Good day, everybody, and welcome to the show, where today I'd like to talk to you about why people and not yet another tool hold the key to success in the tech industry. So my goal today is to shift your awareness towards a bit of a more non technical field, because let's face it, we're all pretty good at coding. that alone won't make you stand out anymore. So I'd like to talk to you a bit about the topic of skills beyond code, which is let's say, So a mix of soft skills, human skills, and social hacks in the technical sector. And, stay tuned, guys, because you're gonna see that there's a lot of untapped potential in that area. let's go. A short introduction about myself. My name is Pierre Luigi Meloni, or GG. And as you can hear from my name, I'm from, Germany. Yeah, schnitzel und sauerkraut. I studied computer science and I made my master in computer science, and I've been in the tech industry for more than 20 years already, in the most various jobs, most of the time in engineering, and I had the opportunity to work with very clever and interesting people, and they taught me a lot, which you're going to see throughout this presentation. I am the founder and CEO of other skills, which is an e learning academy, especially for, tech specialists, for the sector of skills beyond code. when I started out, in my career, pretty much like you, I guess I fell in love with coding. So that was the first thing, even before I started studying. And what I always wanted to do is, of course, I wanted to build cool stuff. Why not? I love technology. To be honest, I also wanted to have a good time. Because, I guess everyone of you knows if you had to earn some money during study, you had to do the most various jobs. And I was in factories and stuff like that. And, The tech industry was promising. They had like more comfortable jobs, let's say it like that. And of course, I wouldn't go as far and say that I wanted to change the world, but at least, I wanted to impact. I wanted to influence the stuff. I wanted to, get my ideas heard and change something. But then what happens? You start going to companies, you arrive in the industry. And the first thing is you got to deal with demanding customers. And sometimes they want to, they want you to produce stuff that you really don't agree with. And you're like, it's really not the best solution, but you got to do it anyway. Then you hit hierarchies and politics. You find out that it's actually not that easy to get thoughts through and that stuff, that you got to use your elbows from time to time even. And the worst thing of all, you're actually working with legacy more often than you would want to. Actually in our industry, more of the time you are bug fixing, maintaining, refactoring stuff instead of building things from scratch. And that it's Different than you would have originally dreamed about the job. what do you do when you continue working somehow, like most people do? You switch your focus. You think about, okay, then I want to earn more money. I want to climb up the ranks. I want to become a senior faster. But still, inside of you, that desire is still there. You still want to influence stuff, especially in your team with the line management, with the roadmaps and stuff like that. You want to be heard. You want your work to be seen. You want it to be valued. And most and foremost, at least it was for me the way I wanted to do things right. I want to do the right things and I wanted to do things right. And the problem in the tech world is if you don't listen to the experts. That means if experts do not have the influence they should have, they're not really heard and things are not done right, what happens is technical debt increases, efficiency of projects goes down, the complexity rises over the time. But the problem for us is we got to work with that on a daily basis. And the bad thing is if if you have this feeling that you thought I knew it before and I knew it better, but I couldn't get them to believe. And now we're in that situation and everybody thinks yeah, it's your problem. You built it. And this really was always a problem for me. And that got tiring for me. But then you realize, ah, no, excuse me, what do you do then is, because you want to change the situation. What you do, you go to conferences like these, for example, and you look how the others do it. And of course, most of the time you hear like success stories and especially you want to learn how the big companies do it. So you look at all the methodologies and all the theory behind it. You learn how agile is done. You start thinking, yeah, my company might need a tribe. We got to do it the lean way and whatsoever. And then of course, like 95 percent of all presentations and conferences, they're about tech. ah, they're using this disruptive technology and everybody treats technology as the problem and the solution, which already is strange, right? So you see how they do it, how you should do it. You start taking the stuff in, into your company and whatever, but what's the result? Some things might get better, but most of the time, does influence really increase? Do you do things right? are you being heard from now on? Are you being seen as the expert? Most of the time, not really. And this