I'm a tech lead building enterprise software products at SAP Signavio. In my spare time, I work on Songcoach.ai, a song practice app for ambitious singers.
Projects · How I work · Tools · Productivity · Skills · Routine · Books · Personal
Born in 1984 close to Passau, Germany.
Got my first computer for Christmas in 1990, a Commodore Amiga 500. I wasn't able to do much with it besides playing games and drawing stuff. But I was hooked on computers ever since.
I was a competitive rower during my teenage years. My highest achievement was being the runner-up at the German Indoor Rowing Championship. 💪
At the age of 16, I incorporated my first business called "German Intertrade" from my childhood room: buy PCs on ebay and re-sell them locally with a margin.
Taught myself how to program dynamic websites with PHP and MySQL in Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Built my first website, allowing peers from school to upload pictures and comment on them. Think of it as a pre-facebook built as a hack on top of phpBB.
Excited about this new skill set, I wanted to professionalize and learn TYPO3 (a popular CMS in Germany back then) to earn money as a "webmaster". However, I found TYPO3 to be ultra-complicated to implement and use.
So I started to build the "alexo Impresario", a CMS that was more user-friendly and allowed me to create and operate websites for customers.
Left my parents' home and moved to Berlin to study economics (and go clubbing). Stopped going to university after 3 weeks, realizing quickly that I was done with teachers telling me what to do.
I dedicated myself to further develop the Impresario and turn it into a viable business. However, as I was not a programming wizkid, I had to learn software development the hard way. With little knowledge and no guidance, things turned pretty bad.
By the end of 2005, I didn't have a single customer and was 20k EUR in debt. My parents started to question my life choices. But I refused to give up and go back to university.
Fun fact: during that time, I also applied at different theatre acting schools because I wanted to learn the craft. At one audition in Berlin, I got rejected, and the jurors made fun of me because I was struggling to speak standard German without my Bavarian accent. This experience finally made me decide to become an engineer, so I would be judged on merits instead of appearance.
My career took a turn for the better. I finally sold the Impresario to a few customers and started earning money! Within a year, I was able to pay back my debts and make a living.
I remember the summer of 2006 when the World Cup took place in Germany, and people were just cheerful all over the place. It remains one of the best times in my home country, particularly in Berlin.
As I matured as a developer, I increasingly realized the pointlessness of building a proprietary CMS. Free and superior open-source alternatives had been on the rise, and one, in particular, had caught my attention: Drupal.
Killing your own product that you've poured so much time, energy and hope into hurts (even today). Yet, by betting my cards on Drupal, a new chapter in my career had opened.
Fulfilled a dream of mine and went to live in San Francisco for a few months where I had one of the best times of my life. But the city was just too damn expensive.
I actually went broke during this time as I lost my only client due to the global financial crisis. Had to live on pasta for weeks and slept on friends' couches.
Through my network at Citizen Space, I got an interview for a consultant gig at Zappos. Got flown into Las Vegas and had lunch with Tony Shea and his CTO, which felt completely unreal. I screwed up the technical interview afterwards, as I wasn’t able to simply say “I don’t know” to some questions, instead of bullshitting the interviewer.
With my financial situation worsening even more, I almost accepted a gig to work on a porn site once. Glad I didn't do it.
Shortly after that, Jaspersoft reached out to me and asked me for help with their website relaunch. This gig not only saved me financially, but it also made me grow as a freelance software engineer, handling a US client for the first time. I've never had any trouble finding new gigs since then.
Back in Berlin, I moved into co.up coworking space and became friends with the founders of Cobot. These guys were years ahead of me with their development practices and introduced me to this new site called GitHub, teaching me how to create PRs, how to do test driven development, and encouraged me to do more public speaking.
At the same time I got more and more involved with the Drupal community where I enjoyed the camaraderie of other developers. Memories of my lonely years of working as an inexperienced solo-founder started to fade away.
Discovered a book about Flow Psychology, which changed my perspective on life and product forever. I found a new purpose as an entrepreneur in building software that would (somehow) help people “live a life in flow” and become happy.
The idea was as fluffy as it sounds, and therefore, the project wasn't going anywhere for a couple of years. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the autonomy of working on my own side projects while the freelance business kept getting stronger every year.
