Hi everyone. Today we talked about a career
in coding, what's the best way to start and even when you start
a, what options are still out there and which rose can you
take am? I guess the own yawns has had
many different roles in his career developer or even Tech
evangelist and now software architect I really like this
perspective on the topic, don't forget to like And subscribe on
YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcast platform.
Enjoy welcome to Beyond coding, a dive into the world of
Successful people in IIT from your sponsors Z, Bia creating
digital leaders. Here's your host, Patrick akhil.
Johann, welcome man. Thank you.
How's it going very good? How are you cool man, I'm I'm
good as well. It's pretty early but should be
good. Yeah, so I invited you on to
talk about a career in coding because you have quite the
career yourself. You've had kind of different
roles and I think if you start from University it's kind of
hard to find your way throughout the landscape that we have now.
Are you have Claudia operations? You have devops Um, even within
development, you have kind of different aspects there.
So I think it's pretty hard to navigate but what let's start
off with, I'm a student and I come from University, I have a
computer science degree or even not and I want to start
somewhere what is going to the the first step in landing that
position where I can just get some work experience.
What do you think they're? Yeah.
So I think the interesting part is that in when studying
computer science or something like that, you learn a lot of
valuable things. But yes, at least in my
Experience. And what I heard from others,
it's often not directly to things you do in a job.
Yeah. So there is a little bit of a
mismatch. So it's a bit looking like yeah.
Where do you start? And where do you learn the
skills that you didn't learn in University or other
environments, myself? I had a graduation assignment
and I did at a company which I was like yeah, that looks like
an interesting company. I quite like the graduation
assignment and I got my degree and then I stayed at that.
They already got a good view of it and the six months that I did
my assignment there. Yeah and then they had like some
different roles for instance database administrators
developers and then your Java developers and don't not
developers and there were some more rolls and that company was
more a Microsoft company so that Microsoft group was quite bacon.
The Java group was a bit smaller, I quite like that it
felt a bit more familiar. You knew everyone and That
didn't have a really big preference but it was like,
yeah, we're looking someone for the Java Department.
Do you want to join that one like?
Yeah. That sounds like a good idea.
Yeah. And in that company cuz I can't
really advise a few start search for a company that offers you
proper education. So I was sometimes recruiters
ask me like, yeah, do you want to join our company?
We have really big budgets for studying and then they say,
yeah, we have 1000 Euros for studying yet.
That's nice, but thousand Euros for star.
It's like two or three days. Yeah, the company I joined and
there are multiple companies that do that.
They have a whole plan for you. They teach you the Java language
or whatever you are starting with and a really broad skill.
And my case I think it was like two months of continuous
studying and then afterwards once in a while we got like a
day of studying both technical but also a day called it social
skills nowadays you some people say you shouldn't call it social
skills. It's like skills you just Eat
basically. Yeah, but really find a company
that offers that education to. It makes the bridge from the
things you learned in school, to what you have to apply in your
job, a lot easier. I learned a lot about Java
different Java Frameworks, operating systems databases,
which I didn't know before, and I think that helps to get
started in your new environment. Yeah, that makes sense.
I like that. You take that kind of
educational path, right? Because when your educational
Journey, UPS is not when you stop learning, right?
Even on the job. It's very important to learn on
the job but also beyond that, right?
And getting that room in either a budget or just days off to
train yourself or to do that within a team.
I think it's very important to keep that kind of ball rolling
and keep learning on the fly. But those aspects, right?
You already called it skills that you didn't learn
necessarily in any user University or in educational
journey. I think they're more related to
working together. Right?
Because the developer is not necessarily a one man army,
you're usually doing it within a team, but why in kind of your
educational Journey? Why is there not a focus on that
in a computer science degree? What do you think?
I think it differs because I had a focus on that and then my
education. Yeah actually.
So when I was studying computer science, the sometimes you did
assignments alone sometimes with two or three but they also had
like some sort of internal company which was run by
Students of that, the higher years basically.
So they were directors and managers and stuff like that.
Yeah. And when you started, you were a
developer in that company and you had teams of I think it was
between 4:00 and 6:00 or something like that.
You had to do an assignment for a real company and you had like
half a year for that and a couple of hours each week.
It wasn't healthy your full-time.