is not the only experience I have. I guess many of you can share that feeling. And I saw it in so many companies. I've been working in a couple of companies and I've been consulted in many companies. And that's really like a common problem that I see. Thank you. And what I realized, the longer you work in a company, that there's always a certain type of person. Sometimes it's a consultant, sometimes it's a team member, sometimes it's just a line manager. Some people who have technical expertise, but some are not, let's say the brightest minds in the room. But somehow they just know how to talk and to sell. I call them the sellosophers or the noisecutives. Really strong with bam, buzzword machinery. And they are somehow able to influence management. And they're also somehow able to fly up the career ranks just like that. And you sit there and you'd be like, damn, I've been here for like forever. Hardly anybody knows the application better than me. And now I get another boss who, where I experienced knows less than me. Technically, and this is at least a tech company. But there's this weird relation that, that people are hurt that I just, I don't know, louder or whatsoever. And, Yeah, that's a strange thing. at a certain point, this happened to me early in, in companies. It changed later on, but I'm going to get to that. But at a certain point, you're going to make a cut in your career. And you think about how it's going to be, is it going to be tiresome all the time? Of course, not all the time, but will I run into these issues over and over again? Or do I, at a certain point have to become like, I don't know, like one of them? So that was a hard thing to think about. But then one day, there was another consultant. Actually, to tell you the story, I was working at a company that made clinical research, and I was a software engineer. And, we had really some legacy, technology, and this is why we had consultants from time to time come in. And there was, let's say, yet another one that came in. So history kept repeating and repeating. But this time, there was another guy. I remember that guy particularly because, he was different. His name was Steven, by the way. And to put it bluntly, I would say that he felt like he was one of us. Actually, it was very calm and real. So no buzz wording at all. He was a real tech expert. So he was a beast, I have to say. And with us, he was nerdy, which is cool. But I'm saying that because I've never seen like a nerdy guy in the management meetings having like influence and telling them what to do. But he did. He was able to influence management and get, let's say, get the right things done, at least what we thought. And, he was able to get the change done that we didn't. And, I remember a story one day. I gave a presentation in front of the team. I had a great idea. I remember the idea came to me at night. Those are always the best ideas. And I got up. It was about refactoring. It was a biggie actually, but I had a great strategy in mind and I presented it to the team. And, like everyone loved it and they were like, thumbs up, really good. Yeah, we got to do that. But it's a bigger one. So you got to present it to management as well because they have to, to seal it. If it's good. And I was like, yeah, great. I take the presentation and I'm going to show it to management, made a date and stuff like that. And then Steven found out about it. He came to me, he checked the presentation and he told me, don't do it. And it was like, what? What problem do you have? And he was like, no, postpone the presentation. So get more time and you got to change it because the way you're going to do it, it's He said, it's like giving a present, a presentation in Chinese to an Italian audience. They're probably not gonna understand anything. And what he said, you do this. First of all, you got to know your audience. that means get into their heads. Think about the KPIs, the key performance indicators they have. What are they expecting? What are they looking for? What are they not expecting? And what do they don't want to hear? What don't they need to hear? And what might bore them? Second, use their language. Take imagery, take analogies and that stuff from their domain. So make it understandable for them, make it relatable for them. And the third tip, and that this is one of the best I've ever gotten, was, When you tell something like this, I know we engineers, we tend to speak about the solution and how great the solution is and go into details. And he said, do not talk about the solution. Make them understand the problem and make them understand the, the benefits of your solution. that is a pretty different thing. because, when you want to be seen as the expert, no one should tell you how you do your job. It's okay if it's a black box. If somebody understand that there's a need, that there's problem and that you have whatever magic solution that is okay because you as an expert say, yeah, that's the thing. That's what I'm getting paid for. And this is the benefit you have. People are going to be happy, especially when you present to management because what are they interested in numbers, facts, risk assessment. Maybe, some money assessment as well and all that stuff. So this was a