Hello Friend,

I'm a Senior Data Scientist at Amazon. An intense, highly competitive environment, and I landed the most competitive teams within it. I survived, and beyond that I thrived. I would love to tell you more but NDAs.

To get to that seat I played the corporate game for more than 6 years. Feels like 25.

In those 6 years I worked on cutting edge scalable products serving B2B customers and shaping their procurement experience. AI, ML, Data, software design, stats, you name it.

IC to management and back to IC. Interviewing hundreds of people and being interviewed myself. Watching the politics play out from close enough to understand who actually decides. BI, DE, DS, PMT, SDE. I touched a bit of everything, and it was intense.

I also worked out of, and with teams based in, Seattle, London, Luxembourg and several other EU countries, which taught me something it took me a while to see: the rules are not the same everywhere. And it is not only geography. It is the environment, the size of the business, the internal politics, who actually holds the decision. What gets you promoted in the US will stall you in France. What passes for direct in Amsterdam reads as aggressive in London. Comp bands, visa leverage, negotiation norms, promotion cycles, review calibration, all of it shifts. I can tell you how, because I have operated inside them.

France. Prépa MP, école d'ingénieur, then an MBA. Computer science specialized in AI and Big Data in 2017, before the hype.

I went through it the hard way and had to work out every step on my own. Which master, which school, which country, what each one actually costs you. 5 consecutive years of it, with nobody to ask. So if that is where you are standing right now, I know exactly how it feels.

So I have watched this field evolve from the inside, through every phase of it. That's why I write about AI the way I do.

Student abroad. Titre de séjour renewals. No money. Side hustles to stay afloat. I also solved my passport problem by getting French citizenship while still a student.

If you are trying to build a career, or get the degree abroad that lets you start one, while keeping your legal status in order at the same time, I have been exactly where you are standing.

My first salary was 6 figures, in the richest country on the planet. After landing that job, the goal for the 5 years after 2020 was simple. Never worry about money again.

I spent those years actually learning. ETFs, savings architecture, private markets, all of it. I made every mistake available and I got a few things very right. I started investing in real estate at 24.

That is the experience behind everything I share on money. All of it lived.

Like anyone ambitious I understood early that selling my time does not scale. I have tried to build startups and projects over and over. No real success yet. Still trying, still learning, and I will keep going.

One thing did work. Distribution. This community is now past 200k across Instagram, Substack, YouTube and the rest, built from zero. If that is what you want to understand, we can talk about that too.

12 years of ground covered, and I share all of it for free. Forever.

I refuse to sell personal finance courses, big tech interview textbooks, AI automation manuals. Given the support and conversion I already see in this community, I could make tens of thousands selling knowledge. Probably hundreds. But no. It defeats the purpose. We will find another way.

I get at least 50 emails a week. A dilemma. An offer to compare. An investment question. A project someone is stuck on. A visa situation. A growth problem.

I cannot honestly answer them at that volume. A real answer means sitting down and going deep into your specifics. Your numbers, your market, your timeline, your constraints. That is what the consultations are for. Case by case, which is the only way advice like this is worth anything, and it does not break the principle of free knowledge for everyone.

After everything above, there is a good chance I have already stood somewhere near where you are stuck today. Not the same situation, but close enough to recognize the shape of it. And most people who reach out do not need someone to tell them what to do. They need a second opinion. Someone to name the blind spot they cannot see from the inside. Someone who will sit with the decision and work the pros and cons with you properly.

Let me be clear about what this is not. I will never give you direct financial advice. I will never tell you to buy this, sell that, take this offer, quit that job. That is not my role. What I give you is the framework, the experience of someone who has been through it, the questions you have not thought to ask yourself yet, and an honest outside read. The decision stays yours. It should.

If 1 session is not the right format, we can figure out some kind of suivi. Some decisions play out over months, not over an hour, and checking in as things move is often worth more than 1 deep dive at the start.

They are expensive. I know.

But the cost of a wrong call at the wrong moment is much higher than an hour of my time. A misjudged offer. A promotion cycle you sit out. 2 years in the wrong market. A portfolio built on a strategy you never stress tested. Getting the right read from the right person at the right step is worth it. I pay other experts for second opinions myself.

Up to you.