Splitting light

Season 2 Episode 35

The Iena days

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Around April 2019

At the end of 2018, I had started to look into buying a home. I had finally finished my student back in September 2017, just before the pivot. I had put money into savings since then, it was now time to buy. It was my next step. My next personal step.

It was a long process. I started to look for a house in the Paris suburbs but couldn’t really find something that clicked and that was in my budget. I remember talking about the process with Arnaud (a) and he told me to just buy an apartment in Paris.

His reasoning was that I could resell it and later buy something else. It would be easy to flip. This had not come into my mind. I had wanted to buy a permanent home. His remarks opened a new path.

An afternoon or lunch on the Iena maison rooftop with a famous Parisian monument behing.

Djazia was seeing my process. I had visited a few things. I was browsing ads. I wasn’t moving very fast. She found a solution. Like she always does.

There are property hunters just like there are talent hunters. She found some and gave me the contacts. I messaged them, got a meeting with one and signed a hunting contract. Two weeks later, I visited two apartments and I made an offer on one. The offer was accepted and the long process to get the mortgage and sign the final papers started.

While I was searching for a new home, Scaleway was also hunting for a new office. We were living the last days of La maison Iena. Xavier (b) had loaned it to Scalway for a limited time. We would soon have to leave that wonderful place for a new office. In La maison, the home, I lived so many things. I have so many wonderful memories there.

Working on the rooftop in the sun. Meetups on the rooftop. The OpenIO festival. Doing a meeting in a swimming pool! It was really something else. This place, this mansion was another level. My standards for offices were raised so high that nothing has matched it since then.

Part of why it worked so well for me was that it reminded me so much of what I thought, at least the time, were my golden days. Those golden days were my years at Epitech. I was reliving in that place my student nostalgia.

(Part of) the Epitech campus where I spent my nights as a student

The intensity of the work we did there. The sheer love of building the storage products. As well as maintaining the existing ones. It was a rush. It was an experience that pushed me so much.

I am, to this day, grateful to Scaleway for this time. For Arnaud to have this office with the right vibe. For Xavier for opening the doors of the mansion to us. But most importantly to Théo (c) and the rest of the storage team. It was a glorious time.