What's your background?
I grew up in Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) and went to school here, and even ended up staying for university. I loved Biology a lot and decided to take it up at university. After doing my Masters and having decided that I did not want to do a PhD, I ended up working in a lab for over a year. It was around this time and during my masters that I became quite interested in Bioinformatics (organizing Biological data by using computer science). After studying Biology for 5 years, and working for 1, I somehow decided I should go back to university and study a bit of Computer Science. It was a really hard decision to make at the time because it meant leaving a job behind and getting back into student life. Ultimately, I’m so happy I decided because it meant I got to work in an area that I was increasingly becoming more interested in.
I did a crash course for 3 months at Waikato University (which I found insanely difficult, but hey, I did it!). Over lockdown, I found Kami on LinkedIn and applied as a Customer Success Engineer. Kami took me on and I’ve now been with them for over a year and have expanded my role out to the data team as well.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes - Customer Success requires that you’re willing to learn every day as we have to deal with new bugs often, and you’re interested enough in code that you’d be willing to dig into it to look for anything that might cause errors. The Customer Success team has people from study backgrounds like English, Math, and Philosophy, to name a few! With the data side of my job, I was lucky enough to have a really good support system and build up the knowledge that I had gained from my coding course. I would say that for the data side of my role, having a bit of coding and database experience would be necessary.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The coolest thing about my job is the support I get from all my co-workers. Being a Science major, almost all of the technical things I worked on were new to me. Kami has some dedicated and kind employees who are ready to help whenever you’re stuck or have questions. This helps me because it gives me the confidence to learn new things even if I think I won’t understand at first, and it has also taught me so much about how senior members of my team think and work.
What are the limitations of your job?
Since Kami is a software used by teachers and students all over the world, it means that some of the time we have to work odd hours in the morning to make sure we can meet our users online for calls or demos. It also means that occasionally we get a big data request for a meeting that’s happening the very next day, which means we can sometimes end up working more than usual to make sure we can provide for our users. Although these are limitations, I do love how everyone is dedicated enough to work with you and around you, so you’re never left to a big task on your own if you’re unsure of what you’re doing.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...