An interview with Tim Benniks from Valtech

my name is Tim Benniks and welcome back to the channel in this video it's me being interviewed rather than me interviewing someone else this interview happened at the Vue.js Amsterdam conference where in the back they actually have a little studio where they interview speakers and do a podcast and such normally they interview other speakers after their talk about what I think of the conference and things like that they did the same with me but because I'm collaborating with them to do stuff for my YouTube channel and their stuff that they do for the community I actually get to publish my own interview so this interview is around 25 minutes we go in-depth on how I do the work that I do my philosophy about managing teams but also what I think about the new headless revolution and how big CMS's are working on that so without further ado this is the interview with Tim Benniks me at Vue.js Amsterdam hello and welcome I'm Harris - the people here with Chris Passionate People and Tim Benniks we just delivered awesome speech on stage at Amsterdam that was about leadership and putting team first yeah let me ask you first right off the bat how do you like a conference this year of course cuz you're a returning speaker so um I really love this conference and it's it's set up super well and the organizers they do a great job so yes I'm super happy that I had the honor to come back actually I would love to come back again but we'll see if that works because it's getting so famous now everybody wants to speak here it's true I do have to say and I'm speaking from a personal perspective here because I cannot speak for everyone who's involved with the conference but I think it's great to have you back here on stage oh thanks that's great thing it's really really nice also as having a talk that doesn't focus on the pure of Vue.js aspect but also the things that are important when it comes to development which is not directly related to coding yeah exactly because there's a lot of conferences that go super technical and then actually the tools that people need to get so technical I discussed those right and those are the tools that people need to be able to get the freedom to do that code so I think it's important that you have some sort of aspect of this every conference nice so can you tell us about your interaction with Vue.js community so you could come to event like this but in there during the rest of the year what's your relationship with Vue.js and the community well since last year or maybe two years ago we started a big project with Vue.js and it wasn't actually my choice but they said this is what we're using so go for it and then of course you're gonna have to use it and go deep and ask questions and that that worked well for a year we did a bunch of for requests and starting to get a bit more involved and then 2019 came and I decided okay I need to talk about the work we do because it's pretty cool and a lot of people do this work but nobody speaks for them so I decided okay I'm going to do conference talks and the moment you go on stage you meet those other people that are also in the few community and then I realized hey if I use Twitter I can actually talk to them because I was one of the first Twitter users and I just didn't use it and suddenly I started to tweet and people tweeted back and cool stuff started to happen so community forms like organically oh yeah that's how it how it happened so now you use Twitter mainly for your being in the loop actually I started using Twitter really for work when I want to do anything work-related or code related or open source related Twitter's is by far the best for me anyways and quite recently you started using Twitter you know completely different sense would you mind sharing a little bit about that you you touched upon it when you started your talk and then you moved on to your actual subject but maybe this is nice to sort of detail it a little bit more yes let's have a look at that so basically you can of course also automate Twitter so I had this project or at least I had an idea and I made it into a project because I used to be fat as a kid all the time it made me feel terrible and it took me a long time to realize how do I lose the weight and feel better again right so of many years ago I learned that if I have a bit of like public accountability I actually make sure I keep doing it and now I moved to Paris I ate all the good food and I started to gain a bit of weight again so I decided okay I need to do a project with public accountability that fits in my scope of work so I decided to build an application when I step on the scale in the morning it would do all this automated stuff over the internet and it would eventually post a tweet so I would step in the morning on the scale and after ten seconds there's a tweet that says Tim waste as much and I used all these fancy new technologies with Netley fine like basically everything that was discussed today I've actually used those tools to learn the tools to do my own project - yeah - to hook all those things together and today was actually my goal I didn't make it not even by far but it was nested way though I mean I got impressive yeah that's impressive nonetheless the thing is I try to keep it healthy because I could have made like I had to lose like 12 kilos in 3 months I could probably do it but then how healthy is that I was just stupid cool either way it's pretty cool use of technology you know it taught me so much that I made it talked about gem stack and surplice that hadn't didn't decide to do today because the guys asked me to talk about team first but that made me understand it and actually I made a talk about it so I'll do that in another conference now so you buy those projects you teach yourself and you open career possibilities because now I get to speak to Divya who works at Natalie Phi and I can give