In early 2019, our CTO Jens spent six months in Barcelona, working from the office there and getting to know the culture and its people. We talked to him about his most memorable moments, eureka effects and key learnings during his time in Spain.

Jens, do you remember your first day in Barcelona?

JENS: Yes, it was really exciting! After eight years with the company I was a newbie all over again. There was a welcome package on my desk and I had to introduce myself at the Newbie Special.

What was your onboarding like?

Everyone was really helpful and made me feel at home right away. Thanks again to everyone in Barcelona for being so welcoming! This experience made me realise that no matter where you are, a warm welcome and a good onboarding process are key to the best-possible start for any new colleague! We should all do our part and support our new colleagues where we can. As for the technical and organisational onboarding: a recent survey we carried out showed we can do better in some areas. We’ll definitely tackle that going forward.

What other eureka moments did you have?

At one point during my stay, someone from the Lime BU asked me what OKRs were. It was at that moment I realised just how much information gets lost between Hamburg and our other offices. There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to the flow of information within the company. We’re working to improve this by fitting in personal visits whenever it makes sense to do so and of course by implementing new communication tools. If you don’t work in the Hamburg headquarters, you often don’t know as many people in the company and you miss a lot of the talks that go on in between. Since returning from Barcelona, we already rolled out Slack and JUST, which I think improves the situation a lot. Slack helps to communicate easily across multiple locations, teams and projects. And JUST has two really useful functions: the PEOPLE app is a great help when looking for the right person to contact about a certain topic. But it only works if everyone contributes, so I encourage you all to fill out your profiles and add your skills! The NEWS app, on the other hand, helps us not lose touch within our growing organisation. But this is a team effort as well! Everyone can participate by contributing and passing on information, or by simply asking if you get the feeling you missed out on something.

Do staff in Barcelona work differently to staff in Hamburg?

In some ways, yes. Our smaller offices are often faster and more flexible, and they don’t have long coordination processes. Did you know that the team in Spain has their own Twitter channel? It’s easy, authentic and very effective for local employer branding purposes. It does a great job of conveying the spirit and identity of the Barcelona office. See for yourself.

This is just one example of how we work differently in different locations. In a smaller office like Barcelona, colleagues don’t always need the same elaborate processes used in the larger offices in Germany. I believe that in some cases, offices outside of Hamburg should have the freedom to choose how they do things because it’s what works best for them. If the results are there, I don’t care how we achieved them. But we need to talk and listen to each other more to determine what works best.

Are there any other notable differences?

Yes, the kitchen sink! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the kitchen in the Barcelona office! There were no dirty dishes, it was always clean. Smaller offices often really make it easier to establish a good working community: the smaller the office, the more people feel responsible for their environment. We should try and maintain some of that spirit for our growing company — let’s all show some accountability!

What was your biggest challenge?

That’s easy: working remotely! It was a challenge not just for me, but for everyone involved. All our board meetings took place via VC, so the entire board had to go through a learning curve and adjust, too. I once dialled in to a board meeting and during the call they totally forgot I was there! Some of you probably know that feeling. But luckily this improved over time, too.

Many colleagues work remotely. What are your main learnings and what would you do to improve the situation?

A lot of colleagues in Barcelona work from home due to the long commute many have because they live in the suburbs as a result of the high real estate prices in the city centre. That’s why some teams always do their meetings fully remotely, meaning that everyone, even the colleagues sitting at the same desk still dial in via their notebook. Having everyone using this setup increases the quality of the conversation as everyone is faced with the same challenges while talking and listening.

For this to work everywhere, like it does in Barcelona, it’s crucial to provide good technical equipment. Nothing is more frustrating than being excluded because of insufficient technology. Fortunately, we already have a great setup in most of our offices. What we need to improve on is the process of enabling colleagues to use our technology to its full potential. Moreover, it helps if we all increase our awareness and keep a few things in mind. The “Remote Ready Initiative” that started at XING Events has already collected some good tips on this and there a quite a few other people in the NEW WORK SE universe who are working on and talking about their experiences with working remotely. I’d like to get together at the beginning of next year so we can share our knowledge and discuss how we can make the different concepts work out best for everyone. If you’re interested in joining this or have anything you’d like to contribute, feel free to use the comments section or get in touch with me directly.

