Last modified: 2020-03-15 20:01

TL;DR: Want to work with me? Check out my services on alex-rock.tech :)

A bit of lore

I’ve been a programmer in the IT industry since 2011, started using PHP in 2008, learnt tiny bits of C++ in 2005 and 2006 at my high school’s “computer club”, coded RPG-Maker scripts between 2000 and 2003 (around that) and wrote my first lines of code around 1996 in BASIC to display multiplication tables with a single number as input, with the help of my older brother.

I have no computer engineering degree, but I have a lot of culture about computer engineering, and ten years ago, I was absolutely not planning to become a computer engineer one day. My older brother, who’s now a skilled software architect, introduced me to this world where everything (kinda) is possible, and where writing allows creating live things on a screen.

After living hell at school (probably because I’m neuro-atypical), I needed purpose.

This purpose came true after a long time: I’m now someone who has enough skills to help people.

My first “trainer” experience is now five years behind me when I’m writing this post, and I taught PHP and Symfony to hundreds of people, I kept contact with a lot of past students and I’m keen to know where they’re going in their career, and I loved it.

I was happy working as a Training Consultant for the past three years, even with all the mental struggle I suffered.

But something changed.

My wife has been diagnosed a Lupus, and we have two kids that were evaluated with a really high brain activity causing some sorts of social and organizational issues.

I value my family first, before anything else, even work. My family is the most important thing to me. And I’ve been “fired” from a past experience because I had my kids with me at home while working and they often interrupted me, my employer wanted me to find another solution (which there was not, as I have no close family, no close friends, and didn’t have enough money for paid childcare), and despite me telling them there was no solution, they decided to fire me anyway.

Now, my wife will never be able to be as active as she’s been for the past fifteen years anymore.
She’s a hard worker, has tons of activities, is a really smart woman and is constantly reading about science, history, sociology, feminism, etc. She’s really incredible, and I’m the luckiest man of the world because I’m on her side.
But now with Lupus, she’ll live with regular pain attacks. Daily, weekly, monthly, no one can know, but even though this will never be totally disabling for her, it will drastically for her to slow down on her activities.

So, to compensate this, I’m going freelance.

Freelance, it starts now!

I’ve been thinking about making this big step for years, and now my situation needs it, so…

If you want us to collaborate, hire me at alex-rock.tech :)

Here’s the latest version of my presentation:

I’m a passionate web developer, PHP / Symfony trainer. Best practices evangelist, I like professional architectures and clean code. Big fan of PHP, Git, and PhpStorm. I also sometimes do code in Javascript. Certified Symfony 3 and 4. Approximately 10 years of experience in dev, and I wrote my first lines of code when I was 7 years old.

I have autism and I can only work remotely and 3-4 days a week maximum.

I speak English & French.

I have time to look for other opportunities, so if you:

  • Need a certified Symfony/PHP backend dev
  • Accept 100% remote work
  • Love good programming practices
  • Contribute to Free open-source software
  • Prefer quality over delivery time
  • Work in French or English
  • Accept people with autism Maybe we can get along 😉

Open-Source is my credo. Want to help?

You can’t hire me, but want to help anyway?

I really want to dedicate more time to open-source. I’m planning to do live coding sessions on Twitch.tv (that I’ll reupload on Youtube), and I’m really glad to help people on Slack, Twitter, Discord, etc.

I’ve set up my Github Sponsor page on which you can fund the development of many of my open-source projects, but also, help me contribute to all other open-source projects I like to contribute to: Symfony, EasyAdmin, and many others across my Open-Source journey!

I also work for Studio Agate, a creative studio that works on RPGs and fantastic universes for which we create cross-media contents, and this awesome project needs funding too (An upcoming post will be done in the next months about this specific project, by the way, stay tuned! :D ).

And in the meantime, if you want to support art and eco-feminism, you can also toss a coin to my worldwide favourite witch: my wife ♥.

See you very soon :)