great tip he gave me, but we're going into that a bit later as well. And, yeah, so I did, I prepared it that way. It was the first time I didn't know if it was okay or not. But yeah, I had many presentations before, but that was the first time I went into a presentation with management and I thought like, that was a success. Thanks. They got me, it was like interesting. We had a nice conversation. I could see in their eyes and they were like, hey, that's a really good thing. And I swear to God, it was the first time the CEO got up and even applauded. And he was like, see that? That's the effort guys. And I was like, yeah, hell, why not? Cool, cool stuff. But the best thing about it is this was my aha moment where I realized, damn, he can do it and I could do it as well. And there was no magic behind it. And then I thought about. what he was really doing. Because in the beginning, when I thought about Steven, and I saw his work of thorn like a case, maybe just a magician, magical guy who's I don't know, super empathic. Or maybe it's just because he's old. And I don't know, privileged, and he's from extern. So this is why they listen to him. But that's really not the case. Everything the guy had was like he had a bucket full of clever hacks. He had I don't know, let's say, like a magic playbook of wisdom for pretty much every situation. Not only in the management meetings, but also internal. When you're talking to the team and that stuff and how you prepare stuff and even, when you go into technical decisions, he just had, these little efficient hacks. And I found out by watching him, I don't know if he, he saw it that way too, but that was the pattern I saw that every hack he had was algorithmic. It's take this playbook and do it like that. And guess what? As an IT engineer, what are we good with? Algorithms. So if you break down the hacks in that form, it's like everybody can do it. So I started watching him and I started noticing and I even watched other people who did stuff like, or at least where I thought they had a good approach to things. I wrote it down and I started using that stuff. And I tell you friends, that was a turning point in my career, not only for, success inside teams and what results we had. Also, especially it was an ignition for, Let's say, the guys I explained before, the guys who seem to fly up the ladders and I somehow found the turbo how that works, but with a good feeling because I wasn't buzz wording out. So what happened is my influence level grew and especially my trust level grew. People saw me as an expert, especially as a go to expert. And that's a, that's an important thing. We're all kind of experts, but the go to expert is the guy you go to when you need if you want to know something or if you want to put somebody in charge. And somehow among a group of experts somebody shines out and this is what happened from that moment on. And of course I became, because it's all social stuff, I became a better team player. And better team player means better team. And better team means better results. And that was really satisfying. I got to tell you that. And the interesting thing is, from that moment on, you start being seen on the radar for promotions. And it's not like you have to knock on doors somewhere else. It's like people come to you because they see ah, there's potential. And we want to put the trust in that person and let that person go on with that topic. That was a good thing, actually. But, the best thing of all, to be honest with you is, I didn't have to change anything. I was scared before, as I told you, it's do I have to be tired some all the time? Or do I have to, change personality and become one of them? It's no offense to nobody. It's just, I'm not a native speaker, so it might sound weird. But the thing is, I was always able to stay me. And I was able to, put some more of my thoughts into the company and into the process. And that's a satisfying thing. So in short, the learning from that episode in my life was that ironically, the key to producing great code at work and truly enjoying tech wasn't in the code itself, but it was beyond it. And my story continued. I got hooked to this topic somehow because it worked and it felt better. of course, I wanted to improve my skills beyond code. First of all, to have a better work life experience. And second of all, because you're never alone. And I saw potential in others in my team. So I also thought about, hey, I'd like to teach these methods. So why not? But the problem I hit is the journey started faltering. because you, actually, you do not find many appropriate teachings out there. So what I did is I started coaching seminars, attending coaching seminars. I went to leadership trainings, I made these career seminars, I went to soft skill courses. And don't get me wrong, these programs are all great. But somehow, I think for the target group of software engineers, they are not so suitable. You know what I mean? You So the thing is, what I got is, first of all, I thought they were way too generic. it's nice knowing about theory that in groups, someone can become the alpha, one is the beta, the other one is the gamma. That's all nice. But where's my practical advice? what do I do with it? I want it