Because right now there's an equal level of playing field.
Seniors have knowledge and they have history, but they don't
have experience with tooling. So experience with tooling is
where you as a junior can be equal.
Interviews are evolving. No longer will you show your
coding skills. You will be more responsible for
thinking of a system and designing and orchestrating a
system. Don't wait.
So there is no reason for you to wait until you have a portfolio
to start applying already. In applications you can show
what you're building. Act like you have the job and
you're asking looking for information to do your job.
You will come across as someone that genuinely cares and that
looks incredibly eager and motivated to do this.
What I want to see in an interview when you execute is we
are back with another Q&A episode.
I have never received this many questions, so there might be
another episode next week actually, depending on how this
goes. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.
For the first one, as an engineering manager, an
interesting subject is how a brilliant jerk.
Can it affect individuals, the team or the whole organization?
Do you think they have a space in an organization?
Do you believe they can be changed or need to change?
I don't even know if I've ever worked with a brilliant jerk.
For people that don't know the term, a brilliant jerk is
someone that is extremely capable but likely emotionally
something is missing where their behaviour towards others is too
short, maybe arrogant, maybe rude, maybe they don't have any
patience for any other people. I really don't like people that
don't have patience because I feel like if we level up as a
team and also as a department within an organization, there
needs to be patience for people that don't understand.
I don't think I've ever been involved with people or worked
with people to such a degree that I would label them a
brilliant jerk. But I'm also not a person that
labels. I hate when people put labels on
me or on other people. In essence, there are big
companies that completely try and avoid hiring brilliant
jerks. Netflix I think is the one of
the early companies that coined the term and that also outlined
that they will not hire people that are in that way.
People that show toxic behaviour towards others when it is about
collaboration, effectiveness and execution cannot hold.
It will tear down your team culture and sometimes even your
organizational culture if it sustains for a long time.
If people don't want to work with one specific individual and
you cannot get them out of the organization, then you have a
problem on your hand. And I've never found myself in a
position like that. However, I am of the opinion
that through a lot of guidance and through a lot of patience,
at least from my side, compared to or if I were to have a
conversation with someone labeled as such, I would be able
to steer their behaviour. Maybe it's a little bit of
optimism and hope that I have, but genuinely my assumption is
that people are not aware of the effects of their behaviour.
If they are aware and they essentially don't care, then
they must be so confident in their skill set and their
position within the organization that they genuinely don't care.
So either it's nothing is going to change or there's the door if
it reaches that point. Because of my optimism and
because of my hope, I think that behaviour can be steered and
people don't just stay brilliant jerks.
But they in the end become brilliant and I love working
with brilliant people. So in short, would I hire them?
Likely no Would I work with them if they're already in the
organization? Absolutely.
I would do my best to make sure the behaviour changes and I do
feel like I could learn a lot from billion people.
I love working with brilliant people if they have the patience
to also share their brilliance. All right.
With tools like Cursor copilot clot code becoming normal in
some teams, how should juniors balance using AI to ship faster
versus making sure we actually build deep skills?
Does heavy AI use ever backfire when it comes to interviews or
long term growth? First question, what should
juniors do with the tooling that is available out there right
now? My answer is use the tooling and
leverage them and excel because right now there's an equal level
of playing field. Seniors have knowledge and they
have history, but they don't have experience with tooling.
So experience with tooling is where you as a junior can be
equal. If you can teach how to use and
how to leverage tooling compared to a senior or educate senior on
the usage based on your own experience, then that is
extremely valuable. I feel like these toolings are
evolving. I feel like these tools are
evolving, but they are here to stay.
I've been a big fan of Claude Code, Open Code I haven't tried
out yet, Cursor. I've seen many awesome things
and I know people that are extremely excited about look and
feel, speed and effectiveness of the tooling.
I feel like the tools are going to evolve and some principles
will stay. So use that to your leverage if
you are a junior. The funny thing is you can also
leverage the tooling to excel in your own learning path and in
your own learning career, your own journey.