I saw Michael Phelps swim like a demigod at the London Olympics and decided that I finally wanted to learn freestyle swimming myself.
When I started out, I was completely exhausted after swimming only two lanes. My coach Holger then taught me how to relax my arms between each stroke and keep a correct posture, which made all the difference.
By the end of 2012, I did my first short-distance triathlon in the open sea in Barcelona. My biggest athletic achievement ever since the rowing championship in 2000.
Just for fun, I started taking lessons with a vocal coach. These 5 or so lessons turned out to have a profound impact on where I would later channel my entrepreneurial energy: music.
In the summer of 2013, I permanently relocated from Berlin to Barcelona as I was eager to live abroad, learn Spanish and enjoy the Mediteranian lifestyle. Barcelona would become my home for the next 6 years and the place where I met the love of my life.
Instead of hanging out on the beach however, I spent the first 9 months behind a screen, cranking out code and building the new ARTE Concert website together with a team of three other developers that I had just met at a local coworking space.
This gig was bigger than anything I had ever worked on before and it pushed all of us to go beyond our limits. Moreover, it taught me how to take ownership and work effectively in a team.
Yet the best thing about it, was the beginning of a long and successful collaboration with Kreuzwerker, the Berlin-based IT consultancy that had reached out to me for help with the ARTE Concert relaunch. Over the following years, Kreuzwerker would constantly hire me for more freelance work and give me the opportunity to grow into a leadership role.
Motivated by the positive feedback from my vocal coach, I became more ambitious in building up a repertoire of songs that I could perform on stage. I had also learned the basics of deliberate practice for improving my skills. Before that, I would just perform a song from start to end, enjoying myself but not making much progress.
However, the inconveniences of deliberate practice quickly started to frustrate me. Searching for specific sections in a song to practice, manually rewinding the player over and over again, recording myself, playing it back, taking notes, etc. – it wasn't a very fluid process.
What I craved was a way to fully focus on my practice without constantly having to push buttons and adjust sliders, so I could enter a flow state and improve more efficiently.
And that's when it "clicked": music practice was going to be the new focus of Flowra, my second attempt at building a software product.
Within two weeks, I've finished the first prototype. It allowed me to loop a section of a song simply by clicking on the song lyrics. Using Flowra for the first time myself felt awesome, as it actually improved my practice experience. So I sensed that I might be onto something with this thing.
At that point, I should have just released this crappy but functional prototype and started talking to other users. But instead...
I kept on building more features, in the true spirit of a developer who was afraid that their solution wasn't perfect and people wouldn't find it valuable enough yet.
I was also facing a learning curve in building a Single Page Application (SPA) for the first time. The concept of client-side state management was new to me and the early Angular.js framework wasn't doing a particularly good job at preventing noobs from building a low-performant mess.
Over time though, I got the hang of it and Flowra had turned into solid software. It was ready for launch!
Moreover, Kreuzwerker contracted me to help them build a "Zappier for AI services". My newly gained experience from building SPAs came in handy for this. The project also exposed me to building serverless backends for the first time. I would never go back to building a Drupal website ever again.
My daughter got born and life changed forever. Family became the most important thing in my life and all of my other aspirations had to take a step back.
By the end of 2018, I relocated my little family from Barcelona to Passau. After living abroad for 6 years and being away from home for 15 years, I felt the need to return and live closer to my parents.
Back in Passau, I moved into the Inn.kubator coworking space. One of the coaches there encouraged me to apply for the MediaLab Startup Fellowship, a Munich-based startup accelerator. And Flowra got in!
Meanwhile, I was joined by my girlfriend and a marketing intern who built an audience on social media and grew Flowra's song catalog. It felt wonderful to finally have a team and work on your own product full-time. But balancing startup work with family life was also a constant struggle.
In the accelerator programme, among other advancements, I learned how to interview customers. Through these interviews, I discovered what the product was lacking to possibly find true product-market-fit. Unfortunately, we wouldn't get the chance to execute on these findings.
As a global pandemic started to shake up the world, our accelerator stopped funding us. I was quite frustrated about this, but had an even stronger will to continue our path.
My girlfriend was already pregnant for the second time when this happened. Then we got the news that would turn my life completely upside down: we were having twin boys!
