First Person Meets… Arno Schilperoord: Coding is magic poetry

Matt Egan

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to First Person The show where we meet the most interesting people in it and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you're an interesting person in it, do let us know you might be the next first person. The next voice you will hear now will be today's guest. He is Arno Schilperoord.

Arno is definitely one of the most interesting people in it.

He's currently director of global architecture and digital innovation at the Heineken company, and we are delighted to have him as a guest on first person so Arno, welcome and first up, what is the first thing people should know about you? Arno Schilperoord

That's a great question, and thanks for having me today.

I think I can talk about what I do or what I've done in the past, but maybe the first thing that people should know about me is that I think I believe coding is magic, and that coding is a form of poetry.

In coding, you write in symbols and in syntax, and from that, you create a whole new world, and new, you know, you create apps or websites or games or financial systems or new algorithms. So to me, that is, you know, creating a whole new world with just words.

Matt Egan

Yeah, I sometimes have to take a step back and think about that, because you are through symbols and words, like creating something in a way that like, it's almost, if I watch my children using Minecraft or something like that, right?

It's almost like instinctive to humans to do that. It is an art form. But I don't think we necessarily think about that often enough. Arno Schilperoord

I don't think so, but it is what really inspires me and creating something from nothing blank screen. And you know that sense of possibility that is really what inspired me? Matt Egan Very, cool.

Okay, wonderful. What a great start. So Arno section one of our little show, we like to call First things first, and this is where we like to get to know about our guest by understanding some of their first times.

And I'm actually really looking forward to this based on your first comments here. Well, let's, let's, let's focus in on your, your first job in it. Tell us about, you know, how you got started in this industry? Arno Schilperoord

Yeah, it was back in 1995 that I started with a small software company with just a handful of people, and one of the first projects I was assigned to was with a with a bank back in the Netherlands, which is part of a team that did a design implementation of Windows infrastructure.

And soon after that, I moved into a department that is responsible for designing and building global trading floors for the bank. So that's environment where everything needs to be high performance, resilient, real time.

So that's really where I learned the IT job, working on the pressure building systems that we couldn't afford to fail. Matt Egan Yeah, pretty exciting.

And, you know, remembering back to that time you were doing lots of things for the first time, I presume, right?

I mean, I remember a little bit before that, but as as a high school student visiting the stock exchange in London, and it was all guys in bright color, and it was guys in bright colored jackets, like arguing with each other.

And within, you know, five years, it was online, digital training platforms to your point, Arno Schilperoord

absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a time that was super emerging. I learned a lot of things for the first time. I think everybody else was learning things for the first time, yeah. And that, to me, was so energizing, Matt Egan energizing.

And, you know, to your previous point about creativity, that's pretty cool, right? Because, because you're building things, would that?

Would that be kind of the first time that you, you sort of, you got in there and you thought, yeah, this is, this is the kind of thing I want to do, like, with my life. Arno Schilperoord

I think so, yeah, I did that really clicked for me. That at that time, had the level of innovation, the level of energy, also working, you know, with all sorts of colleagues from from different parts of the world.

That's really what I thought this, this is maybe the industry for me to work in. Matt Egan

And how did you get to that point I'm interested in, because, you know, we started here where you're working writing code, I presume, for a software company, but like, there's, there's a point between you getting the inspiration to build something and then having the technical skills to go get that job.

So was that something that you, you studied in college or at school, or, you know, how did you get into that whole world? Arno Schilperoord

It's very different, actually. I, I've, I've studied physics, so, bit bit of the. Different background. And so I did research on anti glare coatings on MTV screens with Philips.

I worked at a university on, you know, what they call the scanning tunnel microscope, where, you know, you create images at atomic level of surfaces so very different. But already at time, I was, you know, using computer models and writing computer code to help in the analysis.

But after my study, I explored several job opportunities, and that's how I rolled into in the IT world, like I said, that world, at that time, that industry, was booming, I was surrounded by incredible people, so much creativity, so much energy. I was learning. Everybody was learning.

And yeah, like I said that, what I believe was the world for me to work in. Matt Egan

Yeah, no, it's so cool. And it's amazing how often when we meet people in this environment like it isn't a straightforward, yes, I wanted to work in it, therefore I pursued a job in it.

