commercetools Career Growth & Development

Give us a snapshot of what you do to stay on top of your engineering knowledge and skills. 

As an engineer, staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies that allow us to create better software is crucial. That’s why I pay a lot of attention to these trends through newsletters and Discord groups in order to stay up to date on the space. Usually, at the beginning of the new year, I do a personal retrospective where I also like to think about what I can learn during the upcoming year. I try to focus on 2-3 major things. For example, this year my priorities are AI, MongoDB and Scala. After identifying my priorities for the year, I try to spend time in communities and search online to find valuable resources about the topics that I want to study, like videos (paid or free), blog posts and websites (e.g., microservices.io for studying microservices).

Last but not least, I try to connect on LinkedIn and X with influential people about the topics that I want to deepen (e.g., following Sam Altman on X, Perplexity, etc.). This may seem obvious, but it can provide so much value! I tend to use the recommendation algorithm on these social networks to my advantage, so that after some time, my feed is curated with relevant and useful information on my priority topics.

What are your go-to resources for keeping your engineering skills sharp? 

Usually, I tend to use a mix of these things to keep updated.

I also use local meetups and conferences; connecting with people gave me so much value in my career. Some of my favorite newsletters are: Stay up-to-date about Scala: This Week in Scala Tech, tldr.tech, Chris Richardson newsletter who is the creator of Mircroservices io, and ByteByteGo. 

I also tend to use ChatGPT with tasks to let AI send me the latest news in the tech landscape every week.

Depending on what I’m trying to learn, the resources I gravitate toward vary. For example, to study a new programming language I prefer to watch videos, while to deepen a tool/library I already use, I tend to dig into the documentation plus some Medium posts. The rest of my learning comes from experimenting on my own.

How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?

Our team cultivates a culture of learning and belonging through a variety of collaborative and celebratory practices. We host Exchange and Exploration Days, our own version of hackathons, where engineers from different geographies and locations come together to experiment, build prototypes and explore innovative ideas. These events create a space for cross-functional collaboration and spark creativity beyond day-to-day work. We also run lightning talks, where team members share fresh ideas, novel approaches and lessons learned, fostering knowledge exchange across the group. Our kudo sessions celebrate achievements, both big and small, ensuring we recognize both individual and team successes.

Importantly, we nurture psychological safety, encouraging engineers to take risks, try new things and embrace experimentation without fear of failure. We see every setback as a shared learning opportunity and every win as a shared celebration, reinforcing our commitment to grow and succeed together.

How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?

This culture keeps our team energized and brave, ready to try new things and explore emerging technologies without hesitation. For example, our Smart Data Modeler started as an X&X Day idea and is now shaping how we dramatically improve our customers’ time to go live.

When Model Context Protocol was released, we quickly experimented, recognized its potential for building an agentic ecosystem and transformed a prototype into a fully fledged product called Commerce MCP, which was announced onstage at our flagship event, Elevate — The Global Commerce Summit, this past May. These successes show how our culture turns bold experiments into real-world impact for our customers.

What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?

My advice is to stay authentic. Your team will quickly sense if you genuinely believe in nurturing a learning culture or if it’s just a buzzword to you. Start by creating psychological safety, a space where engineers feel they can experiment, take risks and even fail without fear of judgment. Encourage failing fast, because the faster you test an idea, the faster you learn from it.

Make it clear that we win and lose as a team, never as individuals. That means no blame culture; mistakes are shared learning opportunities, not moments to assign fault. This mindset builds trust, fuels collaboration and removes the fear that can be a barrier to creativity. When people know they’ll be supported whether their idea succeeds or not, they’ll be brave and push boundaries, explore emerging technologies and find solutions you never imagined. Over time, this doesn’t just create a learning culture; it creates a high-performing, resilient team that’s not afraid to try!