So definitely do so now, what information actually retains in
the end? There's studies, there's
hearsay, there's experience. If for you, you find a way to
actually get up and running and you remember based on what the
tool is in output or what it teaches you, then that's
fantastic. That means you can excel your
learning like no other. If information doesn't retain or
genuinely is not interesting to you, then it might have to do
with the type of engineer you are, and if the tuning was not
available then likely the same information would still not
retain. Some information is going to be
interesting, some you will have an innate curiosity towards,
could be a various technical topic, but in essence you're not
going to be as interested in all topics.
For me specifically, I get really excited about what we
have and what we need to do in business, outcomes specifically,
and then what technology is there that I can leverage?
I will research because I have fuel.
Basically, my outcomes are my fuels for research.
If I don't have any outcomes, if I'm not working towards a goal
or a purpose, my fuel does not come from exploration.
I like certain aspects, certain tooling.
I have interests, but leveraging that for every single tool that
is needed for an outcome, it doesn't come naturally to me.
I can do it with discipline, but my discipline has its limits.
So if I'm genuinely curious and I have this magical answer box
like Claude Coats sometimes is, I can go back and forth on a lot
of things and I'm learning a lot of things quite fast and I'm
genuinely enjoying it. So as a junior, my
recommendation would be definitely do so.
There was a second part specifically about interviews,
and in my opinion, interviews are evolving.
No longer will you show your coding skills is my assumption.
You will be more responsible for thinking of a system and
designing and orchestrating a system.
So my assumption is that interviews will be moving
towards that. And what I want to see in an
interview when you execute is twofold.
It could be that in an assignment you're going to get
an existing code base and you will either have to build on top
of it or change something or modernize something.
I want to see you interact with your AI tooling, and I want to
see you explore in parallel different aspects.
So you can either use tooling in different windows and do
different parts of exploration. I want to see how you disperse
and then come back with condensed information, how you
communicate that to the interviewer, how you learn and
then therefore in the end execute.
Or you work in parallel with your AI tooling.
So you do a few threads with regards to research and
exploration for your code base and then you do it yourself
manually. For me, the people that are
really good engineers will be able to familiarize themselves
in unknown code bases quicker than people that are less
senior. And this is what I want to see
typically in an interview, how you explore and then in the end
use what you found to execute for the task at hand.
Does it ever backfire in the end?
Things are evolving so in the wrong organizations, wrong for
you. If you like AI tooling, an
organization is not allowing that right now, then yes it will
backfire. If you interview at the company
that is not a right fit for you in any type of start up where
they are leveraging anything they can for speed and you are a
person that loves using AI tooling are very well equipped
to do so also in practice and in production, then it will
definitely not backfire for you. Now there were a lot of
questions actually in this and I've combined a lot of the
questions in my answer already. One of the parts that are still
kind of unknown is how do you continuously learn and educate
yourself with AI tuning that is available.
And in essence, how you learn is still up to you.
You know what works best for your information retention.
So whether that's watching a YouTube video and taking notes
or that's reading a a research paper or going through books and
taking notes or doing voice memos or listening to audiobooks
and podcasts, you know what works best for you both from a
preference perspective as well as how you retain the most
information. That has not changed.
We now have another option, which is basically going and
having a dialogue with a ChatGPT or a cloud or whatever AI
tooling Gemini that is now available.
And that is another option. You will know or experience how
much information you retain from those types of conversations and
in the end how much of that is applicable for the task at hand.
You will have to learn an experience.
I cannot tell you how you are going to retain the most
information. For me, I don't even know
sometimes how I do it. I am experimenting with
different methods. I'm doing settle casting from
something something Lumen. I don't know what his first name
is. It might be Nicholas because
lots of Nicholas's, but I think Lumen and settle casting will in
a Google search or a AI search nowadays will teach you about
that method and methodology. And I'm kind of cheating because
I have really good memory. Some stuff just sticks with me
and I think it comes from genuine curiosity.
