What's your job about?
I work for Vista Group, a software company that provides software for the cinema industry. I am a backend engineer and work on one of the key APIs that allows many cinema websites around the world to access their cinema data. I start my day at 9 am by checking Microsoft Teams to see if I have missed any important updates from the day before, then I check on any Pull Requests I have open to see if anyone has made comments about the code I have up for review. At 9:30 I have a daily stand-up meeting with my team where we discuss what work items each member of the team is working on, and bring up any issues that are blocking our work.
A feature, another member of my team is working on is updating the API so that requests that are made about movie showtimes will include the number of seats available in the response – this is useful so cinema websites can quickly show a number or percentage of available seats on the cinema’s screening overview page. This feature was split into about 6 tasks that needed to be completed, these 6 tasks were split between me and my teammate. Once I have finished coding one of the tasks, I send it off to the Tester in my team who tests it by calling the API endpoint and making sure the response is what they expect.
What's your background?
I grew up in windy Wellington, then moved to Dunedin to start my studies at Otago University in 2020. I went to university thinking I would study Economics and Information Science; I had never done any coding before, but I had always wanted to do something tech-related. The first computer science paper I did was completely daunting, I will never forget the fear I felt in that first computer lab; However, I fell in love with the problem-solving and satisfaction that you can get out of programming and swiftly changed my degree to a major in both Computer Science and Information Science.
I did two software development summer internships while at university, these all gave me invaluable experience and skills that helped my graduate application process. I also did a university exchange in Amsterdam to finish off my degree – I could not recommend this more if you get the opportunity. I saw the job advertisement for Vista Group on Prosple and it appealed to me straight away as I have always loved the film and was a fan of some of Vista Group's products already, like Flicks. I had an interview with one of the Engineering Managers and Recruitment Managers, what immediately shone out to me was that they wanted to know about me, my interests and who I was as a person – not just grill me on my technical skills. I felt I could be myself, they wanted to hire good people with the right motivations.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
No, the job of a software engineer means you need to know at least the fundamentals of programming, and ideally have some experience with web development or information systems. Whether it be through a computer science degree, software engineering, or a similar qualification. Characteristics good for this job are attention to detail and problem-solving.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I love the satisfaction I get when I finally fix a bug that has been bugging me for a couple of days, or when I get a feature up and running that I have been working on for a couple of weeks. Programming has a unique quality in that there is a clear moment when your code starts working, and you get immediate satisfaction from it.
What are the limitations of your job?
I am very lucky in my job as there is a big emphasis on work-life balance; rarely, I am ever stressed as my managers are very understanding of me being a graduate. The main limitation is, due to a lot of employees working from home, there is not much of an office culture. This was a flow-on effect from Covid along with software developers generally being more introverted.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...