End of 2019​
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While we were dealing with the 500k object problem in object storage, Jean-Francois Smigielski (a), OpenIO’s CTO reached out to me on their community Slack. They were looking to hire more engineers and several people that they trusted had told them I was what they needed. Most likely I had also done a good impression when we had worked together to bootstrap Scaleway’s cluster.

We exchanged a bit by email, and I went to one of their events in Paris. We talked more with them. I also had a chat with their CEO, Laurent Denel (b). There were a few talks. Notably one from Octave, OVH’s founder. A rival company of Scaleway.

From that evening, we scheduled a day for interviews in their Lille office. On site I spoke with the team, many of whom I already had seen and interacted with. One of the interviews was with Mickael Bonfils (c), an employee working remotely from Bordeaux. This was before he would join the storage team at Scaleway.

At the end of the day, we had a meeting. I sat in a room with the CTO, Jean-François, the CEO, Laurent and the head of HR. We talked. Eventually, the subject drifted to compensation. I was very transparent with them. I told them I was making a specific amount at Scaleway. I had just signed, a few months back, a home loan. I did not plan to move to Lille. I needed at least an equivalent compensation. The monthly mortgage payments were a percentage of my income and I would not accept lower compensation.

I immediately saw that there was an issue. The head of HR didn’t react the same way as the other two. The discussion dried down and was left hanging. I think from the HR perspective it created too many issues. I guess it boiled down to salary differences compared to other engineers, as well as budgetary issues. I continued on my way to Germany to spend the weekend with my sister.

The next week we had a call. The compensation I wanted was, to them, too high for an engineering role. We were to get back in touch some time later. It was the end of year holidays and they wanted to find a way to make it work.

Once the 2019 to 2020 New Year had passed, we spoke again. They offered me a pre-sales engineering role. They were 100% sure I would make the fit. Yet for me my perception had changed. It wasn't a good enough offer for me to leave Scaleway. I didn’t want to quit Scaleway. Even less for a “sales” position. How judgemental I was back then. I thanked them for the offer but told them no. There was nothing they could do to get me.

Because I thought I was only good at engineering, my mind just didn’t wrap around a sales or managerial position. Everyone around saw me differently than my own self perception. They saw leadership, accomplishments, milestones. Yet I didn’t.

I recently found out about something that could resemble what I was experiencing. We frequently talk about body dysmorphia, when you believe that your body looks differently than what it really is. I would introduce a new term: mind dysmorphia. It was not imposter syndrome. I didn’t think I was a fraud by then. However, I did not understand at all what I was bringing to the table. I did not understand my capabilities and capacities like everyone else did. It’s a very strange feeling to understand that many years later.

In December 2019, I didn’t self reflect enough. I had a new object storage region to bring up.

(a) Jean-Francois Smigielski: then CTO of OpenIO, now doing OVH’s block storage
(b) Laurent Denel: then CEO of OpenIO, now doing entrepreneurship and having fun with cars
(c) Mickael Bonfils: Then Storage DevOps, now tech lead at Synch

1. ​https://web.archive.org/web/20200419180208/https://www.openio.io/tbps-challenge​
2. ​https://www.showcaves.com/english/de/subterranea/KoelnKalk.html

If you have missed it, you can read the previous episode here​

To pair with :

• Unraveled - Lorn
• EBADR