After a couple of weeks in shock, I finally got my act together and made a few hard decisions: instead of moving my family into a slightly bigger apartment, I'm going to build a house for us. For this, I had to stop working on my startup immediately and start earning as much money as I could right away.
In July, my girlfriend and I got married, just ten days before our boys were born.
The toughest year of my life so far.
A two-year old toddler and two baby twins at home.
A global pandemic in full swing.
Funding, planning and supervising the construction of our new house.
All while working as the sole responsible engineer on a website with 14M page views per month.
I remember falling asleep during a SCRUM meeting once with my camera turned on and waking up when everyone else had already left the meeting.
Joined the excellent t-online.de front-end engineering team for a while and learned how to work on large React codebases.
Still disappointed about my departure from Flowra in 2020, I started to reflect more about my mistakes and weaknesses as an entrepreneur. Discovered the notion of “product engineer” and read The Effective Engineer.
Received an offer from SAP to join as engineering lead of an innovation team. Working on enterprise software at a big tech corporation had never been on my mind until then. Yet, I was intrigued by the opportunity work in product innovation. All I sought, after all, was autonomy to build products on my own.
Moreover, I felt ready to switch from individual contributor into a team lead role.
And it turned out to be the right decision at the right time: just as capable Large Language Models hit the engineering mainstream in 2023, my team was set up and had the mandate to figure out what to do with this new technological marvel.
We learned fast and were among the front-runners at SAP to build non-trivial prototypes.
Yet, the biggest win this year for us was the innovation of a completely new product that leverages AI to save SAP customers time and money in their onboarding process. (I might get into trouble for sharing this publicly, but yolo!)
Towards the end of 2023, I’ve finally found some time on the side again to pick up the remains of Flowra. On December 23rd, I re-launched Flowra.com as Songcoach.ai.
It's a fresh start on a modern stack that allows me to build for web, iOS and Android with a single codebase. More importantly, however, Songcoach will serve as my personal playground to become better at product engineering.
I won't have the time to build and maintain many features. But I do have some time to talk to customers, understand their real needs and make Songcoach the best product for them. Even if it's just 10 customers who love the product, I'm happy AF.
2003 - 2007 bootstrapped alexo Impresario CMS.
2006 ShareYourEmotions.org community website for the world cup in Germany built on Impresario.
2006 - 2008 Hypoxi websites and partner extranet built on Impresario.
2009 Sanitation-Is-Dignity.org campaign site.
2009 Jaserpersoft.com website relaunch with Drupal.
2009 - 2011 Actency.fr Drupal-based software product.
2011 Zoobe.com Drupal consulting.
2011 Published article about Drupal 7 in PHPmagazin.
2011 Public talk about Behavior-Driven-Development at DrupalCamp Berlin.
2011 Released 3 new OS Drupal modules.
2012 REN21.net Drupal-based peer review application.
2012 Public talk about BDD and Flow Psychology at DrupalCamp Essen.
2012 SQUIN web application to help smokers quit, built on Drupal.
2013 RedbullFlugtagUsa.com Drupal-based microsite-builder.
2013 umweltbundesamt.de interactive application for visualizing air pollution data.
2013 - 2014 concert.arte.tv Drupal development in a team of 4.
2014 - 2015 ARTE Site Factory – another Drupal-based microsite-builder.
2014 - 2019 bootstrapped flowra.com web app for singers to deliberately practice songs, built on MEAN stack.
2016 INA Drupal-based editorial publishing system.
2016 - 2017 DKT Flows and Flows Engine - Zappier for AI services built on (new) Angular and serverless AWS.
2018 Seachefs – HR management software for cruise ships, built on React and AWS.
2019 worked on flowra.com as part of the MediaLab Accelerator cohort.
2020 Raisin Bank banking-as-a-service API built on serverless AWS.
2020 - 2021 Planning and building my house.
2020 - 2022 t-online.de/wetter high-traffic weather site built on Next.js and AWS.
2022 t-online.de Re-launch of Germany's 2nd biggest news portal as part of their front-end engineering team.
2022 Built my terrace deck.
Since 2022 working at SAP as tech lead of an innovation team (watch video).
Since 2023 building Songcoach.ai with React Native and Supabase.