Yeah but it's simulated like a real working environment and the
higher you got in the company, the differential roles got you.
Became either the project leader from for one team or maybe you
try to get new assignments from companies or things like that.
So I think that was a really good one because that had more
of a feeling of a real company. Yeah.
And doing real stuff instead of I had a lot of courses in
programming languages. Probably only used at that
University. Yeah, that's fun but it doesn't
help you that much when you have to program in Java or.net or
something like that. So yeah, I think it did.
Isn't it is good? I think if there is
educationists paying attention to the bridge cause University,
I think traditional is more about doing research after you
get your degree but in reality, the ones going into research is
only a small percentage. I think most people go working
for a company and work on practical things instead of
theoretical research. So I think then it's also good
to make sure those people are also prepared.
For that. Yeah I like that it's already
inherent in such a product project then that you do for a
company. Yeah that is kind of a real life
example or real world example of how it's going to be after you
graduate, right? And even then let's say you
started at a company in your case you were a Java developer.
But already there there's kind of that the Java title right or
is it C sharp or it's golang or whatever?
There's a lot of different technologies that you first kind
of Klingon right? But you also have to kind of let
go of those if you want. Try something else or even let
go of the developer title in itself.
If you're more like I want to do product management, that's more
my thing. I like more.
The planning the stakeholder management, more of the kind of
people skills in that way. How can you cut a navigate that
for yourself? If you have no clue where to
start first and then no clue where you're heading?
Basically, I think one of the best options there is.
If you have a company that offers various rules cause that
makes it easier to switch, you can do that within the company.
You don't have to go. To it to another company.
Yeah, so my first company I stayed there for 11 years and I
had like, I don't know, a different function titles or
something like that. Nice switching between various
roles and trying out things and sometimes you like to do things
for for a shorter period of time.
And then you're like, okay now something else.
So having a company that supports that and it's big
enough to do that, I think makes it relatively easy if you have
to switch between companies every time.
Yeah it's a bit harder and yeah. Like I said, I started With Java
development and I quite like that.
So started as a junior developer.
Then we call that, I think meteor, and then Senior
developer, lead developer, and then let my own team.
And then gradually, you also notice that when you start as a
junior, you probably do mostly Julie coding.
Of course you have some meetings agile meetings or things like
that. Yeah, but the higher you get in
your role, the more you get communication with other
stakeholders, like the business or With operations and stuff
like that. So you get bit more
responsibilities not only focusing on Purely coding.
But something I also find important is like the non
functional aspects like good quality and performance and
stuff like that. Yeah.
And at least that's that's what I noticed.
The more I went towards lead developer, the less I was coding
and the more I was helping others mentoring others.
Helping them improve instead of doing all the work myself.
And I think that's also an important aspect of being Lead
developer is trying to let others grow as well and
basically make yourself obsolete.
That's exactly, my goal most of the time.
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. If some of the colleagues I had
in my team and it up with their own team as a lead developer, I
mean then you've achieved it they basically became more or
less the same as you and I can do their own thing now and you
can help others or they take over from you and you can join
another team, I think. That's a really important aspect
to share your knowledge and to help improve others after you.
Of course, have some years of experience.
Yeah, yeah. I really like that.
You're kind of paying it forward, right?
Yeah. Allowing others to grow at the
same that you did, I didn't, and you can then allow others to
grow and it kind of spreads forward and it's just a great
win-win for everyone, right? You learn by teaching and others
learn by getting taught, I guess.
Yeah. But even the thing you laid out
just to step back On in kind of experimenting, right?
Seeing if things work out for you.
I think there should always be room within Organization for
that. But is there kind of a time
frame for that? Do you would you say, like six
months? Try it out, see if it works or
maybe a year because when I talk to people, they're very much
like a I'm in this role now and I want to do this at least for
two years and for me like I was always like I want more, I want
it faster. So two years sounds like a lot
basically but they already have kind of their they're more
comfortable with two years. Let me put it that way.
Is there like a good time frame from your experience?
I think that's really differs as so friends.
If you do Consulting, you have some people who work for one
customer for like, I don't know. A couple of weeks.
Yeah. Or maybe half a year and I had
colleagues who worked at the same customer for like, 11
years. Then I was like, but why are you
working at a consultancy club if you stay so long at a customer?
Yeah, you could have joined them directly then.