shorter, faster. I want these hacks, I want to use it immediately. Then second of all those things were not really tech related. there were people related. That's fine. But I wanted, this special factor with the tech sector. And third of all, the, most of the teaching styles were not really, compatible. Give you an example. that depends on, on, on what you like, but I'm not really the type for, group therapy, chair, circle, role play stuff, Depends. Maybe you like it. Good for you. I don't. So for me, it was a bit incompatible. And the next thing I thought was it felt, it really actually felt a bit like therapy. I thought that the approach most of the time was that you go there and people show you that there's something wrong with you. And here's the solution that you should adapt and change your personality. So there's always a feeling I got there, but I always thought, and I still think there's nothing wrong with me. Just there's nothing wrong with you. We're just the way we are, and that's good. It's just about how we interact with each other, and I don't want to change myself. What I wanted is, I wanted to be me, remain me, but I wanted to have an efficient compatibility layer with the world. And that's fine to have. This is why there are interfaces for. Do you get what I mean? I want, I wanted exactly these hacks. That I've been telling you about. Like this, okay, what can I do? How can we make the interaction more useful? But I want to stay me. And, it was pretty specific what I was looking for. But it was a bit of a disillusionment. Because unfortunately, there was not enough suitable content. And there were not enough suitable learning methods as well. So then one day, I was already working, I was working in an e commerce company and I was C level there, which was actually pretty cool and, stressy, but as a C level, you have to know more about business. And I wasn't really strong at that time. So I was thinking about making an MBA. The problem with an MBA is that, it's really expensive. It takes time. It feels like going to university again. So I wasn't too happy about that. Yeah. And then suddenly out of nothing, I saw an offer from the United States of an online MBA. And it's called the Power MBA. So I do not get money of them, but if you hear me, send it over 10 grands a day, please. So no commercial here, but I got to name it because it was really cool actually. And it was an online school and everything was online and everything was based on videos on demand. So it was pretty much my tempo. I could do it whenever and wherever I want, which I really like. And it was well structured. then the format was like, micro learning. I don't know if you know it. It's like these, small bite sized chunks to learn. It's like you do 15 minutes a day and not more. And statistically, the learning results are 20 percent better than on traditional training. And I approved that. That totally worked for me. And the other thing I found really cool was that statistically, you have 50 percent more engagement because it's way easier to commit to 15 minutes a day than to two hours a day or to like, a long lesson. And, third, it was completely based on expert interviews in real life situations. Yeah. And I liked that. And that sparked a fire. I liked the format of this course so much that this was the moment where I thought, I want to create my own company. And I said, if they can do it like that, why don't we create something like that for skills beyond code for the tech industry. And so what I did, what we did, at outer skills, we went out and we started interviewing as many experts as we could find. So experts that we considered as real pros, successful people in the industry. And those were technicians, like all levels. Um, technicians, software engineers and architects as well. We talked to the C levels and to managers in between. And what we did basically is we asked them for their top five advice, tricks, Hacks, self improvement things that they would have given themselves at the beginning of their career. And most of the time, people will start telling you these stories like I just told you with Steven, like these epiphanies they had, like this one advice, or the person gave me that advice and it changed everything forever. And most of the time, those advice are really practical and just clever. And we started collecting all that stuff and putting it together. And what we saw is that there is a pattern in there. So what we did is we, let's say decrypted that pattern. And we found the seven rules beyond code for it success. And the seven categories that we found in that advice are first of all, it's about vision and purpose, which means, You got to have a certain vision and idea what you want to do in your job because most of the time people don't really know what they're really good at or what they desire and what they actually do not really like. But the sooner you start thinking about that stuff, the pathway you're going to do is going to get clearer. Second of all, because everything starts with yourself, is self management. How do you organize yourself? And how do you, for example, handle criticism and all that stuff? And there are really good tricks how to also little algorithmic hacks how to handle