About

What I offer

I have been a backend developer, PHP and Symfony first, since 2008. For a long time, what people bought from me was code: knowing it, writing it fast, holding a framework in my head. That is no longer it. AI writes, I verify. What I offer today is judgment: what to build, when, at what cost, and what breaks if we get it wrong.

What I do well

I start with the minimum and let usage dictate what comes next. A profitability calculator started as an iframe with no database; when users showed they kept coming back, it became a real application. About 300 active users today.

I decide on cost, risk and failure mode — not on fashion. At Chiliz, an atomic batch would have given exactly what was asked for, a single signature; I ruled it out because one failing sub-transaction would have cancelled the others. At Orange, I chose the least elegant solution because it was measured, reversible and the only one within budget.

I make an application something you can trust. Cumulative calculation over the full history, reconciliation against the existing reference, explicit tolerance, event tables with statuses: when a number drives a buy or sell decision, it is not delivered until it is proven.

I take the load without taking the place. A drifting subject carried by a developer I was mentoring: I went through management, he asked to step out himself, he stayed in every review, every choice was explained to him. Shipped, and used for every token issuance since.

I look beyond my box. Hired for the frontend at April Technologies, I took on the Java backend to understand the whole chain, then to deliver features end to end. The language is a tool; what matters is the system.

Each of these sentences points to a documented case, with its numbers, what pushed back, and what did not make it to the end.

What I don’t want

I have been a team lead. I learned that meetings, documents and managing a team are not my ground. What I do well is deciding on architecture and helping people grow technically. So: senior individual contributor, architect or technical lead — not a manager, not a product owner, not a project manager.

How I work today

I hardly write code by hand any more. Claude Code is my daily tool; the calculator’s V2 was built in three months part-time, outside working hours, where it would have taken me six months full-time. What that changes: my time goes into design, verification and trade-offs, not typing. I am preparing the Claude certification to make that legible from the outside.

Before building, I ask the questions that define what we are building. It is the reflex I demand of my tools, and the one I bring to an assignment.

What I’m looking for

A freelance assignment or a position, in PHP/Symfony, with AI as part of the job — for coding, or to integrate into products. Preferably where money depends on a calculation, where there is legacy to keep standing, and where there is room to make decisions. Based in France, remote preferred.

On the side

I also build custom tools and automations for small businesses, under the name Ton Pote le Geek. That is where the calculator was born.