 Is it on? Test? No, right? Now? Now? Yeah, OK, so it works. Thank you. That's right. Maybe one thing first, because I'm still a bit afraid of COVID, so maybe if the people around who have a mask would wear that, I would be really, really thankful because I can't have one, but you don't have to leave. So if you don't have any, it's fine just because the room is quite full and they don't feel too comfortable with that. Thanks. Then let's start. This is my session. One does not simply work in the management position and what I learned on my journey from them to CTO. And what I will not talk about in this session just to manage expectations. I will not talk how you become a CTO because I think that the definition of a CTO is really different from agency or company to company. So if you have a triple agency who wants the trooper mostly, does this sound weird or is it OK? Better, I would super the way. So if you're a triple agency and you work mostly with trooper, then probably your CTO will have some deep trooper knowledge. If you're working in a company with a lot of different technologies, then probably the CTO just have a rough overall vision about the technical things that are happening. Maybe the focus of the CTO is more on consulting or defining the strategy of the IT within the company. So I think that differs a lot. So it's not so easy to talk about how to become a CTO, especially because I only have my perspective. So I just work in this one agency. I can only talk about this one. So I think it wouldn't be of much use for the rest. What I will talk about is my professional journey. And then I have identified or tried to identify some areas that play the role throughout my professional journey. So they were relevant throughout all steps I was making to different extents. So some were more important in the beginning, some were more important in the end. But I think they are rather generic. And so I hope that you can also take something from this. I'm Lela Meyer. I'm the CTO at Cocomor. Cocomor is an agency for marketing, UX, and IT. And we have our headquarter in Frankfurt. We have about 180 people. We have an opposite also in Poland, in Spain, and a lot of people working in the movie. I'm also coming from Frankfurt, but from Mainz. What's close to Frankfurt? And yeah, about my professional journey. So I studied media informatics. And while I was still studying, I started to work at Cocomor as an intern. I was writing my master thesis there. And then I started with my first full employee contract in 2006. And since then, I've always stayed in the Cocomor. But might be that unusual, but for me it's totally fine. And throughout this way, first I want to say I was never somebody who has planned her career really. Like some people probably do this, that they know, OK, in three years I want to be there. In five years I want to be there. And in order to reach this, I need to do this step. I need to do that step, all these things. And that was never what I did. So for me, a lot of things happened accidentally. And they were not really planned. Some things were planned, but also more of a short term. And as you can see here, I had a lot of different roles during the time. So I started as a PHP developer. Then we started to work with Trupal. I don't remember the name, and I forgot to look it up. But it was with Trupal version 4, so it's already some years ago. I worked then as a Trupal developer. And then I had a lot of positions that were not clearly named. And we called it manager of software development. But in fact, I think it was roles like solution architect, technical business analyst, ITPM. So always being the person connecting development and management and clients and account management, but never really so clearly to grasp. In the meantime, I also took the number one more responsibilities. So I started to be responsible for the Trupal team. Then I was responsible for the software development team that I joined our executive board. And then in 2020, I became CTO. So I have mentioned these impacting areas in the beginning. And these are the parts that I have identified for myself that they always make me struggle at some points and play the role. So first is making a decision. The next one is being introvert. Then we have quite comfortable comfort zone that was not that easy to leave. Being a woman also played a role because in tech especially, you're always kind of a minority. And of course, the people around me. So in following slides, I now just want to go through each of these aspects and then always tell how it affected me. What I think, if you're in a position that you want to do next step in your career and you want to have a new role, what you could maybe do to navigate through these things is a bit easier. But also what you can do if you're a manager or a boss, how you can help your people to get a better deal with these things. So let's start just making a decision. OK. So you'll notice when you have new roles, a lot of new responsibilities are popping up. So you're doing something. And then, for example, you're becoming the lead dev in addition to just being a developer. You suddenly have to do time estimations. You are responsible for the project. You're the contact person for your technical or for your debt colleagues. And a lot of things are happening that didn't happen before. Maybe you need to write concepts or define architectures, tasks like that. If you're then becoming a technical manager, suddenly you have some responsibility for people. You have the team to deal with. You need to maybe hire these people who are recruiting, have budget discussions because you want to hire freelancers, all things like that. And you also probably get more into contact with some other department around. So when you're doing projects with other departments like design or whatever, you will probably have more interactions there. And then if you do another step, you become something like executive director, CTO, the task, stroke beaker again. So you are then leaving your safe IT space, but then you're rather connected also to the other areas of your company. You are more involved