Alexandre Minette, Full-Stack Software Engineer @ Pennylane

Hi Alexandre! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I am a self-taught Full-Stack Software Engineer. It’s my passion: I’ve been coding since high school. As soon as I graduated, I went to England, then I worked remotely for 3 years from Vietnam — before working remotely became cool with COVID.

I also have some personal projects outside of Pennylane. I have a technical blog where I write about interesting things I find. I also developed a budget app (available on Google Play and the Apple Store) which I worked very hard on: 2 years of continuous coding.

Why did you choose to join Pennylane?

I instantly had a very good feeling when I talked with Quentin, Thierry, and Guillaume. I wanted a modern startup after my time in England and Pennylane is the most organized company I’ve ever worked for.

Pennylane is a company with a genuine tech vision — in the most basic sense of the word — that knows where it is going. We have a real strategy, we don’t just ship projects as we go along.

In my previous jobs, I really only dedicated 50% of my time to the company’s project: the other half of my time was used making sure that everything didn’t fall apart. At Pennylane, it’s more like 95% against 5%; we have very few unglamorous tasks to do, and since they’re everyone’s responsibility, they are very well distributed.

The “hypergrowth” aspect of Pennylane is also something that attracted me — even though I underestimated the growth rate: when I joined in January 2021, there were 15 Software Engineers. In December of the same year, there were 40 of us.

What struck you most about the way work, and especially the Tech Team’s one, is organized at Pennylane?

At Pennylane, we do continuous deployment. We don’t just talk about it in interviews, it’s something we experience every day. We deploy 40 to 50 times a day and we are confident in what we send to production — this is particularly thanks to the many quality processes we have upstream: Pre-commit, filter tests, manual reviews by other team members, etc.

We start coding on Monday; by Wednesday, we’ve already released something. Then, we receive the first feedback from the users very quickly and this allows us to iterate, improve, etc.

The quality of what is delivered and the responsiveness of the team is exceptional, the platform is changing in front of our eyes — just look at the Slack channel on which PMs announce the release of new features: there are 4 to 6 publications per day.

The tech team is the most competent team I’ve ever worked for and it brings everyone up: everyone is proactive — I’ve observed a kind of “rite of passage”: from 2 months onwards, you start to propose new ideas — everyone gives their opinion and is trying to improve oneself. If you have any problems, you can send a message and someone will come and help you.

The tech & product team is organized in squads; can you tell us about their organization and your work?

The organization is very fluid, we don’t have endless sprint retrospectives with debates about how many points to attribute to each task. Because of this continuous deployment, we can afford to send what is needed at the time on a daily basis and focus on functionality.

Which stack & tools do you use at Pennylane?

Rails & React are the main stack. The quality of the code is checked a lot by pre-commit. We also have Github CI. With continuous deployment, everything is prepared upstream so that once the code is sent, you can trust that it is good.

Personally, I love Rails for its readability and the very thorough tools.

The tech team is working remotely; how do you manage to create comradeship in that setting?

We are constantly in contact via Slack and video. Since a large part of the tech team works remotely, there is no difference in treatment between people in Paris (where our offices are) and those who work remotely. Everything is very well adapted.

The regular events organized by Pennylane also help to bond the team. Personally, I don’t see any problems with remote working.

Pennylane is perfect for people who are a bit independent. No one is on your back, but everyone is always ready to help you out.

Tech Days [quarterly meetings lasting 3–4 days where all the remote engineers meet in the Paris office] in particular are really cool: you meet a lot of people you don’t usually see, whether that’s in the Tech team or other teams.

It’s also a great way to see how much Pennylane has grown. From one Tech Days to the next, two or three months can go by and when you come back, suddenly there are three times as many people!

Any word of advice for future applicants?

You’re applying to a high-performing tech team that clearly knows in which direction it’s going, with a strong tech culture. All the time you spend at Pennylane is used to solve “business” problems. All tech initiatives are appreciated and listened to.

Finally, what’s your best memory as a Full Stack Engineer at Pennylane?

My best memory is launching a new feature in production and, barely 2 hours after it was released, a salesperson sent me a message to tell me that he had managed to sign a contract thanks to this feature. The next day, several companies were already using it.

Everything that is produced in tech is valued and the platform evolves very quickly.

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