Chefgespräch, a podcast by Wirtschaftswoche. From trainee to board member and perhaps even to CEO – that is a career that surely quite a few people dream of, and it is the career of my guest today. He once completed an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk at Siemens, this German industrial icon. He then went to the competition, to Cisco, worked for quite some time in Silicon Valley, and came back to Siemens, where today he is responsible for the Digital Industries division, with a most recent annual revenue of 18.5 billion euros and about 70,000 employees worldwide. He is considered the crown prince of CEO Roland Busch. How that feels, I naturally want to find out from him, but we also want to talk about what it actually takes for such a career. But first of all, a warm welcome, Cedrik Neike.
Yes, my name is Varinia Bernau. At Wirtschaftswoche, I lead the Management and Career section and host this podcast in alternation with my colleague Konrad Fischer. The first impression. Mr. Neike, three things caught my attention when I did some reading about you. First, at the age of 18 – I found that very exciting – you traveled around the world by train, from Berlin to Moscow, via Ulan Bator, Peking, and then by ship to Canada, crossing by rail through the entire United States. Second, you are considered an excellent networker who makes many contacts in the industry and also likes to invite people to discussion panels at Siemens factories. And third, you grew up in Berlin, more precisely in Wedding, but at least with your heart also at home in France. If you had to pick one point, which one says the most about you?
Well, probably that I'm half German and half French, and I grew up as a French person in Berlin, and that form of upbringing doesn't really exist anymore. But you have to imagine, I grew up in a military environment. My mother worked for the French military, and I grew up completely as a French person in Berlin, as a Wedding resident.
But your father is German.
My father is German, but he found me much too French.
And then he said: 'Cedric, you have to become German.' I said: 'How does one become German?' He said, you have three options. I said: 'What are the options?' 'You go to the state, you go to the church, or you go to Siemens.' And that's how I ended up there at 18.
Ah, okay. A father's piece of advice. And what is so typically German about Siemens, or what was your father missing?
Well, no, it was really about the idea of the apprenticeship being a very German concept. When I went back to France and told my grandmother, my French grandmother, that I had done an apprenticeship – 'My God, why didn't you study?' And doing an apprenticeship in Germany is something great because you really get to understand from the start how the industry and how reality actually work, and I really enjoyed that. This apprenticeship concept is a very German idea.
That's true. Yes. Before we talk about Siemens, let's stay in Wedding a bit longer, with your parents. What was it like, that childhood or adolescence you spent there? And how often did you go to France? How often did your father send you to France?
My mother – every vacation we had, we went to France to my family in France.
In the north, near the north. That's where my French family comes from. My German family is actually from near the Oder, but then moved to Aurich, to East Frisia. So between East Frisia and France was where my heart was. That's very, very different. Yeah, but what does that really mean? It's a world that doesn't exist in that form anymore. You have to imagine: my mother worked for the French military as a speech therapist, my father was an entrepreneur, but all my neighbors were French, the schools were French, the streets, shopping, the hairdresser – everything was French. And in the mornings I went to a Catholic elementary school, a German elementary school, and in the afternoons to a military school. And that really does something to you, when you notice how different cultures are and yet how similar they also are.
Mhm. And if you were to pick one thing each – let's perhaps start with your most German trait. What is typically German about you, and what is still very, very French?
Yes, I am a convinced European, so it's always hard to think in clichés, but it is true that Germans approach topics in an extremely structured and organized way. That is something I have always really appreciated. And the French aspect is also – you have to say – this social aspect of approaching people: I don't know you, but I still find you likable. In Germany, you have to earn friendship.
That makes sense if you're shaped by East Frisia, I would say.
Yes, nothing against East Frisia, a very friendly environment, but that is just one thing that really – yeah, those are two things. You have to imagine: my great-grandfather, when he organized a family event, there were 100 people there, and when my German grandfather did something, there were ten of us. That's just a different kind of upbringing, if you will. Yeah.
Right. Yes. And apparently you couldn't really connect with the church or the military, or – one assumes those weren't real options, right?
No, I just asked: what are the three pillars of German society? And he said: the state, the church, and Siemens. That was the idea he had back then. Exactly.
Or to ask more precisely: in the early 1990s, you then started your apprenticeship at Siemens. Is this more than just a little family anecdote, that your father told you at a young age to go to Siemens? Did it just happen that way? What other ideas did you have about what you might want to do?