So learn and educate, but learning and educating yourself
continuously and doing that in a condensed matter is going to be
more and more important. So if you found a framework or
if you find a certain methodology that works for you
and that can compound also towards the future, that is
going to pay dividends. So invest in that.
From your experience, what really differentiates a good
developer from a great one in real world teams, The great
versus good? I feel like I've done episodes
on and I've covered in Q and as as well.
So I think last Q&A went more into depth with a question like
that. And I typically take the really
good developers are able to execute and I feel like that's
more in a smaller scale. I've recently joined an
organization which is a bigger scale and that's going to be a
new experience for me. What I see really good engineers
and they also get attributed the staff role functional title.
So they are staff software engineers is that they are
really good in flying into teams, exploring things and
orchestrating things or even learning about their code bases
in a rapid manner. And they can do that across
teams. And typically those people are
responsible for driving initiatives that spans multiple
teams. Which is really cool because if
your organization is at a scale where it has different teams
that are distributed and working together on initiatives and some
teams or a few teams together need to execute and achieve
outcomes before 1 overarching outcome is then achieved.
Or even a feature in that matter.
If multiple teams need to deliver before one single
feature, a big feature is orchestrated.
The people that are then responsible because it could be
high risk, high reward, are the staff, engineers, the people
that are really good at seeing the bigger picture, that can go
dive deep when it comes to a specific team and that can
definitely maintain overview across multiple teams.
So the skills that are involved in their systems thinking,
figuring out quickly what type of architecture patterns a
certain code base has, where it runs, what it does, and how it
relates to other teams, those are all skills evolved involved
in there. So yeah, lots to learn always.
What is 1 mistake mid level developers commonly make that
slows down their growth and how can they avoid it?
This is maybe not necessarily a mistake, but it is something
that they don't act upon. When you're in a session, for
example, and you disagree with someone, or you genuinely have a
question but you don't want to ask it because you feel like it
might make you seem stupid. Doesn't matter what the context
is. You might be in a conversation
which with a lot of seniors, or with your CTO, or somehow
miraculously also your CEO. You will have thoughts, you will
have questions, and you might seem intimidated by the room or
by the setting or by the people you are working with.
If that withholds you from asking those questions, that is
holding you back. I don't see a situation in which
a question will be seen as bad, but that is also due to my
experience and my history, so take that with a grain of salt.
I feel like there should be room for you to ask questions.
Obviously you should be paying attention, you should have done
your homework and you should know kind of what the intention
of the meeting is. But if you have a suggestion, if
you have a perspective, if you have feedback, the only way for
you to learn and grow and see if that's the right time and the
right place is to experience. And if you do not experience
that, then automatically withholds you from growing.
Because conversations like that, there might be a single
instance, and there might be similar instances, but they are
only similar. And if you have many
conversations that are similar, you will get better, but you
will never have exactly your same context again.
So you can only experience certain conversations once with
specific people, in certain settings, at a time and in a
place. So ask those questions, learn,
grow. Specifically, after a session
like that where you are unsure how you came across, ask for
feedback with people that you trust and even if it is with
people that you don't have a relationship with, it can create
those relationships with you. If you are saying I'm working on
my personal development, I want to grow as fast as possible.
I was not sure how I came across in this setting.
I felt some pressure due to the people that were there and I
genuinely want your feedback on some of the questions that I
asked, some of my behaviours, how I presented, how I explained
this part of the code base. Can you please help me with
that? If you have the right people in
the right environment, and my assumption, again I'm quite
hopeful and I'm quite positive, is that most of the environments
that you'll find yourself will be that then people are there
and are able and will help you and through doing so you might
build a relationship with them as well.
More for the long term salary negotiations for juniors.
In your opinion, what is the best way for the applicant to
reply when asked what their salary expectations are?
And how would you recommend juniors to prepare themselves
for such questions? Honestly this junior thing you
can just disregard because salary conversations are
challenging, difficult depending on how often you do them and
unless you switch jobs quite often this is not something
you're going to get good at through experience.
So I do agree the more you inform yourself the better you
will be equipped at such conversations.