So, what’s your verdict? Would you do it again?

Definitely! One of the reasons I went to Barcelona was because I wanted to get a better understanding of our other offices and what it means to work remotely. It gave me a brief, but valuable insight and I got to know so many great people. When I left, the colleagues gave me a backpack full of suggestions and wishes for me to take home with me. There are quite a few things I want to tackle in the upcoming weeks. I’ll keep you posted!

“Let’s talk and listen to each other more” — Interview with Jens Pape, CTO at XING was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Finally, I realized what was happening to me. I didn’t know how to deal with interviews when a candidate was shy, not too talkative, rude or if I could see that he or she wasn’t honest.

After some years of experience and, what’s more important, after learning from different colleagues, I’ve acquired some techniques that help to make these conversations more fluent and in case it’s not possible (it can happen), feel confident to finish the interview with some dignity hahaha.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Let me share these tips with you!

When we do Competency-based interviews, it usually means that we have already met the candidate in a shorter first interview, those we use to screen candidates and check there aren’t red flags (required language level, salary according to the range we can offer, career expectations…). After this short interview, we have an idea of how this person could be so we can prepare the interview specifically for each candidate. However, we have to be careful to avoid prejudices.

Shy Person

It is common that these candidates normally answer with yes/no answers or with short sentences. First of all, we should try to find out, why this person is giving us such short answers.

There can be several possibilities: shyness, nervousness, she or he is not a talkative person… and this would be okay. Try to break the ice with this person, make them feel comfortable by dialoguing, not only asking structured questions! … If those are the reasons for their lack of speech, they will talk a little bit more. It usually happens that when these professionals are in a good environment and can be themselves, they become more confident.

Chatterbox

On the contrary, we can meet the opposite personality. Someone that never stops talking! Bla bla bla bla bla bla… and you don’t know how to interrupt this person. Has it ever happened to you? “I just wanted to know when the developer started to code in Kotlin and now I know how many brothers the professional has!” Hahaha!

When you want to clarify something or ask other questions because you already know what you need about a specific topic you wanted to check, don’t be afraid and interrupt them. Always with absolute respect. You can use sentences like… “Sorry for interrupting you, but I wanted to clarify what you said about…” or “Excuse me, before moving to whatever, I wanted to know about whatever…” The interview should be a dialogue, a conversation… the communication is reciprocal. I like these profiles as they are usually very enthusiastic about what they do. We only need to know how to get all the information we need, in time.

Critic/sceptic person

These professionals have the feeling they are being questioned all the time. They will probably adopt a defensive attitude and posture, and they will counter-question you.

In my opinion, these are one of the most difficult interviews as I don’t feel comfortable when I see they feel attacked. What can work is being honest and try to calm them down explaining them that it’s our way to know them better and check if both parties (he/she and the company) can work comfortably together. We want them to feel good if they join our teams. Turn the interview into a conversation instead of something that looks very structured so they can feel it is a dialogue. Make some jokes to distend the moment.

Show-off

When we think of a Show-off person, maybe we think of someone very senior but… don’t take things for granted. I’ve seen very junior developers so, so presumptuous… This kind of people think they are THE experts in their subject and that others are less experienced. In those cases, be brave and let them know that our teams are experts too and the decisions are made taking into account different opinions (also from junior developers…).

Observe their reaction, if they disagree or they explain they enjoy working on their own because it is easier and they don’t feel comfortable discussing with other experts, it’s possible that these professionals won’t fit in our culture (at least in my company). If you need someone to work on his/her own, this professional would be perfect for your position!