Before I think about a solution, I make an effort to better understand the perceived problem at hand. The best solution doesn’t require writing any software at all.
When writing code, I have the reader in mind. The person should be able to understand my implementation and design choices without any prior context knowledge. This manifests in good naming, good abstractions and keeping the README up-to-date at all times, so anyone can run the software locally.
Unless the codebase is huge and has many contributors, aiming for high test coverage in my opinion is a waste of engineering time. TypeScript and linters have made developing high-quality software much more attainable, allowing you to refactor code with confidence. Automated tests however do make sense for covering the core user flows and edge cases of an application at an integration level.
When I work as tech lead, one of my main concerns is to anticipate hidden complexities and avoid them wherever possible. I’ve worked on too many codebases (some of them my own), that grew into an unmanageable mess due to lack of technical leadership.
When I review PRs, I expect the engineer who requested my review to make my life easy by:
I celebrate when code gets deleted from the codebase (especially code that I own myself).
I love working with UX designers that have a genuine interest in figuring out a solution to a user problem together with me, bringing talents to the table that I don’t have - especially if the designer has a knack for good copywriting.
I enjoy working with product managers that excel at filling a pipeline of validated user problems, not writing ticket specs for me.
I thrive working with talented junior engineers who learn fast and are good communicators by nature. Being able to speak English fluently and listen carefully is a must-have requirement. Being a React ninja isn’t.
When I interview candidates for a position, I ask them to explain code written by them that they’re proud of. This usually leads into a discussion that shows me how candidates think and how well they’re able to explain their decisions. I get to see their development environment and I might even ask them to implement a small change in their project (which is fairer than some artificial live coding challenge).
I expect everyone in my team to take ownership of their work. If I commit to a feature, I’m responsible for bringing it into production and taking care of any regressions, regardless of the experience level.
In functional teams, everybody helps each other out to achieve a common objective like a sprint goal or a release. This works best if the committed workload leaves room for unexpected blockers. Which in turn requires thoughtful planning: let’s think harder about this beforehand and come up with a simpler/cheaper solution with a similar impact.
I'm done with working in project teams that mindlessly practice SCRUM cargo cult; it makes me suffer and I don't want it in my life any longer. Instead, I seek to work in teams that practice something similar to the Shape Up approach.
I enjoy the occasional public speaking engagement to represent my employer. My primary focus however is to deliver working software on time and budget.
I am using quantitative and qualitative data to inform my decision making. But I also rely on my gut feeling, especially when there's not enough data available yet.
I mentor and would like to be mentored. So please get in touch!
I generally have a no-bs attitude and prefer candid talk. At the same time, I respect people’s feelings and make an effort to never criticize someone personally.
I highly value receiving constructive feedback and I also give feedback and praise as much as I can.
I work mouseless on my beloved Ulimate Hacking Keyboard or the pretty decent MacBook Pro keyboard.
To type more ergonomically (and a little bit faster), I've applied the angle mod to my keyboard layout. I also tried and failed to adopt the Programmer Dvorak layout.
Tip: I use typelit.io to relax and practice touch typing (I’ve typed 10+ classic novels thus far. Animal Farm was the most fun!).
I code in VS Code using the Neovim plugin. I once tried switching to LunarVim for a couple of months. But configuring and maintaining it devoured too much of my time.
I’m not a VIM ninja. Yet I learned to master the 20, or so, most important commands. Plugins that I rely upon (trying to keep them to a minimum):
I use Kitty as my terminal. And lazygit for a nice terminal-based GUI experience, especially for reviewing hunks before creating a commit.
I use Vimium for mouseless navigation in the browser and Vimac for the same on OS level.
I’m loosely following the Pillars, Pipelines and Vaults (PPV) methodology. It helps me with setting the right priorities in life and following through on them.
I use Obsidian for all my knowledge and task management. What I like the most about Obsidian:
I have a Readwise subscription which lets me bookmark relevant articles, create annotations, tag and then sync these annotations automatically into Obsidian so I find them again when I work on a specific project, like creating a solution design or preparing a public talk.
I actually consider this workflow to be a competitive advantage for any knowledge worker, as it will help you reveal relevant knowledge just when you need it.
I also find Readwise's Reader app to be really well-executed and I use it on an almost daily basis.
