My path of software craftsmanship — the long way
Thorough my career until in June 2010, I realised that I was on the wrong track. I was living in Paris for 2 years already. I was late in terms of skills and knowledge. I knew I had to catch up with others, I was missing something, maybe a lot of things. So I decided to work on it, trying to keep to speed.
First thing is to measure myself. I was probing the market, looking for a job, publish my resume the same way I did back then when I just graduated from the University of Sherbrooke. I went through more than 10 interviews. I noticed I was timid in interviews. I did not know much and was not good in answering questions. I was confident in myself, at least I believed I was. I had 6 years of experience and was considering myself as senior or close to senior. However, interviews did not go so well because I had only practical experience, and knew almost nothing in terms of theory. As a matter of fact, things get caught up. I was not good, experience was not 100% relevant. Knowing a few things was not sufficient. Companies needed a more solid background. I was a senior Java developer, with no mastering of Java, Spring and Hibernate in the theory. Some concepts were vague to me.