– in the context of accelerated evolution of AI tools –
Last week we had as our guest Emanuel Martonca. We asked him to join us in order to discuss one of the most burning issues of the moment in the tech industry: FUTURE PROOFING YOUR SKILLS – In the Perspective of Accelerated Evolution of AI Tools.
Once again, we feel tremendously lucky to have great people in our community, who are both technical and market savvy, to guide us on this journey. We are grateful for the amazing opportunity to have this conversation.
✨About our guest
Emanuel Martonca – Manu – for friends, is an expert in pricing strategies. With 21 years of experience in software development, e-commerce and retail banking, he has worked for a long time as a sales manager for B2B software products and services. His belief is that too many IT and software development teams deliver great technical work but fail to capture enough value from their customers. From his position as co-founder of Soft Fight – a software pricing app, he aims to help companies and service providers calculate the optimal price for each service, so that their work is rewarded at true value.
At an individual level, this means that technical skills alone are no longer enough. To stay relevant, we need to articulate the business value of our work – how it drives outcomes, not just how it functions. Value-based thinking – evaluating our contributions based on impact rather than effort – is rarely taught to developers, designers, or engineers, yet it’s becoming essential. On top of that, the growing anxiety that AI tools are advancing faster than we can adapt, and it’s easy to feel like our hard-earned skills might soon be outdated.
🤖 About the theme
These realities brought us to the topic of our discussion: Future Proofing Your Skills – In the context of accelerated evolution of AI tools. In this new landscape, what’s actually worth investing our effort in? How can we gain clarity on the real impact of our work? And perhaps most importantly – how do we communicate the value we create in a world that, for decades, has measured work by the hours it takes rather than the outcomes it delivers?
🧠 What we learned
⚙️ We began by exploring the role of a pricing expert and how IT customers assess the value of tech services today – compared to just five years ago.
⚙️ Together, we reflected on the key factors that have driven this shift, especially after decades in which Romania’s IT sector was seen as the spearhead of the economy, and many encouraged their children to pursue computer science, believing it would guarantee a secure future.
⚙️ We then examined the mindset shift from measuring work by volume or effort to framing it in terms of ROI and business impact.
⚙️ As part of this, we practiced deconstructing our own project roles – through the lens of the pricing expert. And, perhaps most importantly, we explored how to think of AI not as a competitor, but as a potential collaborator.
⚙️ We closed the session on a cautiously optimistic note: that no matter what direction AI takes, trying to stay relevant in an AI-driven world is only meaningful if you genuinely enjoy what you do – and you’re great at it, too.
💡 What is Community Talks?
In the new remote work reality, once in a while, we feel the need to get together and learn about inspiring stories from our line of work or from our community that are relevant to us.
With this idea in mind, we created a program called Community Talks. It is part of our larger discussion about tech storytelling and how to have better conversations in our everyday work.
Once in a while, we want to invite somebody from outside RomSoft to share with us an inspiring story, or just to have an interesting conversation, be it in the technical area or anything else that we have a shared interest in.
Our guests will play the role of the Guide to any good story, helping us navigate through difficult challenges, acquire new skills, and understand where the opportunities lie in this rapidly changing world.