But they will not happen continuously unless you job hop
quite often. So people that are freelancers
and that do consulting assignments for like a year or
even shorter than a year, sure, you will have way better
experience in having those conversations because you're
you're going to talk about your hourly rate.
It's not even about salary. I mean, yes, it's like a salary,
but still you will be better equipped.
But for the majority of you, the better you do your homework, the
better you will have that conversation.
If you know people in your position with your same function
title already operating at that company in your country with
regards to salary, what they earn or with regards to total
compensation package, you can use that and leverage that in a
conversation. In the end, you need to have a
target number. You will say, this is what I
expect I'll be worth in the end. And that number needs to come
from somewhere. So anywhere on the Internet,
anywhere from ChatGPT, claw Gemini, anywhere from having
conversations with real people. And that third one, it might
surprise you how often people are open and willing to share
about their experience on the job.
If you send a message to someone that already has your function
title within that company, could be within your team, could be
outside of your team and say, hey, I'm interviewing for this
position and I would love to learn about what you do on a
day-to-day. What gives you energy at this
company? Why you genuinely enjoy working
together with this group of people?
I will be in this department. People are typically like, yeah,
why not let me talk to this person, Let me help someone out.
It gives both you an opportunity to learn and then the
opportunity to help someone and it likely will make them feel
better in doing so. And if you through that
conversation, build up a relationship with someone and
say, hey, I'm not great at salary negotiations, I'm
genuinely not looking forward to this.
I have no clue what kind of range is typically given your
company for this position. Can you help me with a range?
You don't have to ask what are you earning?
Because that's where I direct and people sometimes are not
comfortable in that depending on the context and the culture.
But if you say, hey, can you help me with a range so I'm
better equipped in actually having that conversation?
People will give you a range. I'm sure of that.
So then you have a range. In essence, if you fall
significantly below that range in an offer that you receive,
yeah, this is where the negotiation starts.
I already don't like it and I've not done it many times.
Let me preface that. But for example, in my own
experience, I landed a job and I had a range in my head.
I had a minimum. And let's say that was at the
time 50 Ki got below 50K. And I said, well, due to my
experiences that I bring on the table, I've done XY and Z and at
the job I'm expected to do, AB and CI feel like I'm a really
good fit. And I feel like the offer that I
received is not fair compared to what I think I bring to the
table, compared to my worth. Something along those lines.
And you can definitely formulate that better than me off the top
of my head. But in essence, I replied like
that I said, this is what I think I'm worth.
And that was my minimum at the time because also I really
wanted to join at this company. And in the end, I didn't get it.
I, I had zero wiggle room. Apparently the salary that I got
was the salary I got because my manager at the time said, if I
were to write down all the salaries of every single person
at the team on a white board, I, whenever you want to say, OK,
this is fair. And in essence, I had no reason
to mistrust my manager. And in that reasoning, I could
not ask for more because in the end, I also wanted to be fair
for the people that I'm going to be working with.
I really liked the team I was going to be joining so I didn't
want I did not want to screw up this position or this offer.
Now that thought, typically if I reply in a similar way, can I
mess up my offer? Unless you are a Dick head, an
asshole, and expecting the moon, I don't think typically you can
mess up your offer. It definitely happens.
There's always H cases, but in essence.
It should not be that much off your expectations versus your
offer. Expectations are something you
can manage from the first conversation you have with a
recruiter, with your hiring manager, or with your actual
manager continuously. It's something you can manage.
So it should not be that far off.
But still, you might get an offer.
And I feel like you should always negotiate because there's
not much. Sure, there's a very slight
chance. In essence, I don't think
there's anything to lose. So I asked for 50 Ki, did not
get 50K. The next step I was like, well,
I still genuinely believe I'm worth 50K50K is not the number
by the way. I just just saying, I'm just
randomly saying a number. Can we have this conversation
again in two months? That's what I asked.
That is genuinely what I asked. Because I was young, I was
eager, I wanted to do it as fast as possible.
