01
Developers who can read a process
They ask about the workflow first and the feature second.
Motivated and resilient are the minimum. What counts is that they understand what sits behind a requirement. They read other people's code without having to run it down first, they work their way into systems that have grown over years, and they know that nonsense implemented cleanly is still nonsense. So they ask about the process before they automate it.
How to recognise them First question in the requirements meeting: “What happens when two people do this at the same time?”
- PHP 8
- Symfony
- Laminas
- MariaDB
- Docker
02
Designers who build their own layouts
No handover gap between design and build.
Design and front-end development sit with the same people. That spares you the classics: layouts that only roughly resemble the design once they reach the browser, type sizes nobody can read on a phone, and states nobody thought about while designing — the error message, the empty list, the very long product name.
How to recognise them Argues about four pixels of spacing — and is right.
- CSS
- TypeScript
- Figma
- WCAG 2.2
- Mobile First
03
People who optimise for visibility
Measure it instead of claiming it.
Campaigns, classic SEO — and, more recently, the question of whether an AI assistant can cite a page at all. Answer Engine Optimization is not a buzzword but a different way of structuring text: the direct answer first, every statement verifiable on its own. What they do can be read off in numbers, not in statements of intent.
How to recognise them Opens the console on other people's websites out of reflex and checks the structured markup.
- Core Web Vitals
- Schema.org
- Search Console
- Matomo
- Google Ads
04
Support that knows the systems
Nobody who calls has to explain what TYPO3 is.
No call centre, no script, no handover to a third level. The people on our support desk know how our clients work and find pragmatic answers: sometimes a hotfix in ten minutes, sometimes the honest reply that this one will take two days.
How to recognise them Asks two questions first: “Since when?” and “What was changed last?” — the two that settle 80 per cent of all cases.
- Ticketsystem
- SLA
- Monitoring
- Logs
- Backups
05
Project managers who know the whole keyboard
Knows when three days are enough and when it turns into three weeks.
They know their field: systems, interfaces, the work involved, and the point in a project where things usually get stuck. So they say it before it gets expensive — and occasionally they say the sentence agencies dislike saying: you don't need this.
How to recognise them Will show you why the cheaper option ends up being the expensive one. Or the other way round.
- Anforderungsanalyse
- Aufwandsschätzung
- Staging
- Abnahme
- Roadmap