What's your job about?
MYOB is aiming to help small businesses in New Zealand/Australia start, survive and succeed and does so through a feature-rich software business management platform. As a graduate developer (protégé) it was my responsibly to put myself in the best position possible in order to make valuable contributions to the MYOB platform.
As a Protégé you are focussed on furthering your understanding of the software development landscape. Most days consisted of me of doing a deep dive into a software development concept, standard or practice and sharing my findings with my mentors and colleges. I was assigned a mentor who were very experienced in software development. A mentor helped to keep me on track and provide assurances when tasks were hard and congratulated me when milestones were achieved. Personally, I spend up to an hour pair-programming with my mentor everyday which is an excellent way to directly see how I was progressing. Other daily rituals included chatting to the other proteges in my cohort during stand-up meetings, going to a group reading session and playing a quick game of pool at lunch. Having a group of proteges around me really made the learning journey comfortable because everyone is always willing to help.
What's your background?
I was born and grew up in Auckland but since most of my family is from Croatia I moved back and forth quite a bit. That’s one of the main reasons I chose to become a software developer so that I could find work easily where I was in the world. Schooling in New Zealand and Croatia was quite similar but last few years of high school were all in NZ. After releasing my passion for software development, I stayed in Auckland to study Software Engineering at the University of Auckland (from 2017 - 2020). I was lucky enough to make a wonderful group of friends which was quite handy because I found some of the papers quite difficult and I needed all the help I could get.
Throughout university my cohort was very aware of the value of practical experience. As a result, me and my peers would always be looking for internship programs, start-up companies and other opportunities that would help to develop our experience as programmers. I was lucky enough to work at a start-up called Woork who were developing software for real estate agents, build an internal web application for employees at EY and land an internship at MYOB.
At the end of my internship at MYOB I was offered a position as a graduate developer in the protégé program. I took up the offer immediately because I had heard from others that it was very well structured and great for growing as a developer. I joined the program in February 2021, I spent 8 months including rotations before graduating as an Associate Developer – I’m still here and loving it!
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes absolutely! Learning how to code is like every other skill in that it just requires a bit of practice and patience. There’s a lot to learn so trying to do so all at once probably won’t work out but starting at a fundamental level (e.g., learning one language like Java or Python) and then slowly building on top of that can be done regardless of background or experience. In my opinion, I think it’s valuable to have effective interpersonal skills because you’ll end up asking for help a lot and you’ll need to communicate your ideas effectively in a team. Additionally, being open minded is quite advantageous because there are lots of different ways to do the same task in the programming world and it’s important to be able to see the positives and negatives for each solution.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
There are many fundamental aspects of being a developer that I find really engaging. For example, working in teams, sharing ideas, figuring our problems and learning something new every day. The list goes on. One specific attribute I find myself thinking about when I can’t quite seem to find the solution to a problem is that the software development is so expansive that no one knows all the answers. There are so many different frameworks, standards, and languages that it’s impossible to cover it all. This is not only reassuring but also quite motivating. Since there is such an abundance of knowledge to explore, everyday has the potential for you to find some area of software development that clicks with you and could become your next passion project or area of expertise.
What are the limitations of your job?
As a whole – no, there aren’t limitations. Due to the recent global pandemic, there has been a cultural shift regarding working from home.. A more general pain point for software developers is getting stuck. Being stuck on problem for multiple days is very frustrating but likely this can often be solved by reaching out to those around you and the technology, when remote, is amazing now so it’s possible to be connected pretty easily.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...