Pierluigi Meloni: The No-BS Guide to Future-Proof Your Career

In this talk, Pierluigi Francesco Meloni discusses the importance of skills beyond coding in the tech industry. He emphasizes that while technical expertise is vital, the ability to communicate effectively and engage with management is equally crucial. The speaker shares personal anecdotes about navigating corporate dynamics and highlights the pitfalls of relying solely on technical skills for career advancement. He introduces practical frameworks, such as the COIN framework for providing feedback, and underscores the need for adapting communication styles to various audiences. Meloni encourages tech professionals to develop their soft skills to enhance collaboration, reduce technical debt, and improve career prospects, especially in the face of rapidly advancing technology like AI. Ultimately, he suggests that success in tech isn't just about what you know but also how you connect with others and communicate your ideas effectively.

Good day everybody and welcome to the show. Um after hearing the voice of the lovely lady now, I'm I'm sorry that you have to listen to my voice for an hour. That's kind of a downer. But let's make the best out of it. Um first of all, let me just get a quick picture who I'm dealing with. Um my question would be who of you writes code?

So who is working with code? So I thought that pretty much everybody, but keep your hands up, please. That's a German thing. Keep your hands up. My question is are you good at it? So? You're all good at it, but I saw a couple of hands going down. What about you? You like, "Nah, I'm really below average. I suck." Yeah, Carlo, of course. But I earn good

money with it. Well, the thing is uh most of us are pretty good at coding. And that is important, but it's also very common. So it's hard to be special in a one-dimensional perspective where you think coding will make the change. this is why in my presentation today, I'd like to change the perspective of the focus at least for this hour uh at the second half of

our job. And those are the skills beyond code. Um let me introduce myself briefly. My name is Pierluigi Francesco Meloni. So keep it simple is nothing that my parents had in mind when they named me. So the short version is GG. I think everyone can remember that. And as you can hear from my Italian name, I come from Deutschland from Wuppertal, Germany. Um but I got both

backgrounds, German and Italian, and that comes in handy because I'm like a a farce, like a foreigner as a service. So I can choose the nationality that fits the situation. For example, when I'm 5 minutes late for a meeting, I can always come in and say, "Oh, you know, the traffic and there was a secretary outside. Oh, I was talking to her." And everybody be like, "Yeah,

it's the Italian. It's fine." But if it's my meeting and I'm standing there like, "Uh you are like 17 seconds late." Then everybody be like, "Relax, he's not such an [ __ ] He's a German." All right, enough German bashing. Now, I'm there might be more. Um I studied computer science and I worked in the tech industry for the past 20 years. Pretty much every role you can imagine.

I started classically as a software engineer, then architecture, then I somehow made my way into management, um basically product management and then some executive roles. And then at a certain point in time where you might also be now or maybe in the future, I thought about um creating something myself and I did. And I founded a company called Other Skills. It's an e-learning academy for tech specialists

and it focuses on the second half of the job. When I started out in the tech industry, I did pretty much I guess like the most of you. I did some gaming and started scripting for the game and stuff like that. Fell in love with it. And I thought about, "Well, that's pretty cool. I'd like to do cool stuff myself. I'd like to have a good time

because computers for me meant a good time and probably I even wanted to change the world. You want to create something big, something cool." But then at a certain point in time, you got to earn money with it. And you go into business. The business world looks a bit different. First of all, you get customers, demanding customers. Those are the ones with the requirements that stand in

between the way of you and the perfect application. Then you have to deal with legacy a lot. I mean basically most of the time we work with code that somebody else wrote that we have to maintain. And the times we get to write something from scratch are kind of limited. And there's hierarchy and politics a lot in every company. you kind of get used to it and

when you advance, you kind of switch your focus to, "Okay, I stay here. I want to earn more money. I want to become a senior one day. I want to get, I don't know, another rank." And uh works at the beginning, but still this desire doesn't go away. It's still there for everybody. It's still there for you, I'm pretty sure. It's this damn I want to influence

decisions. I want to do things right. I want to build the right thing and I want to be heard and I want to be valued cuz I'm an expert. Not only that I studied that stuff, I've been working here forever. I know a thing or two about it. But the problem that we often face in companies in our industry is that tech experts do not get the

let's say appreciation they should get. Most of the time the real experts don't really have the influence they should have because they're just a department, although everything is becoming more technological from day to day. Most of the time you're not really heard the way you should be heard. And most of the times you have to do things that you think you don't do them right. And that

has a natural outcome. One of the most natural outcomes is technical debt. When efficiency over time goes down. Actually yesterday, I guess it was yesterday, I read a statistic that said that American companies, tech companies, on average spend like a third of their on battling technical debt. And I'm not talking about maintenance, just battling technical debt. While compared to that, it was I guess 25% about a

fourth that is spent on uh on innovation. So you get more money spending fighting the old [ __ ] Can I curse? Cuz I'll do a lot. All right. Battling the old stuff uh compared to creating the new world. And that also of course leads to complexity growing and I guess I mean you know it. Everybody came to a new company where everything seemed golden and then you're like,

"Yeah, same crap again." And that's kind of frustrating. And it's especially frustrating because you think, "Damn, I knew it better and my colleagues knew it better, too." So what you do? You check how the big ones do it. You come to conferences like these. And what you see is like first of all, you learn the methodologies they have. It's like, "Oh, Agile. So so good on paper.

