Yes, one more, and this one is "mandatory", as our friends across the Atlantic would say.

It's called English. Seriously now: this piece is addressed to engineers, developers, and to French Tech people more broadly.

You do tech watch, you work on side projects, you keep up to date - but your English (often spoken) is mediocre for the vast majority of Tech people in France. It is a fact.

We can (and we must) blame a French language-teaching pedagogy that has been beneath contempt for more than forty years. We can point fingers at our (political) leaders, whose English isn't fluent. We can say a lot of things and keep going in circles, staying in the speculative without moving the needle one bit.

BUT NO: act. Act, today, tomorrow. By every means available. Be active, proactive, motivated, driving. But act. Set up Zooms with English Twitter folks, sign up for classes, read all your books in English. Drill your grammar. And not just "I watch Netflix in English". Your future engineering manager doesn't give a damn if it doesn't drastically improve your level. Don't kid yourself. If you're bad at it, do something about it.

Drop everything. Stop working on thingyJS, on Kubernaitiz, dockerzz whatever. Drop the tech and work on your English. Please 🙏🏻.

Work on it with rigour, diligence, willpower, motivation and resilience. Yes it's hard, yes it's thankless, but it is INDISPENSABLE for you and your career. Your next employer may be in Hong Kong or New York and you'll be working remote. The world is changing, adapt, and fast: your competitors are in Denmark, in Norway, in the Netherlands, and they are very, very good.

Understand that in our globalised world (even more so during and after COVID), mastering written, read and especially spoken English will open up far more opportunities than mastering the latest tool or trendy framework.

English will stick around; thingy.js will be replaced in a year or two at best.

I beg you, fellow Tech people. Take your English gaps seriously, look them in the face and punch them in the face.

A Tech friend who cares ❤️