Two months I thought was fair. My manager said, well, two
months is very, very quick, so let's have this conversation
again. In six months, I went from
having not what I wanted and nothing else to not what I
wanted, but at least a dot on the horizon.
In six months, we were going to have this conversation again.
And in essence, in outcome, I took out, I took the position, I
was very happy. I grew quite quickly.
And six months later I told my manager we were going to have
this conversation. He was like, Yep, that's true.
Let me see what I can do. And he did not plan in the
conversation. I mean, we, we were still having
our regular check insurance, our regular catch UPS.
But there was no specific conversation about salary
because what he did was he went and he talked to the salary
people and then one week later he said, OK, your salary has
been upped. And it was up to what I asked my
50K. So I was happy.
Six months later, a regular salary process happened and I
got above and beyond what I expected.
So I was the only person that year that got 2 raises because
in my company at the time we only had annual raises.
But because I negotiated, I got a mid year raise and then I also
got an end of year raise and I got more than what I asked for
in the end of in one year. I was quite happy with that.
I think I grew that year around 16% in salary, which is quite a
lot and none of my team members got that.
But also I had put in the effort and I had shown results so my
manager felt confident to do so. Negotiation wise, I'm not the
best but I feel like there is always something, there is
always a conversation to be had. And if you cannot get something
in the moment, ask for the future, ask for your growth
path, your career path. When can we have a conversation
again? Because this is genuinely my
feeling. In reality, it could have also
been that I was completely overwhelmed and if my team
members were significantly better, which I genuinely feel
like they were, I would not have asked, I would not have pushed
because I felt good with what I had and I trusted my manager to
do justice to that, but he acted accordingly.
So I'm actually quite happy with this experience.
So yeah, long answer short, always negotiate, do do the best
you can, prepare, get your numbers and just have a
conversation experience and there is not much that can go
wrong. What questions in an interview
would you like to hear from an applicant if you were the one
that interviews them? Or rather, what questions could
an applicant make that makes them stand out from other people
within the interview process? This is a fun one because when I
interview, it's typically the questions that I ask that, and
this is quite an assumption, but hopefully that makes me stand
out. I don't interview for jobs
often, but because I'm a consultant, I am in kind of
similar interview positions. Basically, people get my resume,
then they have a conversation with me and it helps that I have
a podcast that they can already see how I behave in Q and AS
like this, for example, or how my thought reasoning works.
But in essence, I definitely take the opportunity to ask
questions. First of all, I check in with
them with regards to time. Do you really have an exit or am
I going to have a little bit wiggle room depending on the
amount of questions that I have? If people ask you, do you have
any questions? The answer should always be yes
and you should have done your homework.
You should have either a list of questions already pre prepared
or based on the conversation that happens.
If you're a good listener you should practice writing down
questions based on what people say.
The better the questions are aligned with the conversation
that we had, the better me as an interviewer will see you as
someone that is a good listener and I want people that are good
listeners. Good listeners are people that
are able to congest information, digest it, condense it, and then
ask follow up questions for them to be able to better understand
it. People that are not curious in a
conversation will have a harder time with that.
And I like people that are curious because curiosity can be
a big fire, a big flame in fuel. I don't think that's the saying,
but it can be a big motivator, a big driver.
So that's what I look for. The next to that, what I like to
do is go more personal. If these are people genuinely
that you're going to be working with, then the interviewer is
also thinking, is this a person that that I can actually see
myself working with? And the best way to build a
relationship quite quickly is to make people think, introspect
and share something either they are proud of, either they are
what they learned or something about their history and
experience. So what is the most fun thing
you've done since joining this company or how did you grow from
the position you had before to the one you have now?
And what are some of the challenges?
Do you actually enjoy it or do you miss the hands on part?
What do you look for with regards to people in an
interview process like this and do you feel like I showed that
or what is something that I can do better in interview processes
or in conversations like this? My brain is kind of all over the
place, but everything with regards to the interviewers
experience or immediately asking for feedback for growth, I feel
like is is a good approach genuinely.