Yeah, but I think that that's really someone's preference.
Say, if you like it, why wouldn't you do it longer?
I mean of course you can try something else and maybe you
like that as well. Yeah.
But it differs a bit as long as you have.
I think you're interested in it and it's exciting.
And you're like, okay this is what I want to do now.
And I also think it it might differ in certain times in your
life. For instance, when I was
younger, I worked a lot of hours that a lot of things also,
outside of my normal working hours.
Yeah. But then I, you Get a partner,
you get kids or other hobbies and then it turns down a little
bit because you have to keep some balance somehow.
Yeah. So I think the most important
thing is that you still have fun at it long.
It takes. Yeah.
It's I think up to you. I love that answer.
As long as it's good for you
then, then my care what everyone else does, right?
Yeah. You already touched upon kind of
doing things outside your day-to-day work, right.
And we've already touched upon more of the the soft skills
aspect even. On the show, a lot of episodes.
But if we talk about the hard skills, right?
And let's say, you're a developer day-to-day, if I'm
applying to other jobs, people ask me, what kind of personal
projects do you do, in your own time?
Do you have some some pages you've made or stuff like that?
And I'm like, man, I'm so focused on my developer work day
today. I don't, I don't really
contribute to either my personal projects or to like open source
stuff or create something that way I do more content creation.
Basically that's Why this podcast is there as well, but
what are some of the more hard skills things that you can do?
Yeah, I think you have various options.
And again, I think it's looking at something that is quite close
to you where you feel comfortable bit.
But of course, it will be a bit out of your comfort zone.
I find it really annoying term comfort zone, but it's something
you're not used to. For instance, when I was asked
for this podcast, I was like should I do it?
I've never done it before. Yeah.
Well I liked it and I was like, yeah why bother I mean.
Do it. And if I don't like it, it's my
last podcast. Yeah, exactly.
So it's a matter of trying again.
So I think when we started yeah we tried different things and I
tried for instance, bit of Open Source.
So I maintain some some packages for chocolatey which is an
installer for for Microsoft packages.
Yeah, and I maintained Java installers for that and you can
Do the coding part so you can work on Java Frameworks commit
stuff to spring or commit to the documentation of spraying or do
something like I did, which is maybe a bit more scripting and
not really goading. Yeah, but I have done other
things as well such as speaking at conferences or starting
small, or with within the company.
First, giving presentations for the team to try and help them
with new topics, or things, we wanted to investigate a.
So I think that that's really Brought and at first, maybe
you're like, yeah, I don't know if I want to do that but just
start small start with just doing things within your team.
Then maybe within the company, we had lunch sessions or however
you want to call them, it's low level, you know, most of the
people there, it's more comfortable.
Although I have to say, I had colleagues who were really
critical, so often in company presentations, I got more
difficult questions that had a conference.
So it's not always true but it gives More of a familiar
feeling. I think.
So, that's a nice way to get started with stuff.
Just start small. I didn't start with everything
at once. I think, when I started, I
started a little bit with speaking my manager and quaritch
me back down, like I do. Don't you want to speak at
bigger events? Like J fo and a fox and Java one
because those were the biggest back down, and most interesting
for our company and I said, like, yeah, I can try that, but
if I don't have any experience on my resume speaking on
conferences, the chances that I'm Elected are quite Slim.
So I proposed some like yeah. Can I submit to some other
smaller conferences and try that first?
And I can put that on my resume. Yeah, I got some experience
speaking for. Maybe a bit smaller audiences at
conferences before you go to the bigger ones.
Yeah I saw my first conference was in Croatia close to the
beach which was actually I think the best location for a
conference. I've ever been very funnily
enough had two sessions accepted at once, which was even more
scarier than Having to do one. Yeah, because a tip is, if you
want to do things like that, it's good.
If you have multiple topics that you can submit because then
program committee for a conference can can select one of
them. The downside is that you might
have multiple sessions. Yes.
Like prepared for tax and also accepted basically crew, a
better organic lie because you speak to people there.
And later I started helping Francis in the Java magazine to
get articles and review articles and things like that.
I started helping Comedies for conferences to select speakers
and things like that. So it gradually grew and think.