Yes, I actually had – as one did back then when one was young – the world was open for the first time, I must say. The Wall fell when I was 16. I was at the French high school in Berlin, 500 meters to the Brandenburg Gate, and we all walked over from school, and we were the kids who were on CNN. And that really does something to you. You had always seen Berlin as very enclosed and very protected, and suddenly the world was open. And that gave me the idea that I definitely wanted to do something international, and Siemens was naturally ideal for that because it was an internationally positioned company. And that was one of the reasons: if you want to know more than just Wedding – your kids, as they say in Berlin – then Siemens was a great address to do that.
And actually, it was originally founded in Berlin, and then – but the corporate headquarters has been in Munich then and now. So how present was Siemens in West Berlin back then?
Siemens was still very present. In 1847, Siemens was founded by Werner von Siemens in a backyard – there weren't even garages yet – as a startup. And if you look at Siemensstadt with 60,000 people, a whole part of Berlin was developed there, which is still called Siemensstadt. That was a huge production site. And naturally after the war, a lot moved to Erlangen, much more to Erlangen and partly to Munich. Munich was mainly the telecommunications sector, not so much the industrial side. But there were still 20,000 to 30,000 people in Siemensstadt in Berlin, and I started at the telecommunications plant. You really have to imagine: there were still thousands of people soldering circuit boards to build telecommunications networks worldwide, and to start there as an apprentice. That was really great.
Mhm. And I read that you originally wanted to build trains, but the train division wasn't doing so well for Siemens at the time. So can I imagine little Cedric as one of those boys who played with model trains and would most liked to have become a train driver?
Yes, something like that. Actually, I wanted to become an astronaut, but I got a bit dizzy. So I thought maybe train driver wasn't bad at all. Well, what happened? I started my apprenticeship, and then I thought after the apprenticeship I wanted to study. So I went to England because I thought I couldn't speak English and I wanted to learn. I applied to universities, actually half a year too late, and convinced them to take me. I then studied industrial engineering with a focus on mechanical engineering. Why? Because I wanted to build trains – I was an enthusiastic ICE rider and thought Germany needed an ICE too. They didn't want me and said: 'You'll do mobile phones and the internet now.' And I thought, that doesn't interest me at all. And I just got stuck with it.
Ah, that's also interesting. Because at first you think: 'Oh God, now the dream has burst, and what am I going to do with this internet?' Just for orientation: we're talking about the late 1990s, when the internet wasn't yet such a well-known concept for everyone like it is today.
Yes, we were in London at the time, and University College London was actually the first internet node, if you will, for Europe. Yes, it was already the time when everyone was starting to want mobile phones, but they were still huge devices. The battery lasted a week, you could throw one from the seventh floor and it would still work. And Siemens was one of the biggest mobile phone manufacturers, and at the time it was about: yes, we have to get this internet, this email, onto the phone. They said, you can do that pretty well. I said, mechanical engineering? No, no, you do that. And that's how I became probably one of the first few hundred people who said we're bringing the internet to the mobile phone. From the network infrastructure side – and every year, I still remember, I went to my management and said this will be the next big thing, it will be huge, and every year it didn't happen. And this real explosion – there was BlackBerry back then for sending emails, but the iPhone was really the moment when the internet on the phone suddenly exploded. But that happened a bit later. For years I believed in it without it coming, and then it did come.
Yes. What does that do to a young person? I just said that today the internet is naturally known to everyone and everyone is convinced it's a huge economic opportunity. But I still remember from newspaper editorial offices in the 2000s and 2010s, when you wrote about digital companies, about those crazy Googles, you didn't have such a good standing as when you wrote about Siemens, for example. Was it sort of a dirty topic?
Well, not dirty, but it was strange, and it was like: what's the point, what does it bring me? And there was already a bit of hype in it. A bit like the AI hype – the internet hype at that point, many people had already seen it, but we as Europeans were also too sure of ourselves. You'll ask me someday why I left Siemens. You have to imagine, in the 2000s, the telecom division of Siemens was 80% of the value of Siemens AG. So both the networks, the mobile phones, and the semiconductors – and we were one of the top three, and networks were being built, mobile networks were being built, and so on. And I remember – and I was the great advocate for putting the internet on mobile phones – when the Chief Technology Officer of Siemens AG Telecom put his arm around me and said: 'Mr. Neike, we've been building voice switches for 100 years. We have a million lines of code. It will take another 100 years for the Americans to really get the internet to the point where we can have voice over it too.' And then I left. That's what it does to a person – when you, as a young engineer, believe in something, you want to implement it, and if you're not given the environment to implement it, you look elsewhere. And that's why I left back then.