Like Spotify, they do the tribe stuff. Got to work It worked for them. Should be working for us, too. Some Some of them are lean or whatsoever. All the methodologies, you name them. And of course, like this makes, I don't know, like 5% on conferences or three. And all the rest, of course, is spent on tech. And most of the time disruptive tech, innovative tech. And the

presentations sound really good. Because the result of the presentation is most of the time, "We had this problem. We did that." And after just some configuration, everything worked. And it's great. And even if it's great, there's this problem that you were at this conference and not the deciders. Maybe not even your team. And it doesn't really change that you don't get to influence. Maybe it makes it

worse because you get another great solution in your mind and it's like, "How can I influence them? How can I make things right? What can I do to be heard?" And then there's another thing, at least at the in my path. You can shake your head if it's not that way, but I think you have the situation, too. Sometimes when something big is about to happen in

a company, you call something somebody from like an external advisor or something like that. Most of the time people come in, they bring their their buzzword gun with them and they tell you stuff about the bright future. I call them the salosophers or the noise executives or however you want to call them. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be like an advisor or a consultant. It

can just be somebody new. Somebody new for the job because new is trustworthy. And they say things that you have probably said like a hundred times before. And they might even say it a bit more generic. Like you said, "Damn, I understand what you mean, but it's actually not that easy with us because I know a bit more." But anyway, management listens to them. And it's like,

"Yeah, that's Okay, at least somebody listens, but why this way?" And the worst thing that can happen is that somebody like them becomes your manager as well. So um I was at a I had a crisis in my career in between because I somehow figured what's going to be? Is that like the option? Is like going somewhere, feeling good at the beginning and then getting frustrated because

things don't change the way I want them to change or the the way at least I hear them. Or do I have to become one of them? Like selling an agenda. And then looking at your LinkedIn profile like uh I worked for 20 important companies in 10 years. It's like bringing the message and leaving again. So it was kind of frustrating. But then something happened, something strange.

Back in the day, I was working at a pharma company and the company had a great application. The application had great business value. Let's say like that. It was a real fit for the market and was great for the for the clients. Was um clinical research. But from a tech viewpoint, it was a disaster. It wasn't built by proper experts and it was at a certain point

in time where it was nice for the customers, but maintaining it and growing the software was was a nightmare and didn't make sense. So it was clear we need a refactoring or even a rewrite. And of course, what does a company do? Do they listen to the experts? No, they bring in someone else. And in that case, they brought in Steven. And Steven, if you're here, I

don't know. Or if you're watching online, or if you're probably going to watch this. He's here? Hi, Steven. Say your second name. No, you're wrong. Steven was a girl. Uh he's now No, I'm So, for the real Steven, if you watch Ah, there's the camera. If you're watching this, I I really hated your guts. I I didn't know you. I I haven't even heard your voice, but

you know, it was you were through for me the moment you came. But the strangest thing happened. Steven was different. First of all, he was calm and real. Was like a really trustworthy person, and uh he was a real pro. So, he had the tech down to to the last bit, so we learned a lot from him. And strangely, he was kind of nerdy. So, actually felt

he was one of us. And uh we were all thinking, "Damn, we already have that persona. Why do we need another one? We already know the cheat how to influence management." But the craziest thing is he was able to do it. He influenced them, but big time. It was like developer's dream. He got all the stuff we were dreaming about, and management was happy about it. So,

he got real change done. And that was crazy. And I remember one of the first times I had an interaction with him was uh when we were thinking about refactoring of um uh parts of the front end. And I had a nice a nice idea, and I figured out a strategy how to do it, and even a road map how to do it. And uh I did

a presentation in front of my team. And uh I had it all done. And the great thing is the team liked it. They even loved it. Even Steven said, "That's That's how we should do it. Great thing." And everybody was like, "Let's show it to management." And then Steven was in the room as well, and he did with his pope-like attitude, he stood up, opened his arms,

and said "Haven't we learned anything?" We were like, "The [ __ ] is he saying? Everybody liked it. I want to show it to management." And I was like, "You want to take the credits for it again, or what?" And the thing is he said, "No, no, no, no, no, no. You you showed it to tech people. If you're going to show it to the management, you have to

rewrite the whole thing." He told me about knowing the audience. He said, "You got to know your audience." whoever you speak to, in that case, it's management, you have to figure out what are they what are their expectations and what are their KPIs. So, they don't want to know about fancy solution or clean code or whatsoever. They want to know numbers. They want to know a base

to decide on. They want to know how long it's going to take, what's it going to cost, what's going to be the benefit. And of course, uh they use a different language. So, if I have a presentation and 90% of the slides are full with code, I could as well just replace them with I don't know, screenshots from Chinese papers. Has the same effect, distracts them, and

they might be thinking, "Who is that?" So, that's not really expert behavior, and I wanted to appear as an expert. So, it's like, "Okay, the job is not make them understand in the meeting what I'm what I'm in in my language what I'm saying. It's like make them understand in their own language. I have to bring the action up front." And uh the third one, and it

was a nice advice, was whenever you And that's specifically for management. Whenever you talk to management, don't really talk about the solution, because you should be trusted with the solution. Make them understand the problem and the necessity and the importance of the problem, and make them understand the And they should trust you with the solution. It's like, "Okay, we got it. You're the one to fix it,

and the numbers are correct. Do it." And that's the moment where you gain um responsibility for the thing, and uh you have no one to to interrupt you in between. Think about it like that. Whenever you go to management, bring like two or three solutions that you can live with, and let them choose the solutions. But as soon as you come up with like open questions, they

do the things that they do best. They decide. Or they might even raise other questions, even though they don't know what they're talking about, because it's And then they'll be like, "Yeah, okay, we do it this way, this way, this way." And then you have to live with it with a decision that you might not even have taken. So, that was kind of a good advice. What