One thing is also important with those things is sometimes it's
work-related. So you do it during your working
hours sometimes, or maybe more like fun, and then you have to
balance it with your other activities, of course, sporting
and stuff like that. I mean, I've had periods where I
hardly did any sport. I was just working and then
doing other fun stuff, but it's good to keep a healthy balance
with that. Again because a lot of people
when they they pick up to too much you might get a burn out.
So it's also good at after a while you evaluate like I am now
doing these in these things. What do I really like?
And maybe I should stop doing some of them because if you
start speaking publicly you don't have to do that until you
were like 67 or whenever your pension starts mean you can do
it for a couple of years. Then stop waited.
Maybe start again after a while. I mean it's something you choose
to do. It's not an obligation.
Exactly. That's Course it's part of your
function and your manager, expects it?
Yeah, that makes sense. I really like the mindset of
just starting small right and then seeing if it works for you
and even letting it Snowball right?
You do one talk and then you're on a stage somewhere.
Doing a bunch of conferences. Yeah but I like that.
You mentioned what's important? There is two then still reflect
if that's what you like right? Because you start you start by
trying it out to see if you actually like it and you can
snowball and you can end up somewhere you might like it.
But is that your passion, right? Or do You still want to
experiment, switch gears and try other things that right?
You always have the room. I feel like and we're very lucky
to have that to try things out. Whether it's speaking on a
conference, whether it's doing more knowledge, sharing within
the team, even coaching and mentoring going to be on the
job, can you maybe outside of the job?
Now, we have so much room to kind of experiment in that way.
I think we're very lucky to do that, basically, but to get back
to the kind of career in coding. Like one of the terms, I see,
The market now is besides kind of the technology labels.
Right. Go laying engineer, even C,
sharp or Java. You also asked have that full
stack label and to me, it encompasses quite a lot, right?
You need to be expert in fronting as well as back end,
and even with the cloud or the operations mindset, that's
there. Now, it's a whole package.
Basically, what do you think of the the full stack label is that
kind of a valid thing to ask from people?
Or is it a label that's just slapped on there to make someone
seem more impressive? It depends a bit, of course,
everything depends, it depends a bit on the people.
Som some developers are really good and they pick up a lot of
Technologies quickly and managed to keep up to date with all of
them. Some spend a lot of time on it,
maybe also in their free time to keep up to date and learn
everything but in general I think it's too much if I look at
my own experience so it started with full stack and then you get
devops so you're a full stack devops developer and now you're
a full stack deaf s developer Yeah, and I don't know what the
latest storm is said now but it's adding and adding stuff and
and that's possible. But what you get is people who
are basically good at doing hello world and a lot of things
and you don't have the in-depth knowledge of for instance, the
Java framework and what goes wrong.
So as long as they can Google it and everything is fine, there's
no issue but if all hell breaks loose who's going to fix your
issue? Yeah.
That that will be a challenge because you no longer have
specialists Another term couple years ago was t-shaped.
I'm a bit more fan of that. It's a bit of a weird name and
I'm not a big fan of terms, but I think it's good to have like a
base in something where you were like really good and you focus
on that. But you also can do some other
tricks. So that if your team members may
be ill or he's busy, you can help maybe with some operations
or maybe you can help with some security stuff.
So, maybe you have a big background as a Java developer.
Upper and, you know, a little bit of front and that might be a
bit of Ops and somebody else is more front under and knows a
little bit about Java and so that way you can nicely spread
it. Yeah, I've seen it in companies
where they forced basically everyone to be more full stack.
It didn't really work because for instance we had one guy who
was a full-time tester. Yeah.
And we needed that because we had changed tests, performance
tests and stuff like that. So he did useful work the entire
week helped us really Good. We were really satisfied with
him, but then he get, he was told by the company.
Like, yeah, you need to start programming else.
You will be fired because we want everyone to program.
Yeah, so what happened we had to do his testing work.
Exactly. Because he needed to program and
we needed to help him with his programming because he was not
an expert in programming. So basically the team came
almost to a standstill especially because it was at
that time I think three people who had once needed to start
coding. That's I think undoable.
It's good to know. Tricks.
So that if someone is ill, you don't have to wait a week before
he's back. But still look at you.
How can we efficiently work within a team?
And if someone is efficiently working in a week, doing one
thing the entire week. That's perfectly fine for me.
He's good at it. Yeah.
