I started on October 2015 a new job at Codurance in London. Codurance is a software consultancy centered around the principles of Software Craftsmanship.

The co-founders are Sandro Mancuso and Mashooq Badar, both very active in the Software Craftsmanship community. Sandro even wrote a book, The Software Craftsman : Professionalism, Pragmatism and Pride. It highlights his views on how a good software engineer should take his career in his hands. I highly recommend it to anyone who works in software engineering.

I first heard of Codurance through Sandro’s conference at Devoxx France 2014. I then read his book and found that a lot of the principles embodied in his view of the software craftsman resonated very strongly in me. I applied during the summer to work at Codurance and went through the hiring process.

I was already very happy to receive an email from Sandro and Mashooq saying that my résumé had passed the first filter and that I was invited to write a simple program to show my development skills. I wrote the program, paying as much attention as I could to tests and design, and submitted my code. Two weeks later, I received a review of my code, along with an invitation for a Skype call with Mashooq and Sandro. Happy, I proceeded to read the code review, and I became blank : the review had 4 positive items and 25 items were listed in the “improvements” section. I honestly thought my submission was the best work I could have done, and they found 25 things that I missed ! Even worse, I could not find a single improvement I disagreed with.

Clearly, the bar at Codurance was higher than I expected, and I dreaded that the Skype interview would show that I did not have the required skills. One week later, I had this Skype call with Mash and Sandro, and they made me immediately comfortable. We had a talk about design principles, they asked questions about SOLID and checked if I understood all their feedback. I was a bit stressed but eventually the interview went well, and I was extremely happy to receive an offer from Codurance later in the day.

I have now been working at Codurace for one month, and I can say the atmosphere is really different there. People here are passionate about software and good design, they take pleasure in sharing their findings with their colleagues and we gather quite often to talk about anything related to software. I do not spend a day without learning something new.

Codurance is a new step for me, and I’m proud to be part of such a great company.