The number of interesting, creative people who have some other related background, but it's, but it's a different background. And to your point, I think, like the inspiration is to do with the creativity, the opportunity, the ambition, the people you're working with.

So that sounds really cool, but you know, the path from where you were there to where you are now with this incredible senior creative job, one of the world's, you know, large, iconic organizations like, you know, talk to me about that, right?

How do you go from that first exciting burst of your career and sort of develop and move through the pathway as you've moved? Arno Schilperoord

Yeah, to me, important part of the work when we work at the trading floor, building, designing solutions that are resilient, high performance. And that's a small step to to architecture and to me, today's world, we are fully dependent on digital solutions.

And whether we work for the bank or the government, consumer goods company, like, like I'm working in today, as a society, we are dependent on these digital solutions, and they need to be well architected, well designed.

And to me, that is something that takes, for me a lot of boxes, something that I like to be part of, and constantly strive for that, for that improvement.

So throughout my career, worked as you know, as architect on consultancy and outsourcing models in finance and our consumer goods. Matt Egan

So you found that that was kind of where you could have the most influence that you wanted to have, I guess, kind of thing. And I mean, like I look from the outside and think that architecture role must be the most kind of satisfying, right?

Because you're you're building, you're building, you're putting the building blocks in place to create the great kind of creations. Arno Schilperoord

Absolutely, yeah, to me, it is. But of course, you ask an architect for that well, but Matt Egan that's interesting, right?

Because at some point you go from, you know, like the way you described your your initial work, without necessarily having any experience in the industry or even knowing what the industry is, right? And you gravitate towards this piece.

So I'm wondering if there were any kind of bosses or mentors along the way who helped you kind of with your progression. And if so, you know, what did you learn from those first great bosses? Kind of thing? Arno Schilperoord

I've worked with many amazing and super intelligent and experienced people, but I think my first truly great boss. He stood out for having an incredible radar for spotting problems early, right?

If there was a technical problem at the project, he would feel it at an early involvement, and he would step in and ask the right questions and steer it back.

When we had a major artist, he didn't just treat it as head, as an incident, the team will solve it. It called the team together after the first incident and perform a root cause analysis and turn it into a learning moment.

If someone was personally struggling, he would notice that and sit down at the desk and had a chat and support.

And so that radar for for spotting early problems, that is something that I really admire in that, in that person, yeah, so that's really where I learned that great leadership isn't just about technical expertise.

It's also about awareness, about timing, about creating a culture of high performance and creating an environment where people feel safe and feel supported, Matt Egan

yeah, really important, right?

And I think, I think there's a level of ego, a level of kind of empathetic ego that allows you to, like, run towards the problem and see it as an opportunity, rather than kind of trying to sort of skirt past it, which, again, interesting how often that comes up in these conversations.

Conversations that that great leaders, great managers, actually are the ones who embrace the challenges and the problems and the issues both a personal level and a structural level, because it's by solving those problems that you you get better, right? And you learn.

And I think it says something about the empathetic nature of the leader, that they're able comfortable to do with that, rather than having to always be seen to succeed, which is, which is useful for all of Hana, because the second section of our conversation today, we like to call first fails.

Because we're not only here for the good stuff, right? We want to be empathetic leaders and learn from our mistakes.

So if you wouldn't mind, I think I'd be interested to know in all that context, you know, you know, what was the first big mistake you can remember making. And I wonder if you learned anything from that, Arno Schilperoord

getting personal now, I think, yeah, well, one of the big mistakes I still remember in my career is we were working on a project.

I was architect on that project, and we had some fundamental compatibility issues with another system, and I believed that could be fixed, and it kept pushing forward and trying to make it work, and really on the inside, I should have stepped back much, much sooner and acknowledged the flaws and have gone a different direction.

And it really taught me how powerful a lesson and sometimes the smartest move is not to push harder, but had to let it go, to reassess and to choose another path.

And well, I guess at the end, that shift in mindset had made me a stronger architect and also some more collaborative in areas. But Matt Egan

it's a hard lesson to learn, I think. And I would say personally in my professional career, it's lesson I have to learn continually, right? Because we're emotional creatures, and so like that, like, like, the prize being there and thinking, if only we can just get get this done.

Like, great. It is. I find it personally, really hard to be the person that goes, hang on, stop. Let's put a spade in the ground. Take a step back. Maybe we need to rethink this kind of at this this point.