I did is I worked it out, made a complete different uh presentation, and I went in there like first times like, "Okay, it's a bit strange and new for me, but let's try it in their language." And it was a complete success. And I was like, "Was the first time ever I was sitting there, not so many questions, like smiling faces, like I thought about it." And

I even had one guy applauding. Like the only thing that's in in in Ah, there's a German sayer about it, wouldn't make sense in English anyway. So, Germans applaud in a different way, let's say like that. It was applause, and I was like, "Oh, that was really cool." And then in the retro, when I thought how how could that happen, I had a moment of epiphany. And

I was thinking about Steven, and I was thinking, "What the hell did he do?" Because at that moment, I was still thinking he was kind of a magician. Like I don't know, maybe he drugged them, whatever, he had something against them, like could blackmail them, I don't Then I thought maybe he's just super empathetic, and I don't get it. I just don't feel it. Or at a

certain point, I just thought, "Ah, maybe he's just old and privileged." Or like you Gen Z people would say, "He's just an old white man." But um that was actually not the thing. The thing what he did is he had like Let's say like that. He had like a database in his head with proven procedures for pretty much every Like he could determine, "Ah, it's that kind

of situation, and I have a checklist. What should I do? What shouldn't I do? And how should I behave?" Was kind of an algorithmically approach for human interactions. And I loved that. And I was like, "This is how we do it." I I don't even know if he does it consciously, or if that's that is just his talent, but observing the system, like checking the logs, what

happened there, I figured out that pattern. And so, I started looking for that, and I was like, "Okay, whenever somebody does something really good, I'm looking for the success factors." Or asking like more senior people like, "How would you do that situation?" It's like, "Ah, that sounds really good." And first of all, you don't [ __ ] up, and second of all, you get some success factors that might

work, because they worked before. And I started incorporating them in my daily life. And that was pretty much the moment when things started change. First of all, people started trusting me more. The the influence level grew. Second of all, I became because lots of that stuff has to do with working with others in a team, I became better team player. And if you become a better team

player, the team becomes better. And if the team becomes better, very likely results will become better. So, that's kind of a positive chain reaction. And third of all, uh that's probably interesting for many of you, someday I I became to appear on the radar for promotion. And before it felt kind of normal to chase promotions, but that somehow changed that opportunities were looking out for me, because

you somehow start creating a name without being a philosopher and making like publicity for your own brand. It's just like let's call it like like leading by And that's what really attracts people. the best thing about it actually was for me felt for me was that uh my my initial fear of like going this way or that way wasn't true. I could just be me. So, strangely

enough, my first learning here was um ironically, the key to producing great code at work and truly enjoying work wasn't in the code itself, but beyond it. Obviously, it's in the code, but there was a missing puzzle piece to elevate that situation. And it was beyond it. And so, it it started ignite itself, and I wanted more. So, I continued. I I was at another place. Steven

was long gone then, so the master was uh out of the house, but I was still looking for it, because first of all, I wanted to have a better life experience for myself, a work life experience. And second of all, if it works for you, it might work as well for others. And as this is about interacting with people, it's nice, you know, if they do if

they change as well. So, I was really thinking like, "Okay, maybe there is something that they can do, because I'm not a teacher. I didn't want to teach them." So, I was looking out, you know, checking programs that there that there are out there. I'm pretty sure many of you made stuff like that, too, like coaching trainings or leadership trainings, like career seminars, soft skill course, and

that Now, don't get me wrong. They're I'm pretty sure they're all good, and they have their own case, you know, where where they make sense. it's kind of not the stuff I experienced. And it it's not that kind of suitable. Actually, hard to describe. Tell you what I mean. What I got when I did that stuff was um trainings you can do out there are pretty generic.

And I have a problem with with that, because if things are generic, and if they are if something is good for everybody, then it's really good for nobody. And good is somehow not enough when you can have better. And the next thing is most of the stuff that is out there, especially soft skills related, is not really from the tech world. It's like kind of generic. It's

like you learn stuff like, "This is an alpha person in the room. Then there might be a beta and a gamma person." You're like, is there like I don't know, Popeye person as well? How does that help me?" It's not really applicable. That's the thing. And the third one is it's That's kind of a personal note that depends on you. For me, it's kind of an incompatible

style, because I'm yeah, you know, not a fan of chair circle and talking about feelings or painting your feelings and colors or whatsoever you can do there. So, the stuff that I really wanted is like I wanted to be me, but like have kind of an efficient compatibility layer around me to interact with the rest of the world, like with a with other departments, with bosses and

and customers and whatsoever. But like I already said, it's pretty tough. So, didn't find a lot. But as an engineer, what do we do? If we don't find something, we think about creating it ourselves. And I I was thinking about that, but let me give you that advice. If If you're uh thinking about creating something yourself one day and making your own company, if you're still struggling

like should I do it or shouldn't I do it, then the moment hasn't come yet. There is kind of this initial spark where you stand there like now I feel like I'm missing something if I don't do And you need a kind of an inspiration for it. I was lucky. I had kind of an I was working at an e-commerce company, and I was part of the

leadership team. And in leadership team, you need to know something about business. And my business skills were at that time not the greatest one. So, I was thinking about making an MBA. The problem with making an MBA is it's it costs a lot. Costs like 80 grands and you got to go to school for 2 years or something like that. So, that really wasn't an offer that

