I got a private comment asking me about the “seven years of experience” I talked about in my previous post. Let me explain what I do and do not count:

  • I do count the time I worked for MiniSAT, now defunct, in France, as Directeur des Systemes d’information - a title far more pompous than the work I did, which was that of a network admin and team lead for a small team of Perl and PHP programmers;

  • I do count the time I worked for Harvest, in France, as Ingenieur de Developpement C++, where my job was to maintain a modular framework for their calculation engine while writing a new one and helping the rest of the team out with their C++ questions

  • I do count my job with Optel Vision, in Quebec, where I have worked as an Programmer-Analyst, Analyst, Team Lead, Project/Program Manager and (now) Chief Software Architect

  • I do count my work with Vlinder Software, which I run

  • I do not count my work with Real Life Systems, which is the previous incarnation of what Vlinder Software is now, but which was far more like a hobby than like real work.

  • I do not count my studies, nor any of the internships, research projects or other phytopathology-related work.

In much the same way, I do not often mention that I am a published poet, that I write fiction and that I study Christian theology. When I say “seven years of experience” I mean “seven years of making a living doing software engineering”.