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Networking as an introvert CTO

vadimkravcenko.com · 2,309 words · saved by 1 readers

There I was, standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company organized, feeling like a fish out of water. The room was filled with chatter, but not just any chatter – Swiss-German chatter. Now, if you've ever tried to understand Swiss-German, you'll know it sounds like someone put German, French, and a dash of alien language into a blender. And there I was, focusing hard on trying to decipher it while also figuring out how to approach all these people without looking like a lost puppy. It was a networking event, so I was supposed to be talking to all of them, right? This was my first networking event in Zurich 5 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then, except the swiss-german language, it still stayed alien. You see, the tech world is a funny place. It's filled with brilliant minds, game-changing ideas, and… a shit-ton of networking events. Events that seem to be designed by extroverts, for extroverts. It’s like someone throwing a party and only inviting peop

Networking as an introvert CTO vadim kravcenko career growth management newsletter Networking as an introvert CTO 19 October 2023 · 15,662 views · Updated 04 April 2026 I was standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company had put together, feeling like a fish out of water. The room hummed with Swiss-German — which, if you’ve never heard it, sounds as if German and French got scrambled by a vocoder. I was busy trying to decode snippets while figuring out how to approach people without looking like a lost puppy. It was a networking event, so apparently talking was

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