It's a difficult thing to do emotionally sometimes, Arno Schilperoord

yeah, it is because, especially, there's a lot of stakes into existing investments teams working on those projects. So to call it to a whole that is a different conversation. Matt Egan

Yeah, it's like the, you know, I'm not sure how true this is now, but they used to say in the 90s about Japanese car manufacturer that, you know, anything was wrong on the production line, the protocol was that everything stopped and everyone focused on solving the minor problem, you know, like whatever time was lost was considered kind of time gained which.

And I always thought that's a great principle, but I don't want to be the guy who's stopping the whole factory because, like, one ball bearings not working right, or something like that.

So it's, it's a great lesson to learn, but I think it's a lesson you have to continually relearn in my experience.

And I think one of the things about that, another question we like to ask is, you know, and maybe, and the answer might be, there's, this has never happened.

But one of the questions we like to ask is, was there a first time you realized that something you knew might not actually be right? You know, some something that you'd kind of operated by, believed in?

You know, sometimes these things get challenged more, and as you Arno Schilperoord

develop Well, show me that it's the first time, not more and more. Realization that stuck with me is that the original promise of cloud, cloud based solution, as being flexible, as being pay per use, as being cheap, doesn't hold true all the time.

So I used to believe that cloud was inherently cheaper and more agile by design, but what you now see is that that model has evolved, and today, the cloud providers often push for a long term commitment and pricing that is tied to revenue of our company or the perceived value rather than The actual usage of systems.

So at that shift, and that challenge my assumption that made me rethink how we architect, for cost efficiency, for agility.

And that's also to me, good to remind and that widely accepted paradigms as cloud and that can change, and we need to stay curious, critical, definitely, and that's just part of being a Google architect. Matt Egan

It sort of feels like you know instinctively that it should be true, right, that you know the cloud should always be cheaper, more efficient, and yet, and we reported on this recently, we're seeing like really large numbers of repatriation from cloud to on prem, and some.

Of that's driven by, which is what one of the reasons why being an architect must be super exciting right now. Some of that's driven by the need to be aI ready and to be to be building organizations for the future.

And some of it's driven by, I mean, I always thought that's why. Why do finops departments exist? If cloud is is always, you know, the most efficient option.

And I do feel we're in a really kind of interesting period from an infrastructure perspective, because every organization has to have these same thought processes, right?

Which is, how do we build the infrastructure a future that we maybe don't fully understand, like, because we know it's going to require, like, scalability of technology to support AI. So that must be quite interesting in your role, I would guess. Yeah, Arno Schilperoord it is.

Yeah, it is. And of course, with many solutions, we do use cloud solutions, but and also we are very deliberately making choice.

When we do, we build in house solution and actually speeding up quite, quite large teams that start developing solutions ourselves and which is proven to be cheaper, better fit for our needs. Yeah, Matt Egan

but a really good example to your point of something that, I think, a paradigm that we all bought into some extent. And it doesn't mean that we were wrong necessarily.

It's just that the world moves on and changes and economics and, you know, business practices are such that the profit mostly get drives things. And, you know, I do, you know, which is, we're not saying cloud isn't a huge part of the future.

We're just saying that that, that assumption that it was the entire future like actually has turned out not to be true, kind of thing, correct? Okay, amazing.

I feel like we could talk technical for the longest period of time, but I also feel like we're getting to know you as a person, and that intrigues me. So we're going to move on to section three, which is our quick fire.

First, we want to get to know you beyond your professional veneer. So we're going to find out about the real person using our patented first person random question generator.

So could you please pick a number between one and 30, pick number five, number five, that is your first home. Like, what can you tell us about your first home? Arno Schilperoord First home?

Yeah, Matt Egan

you had an answer to something else. So we can take a pause and I can Arno Schilperoord

No, that's the home that I was born or the first home that I bought, whatever comes to mind. No, I was born in a small village in the Netherlands, close to Rotterdam.

My my parents bought it, I think they for the equivalent of less than 10,000 Matt Egan euro, right?

Arno Schilperoord

It was a detailed house, and I remember there is a picture of me sitting in the kitchen overlooking, you know, the countryside. So that's the first home, but also one of my first memories, Matt Egan

what I mean so many things that that brings up, right?