Mm. So you were already actively looking around back then? Because then a call came from – now we're at the point where you left – a call came from Cisco.
Yes, the real story that most people don't know – what happened was, I was very happy at Siemens, I have to say honestly. I had the whole internet-on-mobile-phone thing. We had a protocol that no longer exists – the WAP protocol – we brought it to mobile phones as the first, and it went very well. Siemens also supported me, both with my first degree and with the MBA I did. And I really wanted to do a startup – that was the dot-com era, that was exactly what was happening. I had won the startup contest at my university – INSEAD, it's a business school – and wanted to get started. The only thing was, my wife hadn't finished studying yet, we had two small children, and my wife said: 'You are certainly not going to start a company now with this internet thing.' And then I was there, should I go back or not? And I had a lot of contacts because I had invited many people for networking at the university, and among them Cisco, and they said: 'Come to us, come to us, come to us.' And so I went to Cisco – they were the leaders in internet networking equipment back then – and they said: 'Come to us, and then help us push this forward.' And it was a super exciting time, those 16 years.
Can you tell us a bit more about how different those two worlds were? At one place, they told you we'll keep doing what we've always done for another 100 years, and at the other – well, that's very interesting.
It's – so when I came back, I was always asked what the difference between Cisco and Siemens is. Siemens is very engineering-driven, very technical, and what they do is absolutely excellent. Siemens is also very customer-driven – whatever the customer wants, we do it. But we're not sales-driven. And even when innovations exist, they always take a long time to be accepted. What I learned when I went to Cisco was a very sales-oriented culture, and always: now comes the next disruption, now comes the next disruption. Cisco was one of the main acquirers. We bought an incredible number of new companies while I was at Cisco, because there was a new technology, we needed it, we bought it, integrated it, and on it went. And this speed of making a decision at 80% completion, compared to not doing something until it's 110% thought through – that naturally gave American companies incredible acceleration. And I also, when I was in Silicon Valley, led development teams, and nothing was impossible there. For example, in Beijing there were the Olympic Games, and we wanted to take all the data – instead of processing it in Beijing, as was customary – and send all the raw data, huge amounts of data, immediately to New York to be processed there. And we built that, even though everyone thought it was practically impossible. Yes, this idea of thinking big, this idea of moving forward at 80%, this idea that if something is missing, it gets acquired, and we lean forward – that's a very American culture that I also experienced.
Yes. And how much did you perhaps sometimes – I imagine it's incredibly inspiring for a young person to be swept up in that euphoria. But I also wonder how often you caught yourself – the European in you, or the engineer – thinking, wait, isn't this going a bit too fast?
Yes and no. You have to imagine, American companies are extremely international. There are Indian, Chinese – there were an incredible number of Italians – many, very many different cultures were involved, and everyone brings their background and tries to apply it. You're only united by this enthusiasm for technology.
Mhm. And when you're enthusiastic about technology, you have the environment you need, and your nationality or your way of doing things is just one facet to solve a problem, rather than holding you back.
So I was always enthusiastic about technology. My wife sometimes criticizes me for always being positive and saying it will always get better, it will always get better. And she's a judge and looks at things and says, well, what are the risks.
Yes, fascinating. And you need that balance too. Yes, that does sound interesting – we can perhaps talk about that later, these interesting discussions at the kitchen table at home.
Perhaps for context: at Cisco, you were initially responsible for the German market?
No, not at all. I was brought in to advance mobile internet in Europe as a technical salesperson. I went to customers and explained the technology. Then Cisco really wanted me to go to the USA. My wife wasn't thrilled – we had three children and wanted to have a fourth at some point. But eventually they convinced me, and I moved to the USA. Three weeks later my job was gone, and then the head of development said: 'You're a technical salesperson, you're so annoying, you always say how it could be better – just do it.' And that's how I ended up switching from technical sales to development, and then spent a few years developing with great enthusiasm. We were really good friends, but it was truly a wonderful environment, being in Silicon Valley. I was – how old was I – just 30 – and had 40 so-called Distinguished Engineers reporting to me. These were people who had co-invented the internet. That wasn't easy.