Others don't have to pick it up every week again.
So I think we should be careful with it.
It's good to now and then give people like responsibilities.
Like if I have Junior developers and I know they are good in
front end, I'm Not that good in front and stuff.
So I give them the responsibility to do that and if
they have questions, simply come to me.
Yeah. And and speak with other front
end developers within the company and stuff like that.
So, give them some responsibilities but not that
one person do everything that's really single point of failure,
you get, and I think it's really difficult to keep up with all
the Technologies. It's going so quickly.
Yeah. More and more basically.
Yeah, definitely. I think people are able to do
that, but Certain degree, right? And I like that you say depends
depends on the person, depends on their skill level, probably
even their experience, right? Because some things you just
learn by having someone seen do that.
And you're like I'll take that with me.
And you'll remember like I've seen this before so I can, I can
fix that that way, right? But a team is kind of well
they're they're a bunch of puzzle pieces, right?
And if they fit together, well, that's how you have a well,
operating team basically. Yeah, Savvy in how you have a
beautiful picture, but if you have Have a puzzle piece that's
missing. Then how do you find the missing
puzzle piece? Basically wall either recruiting
or as a team figuring out what do we need to?
We meet someone that has more testing skills or leveraging,
the back end or looking more at architecture or even doing more
stakeholder management, nowadays.
I think it's very hard to figure that out within your team and
then getting the right person, even because everyone's skill
set. So different.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question.
I think it depends bed and eat on what work you have and you as
long as you have people more in a fixed role.
Instead of full stack. Yeah then it's a bit easier to
know this because you know that person is getting a lot of work
and he has to ask others to help him.
Then you know go away maybe we need someone else with more or
less his main skills. Yeah.
If everyone is doing full stack, it's difficult or more difficult
to see where the work is in. But still you could look at like
your planning and see like, yeah, what are we doing?
Mainly are we mainly building back end, applications or mainly
doing stuff on front end? Or are we spending a lot of time
on on testing and operations? Because I noticed that in a lot
of teams, the development often wasn't the challenge, it was
mainly operations and everything around it getting approvals and
stuff like that. Which was a lot of a challenge.
Yeah. And I think it also, it helps if
you have least There's two guys in the team who are willing to
do some stuff that's not directly their work.
Yeah, I've also seen teams where people were really strict like
one developer said that I don't write tests and nowadays.
I mean, that's that's really strange.
But even back then, I was like, you get paid a hell of a lot of
money and you only want to do one trick and that's it.
Yeah. I mean I don't want you to be
like a full stack developer, but you can do something else if you
maybe have some more time left. And we have some more work than
And you can easily split the work.
Yeah. And if you have some people in
your team who are willing to do that, I think that that works
easy and it also helps if you can upfront somehow select
people who fit well together. But that's always difficult.
I know we try to do that in the past and sometimes we were lucky
that we simply had a group who clicked together.
For instance, I was in a team once where we had one guy who
was really technical. Yeah, yet quite a And if he
needed to implement a normal feature.
Because and he saw all kinds of problems that could arise and
things like that. Yeah.
But let him letting him fix stuff on compiler.
Level and B, level or network level.
He was really really good at that nice.
So when we had stories and we were selecting, who do what it
was, really easy, he got the annoying stuff.
We didn't want to do and we got the other stuff, which he wasn't
really comfortable in knowing and so sometimes you get it.
Ethically, I know we also tried a bet on selecting those skills
for team. But often what you see is you
don't always have the skills available.
People are still on other projects and stuff like that.
So it's difficult to get like an ideal team, I think, but as long
as people are willing to help, I think that helps a lot already.
Yeah. It's all about that
collaboration with. Yeah because together you can
solve a lot of problems that way.
Right. You can fixate on what this is.
This is just my skill but if you're not a sponge and willing
to And what other people are doing, then you going to be
stuck, I think. And you going to be that one
trick pony, basically enough that trick fails, then you kind
of screwed, right? Because then you're kind of out
of your place and it's probably time to look elsewhere.
I think it's very important to hire people that have a mindset
and they're just hungry to learn right, there are sponges and
that can absorb information, but still have their preference and
kind of their speciality. The thing you laid out in the
kind of t-shaped thing because you still want to be kind of
expert in either one. Or two domains, right?
