This crazy multi year adventure started in 2013. It started on August 19, 2013. The cloud industry was still nascent. AWS was seven years old, Azure was five years old but not Azure yet, and GCP was one year old.

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On that day, I replaced a friend of mine, Manfred, in his position at Online.net’s laboratory, so that he could bootstrap Scaleway with a team of twelve people. The laboratory (the lab) was designing custom made hardware to be rented out to customers. I was stressed that first day. Stressed and excited. I was going to work with hardware. Working on hardware was a personal dream of mine. I had hand assembled all my personal computers. I had spent so many hours looking at SUN servers and other devices. Yet, I knew nothing of working with hardware. I didn't even know assembly code.

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Grégoire, my new manager, showed me around the lab. The team was composed of five people. My job would be to write the software for the hardware.
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I vividly remember when he put the C1 server in my hand. It was the size of a credit card. It looked so small in my hand. If you removed the cooling sink, it would fit in my wallet. This was a full computer. That simple card replaced four different parts into one.
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It was the same kind of chip as in mobile phones. At the time to make one of these devices work, you had to make a custom made operating system for each different device. My first task was to make that card sized computer work using a newly introduced mechanism that enabled much more reusability and customization.

The problem was, I didn't know how to accomplish this. I did what I could. I searched how to accomplish that task. I searched into the code and I fiddled with the device. Getting the output and trying different operating software code while repeatedly restarting the device. When you work at that level, you spend a lot of time physically handling the devices. The rough edges of the printed circuit board (PCB) and exposed components that sometimes look very fragile. After a few days of searching code and repeatedly unplugging and replugging the power of the device, I was able to have what I call a first boot. Meaning it’s the first time I was able to successfully start the operating system on the device.
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A lot more work would have to be poured into the operating system to have all the expected features but nonetheless it was an important milestone. I had been searching on github and the internet for some help. Little did I know, getting help from the internet was going to be less possible to do as time passed.

Have you had this first day of work where everything is gibberish? How did you make it the next day?

To pair with :

• Stress - Justice
• Where wizards stay up late: the origins of the internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon