Blog them all

Note: This is a cross post with my other San Francisco blog.

A few weeks back I was at WWDC (San Francisco), the Apple conference. Something strikes me, every time I hear French I usually say a few words asking where they’re from and so on, and 50% of the time they patronize me.

They look at me as I’m a little student who came from Paris, for a week or two, I only worked since my 18 (I’m turning 33). It usually comes to a point where I say I actually live in San Francisco (well not for long now as I’m thinking of not coming back after my Parisian vacation in July), the discussion suddenly changes, but not all the time. They then want to know how I’ve managed to be here, and how they could achieve the same.

A few days ago I was at Summit (better than coworking space to my opinion), a great Coffee shop in San Francisco with lots of developers hanging around on day time, working on startup ideas. I heard 2 French guys, obviously Engineers, and talked to them. They patronized me (again!) and didn’t even say hi, they just didn’t want to talk.

American Engineers very rarely have that attitude, they’re always very happy to meet new people, and I’ve met numerous people at Summit and other places while not going there for that purpose. Even non Engineers love networking, and San Francisco is the only place where I can wear a short, t-shirt, flip flops and talk to a CEO with a $400 shirt without him patronizing me. Engineers are the people making startups happen, and they’re very aware of that.

A French friend of mine actually noticed the same and don’t talk to French people anymore while going to conferences. If you’re French, don’t do that. Network is important.

(Note : this is cross posted with my other San Francisco blog)

A little less than a year ago, I started to work for Causes, a great experience overall. First time I’ve worked full time for a US based company, and the best users/employees ratio you can imagine. Causes.com announces 150 millions users (fact is it’s a little more), run by less than 10 Software Engineers. The last months I’ve worked:

• A lot on the Facebook Open Graph
• On the Email infrastructure (emailing all those users without being flagged as SPAM tis more difficult than you think)
• Improving test run, using decentralized methods (hydra, but don’t use hydra really, just upgrade to rspec and use other tools)

The Engineer team I’ve met at Causes is probably one of the best I’ve met so far, I’ve learned a lot about:

• Scrum and Sprint jobs
• Pivotal Tracker which I ended up liking a lot
• How Git commit messages are more than more important for your team
• Ruby, yes I’ve learned more about Ruby and the more I use it, the more I like it.
• More stuff I’ve forgot as I’m typing this.

I you ever get the chance to interview or join Causes, you’ll have a lot of fun and join a great project, not to say an amazing office. But tomorrow will be my last day there, and I’ll be free for the next weeks to meet you.

I’m flying back to Paris on July 8th, and don’t plan to come back for now unless I get a good opportunity in San Francisco before leaving. I do iPhone and Rails development but really like doing iPhone applications overall. I’ll also work on tweetsell.it and Push4 on a side.

If we haven’t met yet, please contact me I’m free and look for amazing project to join. You’ll find my linkedin profile and my online résumé (PDF) if you care. I’ll also be at WWDC next week and will try to show up in a few events this month.

“You’re living outside the US and want to get a job in San Francisco? I got a few requests by email asking me about this, so here goes my tip. Please notethat applies to Software Engineer (and people working in the tech industry as Engineers) and I can only compare to what I’ve previously known: French companies.”

Read finding a job in San Francisco on my other blog I moved to San Francisco.

Au lieu de bouger à San Francisco dans une semaine comme prévu, je ne vais déménager que dans quelques semaines suite à des aller/retours supplémentaires entre l’immigration et ma boite. En attendant je me demandais comment je pourrais parler de mon expérience à SF en tant que Français. Comme les blogs ne coûtent rien, sont jolis, et que c’est pareil pour les noms de domaine, j’ai ajouté un nouveau site à la toile : imovedtosf.com bien trouvé non? Cliquez sur like en haut à droite (comme ici d’ailleurs désormais), ça permet de rentrer en contact avec vous.

Maintenant pour les Anglisch :

I was supposed to leave to San Francisco in a week, but because of more administrative paperwork, it is delayed of a few weeks. I was wondering how to give my experience as a French guy living/moving to San Francisco. As blogs don’t cost a thing these days, as for domain names, I’ve added a new blog on the net : imovedtosf.com Click the Facebook like button on the top right (as here), so I can get in touch with you later if needed.

Je déménage le 2 octobre à San Francisco. Après y avoir passé 5 mois en tout, à deux reprises en 2009 et en 2010, il est désormais temps pour moi d’y poser mes valises.

J’ai passé les dernières années à beaucoup voyager, à travailler d’un peu partout pour mes clients (et pour moi) en tant qu’indépendant. Depuis que j’ai commencé ma carrière professionnelle j’ai rarement travaillé en tant qu’employé, ça ne me convient juste pas. Mais ça va temporairement changer.

Pour habiter aux Étâts-Unis, il faut un VISA, et pour avoir un VISA, il faut un sponsor (un employeur). On peut aussi prendre un VISA investisseur et mettre $100,000 sur la table, mais ce n’était pas mon budget. J’ai donc postulé (auprès de 3 entreprises : Twitter, Square et Causes) et fait beaucoup de rencontres lors de mon dernier passage, et mon choix s’est porté sur Causes.com. Bon contact, projet super intéressant, 26 millions de dollars levés pour des causes humanitaires, plus d’utilisateurs que Twitter, une équipe d’une dizaine de personnes… Causes.com est une application Facebook (principalement) qui permet de lever de l’argent pour des causes qui vous tiennent à coeur.

