Coming out

Fifteen years ago my professional life took a 360° turn. Again.

I’d been a diver, a photographer and a film producer. In fact, it got me the moniker the "ex everything".

This time was different. The difference being the internet.

It was clear the Internet was the place I wanted to be in. It would be universal. It would change people’s lives. Such an event of this magnitude doesn’t happen very often. Taking part in it was an amazing opportunity.

The web mashes text, graphics, sound and video. The addition of interaction, however, makes it radically unlike anything else. Interaction multiplies and creates a world of possibilities. It allows experiences to be shaped by its very audience.

The ease of replication and distribution fostered creative freedom by giving small teams — even one-person armies — tools for building and spreading good ideas.

I never took the web for graphic design. Tainted by my film background it seemed to be all about storytelling. The chains of interactions describing fine, subtle threads. A narrative where the user is the main character. When software became social, that thread turned into a vast network. Later on mobility everything on it’s head, making computing a central part in people’s life. Their very identity even.

I got here as an outsider.
I didn’t know anyone who worked in the business.
I never received any formal training.

I bought a bunch of books. And tried lots, lots, of different things.

By then, design was gaining weight. The early 2000’s saw the web up trying to match print design. Flash. Insane usage of images for layout. DHTML’s baby steps.

I worked on various things: computer graphics, 3D, design, animation and video editing. Soon enough I was proficient on these to build the stories I dreamed of. All was good!

Except for one nagging little detail.

Without interactivity, it turns out, all you have is the brochure from hell, a pale shade of what’s possible. In ignorance I glued behaviour with the tools at my disposal than.

The end result was almost good. Almost meaning you could feel something was wrong. Total crap.

This is how — out of sheer necessity — I got into programming. No plan, no purpose, no awareness. At first linking two pages. Animating a button. Making things easier to maintain. Feeding dynamic content.

What I didn’t foresee though, was how software is pure magic.

Software

Software is — maybe except for poetry — the most plastic medium known to men. It can bend distance, even time. Software is the ultimate play dough. All you have to do is learn its spells and you can shape it to anything you fancy.

Software is a strange beast. On one hand it’s infinitely plastic. On the other, computers are absolutely rigid. Learning to walk on both extremes is fascinating (and absolutely frustrating). It is quite unlike anything else. Many things sort of look like software, but nothing is quite like it. Software is a world of its own.

Deeper and deeper into programming, I was drawn— and overwhelmed — by it. The power to bring your imagination to life is alluring. You just need to is to master it. Sit. Read, Write. Fail. Retry. Watch. Repeat.

Programming never came naturally to me. It took me a lot of effort. It was hard.

I’m not an analytical person as a suck badly at details. But software does care for them and it was tough on me. Like an abusive partner: the suffering kept me interested, probably part of the seduction.

I’m, however, one stubborn motherfucker. I know that anyone can do (almost) anything, if she sets her mind to it (and sweats it out). Everything can be learned through purposeful, internalised practice. Few things require genius. Most only take a shitload of effort.

I toiled away eventually becoming a pretty good programmer. I enjoyed it. It gave me a sense of accomplishment. Software is the ultimate power trip.

Open a text editor, turn some loud music on, and there you go: dream a world away. What else could you possibly want?

From my mid twenties til now I’ve always seen myself as software developer. I figured I’d do it for many years. In fact I used to give a talk on this very subject.

However, somewhere, something was amiss. No matter how much I loved programming, I never felt joy in pure technical knowledge. I never cared about algorithms for instance. Sure, I’d dive in when needed but, on their own, they never meant anything to me. Clever one liners or tricks bored me to no end. I felt like a fraud: real programmers love that shit!

In the other hand, I’d see programmers ignore crucial concepts . Seeing my peers downplay ideas for their lack of novelty, describing products as a list of features or thinking users were stupid. Software is pop culture. It creates new ideas, communities and usage. Programmers are notoriously bad at seeing this. Clearly software is a lot more than code. This also put me at odds with most of my peers.

