When I arrived at the office this morning I saw a mention from Enno Wulff and I was very curious to find out why Enno would mention me. It turned out that he nominated me to participate to the BIF challenge. “What the heck is a BIF challenge?!”, I thought.

I must admit that I usually do not participate in any kind of online challenges but then I saw the questions Enno raised and honestly, I was not able to answer them right off the bat.

Call me haxxbard

Born in a hot summer in 1989, 50 km north-eastern from Hamburg I was raised in a small village, going to school with the kids I played soccer with, went to the youth fire brigade and fooled around on the next big thing – the internet.

After finishing my apprenticeship as a software developer in a medium-sized, familymanaged company I started my journey as a full time developer. In 2012 I was offered to take over a support team at REALTECH Software Products GmbH, this is when the next chapter of my life started: I moved to Walldorf, even when I initially thought they are talking about Möhrfelden-Walldorf. Oops.

In May 2016 I joined SAP as a Customer Success Manager for SAP SuccessFactors, since September 2017 I’m a proud member of SAP’s security organization, SAP Global Security.

“The funny thing about firemen is, night and day, they are always firemen.”

And this, a quote from Gregory Widen, is not only true for me while I am serving as volunteer firefighter in the fire department of Walldorf. This is also true for each and everyone in security. If you are once in security, you are in security for the rest of your life. Security is not a feature, security is not a requirement, security is a mindset. This is what I stand for, this is what I believe in.

Since I am in SAP Global Security I work in Security Testing, delivering the security testing service to all colleagues, improve it, expand it. Besides to this I am also a mentor for our Capture the Flag and act as a Security Evangelist inside of SAP and also outside of SAP.

Photo by Hendrik Neumann @ sitHH 2019 – Thank you!

0x3

In his blog post Enno asked three specific questions to Christian Braukmüller, Dominik Bigl and me. I do my very best to answer all three of them below:

What programming skills or abilities would you like to have in real life?

If there is a possibility to choose whatever ability I could imagine I would choose time traveling. “Why?” you might ask. There are several reasons. Some of them are sentimental and of a private nature. Some of them based on my immense curiosity.

I would love to go back and see my great-grandmother again, ask her questions I never asked because I was too young or too dumb to ask at that time. I would love to go back and breath in the air of the coast side we visited when I was a kid. I would love to travel back to see what happened in Roswell and of course I would go and see some dinosaurs.

What would you do if you had unlimited financial freedom?

Probably I would spend money on research about time traveling. 🙂 But first and foremost I would fight thirst, hunger and infant mortality, fund animal welfare and make the world a better place. That is why I am at SAP. We are here to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.

What is your most favorite book?

One might have recognized that I am at least a little bit geeky, this is also the reason for this choice. It is called “Der Bug: Extraleben Teil 2” from Constantin Gillies and is about elderly computer kids from the 80’s becoming secret agents by accident. It’s about friendship and the exciting time when computers like a C-64 or Amiga were the cool sh*t. I just love the nostalgia, the memories to my very own childhood and this special kind of feeling it creates in me.

BIF

I hope you enjoyed reading some of my personal insights; I do have the pleasure to ask for more insights from:

• Carrie Graham
• Marina Pontjakova
• Joris van de Vis