criticism. I won't show them to you today, but you can check it out later on. I'll give you a link. And then the third one is tech ownership. I want to go into detail with that one later on. The fourth one is, of course, communication, because we're humans, we're communicating all the time. See, this is sometimes we forget that tech is a people business. people create solutions for other people in collaboration with people, using technology as a tool. But it's still around for and with people. And why it is with people is the fifth one is collaboration because you're never alone and five people are stronger than one. Number six is the mindset. It's, career also has to do with, like what kind of mentality do you have? And number seven, of course, is business acumen. Everything is about business. Even if you're working for an open source company, there has to be someone who has to pay your bills, right? and what we did is we put all that together in our tech career playbook that we call the seven rules beyond code. So I'm happy that we're, I'm happy to say that we've been putting skills beyond code on the map since 2023. We're having customers in three continents already, and we're selling to individuals and teams, but enough of a publicity. that was, Yeah, you got to say something about yourself as well. I'm with Skills Beyond Code already for a while. And, I see a bunch of false beliefs that people have in their mind all the time. Probably the biggest one is that soft skills cannot be learned. Either you got it or you don't. People often, have this image of the nerds in their mind and that stuff. And we even have TV series like Silicon Valley or The IT Crowd or Big Bang Theory. And they're nice to watch. They're fun. And you somehow can relate to that stuff. That's nice. But it's also crap when you talk about real soft skills. Because soft skills are not about personality. You cannot learn to change your personality and you shouldn't. That's you. that's who you are. But what you can do is you can change some behaviors. I just showed you how it works. This is the stuff we did with Steven. It's you can still be you, but you can use some nice hacks and some of your knowledge, your cleverness to like, behave better. differently. So that's a complete different approach. Let me give you an example. This here is a typical, photo of me in a meeting situation. I could sit, I could watch you do this and this because I'm impatient and I tend to be, let's say, impulsive because I got Italian roots. I got some fire in me and this combined with German destruction could become a hurricane from time to time. The thing is, that Over the years, I learned to see the trigger and change that behavior. And everything started with Steven again. He watched me in meetings from time to time and then he took me aside. He recognized that and he gave me the advice and he said, Listen, first of all, you're not making nobody better with that. Second of all, people will not like you. And third, the results will not get better that way. this is a lose situation. Change it. And the thing he gave me was another small algorithm, and it was the coin framework. C for context, O observation, I impact, N next steps. I give you this example. If there was a meeting where, let's say, somebody used some wrong query methods that slowed the application down or whatsoever, I could sit there in a normal mode and say, Oh, who the hell did use these stupid methods? You should know that better. That fucks up our whole application. I'm swearing. Oh, but come on, this is the internet. There are worse things there. So you might be living with that. And I would continue, Stupid idiots, get that fixed, come on. But that's crap. That helps nobody. That vented my steam off. That's not okay. I could say it with the coin framework. Listen to that. First of all, I could give context. What am I talking about? And I could say stuff like, during my last code review, I checked the solutions implemented in the new module. Observation, what did I see? I noticed that the current implementation processes large amounts of data at once, which might not scale well as our system grows. I for impact. What do I see as a possible impact? This could lead to slower response times and increased resource consumption, potentially affecting user experience and system reliability. And now give next steps. This is the productive part. Say stuff like, it might be helpful to explore ways to process data in smaller chunks or optimize resource usage. Would you be open to discussing potential approaches together? I pretty much said the same thing, only in a nice way, in a productive way, in a positive way, that there might be a positive outcome and nobody's offended. Even if I wanted to, but I can still offend them in my mind. But it was totally easy, it's just, it's another small algorithm that changes the whole situation. So this is about, you cannot change who you are. The Big Bang Theory is a nice series, but Come on, it's a bit different in the real world. And the, the three most common false beliefs we get besides, the biggie I just talked to, told you about is the first one is, my skills are great, but my coworkers suck. Like everybody, everybody connects normally with my