I wanted to take. And I stumbled across an offer. Do you know that by chance? It's called the Power MBA. It's an American program, so I'm not a partner with them, so I don't want to make any commercial for them. Don't want to even talk about the content, but I want to give them credits for the format they had. Because the format was dope. First of all,

everything was online. Course completely online. You can do it your tempo. The videos are on demand. It's all well structured, so it's really like, "Okay, I can incorporate it into my day whenever, wherever I want." And the second thing is was microlearning. Have you tried to do some learning with microlearning? No, are you like too much too much uh cake or still alive? I know that can

be tough. I'm I'm standing. Come on, it's tougher for Actually, yeah, microlearning is a nice thing because I like that I I never liked that school when the lessons were like 90 minutes. So, I'm sorry for the hour today, but that's the way it goes. Um it was pretty long for me, so this is about small chunks, 15 minutes a day. Really cool, I have to say.

Statistically, 20% better results. I what makes sense is 50% higher engagement because it's way easier to motivate yourself for like 15 minutes a compared to 2 hours. It's just like like Ricky we talked about before. It's easier to make sports at home compared to driving to the gym for a 2-hour session. But the best thing about it was um they based all their content not on theory,

but on practical stuff. Like um they said they they uh they they had real situations and incorporated the theory in there to to show that it's valid. And that was pretty much the stuff that I liked because it was similar to the stuff that Simon did. When I did that, that was my my ignition moment. I called a friend and I said, "Hey, listen, let's do that."

And that friend, Florian, shouts out shout out uh became my co-founder and we started a company together. the company was all about how do we get the stuff, you know, like that the mean hacks that Stephen has? So, what we did is we went out and we asked senior persons like seasoned experts. We We went to everybody and asked like, "What were the three best advice you

would have given yourself at the beginning of your career?" And we started to make a huge collection. I'm pretty sure every one of you has the certain moment where I don't know, shortly before you went into a meeting or maybe even an exam or something like that, somebody took your side and gave you special advice like "Whatever happens, don't say that. Say that or do that." And

you could still paint the situation that's such a valuable advice for you. So, we began asking people about that stuff and it became a beautiful That's what we did. So, we created this course just for for tech people. It's not a not a product show. The only thing that it's worth mentioning while we're German bashing is funnily that the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research gave

us uh an award for innovation competence. Can you imagine? Awards from Germany for innovation? The innovation we do is tanks and submarines. And now we have a nice course as well. So, anyway, this not a product show. It's about the second half of of of the job. And the problem in our industry is that uh or let's say in general, soft skills are everybody says that's that's

a really important thing because humans are interacting with humans, but in tech it has like I don't know, special taste to it. I'm pretty sure if we go out on the street and show this to anybody out there, people say like, "Yeah, yeah, for sure." This is the subjective stereotype we You know these these series I I mean everybody knows Big Bang Theory. You know the Silicon

Valley? We got applause. Those are nice TV shows, but they have the subjective flavor saying like, "Yeah, we accept that they are geniuses, but somehow they behave awkwardly or whatsoever." And whoever gets to say what is awkward and what is normal? But still, we think that subjectively those people have problems in social situations. And that's a subjective feeling, but there's an objective proof to it as Like

there are statistics from hiring institutes that say in 73% of cases, hiring experts observed a lack of soft skills among applicants from the STEM field. So, that's three out of four. On the positive side, it also means if you're able to show soft skills, you'll immediately beat three out of four contenders in the job market, which is a nice thing. So, there is a lack obviously for

whatever reasons, but there's a connection in thinking that makes no sense. And this is this soft skills cannot be learned. And that's not true. Everybody can learn soft skills. Even an [ __ ] And if I say an [ __ ] in that situation, I refer to myself because I got a temper and I can be mean in meetings. It's It's there. I can't find it, but um yeah, you shouldn't

condemn yourself. For example, if I had a a meeting situation where I don't know, maybe it was even a junior. Junior [ __ ] up the application. I would be somebody like standing there and saying like, "Who the [ __ ] did these queries created these queries? Those are rookie mistakes and it's would really I would want to rage it out. Like it's so stupid to do something like that." And

go off. Whatever nature that is. The problem with that is it feels natural and it's no problem if it's there cuz it's part of your personality that you cannot change. It's really hard to change personality by the way, but it's really easy to change behavior, especially with triggers. That's what psychology is about. And in that situation, like calculating it's no good for the team. It's no good

for the mood, even if I'm in a rage, and ultimately it's not good for me. So, what you do is like is there a better solution for that situation? There is. There always is. And it's always like kind of a little algorithm. And in that case, it would be the COIN framework. Have you heard the COIN framework? Some do. Some others don't. It's pretty easy. And actually,

it's a framework for one of the most challenging situations in job life. When you're in a meeting and you have to give feedback because you can only [ __ ] up. It's so hard. Most of the time you you might hurt somebody or you might come off too nice and it's not really the feedback you want to give. So, it's nice to have an alternative and I really like

that one. C stands for context. O stands for observation. I for impact and N for next steps. So, in that case, you might give you might start and giving context saying like, "Hey, listen guys, in my last code review, I saw that we're using some different um that in my last code review, let's start like this. That's nicer. In my last code review, uh I was seeing

