Name: Pier-Luc Faucher
Designation: Agent 0146
Double Agent Role: Senior Software Consultant
Special Skills: Will learn anything and everything for fun!
Location: Quebec, Quebec
Favorite Emoji: 🗿
What impact are you proudest of in your career?
This may sound like a weird answer as most talk about their impact in the past tense, but for me it is a continuous and ongoing impact. The impact that I work to embody—and to bring to every client—is stability. I believe I am the kind of person that is dependable in a team, versatile and knowledgeable. I may not have all the answers right away, but I know how to get them. I will ask the right questions and make sure we don’t forget anything.
Looking ahead, what has you most excited for the next year at work?
The learning! What I love about computers is the never ending source of knowledge that’s out there for you to discover.
What is your favorite thing about being a Double Agent at Test Double?
Being part of an elite squad of people who are just as passionate about development as I am—who are also constantly improving and strive to do the right thing for their clients. To be completely honest I was a little bit jaded by the state of consultancy in Canada, where most companies try to fill seats and you’re just a cog in the machine. With Test Double, you know that being deployed at a client means you’ll get to do high impact work for them, and that you will have the opportunity to bring them up a notch or two. And that is a great feeling to wake up to.
What do you think makes Test Double unique?
The decentralized group of like-minded persons who care deeply about improving themselves and their clients. To our clients, TD will gladly meet you at your level, and will help you improve as much as you want, at your own pace, like an old mentor.
What have you been thinking about a lot lately in software development, and why?
A general sadness about the fragmentation of everything. How many languages are out there? How many frameworks? How many testing libraries? Are we reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it? I do seriously wonder about where we would be as a society if we could just unite and work together with the same tools, continuously improving them.
Tell me about something memorable that happened to you and what you learned from it.
The very first day at one of my first jobs I broke a web server filesystem AND realized afterwards that there were no backups. I was so hasty to prove myself and give a good impression that I made quite the opposite! This was a government website with a 15-year history and fortunately enough they had a paper copy of every article in the archives. But OCR was not what it is today …
I was so ashamed of myself, I volunteered to retranscribe every single article during off-hours (because I had to do my actual job during workdays), including the weekend, until everything was done. And so I did. Thank goodness, two kind souls decided to help me with this endeavor!
Lesson well learned: take your time, never assume, cover your blind spots, and double check everything. A job well planned is a job halfway done.
What has you most excited about this year outside of work?
I have been studying Japanese for the past year and have decided to tackle the Japanese language proficiency test! There are 5 levels, from N5 to N1, N1 being the most difficult. I will attempt N4 this December with the goal of rolling into N3 next summer.
I am particularly excited about this because learning Japanese has been a goal of mine for the past 10 years but I never got the previous attempts to stick. It is really hard to find the motivation to work on Asian languages in Quebec, like you are working on this abstract thing that will never be useful, because most people only speak French. And it is so time consuming, that you do wonder if any investment is worth its price. Today, I finally feel like I found a method that fits my schedule, and I can consistently put in 30 minutes up to an hour every day. I can feel the progress, and I’m very proud of myself for finally achieving this goal.
What book/podcast/movie/TV show have you been thinking about a lot lately, and why?
Okay so, nerd alert, but in my teens I watched to this anime called Bleach. The anime stopped before the story was wrapped, and earlier this year they announced a new season! I want to delve back in nostalgia but also use this as a benchmark for my Japanese, to try and watch it without subtitles.
What is the biggest lesson the pandemic taught you?
We waste so much time and resources trying to fill the city centers just to abandon them 8 hours later. I deeply think that remote work is not just an economic advantage for the worker, it is also a moral obligation to permit, even encourage people to work from home, because it is a catalyst for our transition to carbon neutrality. We also need to rethink (American) urban planning to stop having strictly residential or commercial areas. Amsterdam and Nantes are examples of great urban planning that we should base ourselves upon.
What’s something interesting about you that’s not on your resume or LinkedIn?
The Japanese but I spoiled it already! So, huh… here’s a quick list of (hopefully) interesting things about myself:
- I used to be a saxophone player in an orchestra for 3 years.
- I love gardening, especially growing hot peppers and components for making a ratatouille.
- When I was a kid I read every encyclopedia I could find in the library. I also watched the Discovery channel and the BBC. As a native French speaker, this is the primary way I learned English.
- I received a small cactus 25 years ago from my elementary school teacher. It’s still alive and well!
This interview is based on shared documentation with Pier-Luc Faucher and Cathy Colliver. It may or may not self-destruct.
