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Abby Thompson

My area of responsibility currently is to learn MYOB’s tech stack and become a useful and efficient developer for when I rotate through teams in the company.

What's your job about?

At MYOB we work on accounting software. My area of responsibility currently is to learn MYOB’s tech stack and become a useful and efficient developer for when I rotate through teams in the company.

My daily work includes learning best practises for coding and undertaking exercises to practise my learnings. An example exercise is this week I am building a working pacman as a console application. Whilst undertaking these exercises I have two mentors who guide me through my acceleration and preparing me for team rotations. 

What's your background?

I grew up in Auckland and went to High School in the inner city. I then went on to study Software Engineering at the University of Auckland.

I had a couple part time jobs throughout my studies and also had the opportunity to complete a couple internships over in Sydney. I interned at Google and Macquarie Bank. It was really interesting going from an internship at tech company to a bank. The experiences gave me perspective in how each company works and revealed that the banking culture didn’t quite align to my own.

Before starting as a Grad Software Developer, I spent 8 months in Canada working in retail and snowboarding every week. This is something I’ll never regret and something I’d recommend to all who are interested in doing something before going straight into working full time.

I got my current job at MYOB through applying online and a couple in-person interviews. I applied in 2018 before going overseas and pushed out my start date to July 2019 so I could have some more time in Canada. MYOB were very accommodating to this request and as a result I’m still a newbie and have only been here for 6 weeks.

Could someone with a different background do your job?

Definitely. The graduate program is set up so that they have a period of time called “Acceleration”. This time is spent working on getting you up to speed with their technologies and how to become an efficient and quality developer. After Acceleration you then get put into team rotations.

As a result, all you need is the basics of coding languages, a willingness to learn and the ability to communicate and work well within a team.

What's the coolest thing about your job?

The coolest part of the job is the supportive network I have been placed within. I’ve not felt any imposter syndrome in my time here and to me that is a big green tick.

I enjoy the learning and practicing of concepts through exercises like pacman. It’s very satisfying to go through these exercises and be able to build on each concept through each exercise. As I get constant feedback and guidance from my mentors I mostly always feel on track and when I’m stuck there’s always someone to answer my questions.

What are the limitations of your job?

In the acceleration period of this graduate program you’re not really providing any value to the company. The company is putting a lot of time and money into building your skills as a developer and you have to be open to learning new things and to building the skills you already have.

The acceleration part of the program might not fit if you want to go straight into a rotation or team. I can imagine if you think you’re really amazing at developing and don’t want to spend this extra time learning there might also be conflict.

3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...

  • I would advise myself to find internships as early as possible and apply for anything and everything that could be a good opportunity.
  • I would tell her that she should not be afraid of failing. This goes for in university, in social situations and in every other aspect of life.
  • The last piece of advice would probably be to learn how to say no. There were definitely times that I spread myself thin over club committees and university. Learn where your limitations are and put time into doing things well rather than just doing a lot of things.