that we're having some some new query messages. Okay, observation. I saw that these new messages that are not the framework the new methods that are not the framework methods are processing large data at once. And this might well, yeah, I don't know. Impact probably affect the runtime of our application leading to downtime and most assumably to uh bad user experience. Next steps would be who is open

to discussing with me how we could use the framework methods and processing smaller chunks of it. That's pretty much the same message incorporated in four easy sentences, but nobody gets hurt. The message comes across and you even go to the next step. And this is just a super super little tiny hack for a situation where I don't know, if if something like that happens four five times

in a row in a meeting, you might call a coach or a psychologist to get to get the situation back again. No matter how good your tech is, people are [ __ ] up, you know, don't like each other anymore. So, that's really the small details that change stuff. And there's a lot to know about that. While we're here, I'd like to talk about three common misbeliefs that I

encountered Some of them I even encountered when I was here last year because we had lots of talks about the topic afterwards. let's talk about them briefly. First of all, um let me ask you, do you think that you communicate clearly? Now, don't be intimidated. Communicating clearly just means do you think that when you speak other people are able to understand you and when they say something,

are you able to understand them? Give me some hands. Okay, for for the others, what do you think? Honestly, I'm curious. The details? Too much details. But the question was, do you think that people understand you and that you are able to understand other people? And you're shaking the head. It's What do you think? It's like when I say something, I don't even understand myself. Ah, so

they go off-topic. But would you understand what they say off-topic? So then you're back on the positive Well, anyway. It's actually It's I got to tell the story. I promised you guys. a bit embarrassing, but I got to do it. It's actually not that easy to understand if you're understanding somebody or if they understand you. I got to tell you a story. It has nothing to do

with a tech. When I was 18 years old, like two two years ago, I am I just made my driver's license. And when you get your driver's license, you get to see other cities and I was like from countryside and I could go to the big city and see concerts and I got myself concert tickets. And the tickets were for Destiny's Child. Remember that band? Beyoncé's band?

Yeah, it was back in the day. And I had two tickets and I wanted to go there with a friend, but on the day of the concert, the friend got sick. So I had to call another one. And I called around, called around. I got one. He was whispering. I was like, "What's going on? You want to go to Frankfurt with me?" Like a two-hour ride. And

see the concert. And he was like, "Yeah, but you know, I'm still in school. How about I say I go to toilet and you just pick me up?" We did that. It was like big adventure. And in the car, we were happy, you know, chatting, talking about the concert and stuff like that. And when we arrived, um I was standing there and then finally Destiny's Child hit

the stage. Like the three gorgeous young ladies from Texas, black music. That was my thing. Beyoncé is my age, so I was in love. It was great. She came out and I was like, "Yeah, really cool." And a friend of mine was standing next to me like this. And then he looked at me and he was it's them." And I was like, "The [ __ ] it's them. What

do you mean? Who else should it be?" And he And he was like, "I thought it was the band, you know, with the redhead and the Chinese girl and stuff like that." He was thinking we were going to a concert of the Sugababes. Remember that band? It was like another girl band at the time. And at that moment, I really thought to myself, "What the [ __ ] were

we talking about in that car? For two hours?" I thought we had a great chat. I thought we were like on the same page, hitting the stage, asking Beyoncé to marry me or stuff like that. And he was waiting for the Asian girl. But there was none. So it was kind of a bummer. Anyway, I'm just saying that because it's actually not that easy sometimes to understand,

especially in tech where the domain is more complicated. And where probably other people don't know the vocabulary that you know. So and here's the thing. Like last year, the the thing that that popped up the most after the talk was like when people came to me, they were "You know what? You got a point there and all the soft good stuff, blah blah. I really see that

problem with my team." So the underlying message was like, "I got no problem, but they suck." Like nobody came and said, "Yeah, I really got to work on my soft skills, communication or whatever." Not even one came and said, "We got to work on that." It was all like, "Yeah, they got the problem." And the funniest thing about that is I came home and I was like

really interested, started looking around and I found a bunch of studies that say 80% of people believe that they have above average soft skills, but only about 20% actually do. So that's the classical Pareto stuff we got in our industry as well. And now let me ask you again, like with the poll, what do you think makes a great communicator? Yeah. That's correct. I'll repeat that in

a minute. What's whisperer? A good listener. We had that already. Something else? Wow. Okay, that takes it to the next level. I'll I'll call that clarity. Let's say it's listening skills. So you're a good listener. Actually, you listen a bit more than you speak. You speak with clarity. And here's the point, you have a certain presence because most of the talk actually is done nonverbally. And the

next one is you have kind of an emotional intelligence. That doesn't mean that you have to feel the pain of the other person. It just kind of means are you on board if somebody's understanding you or not? This is why I asked it. And now let me ask you again, if that is a good communicator, do you do that in every of your communications? Hands up. I

thought so. And that's pretty much proof. Like I I don't know how many Dunning-Kruger effects I already saw on the on on the other slides today, but that's pretty much the thing. Even with easy things like talking, like I talk, you talk, that works. It's actually not that easy. So there's kind of a bit more The second one was, "Hey, that sounds really good what you do,

but I'm not really planning to go into management. I want to write code." And the statistic I brought last time, I don't know who was here last last year. Couple of you, I guess, yeah. And I was talking a bit more about in detail about the about the Chaos Report. I won't do that today, but that's a study you all should know, especially when you're in software.

