On Stage With Your Boss: Lessons From a Developer’s Perspective
How preparing and presenting together sharpens storytelling, demos, and career skills for senior engineers
Most of my talks are solo. I build the storyline, sketch out the slides, wire up a demo, and then I just run with it. This week is different. I’m on stage at IBM TechXchange with my boss. Together we’ll be talking about modern, cloud-native development and how developer experience with Quarkus and LangChain4j is changing the way enterprises adopt AI.
Getting to this point was… let’s say, an adventure. Preparing a talk with your boss is not like building a demo on your own. It’s a mix of project management, storytelling, and diplomacy. And honestly, once you stop worrying, it becomes a lot of fun. Here are some lessons I learned along the way.
Different Motivations, Different Lenses
As a technical person, my instinct is to explain how things work: the frameworks, the code, the design decisions. My boss sees things differently. For them, the priority is not how something works but why it matters in a broader enterprise context.
That’s not nitpicking. It’s a reminder that technical talks are rarely just about technology. Managers obsess about the impact: Cost, risk, productivity, and adoption. They zoom out where developers zoom in. Put both views together and the story gets sharper.
Agree on the Story First
You can’t just open Keynote or PowerPoint and start dropping text. The story arc comes first. What’s the big idea? What’s the single message the audience should remember on their way out? My boss loves details, but those only shine if the story is rock solid. We spent serious time aligning here, and it made every later step easier.
Slides Take Longer Than You Think
When it’s just me, I prefer simple slides that support the narrative. Co-presenting is different. Every bullet, every icon, every transition sparks a discussion. That’s not a bad thing. It forces you to check clarity, trim fluff, and polish harder than you would alone. My boss has a keen eye for this, and the final deck is stronger because of it.
The Demo Is a Project of Its Own
A shared demo is like a shared kitchen. Everyone has their way of cooking. We built, broke, and rebuilt our demo more than once. It always takes longer than you plan for, so start earlier. The upside is obvious: by the end, both of you know the demo inside and out.
Checkpoints Keep You Sane
The most important trick? Fixed checkpoints. We scheduled weekly syncs on story, slides, and demo status. Without those, everything would have drifted into last-minute panic. The checkpoints kept us aligned and made space for actual improvements instead of rushed patches.
Growth Comes From Abstraction
For engineers, explaining things to other engineers is easy. Explaining them at a level that resonates with executives, architects, or decision-makers is much harder. Preparing this talk forced me to move up a level of abstraction. Not “this is how you configure Quarkus Dev Services,” but “this is why frictionless local environments accelerate enterprise adoption of AI.”
That shift isn’t just helpful—it’s career development. The further you move in your profession, the more you’ll need to tell stories at multiple levels. Senior engineers, tech leads, and architects are expected to connect the dots between lines of code and business strategy. Being able to abstract, simplify, and reframe technical depth into business value is not optional—it’s an essential skill.
The Consulting Mindset
At some point in the prep, I realized what this really was: practice for a consulting mindset. You don’t just show technology. You frame the problem, explain trade-offs, and guide the audience toward the bigger picture.
A simple example: I might want to dive into how pgvector stores embeddings. My boss reframes it: “Vector databases let enterprises search across knowledge as easily as you search on Google.” Both are true. One is technical depth, the other is strategic relevance. Learning to switch between those modes is exactly what consultants do.
Working with my boss, who naturally thinks in that mode, made me sharpen those muscles. It’s not about giving up the details—it’s about making sure they serve the story.
On Stage, Lean Into the Dynamic
When the lights go on, it’s not about airtime. It’s about rhythm. Your boss frames the big picture, you dive into the hands-on. They set the stage, you land the details. The back-and-forth makes the talk more engaging than a monologue.
And yes—sometimes small technical inaccuracies slip in. Maybe the version number is wrong. Maybe the framework gets called by its old name. What do you do?
Here’s the survival kit:
Don’t panic. Nobody leaves over a misremembered detail.
Don’t interrupt. Live corrections are awkward.
Do smooth add-ons. “Exactly—and with Quarkus 3.26.4 you also get…”
Save it for the demo. That’s where the details shine.
The truth is, the storyline protects you. If you’ve agreed on the story, then both of you are always speaking from your strengths. They carry the impact narrative, you carry the technical precision.
Want to See the Demo Yourself?
The talk features a live demo of a Museum app built with Quarkus, Qute, PrimeVue, PostgreSQL, and LangChain4j. It shows how modern developer experience and AI tools come together in a cloud-native setup.
If you’d like to follow along, I’ve written a full hands-on tutorial that walks you through implementing the app step by step:
👉 Build the Museum App with Quarkus and LangChain4j
Presenting with your boss isn’t harder, it’s just different. It takes more discussion, more polishing, and more rehearsal. But it also creates a stronger, sharper session. You get the best of both worlds: their obsession with detail and messaging, your focus on tech and flow.
And if you lean into it, you’ll discover something more valuable: the chance to grow from a coder into a communicator who can bridge the gap between engineering and strategy. That’s not just good for the talk—it’s the kind of growth that defines a senior career.
If you ever get the chance, take it. It’s stressful, sure. But it’s one of the most rewarding ways to level up as a speaker.
5 Quick Tips for Surviving Stage Time With Your Boss
Lock the story early — it prevents endless slide edits.
Treat the demo as a project — start weeks in advance.
Schedule checkpoints — saves you from last-minute chaos.
Embrace inaccuracies lightly — smile, adjust, move on.
Think like a consultant — always tie tech back to business impact.