***

For all the interviews, it doesn’t matter what kind of professional we have opposite us (or on the other side of our screen), a very useful technique is the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). It helps the candidate to describe a concrete situation that allows us to find out about specific competences you want to check (teamwork, feedback acceptance, etc.). It is very important to ask about concrete and past examples so you can get an idea about how they perform in different moments. Take a look at the different steps , from general to more concrete:

SITUATION: start asking them to describe a specific situation. Example: Can you give an example of a situation when you made a big error at work?

TASK: Once you know the situation, ask them what their responsibility was at that moment or the tasks they were doing. Sometimes when they explain the situation, they also explain what their mistake was. If that’s the case, there’s no need to ask it again (use your Active listening skills). Example: What did you have to do? What‘s your responsibility? What was your goal?

ACTION: Ask them to specify exactly what they did when they faced that situation. It can happen that they describe what the team did. In that moment, ask them what they did as an individual. We want to “imagine” them in action! What their role was in that situation. Example: When you saw that the webpage broke, what did you do?

RESULT: We want to know how everything turned out. If the decisions of the professional were useful, if not… In any case, a bad result means that the professional did it wrongly. Sometimes, a situation couldn’t be solved due to different external factors, although our candidate made all the effort she/he could. Example: Was the webpage fixed? How did everything end?

With this technique, we can go further in depth about how they acted in different moments, which can be similar to some situations that person could experience in our company in case they join any of our teams and therefore see if they are a cultural fit.

In conclusion, it’s not always easy to do a good interview. But, if we have some tools and techniques, we can improve the quality of our interviews and in consequence, the quality of the information we get from them and advise the hiring manager to make a proper decision.

Hard conversations, hard interviews… was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are piloting a model to develop future professionals which combines training on the job and bootcamp models. We are providing a real working context, with real projects and challenges, so our students can put their knowledge in practice, keep learning and super-important, gain insights about where they want to develop further in their professional future.We truly believe that training on the job is the fastest and coolest way to become part of the software industry as a professional.

Our students work within existing teams, participating in every single ceremony and shipping our product from the very beginning of in their journey with us. They also have a dedicated mentor, acting as the key person to answer any questions and guide them through this adventure.The icing on the cake is the Academy flavor.

So, it’s not only the amazing opportunity of joining a real product team and having a mentor, but as working students they get trained by other colleagues in the company about different set of topics , from agile mindset and frameworks, going through all our internal tooling and of course, in Android and IOS platforms (since we’re piloting on Mobile!).

Having this academy option, pays off not only on the knowledge side, but also on the networking opportunities beyond their primary teams, expanding the experience from a team to a company scope.

We’re on our first round and so far the plan seems to be rocking it! We had a chat with a student who participated in this project, Diana Hernández tells us about her experience in this program.

1. What’s your favourite part of being a student at New Work SE?

The best part of being a student at New Work SE is the chance to work alongside great professionals and better persons and learn from them every day.
I also like being able to get to know a real work environment with colleagues from different regions and cultures.

2. How has your experience been so far?

It’s being an incredible experience, I am learning every day how a great company like this works, and how to communicate with different teammates with different roles.
It is an excellent opportunity for me to open my mind and gain work experience. I am very excited about it. I’m going to seize this opportunity.

3. What would you say to girls who want to enter the Software Engineering world?

I would tell them that the time for doing it is now, if you really like technology, and everything that the future has to offer, do not think about it and do it.
We have great female references in this field, but not enough, we need more, and I am sure that you will find the first of them at college, as I was able to find great female teachers who inspired me and made me want to be better every day.
Thanks to their help, I am where I am now and I am very grateful to them for their support during the last four years.

Mobile Academy experience was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Teba is from Madrid and she studied computer engineering: In high school I wanted to study architecture, I liked it! But I knew that I wasn’t going to get the grade I wanted because of my marks from the previous year and so, I had to think about a second option, because there was a good chance that I wouldn’t get into architecture.

In the last year of the institute, they sometimes took us on half days to show us the options that were available to us. And I remember a lecture they gave us on computer science, where the lecturer said, “In Spain in the next 10 years we will need 10,000 software developers.”

