One company, one person, one line of responsibility

Background

I have worked in IT since 1995. From 2001 I worked for myself in France, as a sole trader, trading as BALTIX, in the same field as today: consulting, development and systems administration.

Several years of assignments abroad followed — Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Israel and Ecuador. Working where the infrastructure, the habits and the constraints differ from those in France teaches two useful things: how to design systems that hold up on limited means, and how to work seriously with someone without ever being in the same room.

The company registered in Paris is the current form of that work. The name itself has not changed since 2001.

Thirty years in this trade means having watched the promises come and go: everything client-server, then everything web, then everything cloud, and now everything AI. Each wave brings genuinely useful tools and a comparable quantity of solutions in search of a problem. Experience is mostly what lets you tell them apart — and judge what will still be running in five years.

It also means recognising the situations: a server nobody has the password for, a migration postponed for three years, a supplier who vanished with the credentials, a backup nobody ever tried to restore. These are not extreme cases; they are the ordinary state of small organisations — and they can be dealt with.

What guides the work

Understand before proposing. A diagnosis takes time and is not always billed, but it prevents building the wrong solution correctly.

Never create dependency. You receive your credentials, your code and your documentation. The day you want to leave, you leave.

Say no when it helps. Some requests do not call for development at all, but for a setting, an existing tool, or an organisational decision. Saying so costs one project and earns a client.