talks, but the first thing they do is they think about someone else. It's yeah, he or she, they don't have the skills. Yeah, I can totally name a situation with them, but they do not think about themselves. The second one is sounds pretty good, but I don't want to go into management. And the third one is the problem is not my communication skills, but the fact that management is not listening. Okay, friends, let's start with the first one. whenever you think That you're totally above the topic and the others are not Think about it. You might be running the risk to falling into the Dunning Kruger effect Pattern which means you think yeah, I'm really expert here And I would not even challenge that but the more you get into the topic the sooner you start realizing Hell, this is more complicated than I thought and the real gurus are actually real far away many studies have shown that 80 percent of people believe that they have above average soft skills, but only about 20 percent actually do. let me ask you. If most people think, They are above average, but logically, that can't be true. Where do you think they really stand? Or where do you think you really stand? Let's make an experiment. Let me ask you, how do you recognize a great communicator? Think about it. Most of the time, people will list traits like listening, emotional intelligence, and clarity. And now I ask yourself, do you consistently do all these things yourself? there's a difference between knowing about it, and yeah, that's obvious, that's so clear, and actually implementing it. There's a giant difference. And let me give you another huge statistic about that. Have you ever heard about the chaos report? The chaos report is a large study that gets conducted like pretty much every year. what they do is they screen about 5, 000 projects worldwide and the IT projects and they categorize them in three categories. The first one is successful, which means it was done in time and in budget. The second one is called challenged, which means It's either in time or on budget. And the third one is failed, which means not in time, not in budget or completely canceled. Have an intelligent guess. How many are successful? For all of you who now think five or 10, shame on you because it's your industry as well. For all of you who think 80 or up against, no one thinks that reality is it's 30 percent 30 percent of all projects can be classified as successful. Which honestly, friends from engineer to engineer, that's a shame. That's our industry. Can you name another industry with such bad quota? Can you imagine plastical surgery going in there and saying, 30 percent of the cases is going to be successful. it really sucks. And on the other hand, it also means that 70 percent of all projects are not satisfying for the customer because they did not get what they originally wanted. but here's the crazy thing about the statistic. This statistic has been going on since the mid 90s. So the reliable numbers are, I would say from 2000. So for the past 25 years, the numbers have hardly changed. It's always around 30 percent successful and always about the same amount of what is not successful for 20 years or now, almost 25 years, the same numbers. Although. Especially those, these conferences tell you technology is getting better and better every day. Everything is disruptive. Things are getting cooler and whatsoever. But is there a change? No, there is not. And they also, look for the reasons in this study. And the reasons is people. It's communication. It's people business. Like I told you, it's process now. It's like people work with each other. It's crazy thing, huh? think about it. Just let that settle. Second false belief. Sounds good, but I don't want to go into management, so I might not need it. friends. That's pretty much a really false belief. Because, It's not only in management where you need skills beyond code. I'll give you an example. There's a statistic from the ICIMS Hiring Institute, by the way. It's like a huge institute that puts people into labor that says 94 percent of all IT recruiters or tech recruiters believe that people with greater soft skills and skills beyond code are way more likely to be promoted than people with more years of experience but weaker soft skills. And a promotion is not only into management, it's becoming a senior, it's becoming an individual contributor, it's becoming an architect, it's becoming a tech lead and whatsoever, it doesn't have to be with people. So promotions are directly coupled with skills beyond code. Actually another statistic says that 75 percent of promoters would even cut an interview short even if the tech skills are supreme, but if the rest is not good. And here's another one. Even as a software engineer, what do you think? How much time do you spend in meetings? What do you guess? On average, that's an American statistic. It's 53%. I've seen that the German statistics are between 40 and 50%, something like that. Still. let it be 35 in a good case. It's still a hell of time that you have to spend in meetings. And think about it. It's daily plannings, reviews, retros, refinements, team meetings, emergency meetings, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can read it yourself. That's a