into finding a strategic vision of your company. You need to have other budget discussions because it's always more in the scope of the whole company. And the more of these things are coming up, the more complex it will get to make a decision. And I often felt like that, that I had two people hiding in my head, right, always saying, OK, I want to do that. But if I do that, I also need to do this. And do I want to do this? Can I do this? And it really wasn't that easy for me. And some of the decisions I always had to do, or I had to make throughout my journey, one big one was, do I want to give up coding? And maybe some people can relate, right, if you're a developer and then you're maybe taking over other tasks. So you're the one who's joined the client meetings. You're maybe the one who has been the project manager in all these things. And suddenly I end up to be the main contact person for everybody in these projects. I didn't find time to code anymore. You plant me in the beginning like 50% of the time you can do coding, the rest of the other stuff. But in the end, I only found time to do coding in the evening after everybody left and left me alone. So I reached that point where I needed to make this decision. That's right. So yeah, I had to make this decision. And it was not an easy one for me because I like to code. I think I was good at it. But yeah, there was no way to combine both things. And that was one thing. Another topic that was really hard for me was how to put a name tag on what I do. And as I said, I had many roles that were somehow in the middle and that were connecting people. And me in Germany, we say, girl for everything, what's maybe not the nicest expression, but it fits somehow. And I had a lot of discussions with my former bosses. They were always like, OK, Ella, but what do you want to do? And I was like, yeah, but I'm doing something, right? And it's needed and it's important. So why do I need to discuss, navigate through this, and then find out what I actually wanted? And then especially towards the end of the last career steps, it was also hard to decide if I can handle the responsibility and do I fit in certain positions? Can I come up to the expectations that people around me had? So if you're now in the same role that you say, OK, I want to do something new, I want to step up, what are things that you could do? So first of all, I think it's important that you are well informed. You should be aware what roles are out there, and you should know all aspects of a role. And this can even be that you don't only focus on the roles you're currently having in your company, but you could also have a look around, right? Look at shop portals, look what other companies are doing, talk with colleagues from other companies to see what roles are there, and are there maybe some roles that might fit to my needs? You should also check then, as I said, all aspects, because sometimes it's not obvious, sometimes only some tasks within a role are visible to the outside, and the rest is rather hidden because it's internal processes. Then, of course, think about what you want, about your strengths and your weak points, but also what you're interested in and what you're not interested in. Because it doesn't make sense if you invest in improving your weaknesses. If this is a topic you're really not interested in at all. You won't have any gain from that. It's also important, I think, to be honest to yourself. So don't think, okay, I want to become a manager. I don't like to deal with people, but well, that's part of the job, so I will just do it, because in the end, probably you will not be happy, and the people in your team probably won't be either if you have no fun in leading this team. And also, especially when you go maybe up into the higher positions, don't assume that you need to know everything in a role. So I had really some doubts when I had roles where I felt like, okay, now I should be the person with the deepest group of knowledge in the room, for example, but it's not like that. So there were always, especially when you stop coding, you're getting out of this business, and then there will be people who know more, and that's totally fine because you work together and they are part of your team. What you should ask for, so especially your manager or your boss, it's clear role descriptions and career paths. They should of course help you to find your interests, and they should also be open to find options that met your interests. And as a team lead, again, the career paths are important, and there I think it's really important to be detailed. So just don't just write, okay, lead the team, but put what is behind there. So what is it to lead a team? It's yeah, doing recruiting is having, I don't know, resource planning, put people on projects, find freelancers for this team, all these things are part of this role, and maybe that's not visible to the people who are interested in the role. So I think it's really important to define these career paths in a really detailed way so everybody knows what is it about. And also important, I think, is that you should offer different paths. So it might happen that the only option you have for somebody to get stepped up is that you can become a manager, but that should never be the only option. So if somebody is a really good developer and he wants to step up and he wants to be promoted, or she of course, sorry, then there should be an option for them, also if they don't want to manage the team. So maybe that can be like a software architect or something like this, but there should always be alternatives so that people don't have more than one option. And you should be open to adapt the roles. So if you have maybe the perfect candidate for a role, it might make sense, sorry, you have the perfect candidate except in one issue, for example, and we had this case once with somebody leading our creative department and it was really good in that, but he was really bad in organizing the team. So then it might still be an option to find then somebody who helps this person in doing this part they are not good at. So it can be perfect