her feedback on her product well there's not much feedback it's great but this is cool because you've now used it right so you should really do this kind of stuff next to work if you have the time I'd say that's the great advice well for me it's a it comes I can't stop it so but not everybody has that obviously but so you mentioned automation and there Shanaya I wanted to ask you given your leadership position and role at your company and also the helicopter view yeah you have how do you see automation disrupting developer jobs in the next five to ten years well I think it's gonna disrupt a lot if that's great or not I don't know I think for now we should focus on automating processes like being able to deploy something very quickly for example or to automate your testing like we have so much room to win before we start automating what we code I think in the coming years you'll see a lot of tools where you do let's say what nettle if I already does I commit to get and suddenly the deploy happened well this is this kind of stuff is gonna come to enterprise because I work a lot in enterprise with those big systems and it's much harder to get it there but it's a lot brewing so all those big systems from Enterprise are starting to do the Netlify style of work and people are starting to do cloud and docker containers and automating the orchestration so I'd say in the coming years that we'll see first and then start but that starts with smaller companies like next right and Natalie find that it all comes down to that and then it goes up and you also see tools like Webflow where you can basically just drag and drop boxes and you have a website these tools are great but they're not there yet like if you do it on the level where you have one website it goes to 60 markets with millions of visitors you have to know exactly what you're doing to make that work so automating that is not there yet I would say but it's our jobs are gonna become useless at one point useless useless even yes in ten years you have algorithms to build the best stuff you have sorry you get algorithms that outer will be able to code stuff for us right I'm not sure actually to be honest because it's such a humane job as well 11 because it requires a certain amount of creativity and a certain amount of problem-solving skills that I don't see algorithmically solved or solved by statistically I in the next ten years well ten years might be they usually yeah I think I think we're gonna reach that points eventually but I'm not sure how it's gonna look like because in the end there's also people who need to write these algorithms and maintain them and sure there's all what there's always going to be work for us let's be honest yeah I just true I think we don't have to worry about that too much I think like the the the way the work is going to look like they'll change over there over the coming years like it's changed dramatically over the past couple of years you know moving away from like the jQuery style front ends and then the backbone stop front ends and now we have you and react and angular and now web components are becoming standard which is a thing of course and the whole service workflow that we're now moving towards from like a back in perspective so there's so much in flux that I'm really excited to see where it's gonna guess but what I also realized though there's different segments of this market right so the smaller websites they will be much more automated and I think also there's all these companies that do this amazing black magic that you don't know how that got so quickly deployed so that kind of automation will happen though like if you go to bigger projects or more specific ones clearly will have a job but everything riding up to it like all the word presses that keep small they might be automated yeah my new ones myself a little bit it's okay okay wait you see this now already with as you say like with net the fine it'll fly CMS and yeah things like Gatsby on the react side and the whole movement towards headless CMS is where you update your content it triggers like this cult called native flow where it pushes your content as you say what I find interesting though is that you said like on the enterprise level you see this movement happening but it's a lot more slowly why do you think that is that it is so so so well if you look for example like a like a company like site core site core is .net CMS it's one of the biggest out there and they are amazing for content editing workflows they're great so for the last 10 years what they have sold is a monolith so you edit your content and you personalize your content for users and you do that in a nice graphical interface and when you hit safe it's there you have that all in the same nice system but then this hatless trend is coming and they're like okay but if we remain where we are now in a couple of years everybody does this hat listing and we are not yeah they don't want to buy our product anymore the thing is also they're feeling this heat a little bit so they're starting to put that in and they're doing it really well but they have this one caveat for 10 years their salt that one experience that works extremely well and then when you start marketing yes but we are also hatless do this now you invalidate those last 10 years of people that paid you millions to use this globally so they need to find an in-between way to keep that old experience of amazing content editing plus then this hatless thing that we as developers are happy with so it's gonna take longer for them to make that mature because they're basically initially they add this headless part into the monolith so at least that works or you can do the content anything in your application and then once you serve it to the user then it becomes truly headless and you take it out but they actually had to complexify their tools to their tool chain to do that and that takes time and