That like, I have a similar kind of memory of, like, looking out the back door of my parents house that I grew up in, but also you bring to mind the fact that, yes, my parents, also, I think my parents spent less than 1000 pounds on the house.

And yeah, that's not something I want to think about too closely, and it's definitely something my children shouldn't think about to any extent. Amazing. Could you please pick another number between Arno Schilperoord one and 13?

Pick number nine. Matt Egan Number nine.

What is? Oh, I like this question. What is the first thing you would buy if you won the lottery? Arno Schilperoord

I won a lottery. I think I will take my wife out for an amazing dinner Matt Egan

that's gonna be, that's gonna be quite an amazing dinner with your not Arno Schilperoord

spending all that money of the lottery ticket to celebrate the moment. Matt Egan Would you still?

Because I think about this. Sometimes I don't do the lottery right, so it's not an issue that I'm gonna have. But like I would, I think I'd still work right. I think I still would want to do good work.

I'm not sure I would do exactly everything I was doing now, but I guess if you know, if money was no object, would you still want to do some of the things that you do professionally now. Would life change radically? Do you think Arno Schilperoord

I think I would still work? Yes, yeah. I couldn't jump. It's very demanding. I mean, like long hours. So if I could balance it just a little bit better than Yes, but I. Go to go to work? Matt Egan Yes, yeah.

I mean, I feel like so in my world of writing or creating content, it's like, it's exactly the same thing, right?

I really like to drill down to the things that I love to do and maybe jettison some of the kind of, sort of the hours and some of the more administrative or stressful elements. I'm guessing, if you're an architect, you want to build things right?

Like, that's, that's the cool part of the job. Okay? Thank you. Arno, I feel like we'll get to know you know you pretty well at this point.

And I'd feel like will be really useful as we move into section four, our final section will be, which we call first and final thoughts, is to really understand, you know, some of your experiences, and how that can help our viewers and listeners.

So Hana, what would be the first piece of advice you would give to somebody who is just starting out now? Arno Schilperoord

Well, my advice is that this industry is so full of opportunities that it has been for the for the past many years, and certainly now in time of AI. But the key is to find out what really excites you.

So pay attention to what gives you energy, not just what looks good on paper. Stay curious, keep learning. Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself along the way.

And if you ever find yourself in a role or an environment that drains more energy than it inspires you, then take that as a signal and look around. Explore your options, and don't be afraid to move on.

After what my career, I've made a number of changes, because I felt at that moment in time it was the right step to do after five or seven or eight or nine years, and make a step another company, all refinement and all the challenge, all the type of focus, all the technologies, and I have also seen people you know which got stuck to the company and explain about the situation, just move on if you don't like it.

There's so many opportunities. Matt Egan

Yeah, no, or at least to your point earlier, at least look right, look around and think about what you what you want to do.

And there's so many really wise things in there, Anna, that I sort of wish you'd have been saying to me when I was starting out many years, you know, we are fortunate to be living and working through an industrial revolution, right?

So the way things look like today may not be the way things are tomorrow. The career path might change. So you said a lot of things that really resonated with me. You know, stay curious, like, understand what gives you energy.

And, of course, it's not always possible to just change jobs like that, but like, thinking about that in that context will allow you, I think, to stay motivated and stay creative. Maybe, is that? Is that how you kind of view the way your career has been? Absolutely yes.

So it's a good skill to develop, and I think it's really important for people to hear that. And throughout that career, I guess you've done many kind of successful and amazing things.

What would be the first project or achievement that you would want to tell people about from an architect perspective, what's your masterpiece? Would you say? Arno Schilperoord

I uh, well, the first thing I did is something when I bought a computer when I was, like, 12 years old, and then programmed something in basic that's probably back to your first question that you asked.

Added that magic of creating something out of out of nothing that felt like magic, but I wouldn't convert that my masterpiece Matt Egan

thing to have done. I think that's, you know, yeah, and you'd be amazed the number of people we talked to who have a similar origin story, right? Like, when they were a child, they copied out some code from a magazine, or they, like, borrowed the school computer.

And, like, I love those stories, because it really gets to the heart of what it is that that inspires people. But okay, maybe that's not your greatest masterpiece, but it's a very important part of the journey. But Arno Schilperoord why?