match, right? So the person, our creative director was then really good, he could do the creative stuff and he had somebody at hand who helped him with the other things and this other person felt also well with this. No, sorry. Yeah, and together with the team, you should help them to define their role and to get a realistic perception and you should be honest with them. So you shouldn't promote people just to make them happy because nobody will win anything out of this, right? If you don't think this person fits and you don't see way how to improve it in the long run, I think it doesn't make sense if you put them in a higher position. Next topic is getting out of your comfort zone. And the comfort zone is defined as a zone where you can do your work in a quite easy state because you know what to do, nothing unexpected is happening, there might be a lot of things coming so you still might feel some stress but it's always some kind of work that you have under control. Oh, sorry. But it was found out that to reach the optimal performance zone, you always need to be in a slight level of stress. So if you want to learn something new and I think you can relate, if it's something you don't know yet, you will feel somehow stressed and that's totally fine and it's totally normal because then you will reach your optimal performance level. I'm sorry, I'm always clicking in the wrong direction and I don't know why. But be careful because you also have the danger zone. So as soon as you overstep this, stress levels are getting too high, you might feel really anxious and then you are not productive anymore. And this is a good example of what I felt in the beginning of the session so that definitely was the danger zone. I hope that I get slowly to the optimal performance zone but I think I'm not there yet. Yeah, about me. So getting out of my comfort zone definitely meant coding and you can also see here, it's always good to have a boss that slightly pushes you in one direction but ideally not too much. Some other topics besides stopping, stop to code was like doing time estimations in the beginning of my career that was something what really stressed me and made me crazy when my bosses asked me to do time estimations. Joining client meetings is also something I, I'm really not the happiest to do so yet. I mean, got used to it but still it's not my favorite thing and there are still pitches or things that are really important and really big where I definitely need to get out of my comfort zone. As I just mentioned, holding presentations is something I really don't like and no matter how big or small the setting is so I always will get nervous about that but practice helps a bit and also like giving direct feedback to people. So criticized people talking about unpleasant topics is also something I still need to learn and that's always like feels like getting out of my comfort zone. As a team member, so you have now made up your mind and you know what you want to do in order to get a new role and then of course you also need or you will know what you need to do what you still need to learn to improve and then therefore you should define the goals, how you can get there and these goals will lead you out of your comfort zone but it's really important that you define small steps and you don't want to do everything at once. Like now with doing the presentation at the TrooperCon ideally you start to have a small presentation in your team with some internal knowledge sharing that maybe you can have a presentation with your whole company, with local Trooper groups, with national Trooper groups. So just do it step by step and don't do everything at once. Avoid to get into the panic mode so if you feel really overwhelmed with something don't be afraid to talk about it. So if you think, okay, this step was now too bad just take a step back, talk with your boss about it and find other ways how you can reach this goal and don't lose your goals out of sight during daily business and I think this also happens quite often. That also happened for me now. I wanted to do some presentation training before the con to feel a bit better, to feel a bit more safe but everything was so stressful around that I didn't manage to do this and I think that also often happens if you have these goals that it's easier to stay in the comfort zone because you know what to do, right? And then you just do your daily work and you don't care about the goals. So try to put them down somewhere ideally with your boss and that's also the next step. Keep track of them and ensure that you really follow these paths. Ask for feedback from your boss but also from your colleagues. So if you're doing something you didn't do before that's new from you, you can only improve if you get feedback from people. Ask also for training. So if there are bigger things coming up that you're not used to, there should be some training budget and the company should be interested in helping you to improve this. So this has totally led to ask for that and also really important to ask for a fallback option I think. So like trees mentioned tomorrow in the trees note, right? That should always be a two-way door and I think that's the same here. It should always clear but for both sides that you can step back. So if you don't feel comfortable in the new role it would be stupid if you had to leave, right? Because you have been good in your previous role and then if you say, okay, this is all too much let me return to my role and then we can maybe find other options, that's fine. But it should also be the other way around if your boss thinks that you maybe not come up to this and the things are getting too complex and too complicated then it should also be an option to say, okay, let's take one step back and then see if we find another way. As a team lead, yeah, provide trainings, don't forget soft skills. I think often or at least that's something we experience we focus on rather training on the real technical matter for example but we forget that we should also do trainings for team lead for doing presentations, communication trainings, conflict solving. So there are a lot