Point of View on Teddy Ferdinand

[IT] Salary is not the only recruitment criteria

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 07:07:00 +0000

Because of my professional background, I’ve worked for a lot of companies, either as a service provider or internally.

Salary is often:

A taboo subject, you should not talk about the salary you receive and even less with your colleagues
Seen as the only criterion for recruiting: If we don’t recruit, it’s because we don’t pay enough, if employees leave, it’s because of the salary

Today, I give you my vision on this point.

For an effective security posture

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:57:00 +0000

I’ve been working in the IT field for more than 10 years now and I’ve worked with a lot of “security” teams within the companies I’ve been in. I’ve been a security guy (Cloud Security Architect) for a little over a year now.

During these years, I often noticed a blocking posture of the security teams, sometimes even disconnected from the field, leading to slowdowns and tensions in the projects.

The danger of Grey IT in companies

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 07:48:00 +0000

Confined spaces have changed our work habits a lot. Telecommuting has become something more common than it was just a year ago.

With the implementation of telecommuting very quickly, new risks have appeared. Today, I suggest talking about Grey IT.

What is Grey IT?

In a company, in a classical way, the applications used are referenced in a service catalog.

For example, if your company uses Slack, the office service knows it, and will configure this application so that it works with the company’s security and confidentiality standards.

Cyberpunk 2077: Analysis of an agile method failure

Thu, 24 Dec 2020 06:20:00 +0000

On December 10th, one of the most anticipated games of the year was released: Cyberpunk 2077.

Personally, I enjoy playing it, but it’s not the case for everyone.

With an outside look of an IT professional, I suggest you see today the “mistakes” that I think were made in this project, and how some mistakes could have been avoided. This article is not about the game itself, but rather about the organizational and technical aspects.

Turn off the Internet: AWS is no longer responding!

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 17:53:04 +0000

A few days ago, an incident impacting the AWS cloud provider had a significant impact on many companies and services directly affected by this instability.

I saw on social networks many reactions, often beside the subject (unfortunately) and I thought it could be useful to give you my analysis of the subject.

Rewind

Let’s start by recalling the incident a bit.

On Wednesday evening (French time), AWS encountered a growing number of errors in some of its services in the us-east-1 (North Virginia) region.

Why and how I got rid of Disqus

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:00:00 +0000

Lately, I’ve made some changes to this blog, discreetly. One of the main changes is the management of comments, goodbye Disqus, hello Commento. I’ll explain why…

A bit of history of this blog

At the beginning (I’m talking about February 2019, not old times) of this blog, my goal was rather simplistic: I wanted to share my knowledge, my vision on certain subjects and talk about anecdotes of all kinds. A year and a half and forty posts later, goal achieved!

What the Twitter hack teaches us (or reminds us of)

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 22:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, Twitter was the target of a hack inviting, via “verified accounts”, users to send BitCoins to receive double the amount. I suggest a small post on what we can learn from this attack, from a computer security point of view.

Disclaimer

The purpose of this article is not to make an umpteenth analysis of this attack, but rather to recall some basic rules of computer security that this attack reminds me of.

"We need to recruit women in IT."

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 19:45:09 +0000

I see and hear regularly that “we need to recruit more women in IT”. However, there is a lot behind this sentence.

In this post, I will give you my opinion on the presence of women in IT jobs.

False preconceptions

For several decades now, we have been repeating over and over again that IT is a man’s world, we repeat it so much that we end up believing it’s real…

Is teleworking (really) the answer?

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 20:00:00 +0000

Since the beginning of containment (in France, 2020/03), telework has become the norm for many, including myself, however, the return to the office is looming, and I can already hear the first discontents about it. A short post about my point of view.

Let’s talk about CoVid

With the spread of CoVid and containment, teleworking has become mandatory for many companies so that they are not forced to close down. Some companies even boasted that they were in the business of teleworking the most when 2 months earlier they were struggling to allow 2 to 3 days in a month… but nevermind.

My teleworking setup

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 20:18:00 +0000

Like many, I’ve been “forced” to telework for several weeks. Long before CoVid, I already regularly teleworked and I had invested some time (and money) to have a setup that allowed me to work as well as possible from home. A little overview…

The Amazon links you’ll find below are not sponsored, and are simply put as a reference.

My need

I have a desk with a personal computer, I have two screens, a keyboard and a good mouse. My goal is to be able to use this equipment on my own and my client’s PC.

The difficulty of antibot fight on the web

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 06:36:01 +0000

Robots, more commonly known as bots, are now plentiful on the Internet. They account for a significant share of global Internet traffic.