Chaos Report says that 70% of all IT projects worldwide cannot be called successful. Successful means finished time and budget. That's what is important. And it's like 70% of them fail, which is like not a great statistic for our expert industry. So and if they go into detail and study why it is, they find out that most of the people working on the projects are actually really good

at tech. But that's not what it's all about. There's way more in between because you got to work together with others. You should be able to understand the domain and the problems of the customer because if you don't understand the problem, how can you build a great application? But most of the time we're not really interested in that domain. Then most of the time the customer is

not really interested in tech stuff. He just wants a solution. And a lot of stuff goes goes lost in And if you trace these numbers back, but I just said, like the 70%. If you trace them back like 25 years ago because we have these numbers, you will find that the trend curves are pretty much horizontal straight lines. That means that in the past 25 years, statistically,

the outcome quality of IT projects has remained the same. Although that in the past 25 years, and I've been on a bunch of conferences, there's so much innovative, great, and that will make everything better. It does in a way. It changes a lot, but it did not really change the quality of stuff we produce. That's an interesting stat. And the second stat about I I brought you

four stats. The second stat about It's an interesting for me because I'm not a manager is on average, every one of us is going to spend or at least the coding people are going to spend like half of their of their work life in meetings. That sounds weird in the beginning, but think about it. That's an American statistic. German statistic is about 46%. Um there are all

these agile meetings and all the stuff that you do all the time, but there's so much more. There's like client meetings, corporate meetings, like you get so much onboarding. You have meetings with new people. You got problem meetings, you got job meetings, whatsoever. So you're going to spend a whole lot of time in meeting situations interacting with people where coding skills or tech skills won't help much.

And it's about half of the time that you're working. So there's really kind of a leverage And the next one is if you're thinking about a career, think about that. The ICIMS Hiring Report is a large study. A United States study. It's like the biggest institute that brings code workers into labor. And they say that 94% of their recruiters say they would much rather promote a person

with bigger soft skills than a person with more years of experience but weaker soft skills. And that we call the senior problem. There are so many people in companies who say, "Hey, listen, I've been here forever. Why don't I get promoted?" Well, it's like you don't become a senior just for not getting fired 7 years in a row. There's there's more to it. And that's pretty much

the senior And the next stat from the same report 75% of the same recruiters would cut an interview short if an applicant was was incapable of showing the skills beyond code needed for the role he applied for. And you know that story, too. I've had so many friends who said, "I had a great job interview. I nailed the coding challenge. I knew everything about it, but they

didn't take me." You know what? Everybody nails the We're all good at that. Hardly anybody fails there, but there's a second part to the interview. That's the killer. So just saying thing it's not management, think about it. And it's fair to say that even tech is a people's business. People are creating solutions for people in collaboration with guess what? Yeah, other people using tech as a tool.

So that's what it's ultimately about. And that brings me to the final one. that's a biggie. It says the problem is not my communication skills, but the fact that management is not listening. And I got to give you that. I see many people smiling here. And I got to give you that there's something to it. I had that situation previously, I told you, when before Steven came

in, but the problem here was not that they were not listening. The problem was that I didn't speak their So, you always have to reconsider that if you if you put all the effort in that you could be understood as well. And that you got, you know, the the radar out to feel if you're understandable or not. But that is not the main problem. The main problem

here is a typical problem for our industry, and it's called the missing expert status. I'll give you an example. If you Google pictures of experts from certain areas, there's a nice trick as well. If if you want to know something about public opinion, you just make a Google image search, and you get you get the image or the icon or whatsoever that the society that the public

has in mind when they hear a word. So, when you Google for an expert, for example, for a doctor, you get And this already has some kind of expertise. You know the situation, doctor comes in with a report, you kind of freeze. It's like, "Tell tell me what's going on." And whatever he says is like, "You take five of the green pills, three of the yellow pills,

and then you make exercise every day." You'll be like, I'll take the pink pills. I'll do the operation myself." You wouldn't do that. You know, he's the expert. He says it and you say, "I'm fine with that. I don't want to die." It's like you kind of know the consequence, you get a feeling, you trust him. Doesn't even have to be like a studied person. Think about

a car mechanic. If you bring your car to the to the car garage, car mechanic says like, "Nah, cylinder's broken." Who of you says, "Yeah, I don't give a [ __ ] I'll drive the car anyway. I'll just take some duct tape. That's how I roll." You know, you wouldn't do it. He's like the expert, you would trust What happens if you Google for a software engineer? See, that's

part of the problem. It's nonverbal communication as well. But we had that last year, and we had some some discussions afterwards. So, I save you that part this year. the problem is of course, you know, you can talk about appearance or stuff like that. But the problem here is not the the the the appearance. The problem is the negotiation part of the Because you do not negotiate

with a car mechanic, you do not negotiate with a doctor, but you negotiate with a software engineer. It's like, "Ah, it doesn't fit into budget." It's like, "Why don't you skip the tests? Who needs tests? I want action, not tests." It's like, "Put an if in. You're a magician. Do a workaround, and you feel smart." It's like, "I did a workaround. I'm a hacker." But the solution

gets [ __ ] up. It's like you negotiate your solution. And let me tell you one truth. I won't write it here because I want you to remember it. If somebody tells you how to do your job, you are by definition no longer an Somebody tells you how to do your job, you're no longer an expert. So, the thing here is, and that is kind of a soft skill