of things around especially if you're stepping into manager positions where it could make sense to really have some trainer joining the company and help to learn this. You should have an open failure culture and therefore I think it's also important that you as a boss also talk about your own failures, your own failures so that people know that it's not bad if something is not working at first. And together with your team members, as I said before you should try to define the goals with them. You should split the goals into small steps. I think it's helpful to push people a bit. So for example, I remember the first RuPaul events I never wanted to join because I was afraid of people and I was scared about these meetings so many new peoples all together and my previous boss back then he was like not saying you have to go there but he was slowly pushing me in this direction and that helped a lot, right? So I think some small pushes might be good but don't try too hard. Yeah, and ensure that the team understands your reasons behind these goals so it doesn't make much sense if you have some plans for the people and they don't understand where this is coming from so why do you suddenly bring them in an uncomfortable situation, right? They always should understand the reasoning behind that. And provide feedback, as I said before that's really important that people can grow. Next topic is don't let being an introvert stand in your way and there are studies that say that one of the biggest barriers to step up the career ladder is not a lack of technical knowledge or experience but it's rather that you're an introvert, you're lacking self-confidence or you're suffering from imposter syndrome. And these studies I won't go into details but you can see there that the general population is split into half and half between introverts and extroverts and you can see the further you go up the career level the less introverts are around there. So even from the first step mostly extroverts will be promoted and will take over higher positions. What's the problem? Yeah, and that's again me before the presentation started, right, I think if I had the ring I would have put it. And I've been dealing with this since always so I was always too quiet and too shy still in school. I remember in Germany, I don't know if it's everywhere like that but we have crates for written exams but also oral crates and my written notes where I was really, yeah, really good. My oral crates were really, really bad so it was always failing as this in this. And now also at work, a lot of people in my team but also colleagues from other departments or other directors are louder, they are more aggressive and it feels harder for me to not be overlooked and it's not that easy like it seems to be for others. But luckily there were people who still saw some potential in me and I think this is really, really crucial and that's really where the managers play a big, big role. So I had my boss back then who saw that even so I was the quietest one in the team and there was not much telling about what I did or how I did my work but he seems to have realized something in me, right, that I was good in this position in between, that I could talk with people. Also I was so shy but I managed to get to something, the connections between things. So he put me in this manager software development position and that was a really important starting point for me and I'm always wondering what would have happened if he hadn't done this because yeah, that was really lucky at this point and I think the role of the manager of the boss in this position is really important. For yourself and I know that it's easily said, right, believe in yourself and be open if you have doubts or worries and voice your ideas and expectations, trust in yourself and your capabilities but if this problem is really, really strong, you should also try to learn more about the topic because yeah, there are a lot of articles, books, everything and you can get help outside. So if you really suffer from being introvert and you are not able to express your feelings and it's not like, yeah, now I believe in myself, of course it's not that easy, right, so and if you have the feeling that you could need some support there, try to get the support and you should always ask for what you want so you shouldn't expect people to just assume that it is like this and I had this also in many conversations with people in my teams where I was like, yeah, why did you never tell and they were like, yeah, I thought it was clear but it's not, right, so often it's not clear, maybe also your manager or your boss is too stressed out and they don't realize things or maybe it's not that clear for them because they're always different perceptions even on the same point, so say what you want and tell that to people. Ask for support if you have the feeling that you need to get out of this introvertness, ask for the space and the setting you need and what's also important in my opinion is that the goal is not to make an extrovert out of you. I think we introverts are fine and we should of course get to a point where we can communicate but it's not the goal, at least not for myself, to become the queen of small talk somewhere, right? So it's not the goal that you're suddenly entering a room and are, yeah, I don't know, I don't know the English word but you know what I mean, I guess. As a boss, as I said, I think it's really important that you have a look on the quiet ones and don't overlook them. You should check that you're not get blinded by people who can just sell themselves really well because I think that often happens that people who are good in selling themselves and what they are doing, they are also perceived as people who do the better work and it's often not like that. You should provide a safe place for the people and you should also talk openly about yourself, doubts and worries to give the people in your team the better feeling and make them understand that they are not alone. Together with the team member, you should ensure that the quiet people have the chance to talk and to be seen. You can do