Hi, I'm Toni Schmidt
I'm a product manager with a rich technical background. I currently work for Booking.com, where I help build and grow data-intensive horizontal services.
I've got 10+ years professional experience in product management, team leadership and software engineering roles. I've built up strong industry knowledge in online travel and the automotive retail/after-sales sectors.
I'm based in Amsterdam.
What I Do
As a technical product manager I help bring concepts into reality, from their inception to delivery. I use insight and knowledge of stakeholders, the product and the market to discover, define and prioritize backlog items, so the right product is delivered at the right time. By analyzing key metrics, like user tracking- and customer feedback data, I take data-centric decisions.
How I Work
Having coded for much of my life, abstracting complex problems into smaller parts comes natural to me. That allows me to take a business requirement and dissect it into its components, so that the development team, internal and external stakeholders have all the info they need for planning and execution.
Why I Do It
My goal is bringing uncompromisingly delightful experiences to my users. I want to go to sleep at night knowing that I've taken no shortcuts in delivering the best possible product. I want to build products that I can recommend to family and friends with a perfect conscience, because I'm convinced it's the best result achievable.
Timeline
| 1984 | Born in Munich. |
|---|---|
| 1986 | Forbidden to play in the sandbox because of fallout from Chernobyl. Thanks parents for not letting me get radiated. |
| 1990 | Moved to Überlingen at beautiful Lake Constance. |
| 1995 | Started to be interested in computers. Completed Space Quest on the family's x486. |
| 1997 | Started a computer repair business. Still got a dust phobia from that time. |
| 1999 | Started coding Visual C++ for Microsft Foundation Classes (which are somehow still maintained) projects in my father's company. |
| 2003 | Graduated school, yay. |
| 2003 | Served my 9 month in the army. Not so yay. But at least they sponsored a commercial driving license. |
| 2004 | Started studying Information Engineering at Uni Konstanz. |
| 2006 | Developed a short-lived fascination for computer graphics. |
| 2007 | Developed a longer-lived fascination for Human-Computer Interaction. |
| 2008 | Fun times developing computer vision software for optical multi-touch tabletops. |
| 2009 | Finished my Bachelors about interaction concepts for multi-touch user interfaces. |
| 2011 | Started an ASP.NET MVC/C# webdev gig at Textking. Built up a whole translation managment platform from the ground. Great times. |
| 2011 | Crossed the atlantic ocean on a sailboat. Just awesome. Then tried surfing in Los Angeles where the ocean had nothing better to do than break my collarbone. Still managed to have a good time in Vegas afterwards, though. |
| 2011 | Moved to Berlin. |
| 2013 | Moved to Munich and switched to incadea. Now developing for an Dynamics Nav ERP. There's nothing better than debugging in C/SIDE. |
| 2014 | Sat next to my then-to-be wife on a plane home from Shanghai. Exchanged numbers. Things turned out fine. |
| 2014 | Moved to Shanghai. Now doing more and more architectural work for WCF/C# services. |
| 2015 | Switched to CRM Factory/MCON Group. Leading a team of Front-End developers now. Great memories working together with amazing colleagues and friends, like Front-End Wiz and Architect Miguel, and TED-talking Astrophysicist turned genius Data Scientist Gareth. Got nightmares about iOS certificates that expire in the middle of the night, though. |
| 2017 | Started taking it serious with the chinese lessons at Shanghai Jiao Tong Uni. 你好。Passed my HSK5. |
| 2018 | Started at Ctrip, working on Trip.com, as a product manager for a site handling bazillions of flight ticket bookings per day. |
| 2019 | Moved to Amsterdam and started in my current role as Technology Product Manager at Booking.com. Now building and scaling horizontal business services with a focus on data-intensive order streaming services. |
You've made it this far ...
Stay a bit and read about some of the things I enjoy doing.
- I'm AWS certified (AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate).
- I've built saithong-bungalow.com and did the photography for the site. It's a place so wonderful it should be kept secret, so don't tell anyone about it.
- I'm making $$$ (ok, maybe just $) selling photos on Shutterstock et al.
- I'm learning about Machine Learning and Data Science.
- I enjoy going sailing with friends. Here's a nautical photo of me. In 2011 I've crossed the atlantic on a sailboat (barefoot-route, though).
Before you leave ...
Check out my A/B Testing Tool, maybe it'll be helpful if you need to quickly compare two datasets for statistical differences.
If you're more the reading type, have a look at my thoughts about backlog prioritization or writing requirement documents.
Get in touch if you want to learn more about me or just want to chat about tech, sailing, photography or China.