But still have kind of that General overview and being able
to fill in someone else's ill or even leaves the company, right?
Because leaving the company's kind of a doom scenario.
If that guy who was very good at the technical things left, the
company you would have kind of a gap in your team, then
basically, which you would have to fill with someone who would
have equal skill level, that's kind of hard to do.
And I think you mentioned, you need people who are eager to
learn on the other side. That's I think, also a challenge
because people were eager to, Iron Will quicker.
Leave the team because they, they learned the trick.
Yeah, I've had it in the past as well where we build applications
and after like, the third one was like, yeah, technically it's
everything time. The same is just like a
different front end and a few different rest and points.
But for the rest, it's the same. I could predict when we started
what issues, we would get along the road as so, if you're really
eager to learn, you probably helped a bit more.
And that's I think also something that's tricky
nowadays. I understand it because If I do
it myself. Yeah.
But for really good teams, it's better.
If they stay together a bit longer, like a couple of years.
If team members switch like every couple of months you never
get. Like, they're the really good
Dynamic where, you know, each other where you can simply
search shout at each other and things like that, where it's
more or like friendship and collaboration.
And you know what, Everyone likes and how you can divide
stuff or if you don't, if you face an issue, you know who you
can. Things and things like that.
Yeah, so I think that's also a challenge nowadays in it because
there's so much demand people keep on Switching and it's hard
if you look from a company perspective to get a really good
functioning team. Yeah.
And I also think it differs a bit, if you work directly for a
company because then often you have one TxTag that you need to
learn and that will stay there for a couple of years or if you
work as a consultant, we're basically Every company you go
to, they have a completely different Tech stack, you know,
if you do Java one company uses spring in the other uses
Jakarta, or micro note or whatever.
Yeah. And then you need to learn a lot
more even so yeah, I think different places different
challenges. Yeah.
And also different preferences, right?
Yeah, people might be very fine. Just within the same company,
right? Might be a product company and
the same Tech stack but it has its own challenges and the
longer you are there, the more you learn, And about different
domains, right? Your mental model becomes very
sharp and what the code base reflects.
And if it reflects reality or if it needs changes in that way, if
you're a consultant, you kind of hop a bit more from job to job,
right? And you interact with a lot more
people that I clients for example, and I think you teach
more as well because your sphere of influence is basically within
that team. You're the consultant you're
kind of an expert in a certain domain, that's why you got hired
in the first place. So, your bit more knowledge,
spreading and Even in between, which I'm very fond of is kind
of the agency model, right? You might be within a fixed team
and your kind of a task force as you go to a client and fix just
a big chunk of work and a chunk of work and change the text that
could change but the team kind of stays the same and that way,
all right, yeah, but for companies, it's very interesting
because there's a contrast, their companies want stability,
right? They would love a great team
that never changes but people within that team want a
challenge, right? They want to be able to learn if
something changes on Market and it's not in the company and they
want to try that out. They will probably leave the try
that out. You have room to experiment but
that's not necessarily what companies want.
So I think there's a should be a match.
Like the company should be able to allow people to experiment
and that'll kind of glue them a bit more to the company.
Yeah, it helps them grow kits cause if you keep the same thing
team like for many years, yeah, you don't have like four lead
developers in one team. Yeah, at least I haven't seen
them yet. Lee.
And so it's it basically hinders the growth.
I think of the the more Junior once in that sense, I think it's
better if they have the room to leave after a certain period of
time. Yeah.
So yeah, that's always a good difficult balance.
Exactly. We're moving back to kind of a
career in coding. I think everyone will face kind
of decision or two way Road. Basically one that's a bit more
High over more to the people side and what's one that's a bit
more in depth into Technical side, right?
I think for you it was a bit more High over and more the
people side. I mean, I'm just guessing
because you do a lot of conferences and a lot of
developer advocacy. But why was it more the high
over and not necessarily the technical side for you?
I think I do a bit of both. So I'm still technically
involved. I was a software architect.
I try to help a lot more strategic decisions.
For instance, we decided to go from the vertex framework to
Spring framework. Yeah.
Several things we changed in our Cloud setup and stuff like that.
