wasn’t sure what to expect in those next years, quickly had to realise the days of good marks were over. I still was probably just above average in maths, but in physics/chemistry (I’d like to add ‘to the dismay of my Mum’, did I mention she was a Physique/Chimie teacher?, but that’s not true, I lived my life independently by then, wasn’t really asked to account for my results, etc.), there was a trimester (was it in the first year or the second year? I can’t remember), where I managed an incredible average mark of…. 1/20 (neatly spread around with marks of 0.5/1.5 and 1 out of three papers). But this was the thing, that didn’t mean you were out, because in the end, after the first year you got directed to one out of 4 categories (so naturally I wound up in ‘M’, there was ‘M prime’ for the best in maths, and ‘P Prime’ and ‘P’ for people who favoured physics. I still found the beauty in maths (maybe I just like the reproducibility there, while I like the freedom and fantasy in arts, not in science) and logics, whereas physics was too much guesswork, approximations, etc, speculation to arrive at the result. Again, long term/bigger pictures, it is quite revelatory that I haven’t always dealt well with uncertainty even though uncertainty is the most human thing.
At the end of two years when we did the first ‘concours’ (because to enter your engineering schools, it wasn’t about passing an exam, it was about ranking above or below others), I got very limited offers, so like a lot of people, decided to retake that second year to improve. And so indeed, I did better second time around. At the end of it, I had a fair amount of choices, but essentially it came down to two. I could have gone to ENAC (the Civil Aviation engineering school), and in fact I had nearly set my heart on it. This exam was a bit particular as you could apply to either be a civil servant (limited number of spaces, you had to perform well) or just a regular engineer. The big advantage if you were admitted as a civil servant is you started getting paid in school already. So I could see that as acquiring my financial independence already even before getting a job and that sounded ace. When the results for that one came, I was 9th overall (out of a few thousands I think?), so I was quite thrilled! The language bits had gone particularly well, English (still my second language at the time) in particular, but also German, after I’d forced myself to listen to first German Radio, then to BBC long waves for hours on end. Anyway, another option came later, from the more prestigious ‘Mines’ concours (so yeah all these were named ‘competition’ it’s what they were): ENSTB (Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Télécommunications de Bretage). Turned out my position at the end was good enough for that (but sadly not for the Parisian version, though I could have gone to a school or two near Paris too, note that ENAC was in Toulouse, which would have got me closer to my beloved Sud-Ouest). Now Telecommunications were not what they were, but there was the clear idea that this was a sector in big development, so fancying something to do with it made sense (in fact I had told the examiner when I passed the ‘oral’ from the ‘concours’ that I quite fancied working in telecoms in the future), but the real decider in the end for me was that there were a fair few of my fellow pupils I got on with who were admitted to it and had elected to go there. That’s what decided me to choose against immediate financial security (and also probably job security as a civil servant): having fun with people I got on with. Maybe not super long-sighted, but I’d not really had teenage years of fun and going out, so, this was it!
I won’t expend too much on the Telecom Years, clearly some of us had too much fun in the first year as a couple dropped and a small handful of us had to retake the year. Also it was a strange world, where you felt you didn’t really have to go to class (can’t count how many I skipped) and also when having exams you were allowed your documents most of the time. A staple of engineering I guess: it’s now about what you know, it’s about finding solutions with the elements you have, learning to solve problems. Sure it helps if all the knowledge is in your head, but it’s more about mechanisms. But yeah, especially that first year, parties, drinks, smokes, music, belote were more important than anything else. As my sister was living in London, and I got introduced to Highbury during those years by her then husband, I was falling in love with England and everything English (well I guess this started before, to be honest, as our parents drove us around England a few times during summer holidays, I remember particularly a trip through Cornwall). Also our ‘fresher’s week trip’ had been to Plymouth as we were twinned with that university. The rules were that in any case, to get and validate your engineering diploma, you needed to spend at least six months abroad (or was it just four?). Among the options was to spend the whole of your third year (the real third year, so practically my fourth….) abroad. Spaces were limited, but I naturally applied to go to the UK. I can’t remember how the system worked, but London was beyond me (and to be honest, not sure the topics there would have suited me), but I was thrilled to be admitted to spend my final year of study at Aston University in Birmingham, doing an MSc in Telecommunications Technology.
And so I had a brilliant time there (just over a year, the last six months being a placement in Coventry, so I moved there with a colleagues, it’s….not the best place on earth, but I still remember it fondly) that I won’t detail here as it’s not really the topic (oh, but what is the topic?). Birmingham was great, so much fun there, some difficult moments too, but it was great to be with a lot of international students, the beer was cheap, we could play 5-a-side, go to some great clubs, etc. And work, well, some topics seemed easy given my previous studies, some a little harder, but what suited me perfectly was that it was a very generic Telecommunications cursus, no specialisation. So after that placement I did a rather average presentation I think (this was going nowhere in my opinion, I had not actually achieved any result), and on top of average marks in the papers, I got my MSc (and with it the French Engineering diploma) with no particular distinction, but ready for work.