this, for example, if you have recurring meetings where everybody's saying something that you maybe really put a name behind this person who's saying something so that each week, each month, somebody else can say something or like classical ways doing retrospectives, right? Where everybody can give their opinion so that you don't risk that there are people in your team who never say anything because they just feel fine like that but then their voices get lost and I think that would be sad. You should define goals that can be measured to compare people's work so that you don't run into the trap that you think always the best selling person is delivering the best work. You should recognize people's accomplishments because usually extroverts to their own horn, as you say and introverts don't. So if they don't tell about what they are doing good then you should tell about it. So that also other people in the team recognize hey, this people is doing good work. He or she is not talking about it but they are doing something of value here and I think that's important. You should establish feedback processes and there, for example, we started something that we had 360 at the end of the year where we asked the people to assess themselves and also to the colleagues from the IT department but also people from other departments they work with together. So then you get really feedback from all areas and that often comes out that the people assess themselves worse than the rest of the team assesses them. So it really shows that people often think from themselves that they are worse like they actually are and these kind of feedback really helps also the people I think to get to see how others see them and maybe also get some more safe service team. And you should adapt your behavior. So if you know that somebody is an introvert or need more that time or need more time then maybe don't call them or run to the desk and ask for something immediately but rather send them an email, say, look, I would like to know that and that, can I come by tomorrow? Can we talk tomorrow? Can you answer me for mail? Just give people some space if you know that they need it. And being a woman or part of a minority, I mean, I can only talk about being a woman here, right? So I think some of these cases apply then to being part of other minorities but also being a white woman still is quite privileged so I will really focus on this being a woman part. And there are studies again showing that at entry level women and men are quite equal but then as soon as you step up even to the first manager level there are less women promoted than men and that of course then has an effect for the whole development because the balance will always be unequal and it will just get bigger and bigger the further you get up. I wish it would always feel like this to be the only woman in the group or maybe just some. Unfortunately it doesn't but I must also say that I was in general really lucky so with my colleagues, with my bosses in general I always felt well I never felt discriminated or anything. Maybe in the bigger setting I sometimes have the feeling that there's more pressure on me but of course I cannot validate if it's because I'm a woman if it's because I'm introvert or with just my perception but that's something I sometimes feel. I also have the feeling that I'm challenged more often so I have been in meetings with clients that have an IT department with other agencies and then people hear that I'm the CTO and I'm saying okay I'm not that deep into the technical topic so if you want detailed feedback on that and that please we need to ask our developers and I get tons of questions about technical details and I can always just say I told you before I cannot answer that and I'm not sure if this is because I'm a woman or if these people are just not nice people but this happened more than once and then this is something that feels not that good. On a smaller scale I have the feeling I'm interrupted more often. I often heard especially in the beginning to do things that are not directly related with my job like taking the notes in meetings that's often the woman that is assigned this task to if there's a birthday that needs to be organized some event if there's a conflict within the team Illa can solve this because hey you are the girl no right and then this is really something that's not nice to experience and my favorite example was my first Trooper event I joined and the first question I got from somebody I didn't know was if I'm the girlfriend of one of the developers and that was really frustrating but that was already some years ago so I hope that this wouldn't happen anymore. So if you're a woman and or part of a minority if you recognize bias then you should talk about it and you should point out discriminating behavior. You should find an alley and people like you something that's similar like before like tooting your own horn, talk about your successes so that you're more visible and people see the value you bring. Talk also about your feeling if you're not comfortable in situations. So I mean sometimes there were meetings when I was the only woman in the rule it really felt weird and then if you had the next meeting in this session I just asked to bring somebody from another department just to bring this person there so that I didn't feel like the one person that's sticking out just because I was a woman. So I think that's totally legit to think about something like that. Again, if you feel treated unfairly it's like with the introverts you should ask for measurable metrics to measure your progress. You should ask for actions and consequences so when you're complaining about something don't let anybody play these complaints down, right? It doesn't help if you go to somebody and you say hey, I feel discriminated by this and this behavior and then your boss is saying yeah, this person is always like this, ha ha ha. No, that shouldn't be like that, right? So that should be consequence and at least somebody should talk with this person and point this out and you should get support. So from your boss, if your boss is not helpful then