thing, you got to stand your ground. You got to shield the whole part. You got to earn the expertise. Expertise is earned, not given. You can't just say, "Yeah, but I'm an engineer. I got a degree." That's not enough. You got to say like, "No, no, no, that's not how we do it. We do it like that." That is step number one. Step number two is you

got to get in earlier. You got to influence the what part, and you got to influence the why Which pretty much means, um if you don't really understand what you have to do or why you have to do it, it's hard to create a perfect solution. And think about it this way. People who make decisions and who are probably not have not that expert level that you

have with tech might not see the solution universe that you see. So, they might come up with a stereotype solution, "We need that cuz I heard that." But in reality, another solution would be But you can only bring that up if you're in early and if you understand what's And if that happens two, three, four times, people will say, "That's the expert. That's what we call the

go-to expert." So, that's a very important thing for this third misconcept. Let me give you a a little, let's say, motivation for that case. Early interest in project pays off, even if you don't, I don't know, if it's just a client project and you don't really you're not really interested in, I don't chemical, pharmacy, whatever they do. It's like, "I want to build good stuff." That's kind

of a problem, you know. Um at the beginning of every project, you got two axes, you got the you got the on the Y axis, and on the X axis, you get the time. So, your impact shrinks over time. So, at a certain point in every project, there's a so-called point of no return where things get approved. Not everything, this is not waterfall, but like the main

decisions are approved and you got to go with it. And often in time, things are approved where you as an expert think, "Why do we have to build it that way?" But you got to do it somehow. And the real big problem comes afterwards. I mean, it's a problem if you have to build that, but the real big problem comes afterwards because there's a second point of

no return. And the second point of no return is, excuse me, when nobody remembers the planners anymore. Because maybe they're gone or whatsoever. Everybody will remember the people who maintain the stuff, who work with it every day. That's your So, you will be connected with that And can you imagine someone standing "Hey, what's going on? What expert built that?" Or they might probably even enjoy it. I

don't know, no judgment. Everybody has a Maybe it was approved the right way, but for me it seems like a suboptimal And I would be standing there and "Whatever Whoever fixes that has something to do with that." And I might not call this person as an expert. See what I'm going to. So, get in early. This might lead to better solutions. It's some work up front, but

I can only recommend that. It leads to less tech debt. It certainly leads to less pain in the ass at daily Pain in the ass as a leave it. And you remain credible over time, and that's the important thing. Um let me ask you, how about your future? I mean, we have some season people here. You're probably already thinking about retirement, right? But there are many many

young people here as well. And especially as I saw, like every second of, let's say, seven out of 10 talks here have the word AI in it. And it's always like two perspectives. It's like the golden grail, or it's the Terminator scenario. So, I'm pretty sure, like I did, like you did probably too, you've been thinking about your future as well. What might happen? Ask yourself from

another perspective Now that you know, probably you haven't thought about that before, but it is a huge part of your job life. It's the second half. Ask yourself, whenever you get panicked again or you think about new perspectives, think if that stuff could work for you. What could have been different for you if you had skilled up in that area or not. I I told you previously

that I was lying a bit. I told you previously that that pretty much works for everybody, but it doesn't. And you know why? Because knowing alone does nothing. It's about doing. Knowing alone doesn't solve a case. That sounds pretty easy. It's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. But it's like you got to get practice to Everybody of us knows how to live lead a healthy life. It's not difficult.

All you have to do is like work out from time to time, eat the right stuff, avoid the shitty stuff. And we also know the result. It's that easy. We know. I can guarantee you, if you do that, if you lead a healthy life, you're going to have more energy, you're going to have improved health, whatsoever. You feel better. And especially for our job, you're going to

get rid of brain fog, chronic fatigue, body pain, and all that stuff. But just knowing isn't enough. Just like I said, life is about that. You always have two choices. You can do nothing and just continue, or you start to take control of your fate. And as this is a keynote, and all I can do is I I tell you truth, I don't really care. It's your

life. You can do whatever the [ __ ] you want. But you can sit here and consume one thing after another, or you pick out one or two or three presentations that you really like, and I say, "I go into it." Knowing is not enough. Knowing is Wikipedia. Knowing is asking ChatGPT some questions. And it's exactly the same, it's statistically proven with the second half of your job. I

guarantee you, the moment you start putting that into your daily routine, things are going to change. Especially when it's about careers and about opportunities. And that's an important factor when it's about AI. what's going on here? The last word about AI, because I haven't been talking about it, although it was in my in my title. So, I'm sorry for that. But you know, if you don't put

AI in your title, no conference picks you. But I think you're heard enough about AI, so that's that's the Italian thing. You always get through with that stuff. You just lie, and everybody's like, "Oh, it's so sympathetic." But I I use AI to prove my point. I just have one final quote for you, and it's from the World Economic Forum. Jesus, at the moment I I I

name AI, somebody gets panic? I I What's your name? It's a Sarah Connor. Just a final proof from the World Economic Forum. It's a nice quote that says, "Soft skills are what set us apart from artificial intelligence, driving a remarkable 53% in increase in demand as technology advances." 44% of employees' skills will be disrupted by 2027. And you see, 53, 44. That's a switch. So, I'll leave

you up with that. It's up to you to make your choice, just like I said, blue pill, red pill. Everybody makes his own choices. If you like the topic and you want to talk to me, and if we don't see each other, you can always uh click the link, book a call with me or with one of my friends, with one of my colleagues. No sales calls,