And I still Hands-On help teams. So I hope themes with actual the
migration to the newest version of java, I change their code
base. Basically, I still doing some
Hands-On stuff. Not really implementing like
functional features at this point in time because I don't
have the time fret as I'm so for Architects for like, a hundred
people or something like that. Yeah, with a lot of teams.
So, I think it's sometimes interesting to see how much,
Something is more people related and how much something is more
technical related? Yeah, because of course mean you
could also do like management and that's often seen as
something than you move really away from the code.
But there are some managers who still code.
And I've been a trainer for a while within our company, which
I think is also really interesting position as a
trainer or a teacher at a school.
Yeah. And a lot of people that ask me
like, yeah. So now you stop coding.
I was laughing. Like no, I'm coding more than
ever did. Yeah.
Yeah, because in the years before when I was a lead
developer I also had scrum meetings and discussions and
stuff like that. I had a team which we give demos
and stuff like that when I was a teacher I was by myself
basically we had some other teachers but we were all working
more or less independently may be chatting once every two weeks
or something like that but that was more informal and the rest
of the time I was basically either teaching stuff or
creating new course material and creating all kinds of example,
code and The nice thing about that was also that it was quite
broad. If you're working as a
consultant and a company or as an employee.
Sometimes if you work with a technology like spring, for
instance, you only do like the rest part because the database
some other team is creating it and you simply call some other
rest and points. Yeah and when you're a teacher
in teaching spring framework, you have to teach everything.
So it's a bit broader than when you work on a specific project
where normally you use a subset of a technology.
G. Yeah, so actually I quite
enjoyed it and I think I program more than I did in the years
before that. So I can really also recommend
to try that. See if why don't more trainings.
Most of the time, we would advise, if you try something,
don't try it once. We tried a couple of times the
first time often, it's a bit of a challenge or really nervous
for it. In the end, most of the time yet
in, these are still happy with it.
But for yourself, it's the first times, always a bit of a
challenge So if you do it a couple of times you can see if
you like it and maybe do it full-time or do it.
Next door? Your job depends a bit on your
possibilities and again if you have a bit of a big company
where they both do consultancy or internal projects, and they
do a bit of courses, then it's easy to do both things at the
same time. Yeah.
And that. Yeah, I quite like that.
And then later, I did more like, software architecture.
And from when I think, what was lead developer, I ended it.
Stocks and I wrote articles and stuff like that.
Yeah, but it was quite a small part of my job eventually I did
partly that and partly as a technical evangelist so I
officially got some time from the company to spend on it.
I think back then it was like two days a week or something
like that. So it could speak at conferences
and write articles and other things and I'll add the
community for Java developers in that consultancy company for a
while as well. Yeah, so I did both With a bit
to the outside world and also to the inside, basically making
sure that we had interesting trainings to do and training
curriculums for four new starters.
Help with marketing with boots at conferences and stuff like
that. So there are a lot of ways that
you can do and so many evolved a bit more coding and some info
for bit less coding. It's just what you want.
I still love coding and I spent some evening still coding or
writing an article and Add some new framework of stuff like
that. I still like to do that.
Nice. I'm happy that there's also kind
of a Middle Road in which you can do both, yeah, right.
Because I've asked this question before and people are very much
like not enough for me. It was calling all the way.
I went more in-depth, I specialize in quality, etc.
Etc. And the other way, well, I
wanted to be a bit more High over, so I started with the tech
lead position, then moved into management and now I'm kind of
activating and multiplying people and you're more like,
well, I still kind of do both, right.
And it depends on, where I I am within a company.
I can either do a lot of conferences, or I can teach and
really go in depth and know my stuff, right?
Because you need to know your stuff before you teach other
people. What I wouldn't imagine but it
makes sense the way you lay it out is when you're in a team, a
lot of your time, you're aligning with other people,
right? And as you mentioned, you might
not be responsible for that full picture, but when you're
teaching is just you coming up with material and you need to
have that full picture to teach other people that seem full
picture, right? Because that Phil picture is
going Help them along the along, the line, along the road within
a company. And kind of getting that mental
picture of where the company is of their kind of theoretical
mental picture, in that way. And then it makes sense that
you're way more Hands-On, way more preparing stuff than you
would, otherwise because you would be aligning with other
people. Yeah.
What are you doing now? And what's going to next for
you? I'm currently working as a
software architect. Which architect is also a roll
with some people are like okay now you're gone of the Uncle
stuff. And I you and Ivory Tower and I
did some architecture work in the previous company as well.