That’s when I considered a career in IT. And so, I couldn’t start to study architecture for 4 decimals, but instead I started computer engineering. Studying this career wasn’t always easy for me, but I didn’t want to give up. At some point I decided to give it a good go because I liked it despite of the difficulty.

What are the biggest challenges as a woman in the tech area?

In my previous job, there were only two women. In addition, the company culture was more old-fashioned, which did not help. So, it was harder for me to find my place. Yet I came from Tuenti, which at that time was considered one of the best places in Spain in the tech sector. But I had a colleague who didn’t think much of me. I sometimes felt that in meetings my ideas were not always heard, whereas when a male colleague repeated what I had been saying for 20 minutes, he was listened to.

When I came to XING, I sometimes felt that I had to prove myself in order to be valued, until people realised I knew what I was saying.

Do you think that this feeling was caused by others or that you put pressure on yourself about it?

Maybe both. I think we’re used to it as women, and we know the scenario. So, we have an almost natural reflex to have to prove ourselves and be over-prepared to show what we’re worth and make a place for ourselves.

What are your personal goals from the female executive learning journey participants?

For me, it is about getting to know myself better and learning to identify and present my strengths. I would like to be able to use these strengths to the benefit of my team.

The fact that our people manager does this with us can have a big impact. For example, my people manager, of the five people he leads, three are women. So, I think it can have a lot of impact in terms of understanding each other better and adapting the dynamics to that diversity so that the teams come out on top.

What other initiatives do you think would promote greater diversity?

I think we could do something about recruitment. It would be interesting to write attractive offers for women. Studies show that women will not apply if they don’t meet all of the requirements, whereas men will not hesitate. I think that the way in which jobs are written can play an important role in achieving this equality.

It is also very important that the company listens to women and is aware of the barriers so that it can react to any abuse. We need to ensure that we make the workplace a safe and equal environment.

It is also important to cover a good representation of the company especially from a promotional point of view.

What message would you like to give to young girls as they make their choice of study?

I would tell them to study what they want. Personally, I haven’t had any problems with that because it depends on the parents and the education of each one, but I think the important thing is to do what you like, and to find meaning in what you do. Study what they want and, in the way they want. There are many opportunities today and they must be used. They should not be afraid to explore, or to wait for permission.

Marta was born in a small village in the north of Spain and she moved to Valencia for her studies on technical engineering in computer systems:

My parents had a company, and their office was downstairs from my house. When I was little, I used to play with the computers in the office and break them. That’s what introduced me to technology and it was clear to me that I wanted to pursue this vocation.

When I started my studies, I didn’t even know what programming was. I discovered it during my studies, and I loved it.

What are the biggest challenges as a woman in your profession?

I am my own worst enemy. I know I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things perfectly so that no one can judge me for being a woman in the tech sector.

Do you think that this feeling was caused by others or that you put pressure on yourself about it?

I don’t think I’ve been judged that much. I was just always one step ahead so that it couldn’t happen and nobody could tell me. But in the end, it was also up to me to let go of that pressure and their looks, it’s a big challenge.

What are your personal goals from the female executive learning journey participants?

To give me the resources to be able to reach new opportunities. I think the important thing is to give the posts to worthwhile people, regardless of their gender. However, what is important is that women are worthwhile and that they have the same opportunities as men to access these opportunities.

What other initiatives do you think would promote greater diversity?

In my opinion, a very important point to ensure diversity is the way the company reacts in case of problems. As a woman, I have seen some macho situations, which is inevitable in a big environment. However, I have always been convinced by New Work’s way of dealing with these problems and reacting in a quickly and efficiently way.

I am also very happy that we have a person in Barcelona who is responsible for communicating this theme of diversity and setting up concrete initiatives and actions to implement this diversity.

In my opinion, we should extend this concept to the whole company. These profiles should be implemented on a more global scale to have some consistency within the company for more unity and maximum impact.

What message would you like to give to young girls as they make their choice of study?

