I’ll start a weekly newsletter called “The Liquid Engineer” next week. What does it mean and what will it cover? Read on or subscribe here if you’re sold already… 😂

❓What’s the meaning behind the name?

🫠 Liquid. Why is software called software? The term was coined in the mid-1900s in contrast to hardware, which is quite hard to change. So softness is related to the changeability and updateability of the code. Fun fact: This also explains the term firmware, the low-level software layer that controls hardware. It’s a special kind of software that’s a bit harder: firm.

Today, software encompasses a huge bandwidth of softness. You can still buy software on CDs and DVDs, especially games. This code never changes. You have apps on your computer or phone updated weekly or monthly. And you’re interacting with server-side software via your browser or app, updated 10s, 100s, or 1000s of times a day, e.g. on Google’s, Meta’s or Netflix’s servers.

So software is becoming more and more fluid, it is becoming liquid. But software is only one of the many interesting fields of engineering, and the same applies to almost all other fields. Zara, the fashion brand, produces clothes in Europe to speed up cycle phases and react quicker to demands and trends. Just to make one example, more to come in the newsletter.

⚙️ Engineer: Engineering is a huge part of my life. I always liked to create things. Engineering sounds like a very lonely job in front of the computer. Actually it’s a team activity involving a lot of communication with the team and customers. There is always the same process behind it, from building Lego to engineering huge software projects. It can be broken down into three steps:

💡 It starts with thinking about a possible solution to a hopefully real problem. This involves seeing the problem, identifying it as solvable with current technologies, and imagining a solution.

💪 Then comes the act of building, be it with tools and hands or a keyboard and computer. For most of us, it’s more rewarding to build with our hands. This is the addictive fun part, because you can get absurd amounts of flow state out of it.

🧐 Next is the testing phase, where we assess our solution. It’s never perfect, triggering the next thinking phase. And so the cycle continues.

Repeating this cycle leads to more sophisticated solutions. The time it takes to go through one full cycle has a huge impact on the quality of the solution.

❓What’s the newsletter about?

Now comes the confusing part: It will be about 3D printing! It’s a magical technology that makes mechanical engineering much more like software. It’s also a great visualization of how software principles spread into our everyday world.

Subscribe here, if you haven’t already!

Yes, I’m out, too. After over thirteen years at XING. What. A. Ride! Grab a coffee, this deserves a longer-than-usual goodbye post.

Back then in 2011, StudiVZ was dying, and almost everybody questioned my job choice. Thanks to Jochen Kramer for coaching me before the interview, explaining the XING culture and giving me confidence that this is the right fit. And thanks to Alexander Greim for hiring me and being my boss for the first 10 years.

📱 XING iOS App

We built and grew the XING iOS app from an agency-built dumpster fire to the most used contact point for the XING B2C brand. In just a few years, we built a great XING Mobile Team. The most fun team I ever worked with. Sorry, other teams. Despite building 3 products with the mobile web app, Android and iOS native apps, there was healthy competition and high respect for the others’ work. We helped each other when we broke the live environment again and celebrated our successes together.

Many engineers opposed native apps in the early years. Distributing software via app stores was wrong and archaic, killing the open web. The programming language Objective-C with all these brackets, really? With HTML5 just around the corner, it was also a totally useless effort to build this. The web would catch up anyway, and soon.

Turns out, there’s a difference between the most beautiful technology and what customers like to use. After years building frontend technologies, it’s still hard to explain why the web has such a cool tech stack yet makes it really hard to build beautiful products. But no flamewar today, please.

Also, it turned out it wasn’t a zero-sum game with only one winner. Mobile took the brand to places it could not go before. Mobile traffic peaks are usually right in the morning, in bed, at the breakfast table, during commute. The biggest peak is in the evening, on the couch, where you might be reading this post. A desktop experience couldn’t reach most users there. We extended the interaction time with the social network XING, benefiting the whole product.