And then thirdly, if you're a good listener, what I mentioned
earlier, look for specific hooks for follow up questions for
depth. I right now have a position and
I feel like a big part of in me getting that position was
already asking questions that I would ask if I got the position.
It's maybe a bit vague, but if you are responsible for a
certain thing and building out a certain thing, when you join,
you will need information. So throughout the interview
process, you can ask every single question on the
information that you will need to execute and to excel at what
you do already throughout the interview process, act like you
have the job and you're asking for information to do your job
as much as people can. They will share things with you,
and I feel like it comes across as someone you you will come
across as someone that genuinely cares and that looks incredibly
eager and motivated to do this because you're already starting.
So maybe my main take away, don't start immediately.
Start asking your questions. Yeah, as if you already have the
job. That last sentence is important,
I guess. When you're job hunting early in
your career, what actually moves the needle?
Side projects, open source certificate courses or something
else entirely? If you were to start out today,
how would you prioritize your time outside of work?
This is a hard one because my default behaviour, my answer is
I feel like projects show results.
I'm not just looking for someone that thinks of projects.
I want someone that has shown what they can do and that I can
actually look at. But I am not a recruiter.
So you getting the foot in the door, you're not going to talk
to me initially. Typically you can reach out to
me if you're interested in a job and I can refer you, but you
will talk to the recruiter and I don't know what recruiters
typically look at. It might not be your projects,
right? It could be your resume.
So experience also matters. If you've done internships, if
you're early in career, or if you have been in companies that
are in similar domains or similar in size, that already
helps. If you are even located.
I know people that are hiring and they are specifically
located in a place in Amsterdam and they are looking for people
that also live in Amsterdam and already through that you might
think, man, that's a bit harsh, but the amount of applicants
they get, the hiring manager basically said, yeah, if someone
doesn't live in Amsterdam, I don't want to talk to them and
you can have an opinion on that, but this is someone's choice.
So there are a lot of variables that you can tweak and there are
a numerous valuables that you cannot tweak.
Something can also just change in the organization and no one
will ever know, but they will just scrap a position.
The way you can distinguish yourself is by building up
relationships with the people and with the company that you're
already hiring that is actually hiring.
So sending a message out on LinkedIn, I feel like I've done
a whole episode on how to get a job remote or abroad remotely,
working remotely or coming from abroad, and that goes a lot into
detail with regards to getting your foot in the door.
Now, I still believe strongly that projects are a
differentiating factor next to experience, but if you don't
have experience, then showing results in projects I feel like
is the way to go. Nowadays coding is cheap because
tooling does a lot of the job. But building software, in the
end we are engineers, we are not coders.
So showing software that runs in production with certain
operational aspects and also in a good development pipeline with
regards to continuous feature development shows results.
It shows you've thought end to end and not just within specific
development. And the more people think both
in depth and in width, it's maybe a lot to ask, but it's
really to distinguish yourself, the better you will come out
when it comes to the general population.
So yeah, build out those side projects.
I started this answer with kind of feeling torn because I don't
have many side projects. They're not all on GitHub.
My GitHub looks awful, to be honest.
A lot of it's just running locally.
But yeah, in essence, I feel like if I were to apply, I would
definitely have to work on that part of it.
I feel like I have the networking down.
I have a lot of relationships down, but when it actually comes
to projects, I don't have much. And for people that don't have
much, the more you have the better it is because it
distinguishes you. In my circumstance, 50 hour work
week, newborn at home, no prior tech experience.
Do you think focusing on completing a high quality
portfolio before starting to apply is the right approach?
Or should I balance job applications alongside portfolio
building even with limited time? You're busy and the fact that
you are re educating yourself to go to a different career is
incredibly admirable. I would say don't wait.
So there is no reason for you to wait until you have a portfolio
to start applying already in applications, you can show what
you're building specifically in the portfolio that you're
building. So yeah, no newborn on my end
and I cannot compare directly with you.
My only fear is don't burn yourself out, Eric.
It's a lot of work maintaining a job, being responsible as a
father. You probably have other
responsibilities. Maybe you own a house.
I don't have any of that. So I have a lot of time.
