DECO1400 Lecture 7

Life in the IT Industry John Casey, PhD

Working in industry designing cloud/distributed systems

About Me

• Grew up in Melbourne

• PhD, Deakin University (2008)

• Thesis

• Worked for DXC, FoodStuffs, MegaPort

Roles I've Had

• Software Engineer
• Backend/frontend/full-stack developer
• Senior developer
• Tech Lead - in charge of hiring and managing a team
• Software Architect

Teaching and Research Experience

Found that the best way to really learn something is to make a course on it / teach people

• On top of extensive research, also worked as an academic
• Deakin University - Lecturer
• Unitec Institute of Technology - Senior Lecturer
  • Taught Java, JavaScript, Mobile Programming using Android, Web Development, Network Programming, Games Programming in C++

Technical Skills Required in New Graduates

• Have been in charge of hiring new graduates and experienced developers
• Skills required:
  • Front-end: HTML/CSS/JS/React
  • Back-end: Java/C#/NoSQL/APIs/Kubernetes
  • Technology is changing all of the time - important to be willing to learn new things

Problem: Finding the needle in the haystack

• Ww live in a very complicated world with no easy answers
• Recent example - difference of $200 in two financial reports
  • 70 pages of combined data
  • $1.5M of transactions
  • Accountant's don't like when reports don't match up
• A lot of detective work to determine what has gone wrong
• Leverage hard won expertise with system + knowledge of recent changes to system to deduce missing line items
  
• Turned out to be some recently added transactions that were missing from the report
• Added a new catchall OTHER fee category to the report so that missing fees can still be accounted for
• Added the two missing fees to the report
• This required a lot of patience

Vehicle Certification Portal

• Interstate import
  • Check WOVR registry
  • Repairable writeoffs
  • No re-birthed cut and shut vehicles
• Japanese Imports
• homemade vehicles
  • A lot of people in Tasmania turn their old cars/trucks into trailers
  • Kit cars
• Modifications to Heavy Vehicles and Public Passenger Vehicles
  
• Take down all certifications details electronically
• Compliance plate: Certification of change to vehicles

Credit Card Single Page Application (SPA)

• Made in React, hosted in S3 bucket
• Interacts directly with payment gateway so that PAn cannot be intercepted by a third party
• API driven using a RESTful backend
• Authentication done using JSon Web Tokens

Soft Skills

• Almost all job advertisements come with a list of soft skills you are required to have to get a job
• Team player, quick to pick up new ideas, flexible, punctual, professional, reliable, being able to resolve conflicts

Interview Skills

• Good CV will get you an interview - the rest is up to you to convince the panel that you are the best candidate for the job
• Show up on time (in person, or online)
• Dress professionally - don't underestimate the importance of a first impression
• Firm handshake (if not online)
• Maintain eye contact with all panel members
• Have some good examples ready about different projects you have worked on, team work etc
• Have some demo code available
• Be ready for a technical test