When I'm on the go, I send all my tasks, ideas and bookmarks as an email to myself. My (Gmail) inbox is the one inbox that I'm checking every day. So I can be sure that nothing gets lost and will be processed later.
I use the handy Braintoss app to make this a two-tap action.
I make an effort to unsubscribe from newsletters and automatic notifications that aren't of value to me. This increases the signal-to-noise ratio in my inbox and helps me with achieving inbox zero.
I've followed Cal Newport's advice and quit social media. It's a huge waste of time and keeps me from achieving great work.
YouTube, however, is where Songcoach's target audience hangs out and where I find great content. So I've installed this browser extension that removes distracting algorithmic suggestions from YouTube's UI.
I’m proficient in TypeScript, React, Next.js and CSS/SCSS; Node and Express.js;
I used to be proficient in building serverless backend systems on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, CloudFront, ECS etc.). But it’s been ~2 years that I actually built something meaningful on AWS the last time.
I have recently learned how to work with LLMs and build RAG systems. But I wouldn't consider myself an expert because of that.
I currently skill up in Python, Postgres, React Native and Tamagui.
I have some knowledge about SAP technology like BTP or UI5 which is completely irrelevant in the outside world.
Skills I’ll never need again:
My mother tongue is German, although I actually speak to my kids in Bavarian dialect. I am fluent in English and Spanish. I understand French and Catalan, but I can't speak them anymore.
I play the guitar, that is ~10 different chords and a few strumming patterns. And I learned to play the keyboard when I was a kid. Both instruments just well enough to accompany myself when I sing songs.
6:30am Iterate Songcoach.ai or take 1:1 calls with my manager who works in Pacific time.
7:45am Get kids ready for school.
8:15am Work out, shower.
I aim to work out at least 4x per week. Over time, I’ve simplified my workout routine to only 3 exercises: heavy jump rope, elevated push-ups and pull-ups. My workouts don’t take longer than 20 minutes, but they’re intense and effective at burning calories and strengthening my entire body. Plus, I don't need a gym for that.
9am Job: deep work.
12pm Lunch break.
12:30pm Commute to coworking space by bike and listen to podcasts or audiobooks.
1pm Job: shallow work with a mix of meetings, emails, slack and a second round of PR reviews.
6pm Commute back home and listen to music to unwind.
6:30pm Family time, chores.
~9:00pm Read book and get to sleep.
I’m actually not that disciplined at reading books every day. I also watch stuff on Netflix or listen to audiobooks. Whatever works to shut down the system and get a good night’s rest.
Flow Psychology: can you engineer a flow state?
The Musician’s Way: what does excellence mean in the context of a musical performance and how can a musician achieve it?
Getting Real: how to build a successful software product without outside funding?
The Effective Engineer: how do I make the most out of my time as an engineer and be the most valuable?
Deep Work: how can I achieve great work?
Mom Test: how can I reveal the truth of what potential customers actually need?
Inspired: how to create products customers love?
I’m currently reading The Hard Things About Hard Things (which I recommend) and The Software Engineer’s Guidebook.
I'm married to a beautiful Spanish woman with whom I raise our kids, aged 3, 3, and 5. Our family life is… intense.
I don’t know how to cook and have currently no intention to change this. I actually outsourced cooking to prepmymeal and Löwenanteil on workdays so I have one thing less to worry about.
I’m a fan of Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul. Vince Gilligan, whom I consider a genius writer, has crafted shows whose cinematography feels like watching art.
I’m a history nerd. I want to understand why the world has evolved into its current state and where it might be headed in the future.
My political views are heavily influenced by the tragedies of the 20th century. The rise of far-right parties is something that deeply worries me, especially in the US and increasingly in Germany, too.
I’m not religious, but I respect that other people believe in their God(s).
However, I do believe that Tool is the greatest contemporary heavy rock band.
I saw a former Beatle as well as two former Led Zeppelin members live in concert.
I’m a decent singer, although I tend to suck at karaoke.
My favorite singers are James Brown, Etta James, Eva Cassidy, Chris Stapleton, Paul Carrack, Robert Plant, Paul McCartney, Elin Larsson and Sam Ryder.
Even as a 40 year old fart, I still go dance to techno in some shabby Berlin club at least once a year.