The message I would give them is that there are no studies for boys and others for girls. The important thing is to be able to try before you can decide to find out what you like and not lose an opportunity. I think there are a lot of benefits that women can bring to the sector and it’s a shame to lose that because of the mistaken belief that tech is a male sector.

Challenging stereotypes about women in the technology sector was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s dive into it!

Steps and things you need to consider…

Step 1 — Cost of Recruitment Process

Even BEFORE the new hire starts, the fact of hiring has already generated a cost:

• Cost of opportunity while the vacancy is empty,
• Cost of the job advertisement and/or headhunter fees,
• Cost in time (salary) of all the people involved in the recruitment process in terms of, time for interviewing, reviewing tests or challenges, debrief and feedback meetings, (recruiters and other stakeholders e.g., managers, other specialists’ peers).
• Admin costs, payroll, benefits/perks, possible relocation costs, signing bonus, etc.

Step 2 — Cost of Onboarding and training

Even the most senior and experienced professional needs a period of adaptation, learning the new context and tools. The faster they are fully onboarded, the faster they’ll start generating benefits. That’s why investing in good onboarding is key to new-hire success. Here we consider:

• Time of co-workers explaining context, tools, helping the new colleague build momentum
• Cost of training if external
• Equipment needed
• The productivity loss, while the person is learning and until they master the job.

Remember, when calculating time in salary, add company and structure costs.

Looking for the breakeven point… When does the collaborator start generating benefit for the company? How can we calculate this? Bad news: true, is not exact math, there are far too many factors that influence, but trying to find an approximate and objectivize it as much as possible.

To the practice! Open an Excel and you need to create these columns: here’s a sample of how it could look like. With an example of someone joining at a base salary of 45k gross per year and an accumulated training time of 5 weeks.

A: Timeframe — we will do it in weeks. Week 0, 1, 2…

B: Cost — you need to have done some previous calculations (steps 1–2). The first rows will look a bit different, but it becomes easier as you progress, and you just need to make small changes.

o Week 0 (prior to joining): Cost of the Recruitment process, new colleague lands with a “backpack” of cost.

o Weeks of training (week 1 to x) “x” would be the when the training finishes. If training is full-time, that’s easier to allocate. If it’s not, you can sum up all the training hours and accumulate them in weeks. Allocate in each week, the weekly training cost plus the weekly salary.

o From the week that the person is “fully” on “working time” (training time done) you just need to specify the salary cost.

C: Income — how much does the person generate or produce for the company? Some roles are more complicated to calculate (e.g., services, how much does an HR person generate? Is the product of the company “of growth”?) In that case let’s look for creative solutions, e.g., you could divide the total revenue of the previous year and divide by the number of employees. Then divide that figure by 52, that’s roughly the income per week (bear in mind, we’re trying to simplify, be aware of holidays and so many other things).

o Also, during the training time, the income equals 0, for they are not selling, or coding, or producing the company asset. Plus, we must be realistic, the adapting time, during the first months, the person is not producing like a fully onboarded employee. Reflect upon how many months on average it needs for that role to be developed at 100% level, you can consider aspects such as the complexity of the role, tools, business, synergies, and ask Team leads about their experiences with new colleagues… could it be 6 months? 3 months? During this time, I suggest you divide the income/productivity by 50%. Once you reach the “fully onboarded” week, then make it 100%. Or progressively, as you consider, you need to understand your business!

D: Benefits — easy formula, column Income minus cost (C-B). You will see that the first weeks are purely negative, don’t panic, that’s normal — we are investing! After the “training weeks” you’ll see a smaller number (still in negative probably). And great news! Once the person is fully productive the benefit will increase considerably! :) See? You want to do a great onboarding to provoke this ASAP!

o But wait! Will the company already make money then ? Nooooooo

o Really? Sorry, that’s the truth, remember you’re paying (or should be!) a decent salary and also the mere fact of hiring had a cost (sometimes very high!) so you want to have great engagement culture to keep your people motivated and remaining at your company.

o PLEASE, Where’s the breakeven week? It may be repetitive, but I like to duplicate the week in another column, just to see it more comfortably, but it’s unnecessary. Otherwise, the next column will be:

E: Accumulated — that would be E (previous week) + D, benefits of the current week. Again, it will happen as in the D column that starts negative, but THIS is the one that indicates WHEN the breakeven happens.