And when I joined this company, I also talked to them.
I said like yeah I still want to do stuff Hands-On.
So I am doubting if I would be rather like something like a
lead developer or senior developer or an architect.
Yeah. And it's like okay, we'll simply
let you speak to different people from the company and you
can ask them, whatever you want about the row.
And then my most important question was, Yeah, if I'm an
architect, am I put in an ivory Tower producing documents?
Yeah. Or can I help teams Hands-On and
my manager immediately said, no, no.
We just make sure that you can do what you think is good for
the company. Yeah.
And what helps the company forward?
And then I was like yeah that that sounds like good because if
you're in a team and you focus purely on technical stuff that's
interesting but also sometimes annoying because then other
people make decisions for you. Yeah.
So they decide like, Yeah, we no longer do Java.
We're going to do dotnet or we use this framework or that
framework and you're like what? Yeah sometimes I'm like yeah, I
don't know if that's the right decision.
So I was like I want I would like to be more strategically
involved and more long-term involved as well while still
doing a bit of the more Hands-On work.
Of course, it's no longer full-time because, yeah, you
have other responsibilities with it, but it's possible.
So as an architect you don't have to be like the Ivory Tower
architect and yeah, if I sometimes look Vacancies, if you
see vacancies with a lot of vague terms in it then it's
often more the Ivory Tower Architects and so really big
like if you want to do that role which also involves the
technical part and often I'm called a software architect the
name sometimes vary between companies as well, but I think
in general so for architect is a bit more Technical and things
like solution. Architect there are more
focusing on making the solution for Or a specific business
desire. And that's often a bit less
technical. So you have different roles of
Architects where you can choose from basically, and I still like
it that I can both influence long-term decisions while still
yeah. Feeling involved with day-to-day
work, basically. Yeah.
What I really like from that, is that you manage?
Your basically said, no, no, whatever you think is, right, is
how you fill it in, right? That's a very cool because then
you kind of also feel empowered, like, uh, I can just try this
out. I think it's this way.
You're probably right, right, because you're right in the
thick of it. Your manager is a bit more High
over and more overseeing and to get that trust and to be able to
execute in your own way. I think that's very cool.
Yeah. I think in general, it helps a
lot. If you have a manager who
trusting you and who let you do interesting stuff.
Yeah, and you have an interesting team to work with
then maybe it's not like I would maybe want to spend more time on
coding and less on, I don't know or writing Points or whatever.
Yeah, but still it's a nice. It's almost nicely imbalance and
it's a nice environment. So yeah why not stay there
basically? Yeah yeah I really like the
picture that we've kind of painted here in that when you
start from University find a company where you can still
grow, right? Because you need to keep
learning keep trying things out, right?
Either on the job or at home kind of experimenting doesn't
even need to be either technical or more High over more people
slide can be both, right? Can be right down the middle of
the lane, Even those different roles in kind of back-end and
front-end, or even full stack, try things out and see what kind
of fits with you, but make sure you are within a team that you
can still learn from other people, right?
And then just try things out, see where you end up reflect if
that's still the right way for you and otherwise shift, gears,
or just keep doing what you're doing?
Yeah, I love kind of the, the road that we've laid out.
Is there anything that's missing that you still would like to
share? Yeah, I think one thing that's
maybe also interesting is search for a company that supports you
in improving in various Ways, not only technical for instance.
I spent like a week and worked with the training for English
basically, so my English wasn't bad, but I was doing a lot of
presentations and writing articles and was like, I think I
can still improve it. And my company was like, yeah,
that's part of your job, simply do that awesome while it was
ridiculously expensive, but they gave me the room to do that and
I think people can grow in different directions.
So might need a bit more help with with their technical work,
so maybe with a bit more Like social skills or convincing
people or how you interact with people especially in a team.
You need to be a bit aware of how other people react to you
and how you shoot maybe communicate differently with
some kind of people. Yeah.
So make sure that you trained in different areas and not only the
technical part. Yeah, I love that, man.
Thanks for coming on Johan. Thanks a lot of fun.
I hope you had to yes, definitely thanks for having me
woman. We'll do this again sometime.
Yeah, definitely. Yawns everyone.
Leaders.