Going Beyond Senior

For many of us, writing code quickly becomes the least of our concerns. Let’s talk about something that can be much harder: communication. But don’t worry, this won’t be yet another abstract talk delivered by a couch.
Instead, we will touch on subjects directly related to the developer’s life: code reviews, git commits, managing your manager, talking to the product and business people, estimates, or knowledge sharing.

How to get your PR reviewed without much waiting?
How to review the PR without making enemies?
How to respond to estimate requests without making (unrealistic) commitments?
How to keep necessary people in the loop without creating unnecessary noise?
Let’s try to answer all of those questions and more!

The world has changed. So have the work conditions. More and more teams move to flexible or fully remote work modes. It is so common now to have team members spread across various countries and time zones. You no longer even need to have international team members to be spread out. Let’s look into some key learnings and takeaways from running remote or virtual teams. Pros and cons, challenges and opportunities.

I have been working on/with virtual teams for over 12 years now. My current team is spread across 7 locations in 4 countries. It all can work, and can work quite well actually. However, like with everything else in life, success needs to be earned. Virtual teams already have a proven track record of cross-industry success and they will not vanish. Embrace it, or you will fall behind.

This talk reveals three transformative insights that have changed my perception of product management and brought joy to my professional journey. The presentation will provide a personal, unique and concise perspective on product management from a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience.

Everyone is a product manager in some way. Even though we are all different. We look differently or earn differently. But neither the way we look nor the job title – that determines our salary – defines who we are as product captains. True success lies in our ability to learn from life’s lessons. This presentation is intended to be a concrete and inspiring message for product people, those planning development in this area, and the wider IT world.

Some say life only just starts after you turn 40, same applies to your professional life with you reaching more senior job roles. Watch Waldek talking about his experience building career and where did that led him to now. What are the future prospects for him and how many more can be achieved with just your own willingness. Being senior does mean you reached the end of your career journey!

For the last 4 years I’ve assisted over 500 IT professionals in their very personal, strictly confidential journeys of assessing own strengths, blind spots, values, brain types, passion and career needs. Some of the meetings were focused mostly on effectiveness, while some of them – especially since the pandemic started – mostly on personal satisfaction at work, vision clarity and personalizing the career path. From all that work, as well as from my personal research, I’ll share the most valuable and surprising lessons:
1. The unusual blockers behind not knowing what our next step should be.
2. The best tools, practices and frameworks I’ve found so far, to discover your personal career GPS; to avoid following catchy trends and to forge your unique career path forward.
Hope to see you there!

What can go sideways while building a multi-purpose, micro front-end-based platform comprising 30 applications? How can 5 front-end teams, 2 design teams, and 30 product managers work together to transform a vast information environment to deliver the best experience for 2,6 M users daily?
On the enterprise level of product development, we encounter problems that fit in on a whole new scale of ‘troublesome.’ The smallest thing may escalate quickly and affect the entire ecosystem. We’re always to consider the bigger picture. See the real-life case of how we’re transforming the everyday work frame and project strategy and find out why a Design Lead is telling this story.

The journey from a computer science student unsure of the career path to becoming an entrepreneur in the software industry. I will take you through the challenges I faced, the lessons learned, and the pivotal moments that shaped my path.

I will discuss how I made the decision to pursue entrepreneurship, the valuable experiences gained from my first failed product, and the transformative decision to create Base, a sales management software for small businesses. Through my story, I want to emphasize the importance of listening to customer feedback, building a stellar team, and the role of growth in making key business decisions.