from HR or from other senior colleagues if you have the feeling that you don't get any support from anybody in your company then I would say it's probably not the best place to work at. As a team lead, you should build a diverse team. So the more diverse the team is the less the people will be a minority and the less that will be an issue. And for doing this I think it helps to add different perspectives to the hiring process so bring more people that maybe belong to this minority even if they are not directly from this team but it can really help to bring an additional perspective. Also do like assessment centers so that people have to fill a case or something that you can just can put next to each other and see how people perform and then decide who might be the best fitting person without having bias. Ensure that people are treated equally and support minorities. Also important, flexible working environment. So at least in Germany we still have this issue that a lot of women stay at home more often to take care about the children and they cannot come back full time to work and then it's really hard to find positions that might fit them and that keeps them at some career level. And one option for example is what we did is that we said okay, there's a role we need to fill quite a high level role. Let's just put it with two women who work half time both because they are at home to care about the children half time but they can totally find fill this work together. Of course it's a little more overhead but still you can do something to make things possible for people. Also if like I, for example I started to work only 80% some years ago, three years I think. So even before I became the CTO and still I had the option to become the CTO at Kokomo which was really good I think because it's not natural that you get these things and it really helps you to make people happy, to keep good people so try to be flexible. And as mentioned before avoid the typical pitfalls and don't assign to women always the housework that happens in the office. I think I mentioned more or less everything like that don't play complaints down, provide metrics and provide feedback and the people around. There again some studies saying that interpersonal relationships play a really big part nearly like 40% about how happy people are in their job and there the relationships with management are the biggest role and then the relationship with the co-workers. I would not really see that for me the relationship with the management is the most important but the relationship with the team is equally important as well. So without the team I wouldn't be where I am now and I'm really, really thankful for the people there and a lot of steps I wouldn't have done then if I wouldn't have known that the people would support me and that they will have my back if I want to apply for this role or ask for this role. So yeah, a team is important but also of course the bosses and I was lucky with many of them as I mentioned before like my first one they recognized but also others recognized my abilities and they pushed me in the right direction but in the amount that it still felt comfortable for me. We also had bosses that I wasn't that happy with but in the end it also helped in some way because you can realize what you don't like what you would different and at some points at least for me that was like giving me the final push to ask for a position. So when it was about leading the software development team we had somebody who maybe didn't feel that well and for me the final push was then really that I thought okay before I get somebody else who's like that I can do that better. So that finally gave me the courage to ask for something. So everything makes sense somehow in my opinion and that about that. The next slides, yeah they are rather semaries of the previous topics because people are involved in everything I talked about, right? So you should always ask your boss for guidance and support, you should ask for goals, you should ask for regular check-ins and feedbacks but you should also give your boss feedback as well and for once and more important give them feedback if you're not happy with something and if you want things to change but give also feedback when you are happy and if you're satisfied with something, how it's going because bosses sometimes are happy if they get some nice feedback too. And for the managers or the bosses have no communication on eye level and provide a safe space, be empathetic, care about the people, provide guidance, meaning but also important ask if they can support you and I think that's also giving purpose and meaning. So people are usually happy to help. I mean of course it shouldn't be like you're asking for help, people are doing the work and then you pretend that it's your work, that's not how it should be but when you're open and say okay it isn't this person, maybe it's that, people will be happy to contribute and help you. And really quickly just some tools we are using and that can help, it's like the regular one to one meetings and that's something that should never be canceled ideally. No matter how stressful times our talk with the people in your team and make this time available for the people. The 360 reviews I just mentioned, we started to stay interviews so we usually have exit interviews when people are leaving but then we thought at some point well we should maybe do the same kind of interviews when the people are still there to find out what are they happy with. If they would leave in two years, what would most likely be the reason why they would be leaving, to really dig a bit deeper and not just have this regular, regular, oh god, regular, yearly meeting where you talk more about concrete processes in the next step but keep it a bit more open. What I mentioned in the beginning, the job profiles and the career passes and then regular trainings are also important. And that's it, thank you very much and if there are here the contribution opportunities and it would be great if you can fill the session survey and if there are any questions I will happily try to answer them. Thank