And now, at last, we can get to the matter of the topic as I envisaged it at the start: the actual ‘work’ life. As a preamble I would add (again I have a feeling I might have mentioned it in another page or two) that my first initial contact with the working world was while at the Lycéee when visiting some company at Bureaux de La Collines (I remember the place, in a tower just off the A13 motorway in St Cloud), and I was kind of horrified with the idea of consultants, people wearing suits and ties and being professional and serious and having a job. I don’t know, probably not the right words, but I felt the guy who was trying to explain about working in a company environment made it sound like it was all about being a vain…wanker if you allow me).
Finding a job was my next mission (after a bit of a break maybe, I wasn’t in a rush). I sent a lot of applications to the UK as my intention was to get there to live and work and become a British citizen eventually. But I didn’t get any feedback until practically a year later from BT. In the meantime, applying for a job in France seemed relatively discouraging to me. Just the HR people made it sound like working a job in a company wasn’t for me. All these questions about plans, what I’d done with my time since finishing studies etc. (oh yeah, forgot but part of the plans were uncertain/affected by the compulsory military service, but in the end I managed to get that out of the way in a couple of days, but I couldn’t know how this would go…..maybe something for another blog…bottom line, that was done in December (I was back from Cov’ in November), and only after did I start looking for job. I started working in May). And yes, I used my Dad’s car and dressed smartly to get to interviews. I got my lucky break answering an add and finding myself interviewed by a small SSII (consultants, this was a popular way to go at the time, is it still?), which had very very few people, and so the HR was not your typical HR, and my contact with the ‘commercial’ (who was also company co-founder with the HR guy, thinking of it now, was the HR guy even HR or was it just that it was such a small structure it made no sense to have one?) was very good, looks like we connected OK, and from my profile and the topic of my placement, he thought there might be a couple of opportunities for me at Alcatel. So one day, he drove me there to have a couple of interviews from a purely technical-ish point of view (big advantage, I would not got through the HR interview grind of a big company, as they would not directly employ me!) . One didn’t go particularly well, I was asked about writing scripts and stuff, looked very much like IT-geeky stuff that didn’t appeal to me (and for which I had no competence, not that I ever felt I had any competence for anything, certainly at the start), but the other went well, again good contact, and in a validation team. And so I got the job.
Right, this is already super long when all I initially meant to write about was my rapport to work, but then, I suppose I found myself in revisit mode, autobiographical shit. It’s filling up the time, putting all the things out before I can proceed, life’s OK at the moment.
So yes, validation was a boon. Didn’t feel like I needed amazing knowledge, just learning about the product (only software at that time) I was working on, and using an enormous lot of what seemed to me like common sense. It looked like I had the knack of finding problems. Kind of a gift for it. Also I was always good at putting myself in other people’s shoes, or seeing the point of view of the user, etc. So while some developers could get upset or annoyed at times, it was actually perfectly fine. I find no pleasure in finding faults, I’m a lot happier when these are resolved, but I have some amount of luck in finding them, I am also quite obdurate and like to be thorough so quite good at tracking what causes what. And as a bonus, since someone else actually has to solve these problems (with my help in giving as much information as I can to make it simple, and also my responsibility in validating the solutions), I didn’t have too much effort to make (imho). So I found myself being fairly good at my job and appreciated by most people for it. Including my boss. Importantly, in most of my professional life so far, bar one or two exceptions, I have had great bosses with a good human side. But yeah, so within a year, I got identified as ‘potential talent’ (that proved bad foresight as I didn’t end up being interested in promotions/responsibility or advancement, more on that anon) and offered a permanent job there, not having been even one year in my original ‘consulting’ company. Weirdly, an offer from BT came at about the same time. Or rather, first an invite to an interview (so I drove all the way to Ipswich and back one day), and much later but at the time of the Alcatel permanent offer the offer of a job there. And so I had to make a choice. At the same time, I’d started really enjoying my social life in Paris, having met a lot of Brits ex-pats. There were pros an cons to weigh, and in the end, just like for choosing my engineering school, I chose short-time fun rather than long-time (hypothetical) dream of British citizenship. In the cons, the salary was a lot worse at BT, and also I wouldn’t be in London which was the ultimate aim. The truth is, with the pub scene in Paris, I felt I had the best of both worlds here, and that and a little laziness in moving again (I had chosen my flat in B-l-R due to its seemingly ideal location between Paris and my work), meant I stayed where I was and shelved dreams of being a British citizen. Looking back now, it probably WAS the sensible decision, although my bad tendency to not follow my dreams (mentioned elsewhere, but after baccalauréat, I could have gone to Sciences-Po without taking the exam on account of my mention, and it’s what I’d have wanted to do…..but yet again maybe engineering gave me a sounder grounding given my nature, I don’t know really, sure I’m good at adapting, but maybe the mentality of those places would have killed me).
And just like that, I have decided that this is already too long and so I will close this page, call it ‘Part I’ and write more, tomorrow or another day. Needless to say, it was not what I had envisaged, but I found myself trapped in nostalgia/memories/self-indulgence (call it what you wish), have barely written about work-in-a-job yet. This will be the hopefully much shorter Part II.