Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Franck Pachot, I have been a Developer Advocate at MongoDB for a little over a year. I will be at Microsoft starting in June 2026. I have 30 years of experience in databases. I started as an Oracle/SQL consultant, and since then I have worked with pretty much everything: Oracle, DB2, PostgreSQL, YugabyteDB, and now MongoDB.
Did you follow a formal education?
I had a traditional education. I studied MIAGE at Paris-Sud, a master’s degree that combines computer science, information systems, and business management. That multidisciplinary side helps me enormously today when communicating with different profiles: developers, DBAs, architects, and people in marketing.
When did you start programming?
I got into computing a bit by chance, I was not necessarily meant to go into that. I learned during my studies and later on in the working world.
And what was your first job?
That is where everything really started. I began at Alcatel between 1994 and 1997, in a Client/Server development team. I was working on Oracle, DB2, Business Objects, application development, and data warehouse design. That is really where I discovered databases.
Do you think going through consulting firms afterward is an advantage?
Absolutely. When you work at a consulting firm, you regularly change clients, industries, and technical stacks. And that is a kind of skill growth that is very hard to reproduce in any other way. In just a few years you have seen dozens of different environments, architectures, products, and ways of working. Every new assignment means a new technology to grasp, a new product to understand, and a new team with its own habits. And since you do not have a choice, you learn fast.
You develop an adaptation reflex that serves you throughout your entire career. Someone who has spent five years in the same company on the same project may be very good on that specific project, but they do not have that breadth of perspective. For me, that consulting period laid the foundations for everything else. Also, changing and evolving is very important. I know people who have been in the same company for 20 years. Today they are afraid to change, to redo their resume, and to go through interviews.
Since Yugabyte you have been a Developer Advocate, what is that job and what does a typical day look like?
My job is to help developers. At Yugabyte, that meant explaining PostgreSQL compatibility, the advantages of distributed SQL, high availability, and scaling strategies. I answered questions on forums, delivered webinars, workshops, and hands-on sessions. But a big part of the work was also listening, really listening, to what developers were experiencing in the field, and passing that feedback back to product management so it could help improve the product.
At MongoDB it is a bit different in its approach. Everyone knows MongoDB, the job is to help people use it correctly. I explain the differences between NoSQL and SQL, I help with data modeling, I show how the document model fits in. And there is a lot of content around comparisons with PostgreSQL, because that is often where the questions arise. It involves conferences, articles, videos, webinars, workshops, and a lot of travel.
Why did you leave YugabyteDB to join MongoDB?
Honestly, I was very happy at Yugabyte, the team, the colleagues, the product. I was not looking to leave at all. When other companies contacted me, I would decline pretty quickly. Then MongoDB approached me, and I was intrigued by one question: why would a document-oriented database be interested in someone coming from the SQL world? That pushed me to start the conversation, out of curiosity. And while discussing it, I understood that that was exactly the idea: helping users model their data better by bringing a perspective that is often missing in the NoSQL ecosystem.
Your first open source contribution?
My way of contributing to projects is mostly by giving talks or by writing technical articles. I also have a few projects on my GitHub.
Can you describe your work environment?
I am pretty classic. Command line, tmux, the usual tools.
What do you think are the essential skills for a developer, a DBA, or a systems engineer?
Largely curiosity and the ability to learn quickly. Technology changes too fast to rely only on what we already know. What sets the good ones apart is not the list of what they master today, but their ability to understand something new in depth, quickly.
You have over 30 years of experience. With that perspective, what are the traits or habits the best people share?
What I see in people who last and really keep progressing is that they question their certainties. In databases especially, you quickly accumulate preconceived ideas. The best are the ones who verify rather than repeat what they have heard. You need to be able to see what your mental models are and use them correctly.
How do professional opportunities work in your field?
What is interesting is that for a while now, I do not really redo my resume every time. Microsoft contacted me, Yugabyte contacted me, MongoDB contacted me. All without me applying. My LinkedIn is my resume. That is where I publish, where I share what I understand, where I engage in technical discussions. And that is what generates opportunities, not traditional applications. In our field, word of mouth and online visibility matter much more than an updated PDF. If someone is looking for a database expert, they will look at who writes about the topic, who speaks at conferences, who answers questions on forums, not who has the nicest resume template.
Big companies also publish job offers, but often for legal reasons. For example, they may publish a role because it is mandatory, even though they already have their candidate. In practice, the most effective way is still to know people on the inside.
What do you think about the place of juniors in this AI context?
AI today can indeed replace a lot of what a junior used to do, generate code, answer basic technical questions, produce a first version of pretty much anything. The problem is not there. The problem is ten years from now: who is going to become senior? If we remove the learning phase by delegating it to AI, we stop training people. And at some point, there is no one left to take over the work of senior people. That is a risk for the profession.
How do you spend your free time?
Running and hiking. Switzerland is very well suited to that, the forests and the mountains... that is one of the reasons I stayed there too.
Why Switzerland?
I arrived there as a consultant, and I stayed. What struck me is that there is a real value placed on the work of consultants and technical experts. And Switzerland is very decentralized, which I appreciate. There is not a single center of gravity, things happen everywhere. And honestly, the landscapes play a role too.
How do you manage remote work?
It came a bit by force of circumstance with Covid. I had some apprehension at first, like many people. And in the end I adapted very well. In my job especially, pure remote does not really exist, I am often traveling for conferences, I meet clients, developers, and communities. So I am never 100% isolated. It is a good balance.
Do you have any books to recommend?
Honestly, I am not a big book reader. I mostly consume blogs, forums, and technical discussions online. And when I really want to understand something, I go and read the official documentation from beginning to end.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Do not be afraid to change your mind. In tech, we often have very strong positions on databases. The best advice I was given is to remain intellectually honest: if the data or experience contradicts what we believed, that is a chance to learn, not a threat.
And what would your advice be?
Be curious and be able to change your preconceived ideas. In the end, it is the same thing. Curiosity without questioning yourself just gives you someone who accumulates certainties. What matters is going to look and accepting that the answer may be different from what you expected.
Is there something you would like to share with the people who will read this interview?
I think projects like DatabaseStory are exactly what should be done. Interviewing people, writing, publishing, it may seem trivial but that is where you build skills that really make the difference in the long run.
Can people contact you? If so, what is the best way?
I am fairly easy to find online on LinkedIn, on dev.to, on Medium, and on X under @FranckPachot.