I have a lot of free time to apply to work, to apply to
passions that I have. I'm building a company, doing a
podcast, 1 to another YouTube channel.
I have a full time job, I'm in the works council.
In my job I do different things. I do trainings as well,
consultancy, always fun. I was a team lead.
I could not do that anymore because it was too draining.
So at some point you have to cut things.
I have a girlfriend, a partner who I wish I could spend more
time with, friends and family, some friends I haven't spoken
to. I'm horrible at keeping
connections and relationships. So already I feel like time is
tight and for you it must be amplified to some of the
responsibilities you have. So good luck with whatever
you're doing. I think it's very ambitious and
amicable and I wish you all the best man.
In your opinion, which five job platforms or resources are the
most trustworthy and effective for finding real tech roles in
today's market? Five job platforms.
I think if I did my best and someone asked me can you name
three? I think I would only stop at
LinkedIn to be honest, as a job platform.
So LinkedIn first and foremost, both by building relationships
with people and keeping touch with companies that have new
positions. I don't know if LinkedIn is as
up to date as the company profile pages themselves, the
company website pages, company career pages.
So that might be potentially a second.
But yeah, doesn't really scale as well.
What I would say is go to meetups specifically organized
by the companies you want to work for or in a specific
domain. There is now a new meet up in
Amsterdam. It's called AI in Amsterdam.
They have had a conference and I think a few sessions both
earlier in Korea, which I didn't go to, but also organized by a
lot of AI tooling and companies. So I went to the one from
ChatGPT, from Open AI, I should say, and the one from Google
specifically about Gemini. And there's going to be another
one from Anthropic. I'm going to go to that one as
well. I haven't checked the agenda but
hopefully soon, somewhere in February, you will find people
that are like minded with regards to a certain topic,
specifically where the meet up is about and you will build
relationships. And they could be people that
are already working at a company.
Maybe you have an idea you want to pitch to people, you can
practice your pitching and you can build up a relationship with
regards to that. Some people come there and they
have start-ups, they're building so they are looking for people
to collaborate with or to work together with.
There is no equity, there is no revenue, but the fact that you
are already building and creating something can be
extremely valuable or it shows that you have ambition and drive
and are also acting upon that. So there can be a lot of
benefits to go into meetups, but a lot of responsibility is on
you because you have to go and you have to network.
And the only way to get good at networking is to actually do the
networking, talk to people, say, hey, my name is Patrick.
How long have you been living in Amsterdam?
Oh, I've actually, yeah, I'm Dutch.
Nah, no, you wouldn't think of that because that's typically
how it goes. Did you like to talk?
Have you had fun so far? Have you gone to any previous
meet ups? Have a conversation with people?
Genuinely. You will get better at doing
that the more you do it and whatever outcome comes out of
that, I cannot guarantee you can get a job, but it might help, so
why not do it? If you're a front end developer,
how good is it going to be to keep up with the back end?
Are we going to lose with regards to knowledge in a
specific stack? My experience has been I was
quite comfortable on the back end.
I did a little bit of front end in my first software engineering
job. And then when I joined CBR, my
manager asked me, we have a lot of front end projects, do you
want to learn more about the front end?
And my perspective at the time is more knowledge is better.
So I said yes. I said to a lot of yes, yes.
I said almost just everything. Do you want to learn about the
yes? Yes, because I had no clue what
I wanted to do. So the more I learn, the more I
learn. If I like it, if I enjoy it.
What aspects do I enjoy and what do I not like in the end?
Front end is quite specific coming from back end, but I can
see that the inverse could also be the same.
If you start in the front end, there are there can be some
abstract things on the back end that are interesting to you
maybe. Or even if not, I do feel like
general knowledge is going to be valuable.
So if you're specific with regards to front end, at least
know some of the basics on the back end API design or
interactions with databases, or where business logic lives or
how to architect. What does good back end
architecture look like? Know it from a surface level
enough to have conversations with back end.
