After three years as a software engineer at TEA — The Ebook Alternative, I quit my job, I left my flat and I took my backpack and my shoes to travel across Europe… in part to look for a job.

Why did I quit?

When I was hired, one of my personal goals was to benefit from the knowledge and experience of my coworkers to improve myself.

TEA was — and still is — a company where talented people are building a relatively complex platform and where I learned a lot by their side: I improved my knowledge of PHP, I learned new languages, I helped introduce a testing culture, I developed my skills in architecture, project management and teamwork. I even gave a few talks in some big conferences.

But after a while, I felt like I was stagnating.

I felt comfortable in this company and I was absolutely not afraid of Mondays but the excitement was gone. My work was not really challenging anymore.

That’s why I decided that it was time for me to move on to something different. Something that would stimulate and challenge me everyday, where I could learn new stuff and also maybe have a more positive impact on the outside world.

What am I looking for?

That’s a good question: what kind of job am I looking for? What does « stimulating » mean? Instead of « stimulating », maybe I should say « meaningful ».

Even if the technical aspect and the continuous improvement are extremely important for me, they aren’t the only ones that matter. I am also looking for some kind of ethical dimension in my work and I actively avoid unethical jobs.

But what does all that even mean? Short answer: I don’t really know.

I am not looking for « we’re making the world a better place »-style companies. I am more interested in being useful while respecting my values. I enjoy working on interesting projects and ideally I would also like to have an impact while improving myself. Both technically and humanly.

• What’s the company’s goal?
• Who are their customers?
• How could I be useful to both?
• By working for them, will I go against my values?
• Will I learn new things?

That’s the kind of questions I have in mind when I say « meaningful work ».

Working for Mozilla and being able to have a positive impact on literally millions of users would be awesome. But I’m also perfectly fine with smaller projects and impacts.

For instance, I would love working with researchers in biology or physics. I could make my technical expertise available and contribute with my skills to help them in their day to day work. Another thing I can totally see myself do is providing tools for other teams and developers. Working in an SRE team would be awesome too.

And doing that abroad would be even better!

So, what’s next?

In the immediate future, I will probably start by having fun during my trip across Europe. And while doing that, I’ll try to meet developers and companies along the way.

So if you want to grab a coffee/beer and have a chat, feel free to contact me!