Today, I propose you to discover the world of Internet bots.

Bots… but what for?

The first question one might ask would be why bots are roaming freely on the Internet.

You use, sometimes unknowingly, bots every day when you surf the Internet. You have run a search on a search engine, a bot has indexed it before for you. A large part of the messages from companies on social networks come from bots that publish them in their name.

Why do I care about my personal data

Mon, 25 May 2020 11:41:51 +0000

I’ve been in IT long enough to know the value of personal data. It’s very valuable data for companies, allowing them to target their audience ever more effectively.

I worked for 3 years for Médiamétrie which, in France, carries out studies and surveys for companies as well as most of the audience measurements for TV channels and radios.

What often comes out of the studies is the same thing, what is interesting is not the mass, it’s the CSP (socio-professional category). Knowing that TF1 had an audience of 12% the day before is a piece of information, knowing that “people in charge of purchasing” (from memory, commercial name for “housewife/man”) aged 30 to 40 years old represented 26% of the market share is much more valuable.

Containment: Danger to SI

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 07:49:00 +0000

For a week now, many of us have been housebound. Telework has been the weapon that many companies have drawn to keep their business going, so many do not understand why some companies that used to do little or no telework are now able to operate full telework. Similarly, some do not understand that even in the IT field, there are still people who have to work on-site. A brief overview…

All operating systems are bad!

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 08:25:00 +0000

I’ve been working in the IT world since I came of age, a little over 14 years now.

One of the only constant rules I’ve always found is that the OS you love is always better than all the others.

The gems I’ve heard around me

Among the phrases I can often hear, I could mention a few:

How do you want to develop under Windows?
A MacBook is a PC with a 1K apple on it.
Linux is like a Mac, but without the stability

I could go on like this for a long time.

The impostor syndrome

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 06:57:00 +0000

Just over a year ago, I started this blog. More than a hobby, it has helped me to gain confidence in myself and my abilities.

I’ve already talked about it in the past, because of my non professional training, I’m often surrounded by highly qualified and competent people, and I’ve always had this discomfort of not feeling in my place, of being an impostor in my position.

A human problem more than a technical one

When I look, however, in all my missions, I have very rarely had negative comments. My clients have always been satisfied with my work. Nevertheless, I felt like I was usurping a job that I didn’t deserve as much as people who had studied long and hard to achieve it.

GAFAM: Smile, you offer your data

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 07:33:00 +0000

GAFAMs, they are everywhere, sometimes clearly visible, like when you go on Google, sometimes much less so, like for example Amazon which owns the IMDB site.

What are the GAFAMs?

I make this little point for those who don’t know what the GAFAMs are. What is commonly called GAFAM are none other than :

Google
Apple
Facebook
Amazon
Microsoft

These five companies now largely dominate the Internet, and it is very difficult to really do without them.

Is it really greener in the cloud?

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 09:00:00 +0000

“It’s greener on AWS”, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this sentence at Amazon conferences.

Is this mantra that companies repeat to look cool true?

Ecology, the new spearhead of companies

Year after year, companies, and especially large groups, put forward their efforts always to be “greener”. Each company is, of course, more committed than its competitor. I wonder how we can still have problems related to pollution with so much commitment?

The difficulty of implementing DevOps in a company

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 08:17:36 +0000

“DevOps”, that word, one can no longer see an IT job offer for infrastructure or development positions without it being mentioned. Many companies are turning to DevOps, ideas and concepts are mixed, the target is often blurred, while the objectives are clear, leading this transformation is therefore far from being an easy task.

This article is written in collaboration with Pierre Galdon, a SysOps engineer friend with whom I worked for several years.

"When I grow up, I want to be a YouTuber."

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 07:21:27 +0000

Today, I am proposing a post inspired by a sentence my wife recently wrote, who works with children in primary and nursery schools. When she asks what the children want to do later, the answer is often the same: YouTuber.

This article is written in collaboration with Julien Monrousseau, an operations analyst friend of mine, who is launching his little YouTube channel centered around video games.

YouTube, Star “2.0” creator

"Stop playing video games, that's not the way to get a real job!"

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 21:01:05 +0000

“Stop playing video games, that’s no way to get a real job!” I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that line. As you can see, today I want to talk to you about one of my passions, video games.

In the minds of many people, playing games is something futile, which cultivates only one thing: idleness. Not to say that it’s completely false, because there’s a bit of truth in that, but I don’t necessarily agree.