you. There are no questions on the app, anybody? Thank you very much for the talk. It's pretty sure it's inspiration for many. Thank you. And it's personally for me. I think I've been struggling with some of that and I'm still struggling with, I don't know, 70% of it, but you inspire me to keep going. I noticed that it's not easy to notice, for example, with some bias. When you are not, when you are, it's inside that bias, it's not always easy to know that you are in that situation. My question is, during your career path did you consider to change companies or change technology or make some pivots and what kept you in one company for so long? Yeah, I mean, I thought about it, of course, but it was never really concrete, I must say. So, and that is also how the company, how Cocomor developed. So when I started there, we've been like an eight people agency. So it was really, really small. Everybody was really close. I was the intern for the IT. So I was dealing with the server room. I was doing admin tasks. I changed the backup up, I don't know how it was called, the cassettes. So I did a lot of stuff when I started and then the development was just huge. So from the technical perspective, a lot of things happened in this time, like in the beginning we all worked with FTP and suddenly you had version control, right? And so things never get boring and then that happened throughout the day. The team crew, we opened the office in Spain, what is really something, it's my favorite team and no, I cannot say this, cut this out. But really that was something, there was always something new happening that gave me enough reason to actually stay there. Yeah. Yeah, let me start by thanking you for the talk. It was very inspiring. My question is, how do you know, or how do you kind of find out when you're going in the wrong path and when do you know that you maybe need to take a few steps back? Because that's not you, not the right direction. I think one thing is the feedback of course from people, if you have more and more conversations where you're discussing about the direction and get some hints how you could improve it that maybe points out then for you, I think the most is if you feel too stressed and if this level of stress is permanent and you don't find a way out of this. So you go home in the evening or you shut down your computer and you're still thinking about the stuff. So that were things that kept my mind busy throughout the night, throughout the weekend, every time. And then you know, okay, maybe this is a bit too much on my plate and maybe I need to change something about that. But again, that's just personal, right? So I don't know with this stuff. Thank you very much for an inspiring talk. You talked a lot about measuring the performance objectively so that you can level the playing field and could you give a few examples of what kind of metrics you use for that? In fact, we are not too well. So there are no general metrics. So we have for example, like in the development team, we take care that we do regular code reviews and then we have these kind of things that we see that what people are delivering fits well in other teams like the project management team. I think there it's more that we see how close people stick to processes and that we do then the regular project controlling where we then find out how projects are going and then there we can realize if this, for example, problem we have with the project manager because they don't manage the project team well, but it's not really something too concrete. I'm afraid. Sorry, Ben. Yeah, so it's a more qualitative rather than quantitatively. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But measure it as a single value. Yeah. Nice speech, actually. Thank you. To be honest, more than nice, it's a good one. My question is, you mentioned a lot that you're a woman and in your position like a CTO, which is really high, you probably have to be sometimes a bit harsh or maybe mad or maybe serious. Serious when you get a decision. I mean, you should have a strong word. How you're doing that, being a woman. No, you're probably, here are some secrets, maybe. No, I think it's just, it can be harsh and it can argue a lot, even if I maybe don't give this impression, but I'm also fighting a lot. I mean, especially for the interest of my team, of the IT, so I really don't shy back from any discussions or any fights also in the executive board, but that's something you really need to grow into, right? So I wasn't like that from the beginning and you just grow with your role and then sometimes you need to really force yourself, but then you always have to keep in mind that's in the interest for the team. So if I fail, maybe people on the team will have a better standing and that's usually what keeps me going because it really sounds cheesy, but the team is the most important and what keeps me there because I'm so happy with them. So if I know, if I know don't have this argument, we will lose, I mean, that sounds, we are not fighting, right? So we also like each other cross departments, but it feels like I will lose and then also the team will lose and that's something, of course, I don't want to have and that gives me usually the push to have those discussions and also the hard ones. So you began as a developer. Do you ever made or fail the need of a management formation or something like this to learn how to manage people because it's a full job? Yeah, I think we should do and this is something we are actually not really good at at Kokomo, so we often hope that people just know how to do this and with some it's working fine and with some it isn't, but I think really that it should be like that, that you have trainings for managing people. I mean, of course you can also self educate yourself. There are tons of books probably around, right? Something we, everybody reads at our company and it's Radical Kendor, how you provide feedback, how you are open, what you talk about, but yeah, you should have some kind of training for that ideally, I would say. That's a question? That's fine. Thanks a lot all, it's really happy that you came here.