Les entretiens chez Twitter étaient très intéressants (11 personnes rencontrées en 2 jours, presque toute l’équipe mobile…), et la manière de travailler aux U.S. est très différente. J’ai déjà vécu aux US une année plus jeune, pour une année de lycée Américain, je suis donc au fait de la différence de culture. Mais je n’avais jamais travaillé sur place, tout au plus travaillé pour des clients Américains mais à partir de Paris. Je ne peux que dire des banalités sur mon experience de San Francisco, mais pour résumer c’est la seule et unique fois ou après avoir passé quelques semaines (mois) dans une ville, je me dis que j’aurais probablement dû naître là. J’ai aimé Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Séoul, Taipei, Londres, Berlin, l’Inde et autres, mais ai-je envie d’y habiter quelques années ? Non. Tout au plus quelques mois.

San Francisco est la ville où être développeur c’est être le roi du monde, où avoir des idées vous propulsent très vite très haut, où la personne qui vous précède dans la queue du métro est probablement développeur logiciel, où si vous aviez besoin de rencontrer le fondateur de Twitter pour un projet sur lequel vous travaillez, vous pouvez et ceci très rapidement.

Je suis donc très excité et curieux d’avoir une véritable experience “long terme” à San Francisco, vu de l’intérieur. Si quelques uns d’entre-vous se manifestent dans les commentaires et souhaitent me lire, il est possible que je tente de poster un message par mois sur ce que c’est qu’être Français à San Francisco. Mais soyons honnête, je suis déjà resté plusieurs mois et ce n’est pas pour ça que j’ai rédigé des messages

Fabien, bientôt expatrié à San Francisco.

I had the chance to travel to California from last April to July. As any computer geek I had always dreamed about going to California, and mostly around Mountain View. Thanks for my friends, I had the chance to visit Google few times, Yahoo!, Six Apart, Google Android, Apple, some smaller private startups. I’ve got beers with the guys from GitHub (thanks Tom, it was nice meeting you), LightHouse, Twitter, LinkedIn, AfterShock (thanks James!). Orange Lab told me on Twitter I could call 1014 (A French phone number for customer support) to meet them (ahah). I’ve met many more people which I can’t list here, and I’ve also finally met Phil Jeudy (twitter).

I’ve attended the Rails Conf 2009 in Vegas, and the WWDC 09 in SF. The rails conference was very high level, Vegas had the cheapest hotels I could imagine for the room we got. On the other side the WWDC conferences were not as high level as I would imagine, but someone said 60% of the attendees never attended before. I would recommend going to both if it’s you work in those domains, meeting people in real is a big boost for your projects.

Something I did not have in mind, is the good general vibe you have in San Francisco. I had the chance to meet Shane Vitarana (blog), who published DrumKit on the Appstore (it’s featured in Apple ads, on Union Square on top of buildings, etc). He introduced me to many people, and we had a lot of fun together (I have to confess, I don’t go out much while I’m in Paris, but did almost every day in SF). Thanks Shane, you made my trip.

I’ve learned a lot being in San Francisco for that long, on iPhone projects as much as on Rails projects, and on web projects in general. If you work on ideas, make them happen in California. It won’t take longer than anywhere else, but the general impact might be much bigger for you. Raising funds is much easier too. I’ve met so many independent developers in San Francisco making lots of money (>$200K a year) without working much (but worked hard in the past, or had a good idea).

You have two kinds of people in San Francisco, the ones working 20 hours a day, or doing 2 hours commuting a day going from downtown to Mountain View and working for the big players. And you have the ones not working as much and enjoying life. I’d suggest going for the 2nd option if you plan to go to SF.

So would I go back to San Francisco ? Hell yeah ! But surprisingly I would go again not for work, but for the good vibe. Of course there are tons of IT companies there, and even the average level of software developers ain’t better than France (or other countries), you have way more people, way more companies. That operates like a magnet. At the end, you have way more projects happening there. San Francisco makes projects possible. My only concern is time does not run the same way in SF, and a one year stay would pass like a week in other cities.

See you soon San Francisco (my flickr California set).

Enfin arrivé à San Francisco, après avoir passé une semaine à rouler. Début à Los Angeles où on a trouvé un super restaurant appelé Real Daily Food (végétalien), passage à Las Vegas au Sahara pour la railsconf 2009. Chambre à 40$, le meilleur rapport qualité/prix pour l’instant. Puis ensuite direction Grand Canyon sur les conseils de James Zhang, rencontré à la railsconf, en prenant un bout de la route 66 (on a aussi croisé des boites au lettre locales). Paysages manifiques, je suis remonté difficilement du trou vers 22h, après avoir croisé une 10aine de retardataires qui ont sûrement passé la nuit dehors (s’ils ont réussi tout court à remonter). Un arrêt d’une nuit par Williams, une nuit à Big Sur, puis direction Heart Castle hier, Montrey et le magasin Henry Miller. Un détour par 17 mile road, puis direction San Francisco où on nous attendait.

J’ai besoin d’une pause…

Plus de liens, photos sur mon flickr, et mon twitter.