effort and it needs to mature and it takes some years because then you have a company like where I work we do this huge scale for one instance that would have five web sites and each web site is different and has a product catalog and it has different search ways ways to search and redirects and user influx of data there's so much going on if we just throw all that complexity against the tool that was just coming out that's just challenging so I'm not saying it's bad it's actually great but it takes some time and all of them are relatively in the same space now so yeah that's why it takes a bit longer okay well I got another question one ask you about leadership styles I see that you are very young kind and a friendly personality thank you so I would assume you're also leading your team with certain kindness and empathy sure can you like you explained what have you learned in your leadership career and what Styles work and which tiles don't and just tell us more about that aspect well how I started is quite strange but based on that I learned a lot from that and I use that day-to-day so I grew up being a musician so I played music all the time and then I realized okay I'm just paying money to tour rather than getting money it's a hard job and then so I wanted this backup and I became a nurse so I went to school to be a nurse and I work in psychiatry and then at school what we learned is to have a discussion with someone and imagine someone is very sick and you have to give them bad news the way you deliver that is very specific and you have to we had to videotape ourselves every day doing this kind of talks with people and just understand what you say matters a lot especially if you are in the white coat as a doctor and someone else is not there's this justice difference so that's the one part that makes it complex and you learn a lot from that so you will see yourself speaking to someone if you sit like this or that that has impact and then next to that this is it sounds a bit black and white but there's a difference between nurses and doctors in how they operate in their lives let's say so nurse this is just black and right right so it's it's never like that but nurses tend to be people are really focused on the content so they read a whole book and argue from there I'm definitely a person like that but then a doctor on the other side is amazing at reading a room and be able to speak not knowing everything because the doctor can just not know everything there's so much to learn and both of those can get like an A or a tan on a test because you just understand your context and understand what to do but if you're a nurse and you go to a doctor you say I need this isn't this with that patient they won't listen because they're too busy and it just you go with so much content to them so what we learned is how to manipulate them slightly to go on their level talk about their day or whatever they liked and five seconds in and then you ask the question they'll listen to you and I always thought why do I need to learn all this there's so much conversational stuff and manipulation going on and now when I'm in front of the like the CEO of whatever big company we work for it's exactly the same thing so you need to adjust the levels you adjust the levels you read the room and you just are able to understand how they think or try anyways because most of you at that level they are so smart they already understand everything and they have 50 meetings a day so you have to do it in 30 seconds get it across but also do it in such a way that they understand you and of course this is with clients but when you understand this concept when you do it with your team it also works but I don't do the manipulation bit obviously but just see the people like I was a developer once or I'm still am but everybody comes up so just trust people there to me everybody is good at at the core and on whatever comes around in their lives could change you but I always trust them and I actually don't always like we do job interviews right in the first job and if you had never asked about code they don't even care I want to know can you speak can you communicate clearly can you write something are you kind do you fit the team and once that works then we go to the next step so you create this balance of people that fit your team so if you have a team of how do you save like nice guys or nice girls and you add a primadonna into it like a badass code or think I am the best it's never gonna work but sometimes you just need three prima donnas to do amazing stuff make build a facebook let them go away and come back or you have a team of a bit more nice people that are well nice is not the right word everybody can be nice but there are less outspoken or less personal driven so you need to find the balance in the teams and at work we sometimes even do like exercises like what color are you are you caring or are you quickly annoyed or and then you teach yourself about yourself or about others and then we we put people together and that tends to work really well there's been a situation where being empathic as you are was a detriment rather than the benefit in your work situation well the thing is this is what you get with how I sometimes work is I want to have meaning in my work and I want the people who give me the job to be happy you have that in your personal life but also in work so you have all these different personality types and I'm kind of like the word pleaser doesn't sound great but in that context this is kind of where I could fit and so sometimes I just work so much because I want to make everybody happy and so you need to learn when to say no and especially when you get a bit more known in the community for example or you work in a bigger company and they know you will like when they put me on it it will just work but that's also can be a detriment for sure because I've I've been known to