As much as I’ve loved living in this country for the sake of it, I do wonder sometimes if I’m getting something substantial out of it. A feeling I can’t shake of “is all of this time and money going to waste?” It’s something I don’t worry about per se, but definitely ponder over.

I don’t even think this is an irrational feeling either. My job has been enjoyable, and I love the people in it, but most of the time it feels that I am stalling when it comes to gaining technical skills. WordPress is a low-code product, and is built to be usable be just about anyone. HSE really appreciates this, as their staff is mostly made up of non-technical people. Additionally, their use case is largely static, and doesn’t require a lot of custom-built functionality, making it a great fit for a CMS like WordPress.

So I have gained a hard skill in understanding WordPress and Elementor, but those tools are built to be easy to understand. I appreciate knowing them in the case I encounter them again, but it’s hard to call it a technical skill.

But the longer I live in Berlin, the more I believe living in a foreign country enables experiential learning.

As an example, last week I went to a massive developer conference called The Merge. It’s a convention that is organized by GitButler, a Berlin-based startup established by one of the co-founders of GitHub. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet a ton of huge people in the industry. An investor for a Fortune-500 venture capital firm, a former build engineer at Apple, among other incredible people.

I had an interaction with a lady on the second day of the convention after being introduced by a friend. After a bit of small talk, I realized that she was a photographer like I was, and was working for a programming startup (like I hope to be in 3 years). It’s funny, she’s like me if I had decided to take a more artsy path in early college, but we both have the same base of interests. Her project is focussed on images. Specifically, leveraging AI to crop images on web pages dynamically to be flattering for the subject of the photo. As a photographer that struggles with getting his images properly formatted for his page on a multitude of devices, this was worth its weight in gold. It’s even open source, which means I can analyze its code and see what they are doing behind the scenes to make the magic happen.

Without Berlin, I would have never A. Met this person (She’s Finnish), and B. Had been exposed to this amazing tool that would simplify my workflow so much. Even if silently programming in an office cubicle can be productive, meeting people like this can be just as productive, because they can expose you to new cognitive shortcuts that make a tangible impact on your life.

Soft skills have definitely improved for me as well, but in more subtle ways. I have learned to be patient, but firm. Sometimes there are tasks that my manager and/or co-founder propose that just aren’t realistic. It’s been helpful to learn how to conduct myself in a way that is direct without being overly rude. My manager, being from Germany, especially appreciates the directness. It’s just part of the culture.

I’ve also had to be pretty creative with some of my solutions to problems given the constraints of WordPress. I distinctly remember having to shove the contact section with a bunch of random scripts into the footer to make HSE’s social media links appear on all of the pages. Was it pretty? Absolutely not. Functional? Yes.

Meeting all of these random people at conventions, weekend trips, etc, has helped me be more understanding of Europe as a whole. I don’t look at it as much through my US or Swiss bubbles, but instead as a guy who’s visiting for the time being and just so happens to speak a lot of English.

Bis bald!