For a lot of people, networking is the worst part of a tech career. In October 2026 Evangelos came back to 42 Wolfsburg for an ask-me-anything session with a title that filled the room: Networking for People Who Hate Networking.
The turnout said something. Plenty of developers would rather chase a bug at two in the morning than walk into a room full of strangers.
quiet, and connected anyway.
Evangelos studied at 42 Wolfsburg and now builds iOS apps in the city. He is not the loudest person in the room. He has still built a network through meetups, hackathons and industry events, without treating every conversation as a chance to sell himself.
That's what made the session useful. The advice didn't come from someone who loves working a room. It came from someone who found a way around not loving it.
why bother at all.
It's tempting to believe good code speaks for itself. It does, eventually, but somebody has to be listening.
In Germany, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) asked around 13,000 employers how they filled their vacancies in 2015. Personal contacts and recommendations from their own staff were the largest single channel, behind 29% of all hires. For jobs that need a degree the share drops to 20%, with online job boards ahead, but that's still one hire in five.
The people who help most are often not your closest friends. In 2022 researchers from MIT, Harvard, Stanford and LinkedIn published the largest experiment yet on the question in the journal Science. Across more than 20 million LinkedIn users over five years, loose acquaintances did more for people's job moves than close contacts did, although people they barely knew at all helped less. The effect of those looser ties was strongest in the more digital industries, which is where an iOS developer works.
That's the case for Evangelos's advice in one line. The useful connections are the loose ones, and loose connections only form if you turn up.
just go.
His first piece of advice is simple: go, even if you end up talking to nobody. Listen, watch and take an idea home. You might meet someone, or you might leave with a better sense of how the room works, and that counts too.
Quiet participation is more normal than it feels. In Stack Overflow's 2025 developer survey, about half of respondents said they had learned from the site in the past year, but only about a third felt like members of its community. Most people start by listening. The trick is not to stay there forever.
let the work start the conversation.
Nobody has to pitch themselves at the door. A hackathon, a side project, a blog or a Discord server you actually post in can open the conversation for you. After that, all you have to do is carry it on.
Developers have it easier here than most people. A hackathon gives a room full of strangers a shared problem and a deadline, so the small talk takes care of itself. A side project gives people something to ask about. A blog post or a good answer in a community channel means someone may already know your name before you meet. In each case you get to talk about the work instead of about yourself, which is a lot easier for most quiet people.
42 is networking practice in disguise.
At a university you can sit through a lecture without saying a word. At 42 there are no lectures and no teachers. Every finished project has to be explained and defended to other students, and every student grades other people's work in return. The school's FAQ puts it neatly: every student is both a learner and a reviewer.
Explaining your decisions out loud to someone you met ten minutes ago is most of what networking is, with better material to talk about. A student does it every week without calling it networking.
Around that sit the optional extras: weekend Rushes, which are group projects, ask-me-anything sessions with people working in tech, hackathons, workshops and social events. Nobody is forced to mingle. The chances just keep turning up. Alumni keep access to the campus too, and many come back to run sessions or mentor current students. Evangelos's talk was exactly that.
where the network leads.
42 Wolfsburg opened in 2021 with Volkswagen as its founding partner, and the school is paid for by companies rather than students. Its strategic partners are Volkswagen, CARIAD, Bayer and New Yorker, with SAP, T-Systems and others supporting.
Those companies don't just sign cheques. They come to campus for hackathons, workshops, site visits and talks, and they hire. In the December 2025 career report from 42 Wolfsburg and 42 Berlin, which tracked more than 420 students with work experience, roughly one role in five was at an official partner company, and 40 internships had turned into permanent jobs at the same employer.
None of that replaces turning up. A partner on campus is only useful if somebody walks over and says hello, or, in the spirit of the talk, stands nearby and listens first. In September two more alumni came back with T-Systems, and a company project presented on campus took Ahsan to a developer job at New Yorker.
his approach, in four habits.
Go with a small goal. Listen, watch and take one idea home. If you meet someone, that's a bonus.
Bring your work. A project, a hackathon entry or a post gives people something to ask about, and gives you something to talk about that isn't you.
Step a little further each time. Nobody expects a quiet person to become a loud one. A slightly bigger step outside the comfort zone each time is enough.
Treat it as practice. Not every event has to pay off. Practice, not performance, takes most of the pressure away.
Thanks, Evangelos, for coming back and saying out loud what most people only think. If you're wondering whether 42 suits a quieter person, there are no lectures to hide in, but nobody expects you to be the loudest one in the room either. It starts with the 42 Piscine.
Evangelos