work a lot and that's not always good like find your balance in life is important some wise words right there yeah but I have to be like 35 to only start understanding this right it takes me took me a long time and I'm not there yet but I think being reflective of what you do is super important like and I always ask feedback and it's not always easy because I live in France and people are not super direct but then when they do it's really insightful because people are like hi thinkers in France and it's great and just I always reflect do I still like my job am I still giving fail you do I still have autonomy constantly and it can also be very annoying for my boss because they might be like oh but is he leaving or what is he looking for so I have learned the hard way that I shouldn't do that too much because then it looks like I'm never really there even though I am because I'm really loyal alright so there's always pitfalls sure you learn from your mistakes you can tell abut your mistakes you made that made you learn and grow the most well what I have actually the best thing is moving to France for me because I am not good at language like English I'm kind of alright because I've had to speak it my whole life but then speaking French I'm like a child again and the thing is it made me speak slower and listen more because I have a fast brain it doesn't mean that it's good it's just fast so I sometimes speak over people or make very quick assumptions and I'm lucky that I have a lot of experience so I tend to have quick assumptions that are tend to be alright because I've done it before but that can really give you issues right especially if you're in front of a client you assume something it's really not true that's not a good thing to be in that position so moving to France making me speak less and think more that really helped me a lot alright I think there's another talk in there it can be depending on your culture of course and is so for a Dutch person like me who speaks fast speaks a lot things quickly it's really a good thing to do but yeah also people who procrastinate and think deeply a lot but then do nothing right so you have to always find the time but there's always a where yeah of course it's really awesome to talk with you I think we could go on yes probably that's why I did to talk about it there's a question we asked everyone at the end fun question so Chris you wanna yes yes yes so what we are most interested in is when you are coding intensively what do you like to drink but I like to drink yes woah that that changes over time right now it's just water I drink a lot of water but that's just because I like it but never alcohol never alcohol no only after or before alright so there's no sir there's no Steve Ballmer peak to be had with you who knows no but like this is really great of working where I work we work with so many different cultures and lately especially the people in Brazil we work with them a lot and the cool thing is they're super happy that we help them but they actually the help is way more but they don't realize it but they give keep giving as presents and it's always alcohol or like peanuts or like candies so now that if it's there yeah I'll take it sorry I think nothing's on this table here I was fat for a reason so maybe this alcohol it is consumed it is conserved but not while coding generally all right I always give it like this is one fun thing like we work for Rolex the the awesome watch company and one day a package arrives on my desk and it was really big I'm like that's interesting open it up super nice Rolex box and Michael they didn't give me a watch right no of course not they gave me chocolates but like the most amazing chocolates you've ever seen properly aligned with the Rolex logo on it in a golden piece of paper in a big box and so now that I'm older I didn't eat them myself I gave them to all my colleagues because I'm a manager so I got them because I did a lot for this client but actually the team did it so now that I'm trying to lose some weight I just yeah you don't need to eat it all no right just have a sample oh I did yeah let's go now it's amazing how how you can ship chocolates from Geneva in a big box so they don't move there's like bedding like that right what's amazing yeah but everything they do is the most amazing it can be so if you do chocolates why not it's their it's their brand of course exactly their brand is big so perfect ultimate quality brands take so perfect and so I'm really honored to work with these guys to to learn what it means to have the the perfect shot or the perfect 3d render or the perfect video on a website and still make it fast because that's challenging is when I say you have to optimize them no no no no we were having the the most pixels possible so it looks perfect so you need to find your way around it and then but this is a great challenge I can imagine yeah and that website is amazing is the most smooth animations you've ever seen I think we need to have a second podcast with Tim explaining about how we optimized for a client like Rolex that demands nothing but the best there you go I was really happy that I did that many years for Chanel they are similar they're not the same brands clearly there's in a different space but it's amazing they have two discussions with their the people that make the bags or take the pictures the the story behind that brand is so amazing there's so much there and you feel proud as a developer that you can actually show that on a page and you start of start to like the story of the lady herself and how she emancipate and so giving a story behind you what you build that is super cool so I'm lucky that I had that yeah I think yeah we could talk yes yes so interesting yeah I think we need to wrap up sure has been amazing thank you thank you very much thank you Chris thank you Tim thank you cool thank you for listeners to tune in bye bye bye