no no pitches. So, whatever, yeah, these offers really do exist. So, I'm always happy uh to chat. I'm always happy to to chat outside here as well. I'll be here for the next 3 days, so or how long this is going to take. thanks a lot, guys. Enjoy the rest of the of the night. Oh, we have some Q&A, right? Oh, yeah. What did you What did

you think? There is no more questions. There are questions. Why you didn't finish story about Destiny's Child? How was your journey back home with your friend? You had something to talk about or not? The problem was I I had to drive, so I couldn't drink. But I guess he wasn't better, he was drunk as a At a certain at a certain point I on the German Autobahn,

which is really nice game, I took his head and put it out of the window because I was afraid he was going to puke in the my car. But he just lost like half of his face, and now he's chasing Sarah Connor. Where is she? All right, but you were talking a little bit about miscommunication and um can you tell a story about Beyoncé? according European Union

laws, you are married, not Jay-Z is a husband of Beyoncé. Can you tell that story? What the [ __ ] Are those your questions? Yeah, yeah, actually actually at that concert um I it was in German in Germany, and there was silence throughout the concert. She was standing there like watching the crowd, and I said like, "Marry me." in German, which is so beautiful in German. It's like, "Heirate

mich." And and she was not scared. And but the but the crowd laughed, just like you, and she was like, "Why did they laugh?" And she just walked off and said like, "Huh, okay." So, I got like like 50,000 people who heard it, and actually she should marry me. So, yeah, he's European Jay-Z, as Okay, we do have some questions. Does percentage of people reaching to management

or high-level positions align with people mastering soft skills next to tech skills? That depends on what role you have in management. First of all, it's totally possible to reach management with only buzzwords. And I I I would call them some kind of misleading soft skills. So, that is possible. If if you master both, then you're like a golden nugget. So, I think you're all strong at tech.

Master up in the second level, and you got some some golden path in front of you. That's what I would say, yeah. Some more questions. How to evaluate your level of soft skills? Depends on which area. First one would be go to a bar, buy a drink for a girl, see how that works out. No no, first thing is get active, you know? What Excuse me, what?

Okay, how about the soft skills with your wife, then? You can You can practice both ways. You can buy drinks for ladies and then you can buy a drink for your wife. I'm not sure if that will work out. But to to to answer it in short, it's like get active, get practice in that, and and start to understand the feedback. It's like I know I had

Sheldon Cooper in there who cannot, you know, distinguish like criticism, but we're not that way, come on. That's that's really Hollywood. Start go out there and practice. So, You You said it's easy to write good code. Is it, though? I didn't say that. I said I said the secret to enjoying work and enjoying writing great code is in is beyond it. So, I think I think it

is easy to write good code, yeah. Ooh, no tomatoes? Or raw eggs? Um yeah, but but writing code is I mean, you can write it yourself, so that you understand it. But writing great code with a team is absolutely easy, yeah. But like it I mean, who of you does domain driven design? In domain driven they say you should you should spend like 80% of the time

on a whiteboard. And there's no keyboard on a whiteboard. you got to keep talking, you know, you got to understand what's going on. And I I really like the let's stick with domain driven for a second. I really like that approach of the ubiquitous language where you like bring the customer in and stuff like that. We had that once. We had a school customer, and they had

in their school they had so-called modules for the students. But we used the term module as well for our tech thing. So, there might be some problems. And what we did is like, "No no, we use a different term for our modules and for theirs." Or at least for ours, because there the domain wins in the end. And what we did is like we let the customers

explain in his words what we're doing there. And at the end of the day it's like, "Okay, we we really like on on board." And then it gets so much easier to writing code. Do you Do you agree with saying that half of leadership is a theater? No. No, Jesus Christ, who said that? Person here or online? Cuz Terminator is here as well. No no no no

no, it's it's it's a leadership show, but leadership is an I mean, and there there are so many different forms of leadership. Do you know about football? You know I mean, you all know like, I don't know, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, like Mourinho. They're all completely different leadership styles. Depends on if you want to tell somebody what to do, like really up front, or if you do

nothing and just embrace them to do something, or if you motivate them to get better. So, this is really no theater, that's an art, actually. And by the way, when when we talk here about soft skills, the approach that I'm telling you to do is not the magic soft skills that as you get the feeling at the bar. It's proven procedures. I I don't think a proven

procedure exists to convince a girl, but there are many proven procedures to to be good at meeting situations. Agreed. Does physical attractiveness count as a soft skill and influence through the halo effect? Yes. Oh, halo. Hi, Beyoncé. Halo. You see Beyoncé is with you. she's there with physical attractiveness as well. She's got great soft skills. Yeah, of course. Like um This is going the wrong way, I

feel it. Just turn around once, and uh hey, Ricky, how are you doing? Haven't seen you for a while. Good to see you. No no no. So, you said that Beyoncé physical attractiveness, of course. It's um you you see, it's nonverbal communication, and we're we're humans. Why do you think that on on the the the commercial spots outside they're always like pretty That's stuff we look at,

but on the same side it's also bound to stereotypes. You see? It's like we're we're always saying like, "Oh, women in tech." and stuff like that. It a a lady has it much harder if she's being herself on stage. If she comes here with like a short skirt or stuff like that, and has a room with 90% of men, it's a harder audience for her, for sure.

So, you have to know your audience. And physical attractiveness depends on how you define attractive, but physical appearance, I'll say it like that. This is very very important, and even posture