If then those responsibilities are really separated and that
curiosity Dr. you. In the end, if you genuinely
enjoy it, you can do both. People do both and they are very
effective and nowadays with AI tooling, I feel like you can be
more and more responsible for a lot of aspects because you're
enabled due to the tooling that you have nowadays more so than
ever. So I don't think it can hurt.
Don't shy away from it. If you genuinely say I've never
done it but I don't want to do it, that makes no sense.
If you say I've done it and I genuinely enjoy the front set
more because of XY and Z, that is so much more powerful than
you and never having tried so do it.
Is it going to take away from focus and context?
Yes. You can also say I am focusing
on these aspects on the front end before I'm going to educate
myself on the back end also. Fine, have a plan but definitely
experience. How many certifications should a
serious IT professional aim to earn in a year?
How important is it to get certified in today's IT
industry? Have I ever had a certification?
Maybe a few, not more than I can count on one hand to be honest.
So with that my perspective is I don't think it is as important
even to the point where I feel like general education, your
university degree might not matter as much.
We are more moving towards a skills based economy.
So whatever you have built that shows your skill, how well you
are equipped in how you communicate it and show results
is going to matter more than a piece of paper that is a
certificate. That is my opinion.
Not everyone is going to agree. So for some people, the fact
that you have educated yourself and that you have the width that
in outcome gives you this certificate, they also hold
value to that. I'm not saying it has 0 value,
I'm saying I feel like other things are more valuable as
people build more. What you build specifically and
how you build it and how you communicate what you've built
and why have you built this thing is going to be more
valuable than I haven't built anything but I have these
certificates that show that I can build.
But why haven't you built something?
I would ask and if you don't have a good answer for that, if
it was I was working on getting these certificates, then you
haven't shown me anything. You have shown me you are good
at getting certificates, but my job is not to do that.
My job is to build. My job is to execute.
My job is to have business outcomes due to what I do.
So that's what I want to see and that's what I think is the most
valuable. Do you recommend soft skills
trainings or is it all about experience?
When it comes to getting better at soft skills, I get a training
budget every single year. And the mantra in this company
is you finish your training budget every single year.
It is a significant amount of money and you are a responsible
adult and you can spend it in whatever way you want.
Do you want to go to a conference?
You book the conference, you reimburse it or you ask office
management to book it for you so you don't have to reimburse it.
Do you want to go to a conference abroad?
You arrange the hotel, the flight and the conference and
all the food you have there you can reimburse and it goes off
your education budget. Do you want to follow a
training? Doesn't matter what training it
is, you can do so and you can you can reimburse.
So that's the context that I'm in.
I've been at this company for seven years, which means 7 times
that significant amount is the money that I've spent in both
trainings, conferences, flights, food, online courses, you name
it, I've tried it. There are specific trainings
that will always stick with me that I feel like even though the
information that I've gained is somewhere anchored in my brain
and it's hard to regurgitate exactly what I learned.
The experiences of those trainings, both my teacher as
well as the participants, they have stuck with me and their
experiences have stuck with me. And specifically what I learned,
there are certain aspects that I'm like.
This is something that I can still communicate to you,
something that I've learned and something that I am aware of and
that I can educate others with my peers or the people that I
mentor. So I feel like there are
valuable soft skills related trainings.
Yes, a lot of experience might even be more valuable.
It is just easier to gain. You cannot do a training every
single week in a calendar year. It just does not happen.
So the more you can experience on the job with difficult
conversations that you have with a peer or with a brilliant jerk,
or with your manager, or in a conversation in a group of
seniors, or by presenting a pitch that you have or an idea
or a proposal or something to a large audience is going to be of
value to you. So do both.
Figure out what trainings have your interest, ask around, ask
for guidance, ask specifically to people.
What trainings would you recommend?
What has always stuck with you or have you had the most value
when it comes to specific training?
Do that and experience on the job.
That's how you get better at soft skills.
Now, I've talked a lot actually, and I still have about 20
questions left, I feel like. So I'm going to park this.
This was today's episode. Tune back in next week because
we're going to do another Q&A. See you then.