Setting The Tone with Jacques Ngatse

Jacques has been a Software Engineer at Believe since 2017. Before joining the company, Jacques first studied at the Sorbonne University, before turning to studies that led him to the profession of Software Engineer. He first studied for 3 years at EPITECH, then joined ETNA (École des Technologies Numériques Avancées) to complete his studies in a music company. For of course, Jacques is also passionate about music.

What is your role in the Contract Account Management team?

I am a Software Engineer, I am in charge of the integration of functionalities and the design of solutions for our internal tools, in relation with the requests we can receive from our colleagues, since we mainly work with internal requests coming from other teams.

My team liaises with the Contract Account Management operators - who handle the management of producer accounts - and we manage the contract data.

Which are the differences between a software engineer and a software developer?

If you know how to write code and implement it, you can consider yourself a Software Developer. A Software Engineer role will add a designing, visualization, and optimization dimension. A Software Engineer can be called upon when there is a need to find solutions to various problems, for example how to optimize slow pages.

It's a bit like building with LEGO: anyone can put bricks together, but you need to have an overall vision of the final result to know how to put the bricks together to make them look like something. The Software Engineer provides this global vision.

Your team implements the Agile method, how are things organized on a daily basis?

In our team, we have set up several ceremonies that are classic in the Agile Scrum methods. Every day, we have a fifteen-minute daily in which we review topics, progress and issues.

We operate in two-week sprints, and at the end of each sprint we do a review to see how the sprint went, we look at what was completed and where we made progress

At the end of the review, we decide on the next steps, which solutions will be implemented. The solutions can take many forms, it can be a meeting or an Excel file to keep track of a dense project.

What was the last technical challenge you encountered and how did you solve it?

Recently, following the implementation of a project, we were confronted with a strong increase in the load of service processing data. A huge growth that we had to manage quickly. To deal with this issue, I decided to call on several collaborators from different teams. It was a great technical and functional cooperation, everyone got involved to identify the origin of the problem, which we ended up solving by collectively looking for optimization solutions.

You've been working at Believe since 2017, how have you evolved within the company?

I joined Believe with a junior profile, and I have mainly evolved in terms of responsibilities. It happened quite naturally, I moved to a mid-level profile and now to a senior one, with all the responsibilities that go with it. I can produce code as well as work on problem solving, act as a technical referent or as a team leader.

Over the last two years, I have been coached to improve my soft skills, for example in public speaking and conversation, which has allowed me to make a lot of progress and to be able to fully assume some aspects of my senior profile, such as speaking in meetings.

What would you say to a candidate to encourage them to join Believe?

In my opinion, what could really be interesting for an applicant are the teams, the people who make Believe. There are very interesting people and a corporate dynamic that puts an increasing emphasis on exchanges, connections, which is quite positive after two years of being confined. Believe really encourages people to reconnect, to meet each other, and this is visible every day in the work atmosphere and the way we work.

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