Else

Nevertheless my career kept going forward . I moved “up” the ladder, and soon after I was working as CTO, the C level job in technology. What got me there wasn’t being a competent programmer (though it certainly helped me) . Rather it was the things that didn’t seem to be work: talking (listening mainly) to people, breaking tasks up, patching together conflicting points of view.

The irony is, of course, those skills came effortlessly to me. In fact I never thought of them as work. Just like breathing isn’t exercise, all these skills amounted to nothing. With time I began to realize that, somehow, this stuff is actually hard for other folks.

After doing management work for a while I would feel conflicted and would go back to coding. That other stuff isn’t real work. You were not building anything. It felt like cheating.

Loggi

At the worst possible time of my life I left a great job with wonderful people to found a company in my home town. A long time dream that I couldn’t pass on.

When Fabien and I founded Loggi it seemed pretty straight forward. He would do business and run things, a.k.a the CEO. I’d write the software. We hired a designer and off we went.

As Loggi grew something was clearly missing. Loggi is far from a pure software company. It takes place in the physical world, putting together people from all walks of life: software, business, marketing, design, sales, operations and customer support. It took us an entire year to figure out that we needed someone to connect the dots.

I knew about product people, but I never really understood what they did exactly. They seemed to be some sort of managers. They didn’t write code, nor did they designed anything. They were not makers: they were bureaucrats.

I stepped up and performed both roles: CTO and product. This worked for a while. It even allowed us to ship some pretty complex projects.

But growth is taxing. Being CTO of a four-developer team is nothing like a team with twenty . As Loggi scaled so did our challenges, only faster. It takes lots of conscious effort to break from ingrained habits. When shit came to shove I would behave as CTO first and product second.

Eventually it was painfully apparent each role was demanding enough to warrant undivided attention. Worse, they’re often at odds, calling for negotiating conflicting perspectives.

I had to make a choice.

I had been doing the CTO thing for over 9 years. It is the skin I’m comfortable in: for which I have a pool of experience (and people) to draw from. I’m pretty sure I could be Loggi CTO’s forever. And a darn good one at it.
Cozy. Known. Safe.

The product role, however, was the very opposite. I had no professional experience nor any networking to guide me. It required me to up my game on UX, branding, design and strategic planning.
Unsettling. Unpredictable. Risky.

If I fail at running product I will have lost my place in the company I founded. Even figuring whether I failed could prove tricky.

Product sits between different areas. It channels (and re-fuels) everything else. Even with a decent product, so much can go wrong. Product is, more often than we like to admit, powerless from forces you don’t control. Yet product is accountable for the end result.

Still this was not a hard decision to make.

Jump

Personal conflicts aside, it’s pretty clear what the business needed. Finding someone who can share the vision, resolve, technical chops, design and UX is not a trivial feat. I might be under qualified but, chances are, so was everyone else.

Today I’m officially stepping down as CTO. My work title now reads “Head of Product”. I no longer have the leeway of acting in both positions.

We’ve long realised you can’t delegate product. Founders are in a unique position to run it. This is it. Either it works or it works: no where to run.

Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Professionally, I’ve rarely taken the safe path. Each new step made me more aware of the world around me, giving me a broader view and a new skill.set. Each jump has been exciting, transforming, demanding.

Product — just like the Dude’s rug — ties things together. The things I’m effortlessly good at will play a paramount role. So will the stuff that I had to work so hard to master. All that sweat comes handy now. Somethings you just can’t wing. For the very first time I can put to use my seemly unrelated experiences.

At each and every such turn I’d always tell myself it would get easier. It never did. Here I am, nearly 40 and still a newbie on the job. I’m thrilled and scared shitless, but that’s just what worthwhile experiences should feel like. Exhilarating times ahead.

Here’s to scary stuff! 🚀