🎨 XING Design System

Both my kids were born while I worked at XING. I couldn’t have picked a better employer for this time. Taking 6 months and then two years later 8 months of parental leave to share the care work with my wife? Coming back part-time after that? As a team leader? This was all not a problem at XING in 2016.

Fast forward to today, even 9 years later this feels like science fiction and voodoo and witchery altogether for most companies in Germany. While it’s gotten better for individual contributor roles, for leadership roles it’s still the simplest method to terminate even the most promising interviews: Just ask for part-time options. Try it if you want to get out of one early. It’s a topic for another post, but it illustrates the limited understanding of leadership in Germany where the leader is judged by the hours he contributes.

The design system team was a great chance to leave my iOS bubble and understand web and Android better. It was also my first leadership experience leading people on a technology they understand more than I. While this was scary at first, jumping over that cliff helped me become a more flexible leader. I could sense the team’s needs and adapt my style.

The promise of a design system is to hide platform differences and complexities, allowing a feature team to design once and build on all platforms easily. From a brand perspective, a strong corporate design and identity (CI & CD) are essential to stand out in the social media jungle.

Building this internal service team for all XING teams was fulfilling, despite more internal communication and stakeholder management than I would have ever expected. Creating consistency and a clear brand means fewer choices and less custom solutions. I hope nobody is still grumpy at me for some unpopular decisions back then.

🧮 XING Data Team

After ensuring each UI element, like a job recommendation, looked and felt the best it possibly could for years, the data team was a welcome break. Learning what made a recommendation climb to the top position was astonishing and underwhelming at the same time. There are no magic tricks in Data Science, just very solid engineering. I added more leadership styles to my skill set, including my favorite “I have no friggin idea what you’re doing, but keep explaining.”

🤔 What’s next?

So what’s next? I’m not looking for a new team yet. I have a few experiments planned, that I feel I need to do in the next months. Like my first weekly newsletter. Subscribe to the Liquid Engineer. It’s about how new technology hypes are born in general and 3D printing in specific. Your last chance to be someone who liked 3D printing before it was cool! 😎

I’m open for lunch or beers, just ping me!

KPIs are a business tool, only for the 9-5 grind? I thought so, too. Today, I love how they can create focus, also in the personal space. You can even communicate dependencies of goals clearly. I’ll use how I got into running last year as an example.

The obvious main KPI for the sport of running is to measure the distance each run and increase a bit each time. As a consequence, you will burn more calories and improve your fitness. Agreed, this sounds boring. When I started running, I chose 6 kilometers as my first goal distance. This was my thinking, put into a KPI:

🏃 KPI Attempt #1:
📈 Increase kilometers running per run from 6k to 10k over 3 months.

It’s boring because it often doesn’t reflect reality. We’re not machines that can output a few hundred more meters each run. Treating ourselves like that won’t get us the results we want.

It didn’t work at all. It was too much for my out-of-shape body, and I got severe headaches after each run. Instead of increasing my distance weekly, I found excuses not to start running. Instead of a trackable and empowering goal, I became demotivated.

I changed my running approach. Instead of focusing on kilometers, I focused on consistency first. Here, leading and lagging KPIs come into play. They capture a connection between indicators. Progress on the leading one will eventually move the lagging one:

🏃 KPI Attempt #2:
🔁 Leading KPI: Run weekly for 20 minutes for the next 3 months.
📈 Lagging KPI: Run 6k per week.

This became a better motivator. I felt good about running each week, even though the distances were short. It started to be fun! A bit later, I had enough energy to increase the distance.

After a year of running, I’ve made it a habit. I’m no longer tracking consistency because I want to run each week anyways. I am finally back at my initial KPI of increasing the distance. After all, our body is a bit like a machine, just a more complicated one…

Here’s what I learned:

💡 Start with one simple KPI. Treat it as a starting point and evolve it.
💡 KPIs need to work for you, too! Otherwise, they become a demotivator.
💡 If you can’t see progress on a KPI, consider adding a leading KPI.

After more than 12 years of working in software engineering, I decided I cannot live without my own blog anymore.

So here it is, let’s see where this goes.