Now that you have the basics, you can “play” with things that may happen along with the employee history, e.g., a bonus, extra training, long leaves, salary increases, a training or conference, etc.

With this done, you can easily pass this data to a (nice) graph (see the example) and for sure this will help you and your stakeholders, Teamleads, Business, C-Levels, visualize, realize and be conscious that a good onboarding, follow up, and engagement policies result in a win-win, happy colleagues, long-lasting relationship… benefit for all.

The breakeven week will differ from company to company, job role, and if we went to the detail, per person. But you can work with an average that will help you to quantify and obtain a first approximation.

In your team’s recent hires… When does the breakeven happen?

ELTV: Employee Lifetime Value and Breakeven Point… or the cost of an early leaver was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I believe that we are already experiencing a new industrial revolution but, today, it is based on a new paradigm. For the first time in history, it is not energy that is changing the world, but computing and computers. As Marc Andreessen so aptly summarized: “software is eating the world”. It is with this in mind that I invite you on a philosophical journey about the impact of software, and more specifically of artificial intelligence, on the world and on society.

I like to define artificial intelligence as the ability of a digital machine to perform a task normally associated with intelligent beings, namely the ability to see, act, communicate, infer and learn.

In order to understand how this technology can impact humanity, I believe we must take refuge in philosophy, more specifically in the schools of thought of dualism and monism.

Dualism arises in the Greek school of thought with Plato, Aristotle and Descartes where they argue that the mind and the body are two distinct and not identical entities. Plato speculates on the existence of a world of ideas that contains things that do not exist in the real world, such as a perfect circle. A truly perfect circle will never exist in the real world, but it does exist in our imagination.

Monism, in turn, appears with Heraclitus and is developed several centuries later by thinkers such as Spinoza and Berkeley, where they defend that the mind and the body are manifestations of a single entity. Fundamentally, everything in the universe is made up of atoms and everything is subject to the same set of laws of physics. Even our emotions and dreams are just brain synapses and chemical reactions. In this context, everything can be broken down into its fundamental components, where a chair uses the same fundamental elements as a human being.

Will it be us humans, machines, animals or humans? Based on the two currents of thought, we can infer that, on one hand, a machine can behave like a human, or, on the other hand, a machine will never have access to the world of creativity and emotions that characterize us so well. But what does all this have to do with artificial intelligence and its impact on the job market? In fact, everything!

Monism defends a union between the body and the mind, which leads me to think that artificial intelligence can leave humanity without work, with the world having to reorder itself and find new ways of physical and emotional sustainability (we talked about a single universal income, for example). If we are made of exactly the same fundamental elements as the rest of the universe, there are solid reasons to believe that a machine could one day take our place, in many cases being better than us humans.

Now, if we look at the same problem with a dualistic lens, I believe that not all jobs will be taken over by machines. Since humans are fundamentally different from machines, there will always be work that machines will not be able to do. Thus, there will always be a haven for humanity, where machines will not be able to access our mental, abstract and creative world. I believe that many sectors will be transformed by artificial intelligence (such as industry, retail, services, among others), but many more will be created based on human sensitivity.

It is with this duality of perspectives that I leave you. With the certainty that we are on the verge of the greatest industrial and societal revolution in recent centuries. It is important to be aware of this duality of thinking that shapes our beliefs, conversations and predictions about impact on the world. I, personally, am a humanist. I believe in dualism and the existence of a creative, emotional and imaginative world. Although artificial intelligence will wipe out many jobs, many more will be created precisely based on these characteristics that make us human.

This article was originally published at Dinheiro Vivo.

Artificial intelligence and work in the future was originally published in New Work Development on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.