Exactly. I have a follow-up question about that, because I think smart minds aren't the easiest for a manager, right?
No, but they are the most inspiring. The thing you always have is that, above all, when you work with people who are all smarter than me, who really can think – and what I always saw as my role, perhaps this comes from the German-French background, I also studied industrial engineering – was always to connect between worlds. My task was always to take that genius, abstract it, and then turn it into something you can sell on the market or explain to management. And I think that was the great help – not explaining to them exactly how the protocol works, but saying: imagine what we can do with it. Can you implement it? Yes, it's simple. But who needs it? This translation was always my way of taking these people along and saying: your idea can change the world.
Mm. Did you find it difficult at the beginning – or what were those moments like when you...
Well, you do always have this imposter syndrome. When you go to Silicon Valley as a mechanical engineer and say, okay, these internet protocols were co-developed by my employee, and he says: 'Are you crazy? It has to work like this and this,' then naturally you doubt yourself. But on the other hand, it's also about listening, implementing, and defining a clear opinion. And what I always find funniest is when smart people work together – it's no longer about whether you make an incredible amount of money or whatever, it's always about: I'm right and I'll prove that it works. And when you put them in a situation where they can prove themselves and implement something – I'll give you an example – we built the largest mobile network in the world in India from scratch, on a completely new internet protocol, and it was ten times faster and ten times cheaper than all other networks. And implementing that is fun.
Yes, you sound quite enthusiastic about that. Would you say, in retrospect, perhaps also as a lesson from this life path, would you tell young people today to dive right in? Because as you just described, how long did it take? Five days after your arrival in the USA your job was gone – 30 days – or the example at Siemens. You actually wanted to build trains, but now you're doing something with this crazy new internet. So is that really the career path you would recommend to young people – career advice?
Yes, I always think – when people ask me what makes me successful or not successful, it's always super hard because every life path is completely different. But what do I look at when I see young people and think they'll be successful? Curiosity is super important. People who always want to learn something new – that's extremely important. The second: are they brave? I was 18 when I got on that train to travel around the world alone, because I just wanted to discover the world. Would I allow my children to do that now? I don't know, but I just did it. And I'm actually not someone who is super brave. When I was 10, I forced myself to jump from the 10-meter diving board – that's not something that comes naturally, you have to think about it. So courage would be the second thing. And the third is always hard to translate into German. It's what in English is called 'humility' – do you have a certain...
Humility. Yes, humility is a great word. Do you have a certain humility to realize that you don't always have to be right? Because humility comes before the fall, and you always have to look – even when I think I'm successful, that comes to you, and you have to be prepared for that. Those are the three things you need: you need curiosity, you need courage, and you also need humility to really find your way in great situations. And a career is definitely not always going up – it's what they call a 'jungle gym' in English, just a climbing frame on the playground, there are different ways to the top.
Yes, it's interesting you mentioned humility, because I recently had a discussion with a female CEO of a large mid-sized company about how prevalent humility is in German management. I completely agree with you, and it sounds logical at first – I need to know my limitations to move forward strategically. If I'm too convinced of myself, I'll eventually fall on my face and not even understand why. But still, I don't necessarily have the impression...
Yes, but there is a new generation growing up that also has a certain share of humility, and we have to be careful that we don't become too humble and think we can't accomplish anything anymore. You also have to believe in yourself. You also have to be proud of what we've achieved. And we had a previous generation that was very, very proud of what it accomplished, and rightfully so. It's incredible when you think about it – 60 to 80 million people, depending on how you count, created something and how important we are for the world economy.
Mhm. But still, the world is changing, and a bit of humility is good, as long as you still have the courage to keep going.
It takes both. It takes both. I'll give you a small anecdote about that later, about the topic of humility and courage, but we can get into that later if you'd like.
That's noted. A little cliffhanger. And another thing I found super interesting from your time at Cisco: I read that a former colleague at Cisco once described you by saying the business was booming. We've just sketched the internet boom in the 2000s – one or two people might remember it. And this former colleague said the business was booming, you could have chosen easy jobs at Cisco, but you deliberately chose difficult jobs, restructuring tasks where you also had to make tough decisions. You're nodding already, which means you really feel that description hits the mark.