whole lot of time that you have to spend in meetings. And that's a whole lot of time that can be frustrating. And it could be so much better if you had like nicer, nicer hacks to deal with, with those moments. And, the third false belief is that, the problem is not my communication skills, but the fact that management is not listening. first of all, if the fact is that management is not understanding, then it is your problem because then you're not explaining well. It's always easy to point it at them, but that won't fix nothing. You got to try harder there. So then this is about, having a different communication approach. But I tell you what the, what's the real thing behind that. This thing has to do with your expertise status. Let's play a game. Think about in your mind, think about a doctor, a medic, medical doctor. How does he or she look like? Pretty much it's going to look like that, right? Person in white suit, like everybody has the same image in their head. I think it wouldn't go too far away from that. Now think about a car mechanic. How does that look like? Pretty much like this? Like someone working under a car? Like some oil over with tools and gloves and stuff like that? I guess so. And now, think about a software engineer. What do you see? I googled the pictures, because whenever you want to have the public opinion about something, you can just google the pictures and then you see honestly, the picture that people have in their mind about something. And it looks like that. It's like a creepy guy in the basement. And what's the problem with that situation? think about it. If you go to a doctor, And the doctor tells you, listen, we're going to make that kind of therapy. You're going to take these pills. We're going to do, we're going to make it three weeks like that, then an operation. You won't say, nah. We skip two thirds of the pills because of costs. we don't do that. We do it this way. And if you do an operation, take a bone here and save it over there. You would never do that. You would not even go to your car mechanic and say, Hey, listen, why don't you do it with duct tape and use some oil from the kitchen that I have left over. He would look at you and said, get the hell out of here. First of all, you wouldn't do it. Second of all, they wouldn't do it. But in our line of work, My customer's king. And, it's so easy to make an, Um, to, English. What are the words? To make an exception. Like, why don't you put in an if? Why don't you skip the tests? Why don't you do that? it's just for the MVP. We're going to fix it later on and stuff like that. We do that all the time. And here's the problem. If someone tells you how to do your job, you are no longer an expert. Listen carefully. If someone tells you how to do your job. You are no longer an expert. And that's the problem with that. Why are they not listening? Because you are not being seen as an expert. And the way to shift that is the following. First of all, you as an engineer, you own the how part. Whatever idea, somebody comes up with an idea, that's the why we have to do it. Then some smart people think about it. What exactly do we have to do? And then there's the how part. How does it get implemented in a tech world? First of all, nobody tells you how to do your job. You're the expert. Shield that area. The how is closed from now on. Second of all, start influencing the what and why part. The sooner and earlier you get in, the more benefit you will have. Let me show you this way. When you start a project, the earlier you are in your project, the more impact and influence you have on the project. Okay. But at a certain point in time, you reach a point that I call the point of no return, where you cannot change, requirements anymore. They're just, they're sealed. And you missed your time to go in there and change something. Because you as the expert might even change the world. Because I know what you want to do. But in the tech world, you solve things differently. You might even have a benefit from it. If you don't, requirements are sealed. No matter how stupid they are, they'll just get approved. And then you have to live with something like that. And at a certain point after that, nobody will remember the planners anymore. Because the planning part is over, then the implementation and the maintenance part continues. So for most of the time of the project, everything that people will remember is, who built that crap? You did. So that means stupid decision, you have to live with it, and you will be blamed for it. Even if you think it was never my idea, I knew it better from the beginning. Nobody listened to me. Doesn't matter. People will think you are the guy. So get in early. This is the motivation. The sooner you get in, the better the solution will be, the less technical debt you might produce because you as an expert have the hindsight to think about it and the less pain in the ass for your daily work. And most important of all, you remain credible. So I see I'm running out of time, which is why I got to come to an end of this presentation slowly. Nope. Let me ask you a simple question. If you reflect on everything you saw today, if you did it how I did, how we saw it today, do you think you could be more successful