I think my masterpiece hopefully to come and the work that's currently doing in the current role at Heineken, and we do a complete business and technology transformation, changing our enterprise application landscape, heavily invest in the value of data through AI, which requires a lot of architecture attention.

Of course, that entire transformation have been at the very start of it and involved with it now, so in the middle of the journey. But I hope the biggest part of that masterpiece is yet to come. Matt Egan

Yeah, no, that's cool. And again, that's an answer that we often hear from smart, successful people, right? We're proud of every achievement we've had, but we want to move on to the next thing.

And I do think successful people are often the people you know you described previously how it's about understanding what gives you energy looking around you and thinking about where you want. To be rather than kind of just slavishly following a career path.

But I also think that curiosity to be excited by technology and build the next thing is pretty cool, right?

And from an architect's perspective, you know, there are a lot of challenges right now because we speak to a lot of business leaders who are like, we're going to transform our business using data and AI.

And it's like, cool, but you need architecture to build the infrastructure to like to support that. And I'm not sure that's that's always understood, but I mean, you must feel that there's a huge opportunity out there like to build these great projects with architecture. Arno Schilperoord Yeah, yeah.

And that's really also the next thing. I only surprised you that also in our organization, I truly believe that the impact of AI will be massive and disruptive in the in the coming years.

I think if you compare to previous big transfer, cloud, mobile internet before had massive impact. And I believe the impact of AI is is equally big or bigger, and will go even faster compared to its other big trends in the past.

I think it's difficult for all of us to imagine what the impact is and what the potential is.

And now something like agentic AI, and we have a number of bots that execute processes in an orchestration board that also together and feature back into a human being will feed, you know, the bots and trains and learns it, and it has massive potential for the organization not to drive efficiencies, to sort of work with less people or very different roles, To what what we have today.

And, yeah, that is maybe the biggest transformation that I've seen, and that is yet to come. Matt Egan

Yeah, no, I don't disagree. And I feel like sometimes, like you mentioned this earlier, it's important to take a step back and think about that. You mentioned multiple kind of disruptions and transformations, and each one seems to get quicker. And AI is exponential, right?

It's going to, going to increase these things.

And you know, some of the things you spoke about, there are kind of, you know, to my mind and in my world, it's about remaining focused on the mission and understanding how you can transform like operations and strategies to support the mission, using these, these tools, and kind of being open minded, right?

Because we don't know what the end point is, but I feel if we've got the mission and the values to support, then it's, it's super exciting to kind of follow this wild ride, I guess.

But you have to have that growth mindset to understand that what we did yesterday may not be the thing we're doing tomorrow kind of thing, Arno Schilperoord no.

And at the same time, I try to prepare for it. Be ready for it.

Alex said it, people think sometimes let's jump on the AI work, but there's a lot of foundations that needs to be in place, around platforms, around data, around how we do knowledge management in organization. Matt Egan

This is why we need architects, right? Because, again, like business leaders will have visions like, but you know, the IT strategy has to be the strategy, or it's not going to work. Quite the pieces all have to fit together.

So it's like, it's a very exciting time, but I guess, also a challenging time. And that's that's what makes it interesting, really.

So Hana, this has been wonderful, but I would like to ask our only non first question, which which is, do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share with our audience as we close down our conversation? Arno Schilperoord

My final thought is that we should always remember that speed is one divided by complexity. Yeah. And I think sometimes we over architect to make the world too complex.

We should think about how we design something, when we architect something, when we architect something, when we create something, how will it look like a year from now and keep it now as simple as it can be, but not simpler, so that we can move at speed.

Speed is extremely important. Matt Egan

My boss often likes to say, talk about velocity, speed with purpose, kind of thing.

And I think they both speak back to the idea of, you know, you opened up with this, talking about the excitement of creativity, and I think there and how, you know, it's art really, to create something nothing. And the greatest art is simple, right?

It's, it is it is not easier, necessarily, but it's possible to create a great an incredibly complex, technical thing, but the thing that lasts for the longest time, and the thing that has the most value and is the most artistic tends to be a simple thing.

Simplicity is not easy. Simple is hard, but it's good and future. Proof, right? Yeah.

Well, my thanks to Arnold, and thank you for watching or listening to this episode of First Person, the show, where we meet the most interesting people in it and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I have been your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you are an interesting person in it, like Arno, please let us know, and you may be our next first person. So from Arno and me, goodbye.