There are quite a few different ways to step up your career and improve your software development skillset, but actively participating in community discussion has to be close to the top of that list.

Let’s take our colleague Stéphane as an example – since his early dev career, he has been a huge Open-Source enthusiast, always looking for a way to distribute knowledge without asking anything in return. But in some instances, the return can be a very spontaneous thing. In his case, the return was an offer to become a part of the Sylius Core Development Team, so we sat him down and asked how everything panned out.

How did this opportunity come across? How did the Sylius team notice you?

I think the main reason was my activity on the Slack server. I always tried to be proactive, participate in discussions and provide support to other users. I’m also contributing sometimes to Sylius directly, and always pinging them with the hardest questions no one really wants to ask. So, after they moved forward with the #community-pulse channel in December, they also decided to grow the Core Team and I couldn’t be more thrilled that they picked me for the role.

What does it mean for you personally?

I’m extremely proud, this feels like a big recognition and return on my investment there. It also proves that the work we do in Locastic is recognized and in accordance with Sylius’ vision of “clean” code since I’m developing the same way on Sylius as for Locastic’s projects.

“Not everything was communicated clearly, some decisions were not obvious for people following our product. In addition, we also felt that some input from the outside of our bubble could be super valuable. In the meantime, some of the community members have shown extra engagement and involvement, which made them obvious candidates for extending the Core Team.”
Sylius statement on why they decided to expand the team.

What will you be doing as a member of the Core Team?

I will try to maintain the same activity in the community as before, but I’m sure that the role will bring more challenging tasks.

This also means that the three new core team members will be able to approve PRs and eventually merge them. Hopefully, that will result in Sylius moving and developing faster and hopefully, we’ll get rid of some current issues and try to attract more people to contribute to Sylius. Furthermore, we will try to make the documentation more up to date so the newcomers are not lost or confused in their first Sylius adventures.

What are your Sylius-related plans for the future?

I will keep doing what I’ve been doing for the past few years (Locastic and Sylius related work), but I also plan to expand my horizons. Starting from this month, I started doing official training and consultancy, mainly for French-based companies for a few days per month.

Apart from that, I recently started to stream some coding sessions on Twitch and that’s something I’m hoping to pursue in the coming years. On the stream, I’m working on real use-cases for some Open-Source plugins, primarily Sylius, but I’m not excluding any other Symfony bundle. Right now, the stream is in French, but I’m interested in switching to English if the viewers ask for it.

Aside from watching his Twitch stream, make sure you follow Steph on Twitter or notice him posting in the #community-pulse channel on the official Sylius Community Slack.

Results for tag #interview

Interview: Stéphane joins the Sylius Core Team!