with that? Could that work for you? if you used expert hacks, just like the way I presented them today to tweak your communication, to bridge the gap between tech and business, i. e. make them understand even non technical people, bring them on the level, make them understand, get them in the game and improve your team play and start changing and improving things. Could that work for you? the thing is, over the years, what we saw that, people who skill up beyond code First of all, for them, it's the benefit you get from it. For sure, it's a door opener for better jobs and higher salaries. We don't only know that statistically. That's what people say. And that's let's say, a logical conclusion of that. Second of all, you get a competitive edge in the job market. According to the springboard report, last year's springboard report, it was and they said that about 70 percent of people working in the STEM field, technicians, lack. important business skills, business soft skills and skills beyond their expertise area. 75 percent is a lot. So if you skill up in that area, that's a cheat. You can cut the line for job applications. you, can stand out in job interviews and stuff like that. You're a special one compared to the three others next to you. So one in four, that's actually a nice thing for yourself. It's an efficiency boost. I, for myself can say I had a way better work life experience. And, a very interesting one, the world economic forum said that by 2027. Jobs will have changed so much that in pretty much every job you have to focus more on human skills because that's actually what really differentiates us from AI. AI is pretty strong in pretty much every task but on a human interacting level even if it sounds good for first it's still a machine so there will still be humans working together and this is a thing where you really could stand out. What you could definitely get rid of and that I can prove is you. Being overlooked and ignored, if that is important for you. Not being understood and, trust me, lots of meeting drama. For me, the most important thing would have been, it's most easy to say it with a quote of Benjamin Franklin, which says, Lost time is never found again. So if I had a DeLorean time machine where I could travel back in time, And teach myself all that stuff, all the hacks that Stephen had and all the stuff that we found out later for the beginning. Boy, that would have saved me lots of gray hair. Right now, in that light, I think, and with my shorter hair, you don't see it so much, and that is good. But this is when my hair are longer, how it looks like, and this is thanks to many meeting situations, this I can tell you. And so I ask you, like in every presentation you will attend throughout this conference and throughout many other conferences, you always have two choices. Blue pill and red pill. First of all, do nothing. And that's totally fine. Without judgment. You don't have to do anything. You can just let it soak in. Like more knowledge, okay? And then continue with whatever you do. And that's fine. If you like to stay invisible, again, no judgment. Many people like that. If you're more like an order taker, If you, if you just basically want to survive and have an okay time, and if you like, if you prefer to keep complaining, I'm allowed to say that. I got Italian relatives and complaining is a sport there that I can tell you. So if that is the thing for you, that's fine. Take the blue pill. But if you're more like somebody who says, No, actually, I want to make a change. I want to get active. I want my career to grow. I want my personality to grow. And I want to start winning things, especially at work. Then take a leap of faith, get active, do something about it. This is really an advice that I could give you. There are many possibilities out there to improve that skill set. There's one that I can offer you and I'd like to do that on my final, with my final words here in that, conference. So if I offered to take your skills beyond code to an expert level to help you boost your career in the next 30 days, without you having to leave your home or office and you can take the video course whenever, wherever you want, on demand. You don't have to sit through long, boring lectures. You only get concise and straight to the point microlearning videos and you probably don't even have to pay for it because your boss has a training budget for you anyway that you shouldn't let go to waste, my friends. Here's my question. Would you take me up on that offer? Consider it. If you liked it, you can do it. If, If you'd like to get more information about that stuff, we prepared a little PDF for you. that you can, it's for free, that has more information about Skills Beyond Code in general. And that gives you your first how to tutorial. And you can check it out here under skillsbeyondcode. com or just make a photo of that, of that QR code and feel free to download it free of charge. You don't have to sign anything. Friends, it was a pleasure. Thanks a lot for having me as a guest speaker here. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. And if you have any feedback or if you'd like to get in touch, feel free. I would be happy to do that. enjoy the rest of the day. Goodbye.