Finding his footing
Sigi grew up in Austria but, as a dual citizen, visited America often. During these trips, he spent time with his grandfather, one of the contributors behind Microsoft’s MS-DOS. They tinkered with computers, and Sigi, who loved playing instruments, performing, and dreaming of a music career, began to appreciate technology.
Inspired by his grandfather, Sigi joined a technical high school. Though classes were okay, coding felt like a grind. “Others lived for it – I didn’t,” he admits. Surrounded by tech obsessed peers, he doubted he’d ever stand out. Then he discovered Cloudflight Coding Contest. He participated several times and eventually took second place worldwide: a standout result among thousands of developers. This secured an internship at Cloudflight, and eventually, he joined full-time.
Still, even as a professional software engineer, he doubted his coding matched his peers.
Meetups changed everything
One day, a friend dragged him to a tech meetup in Vienna – no plan, no expectations. He saw engineers with deep knowledge but clunky talks, and knew he could present better. Meetups became his training ground: he improved his coding, networked, and gave talks – joking, engaging, and connecting. He leaned into his strengths: performing and a knack for engineering.
Combined with rigorous self-study and private cloud projects, meetups helped him grow into a stronger engineer, eventually shifting to site reliability engineering. Today, Sigi co-hosts local events, internal knowledge exchanges, and speaks at various tech events. He recently gave talks at the Cloud Native meetup hosted by Cloudflight Linz “TalosOS: The OS Kubernetes Deserves” and “Programming Industry Trends” at St. Pölten’s college.
Sigi was not a tech prodigy. He was a performer interested in tech. Cloudflight’s contest and culture gave him space to grow into a better engineer and performer. He shows developers you can carve your own path with effort and courage.
