We've been on somewhat of a hiring streak lately, and we would love to introduce the newest members to the team to you. Today, that's Théo Crevon, who joined the k6 OSS team November 1st, making it a team of 7: Nedyalko Andreev, Ivan Mirić, Ivan Palladino, Mihail Stoykov, Olha Yevtushenko, Inanc Gumus, and now Théo.
Théo is a French polymath engineer in his thirties. He lives in Berlin, Germany, since 8 years, despite not mastering the language (yet). Théo describes himself as an introvert, and a life-long learner.
What made you join k6 / Grafana Labs?
First and foremost: the people. The interview process was filled with friendly, interesting and rich conversations with people I immediately felt comfortable with. I've also been using Grafana tools and products for years in the context of my previous roles, and it felt obvious and meaningful to join the company and start contributing to it. The fact that I would be working on open-source products and projects also played a big role in my decision.
What's your background?
I come from a rather small town in Paris' western suburbs. Initially I studied Literature and Philosophy and was set out to become a teacher, journalist, or, who knows, a philosopher?
As a 90s kid, computers and electronics were somewhat always in my environment, but I really never was that much interested in how they worked. Until someday, some friend introduced me to programming with Python, and helped me install Mandriva Linux on my parents' computer. A few years later, I decided to interrupt my studies, so that I could go back to high-school (from home) and get my "scientific Baccalaureate". From there I went to a computer-science oriented engineering school, where I had one of the best and most stimulating experiences of my life.
I never looked back since (although I've been looking into studying Psychology and Linguistics at a "night school" recently). It's been 13+ years, I work in Software Engineering; and I have no regrets whatsoever. This job provides me a lot of the things I need to live a happy life: problems to solve, new things to learn all the time, a connection to a wide-variety of new topics to explore!
What are you currently working on? / what did you show off (or: find) during your week of testing?
As an open-source maintainer of the k6 project, my role is to maintain and contribute to the k6 tool and its code. I've really just started, so I'm in the process of finding out where and how I can be the most useful. During my week of testing, I found a few tiny limitations and aspects of the tool that I'd love to try and improve.
What do you do outside of work?
I get obsessed with management and automation games such as Factorio, Satisfactory, City Skylines or Capitalism II. Flight Simulator, Assetto Corsa, or Dirt Rally stimulate my brain as well my love for processes, protocols and the quest of perfection - I tend to become quite obsessive on games that require either flow state, absolute concentration or motor skills such as Celeste, Hotline Miami, or Super Meat Boy.
Hacking and programming are my passions. If Mark Twain is to be trusted, I've never worked a single day in my life. My Github is full of some of my creations and experiments. Some others are buried deep into encrypted drives in my computer; and won't see the light of day until I spend more time on them.
I also build video-games using the Unreal Engine here and there, but have yet to bring one to a state that's good enough to be released.
I love climbing, swimming and hiking. And traveling. Japan for me is one of the few places in the world where I truly feel comfortable. People are extremely sensitive, polite, everything always works, food is extraordinary, the culture and landscapes are stunning.
Podcasts occupy my ears most of the days. Generally I prefer those that are very specialized in something I know nothing about. The only books I open nowadays are now scientific/technical. However Science fiction is the only fictional kind I can still read with pleasure; it allows me to escape both the routine of the modern life, and the globally depressing state of the world.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Oh, a few things maybe:
- I lived on a houseboat.
- I use the fish shell.
- I have a custom program running on one of my Raspberry Pi home servers observing the /proc/mounts file and re-mounting manually an external USB drive as soon as it's unmounted. This has to do with some USB related weirdness on the Raspberry Pi side that leads to an external USB hard drive to somewhat block the system from booting if you add it to the /etc/fstab. If you have ideas, or a nicer solution for me, SEND HELP!
- I often get asked where my Nickname "Oléiade" comes from. It's from the Aeneid. A classical text by Virgil, a Roman poet, who tells the story of how Troy was conquered. If my memory serves me, Oléiade was one of Ajax' companions.
Eager to join a fast growing company? Have a look at our open positions and apply today!