Discover our Team: Benjamin Fuks, Senior Front-End Developer, based in Paris.
What is your career path? What did you do before joining Jenji?
My career path may look unusual because it took me some time to get into the coding field. After university, I worked as an assistant to the HR consultant of a large nuclear company. Sometime later, I decided that I should try something new. It led me to realize that I should get back to learning, so I started studying informatics. During my studies, I worked as an intern and later was recruited by the same company as a developer. At this position, I gained a lot of coding and engineering experience, which helped me to grow as a professional. Due to the circumstances, I happened to find Jenji at the very beginning of its establishment. And I was immediately inspired by ideas and people, so I joined the team as the second developer at that time!
Why did you join Jenji?
Because of people! I happened to meet the CEO and COO of Jenji, Pierre Queinnec, and Nicolas André right at the start of Jenji's journey. And I was inspired by their curiosity for the engineering world, so when I came across the opportunity to work at Jenji and develop a new tool, it gave me excitement!
Describe to us please what your working day looks like? What do you do as Front-End Developer at Jenji?
My working day splits between calls and coding. We start the day with a joint call with product and engineering to ensure teams are in alignment to implement features. As a senior developer, I also guarantee the quality of the code, so it means I review all lines of code and make sure that it is readable and consistent with our code style. In the second part of the day, I am working on coding myself, developing and letting the team check my codes as well.
What are in your opinion the qualities required to be a successful Developer?
I would say that being able to function in the team is the most important required quality for being a successful developer. Let me explain: building software is just like building a house. Sure, you can put up four walls and a roof by yourself and call it a house. The same thing can be said about software. Any programmer can build you a program that says “hello world.” If you want to build a highly scalable distributed web application to serve a global audience, that’s a different story. Most construction projects and software development projects are doomed before they start because of poor teamwork. But the problem is that most people don’t understand the power of working together. For example, the product team is the architects of Jenji, the cement mason is on the side of the engineers team, who are working with data, and the developers are the builders, who are coding the software. And now just imagine if there is poor teamwork.
What has been your biggest challenge as Front-End Developer?
This question is difficult to answer. I never felt that I have challenged myself growing in the coding career, it was always fun and super interesting to me. I think it is a sign that it is really my job and I found my place!
If you could speak to future Jenji candidates, what would you say?
If you are thinking about joining Jenji, now is the best time to do it. Jenji is growing fast, the team becomes international, which allows you to learn a lot through this scale-up process. In my opinion, it might be problematic for growing companies to have quality horizontal and rich internal communication, but it doesn't apply to Jenji. Employees feel free to share their ideas with any department and enjoy the meetings up together in Paris. The second very important point is that Jenji is using a modern technology stack, which allows developers to learn a lot.
What is your life motto?
I don't know if it is the life motto but right now my motto is : “keep it simple!”
