Hi guys
I'm a software developer in expensive Sydney, you can ask me almost anything :)
Cheers
[AMA] I am a Software Developer in Sydney, Ask Me (Almost) Anything
Lsillyguy on 20/11/2017 - 20:39
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Your not selling the software your selling a subscription and support.
Not all companies sell software, the software they develop is used in house to sell something else, like airline tickets, pay tv, marketing
Our software one of 2 of its kind in the world, starts at $20k for 12 months usage. It has many modules that you pay 5-60k each on top of the base , and many multi nationals have 10+ licenses. We have over 150 clients world wide and around about that many unis using it. See how the figures add up ? Oh offices in London. South Africa. 2 in the USA. None in China. Forget a out that market the other competitor who is 10x bigger can’t eveb get any money from the Chinese :-)
It adds up dosnt it ? Oh and it’s all the brain child of our founder and CIO.
I spend about 350k per year on license renewals for about 6 seats.. Some software is expensive.
Err, so what is this software and what do I need to know to make a similar one for the bargain price of 20 grand a year per user…?
@unclesnake & @T1OOO & @airzone already covered what I was gonna answer. All the comps I worked for do Software as a Service, they earn quite good money, but up the food chain they relied on other companies to provide Platform as a Service like Amazon and those companies make a fortune…
I know right? So selling software can hardly be the mode to survive for IT companies, you can't really find that many new customers each year. Only licensing can.
Well, put it this way, we use software as a service to provide solutions to real world problem. And as any business moving forward, you always have problems and will need software solution for those.
If you need an example where companies sell software as a one-off product to consumer, look at games! Oh boy and then there is DLCs, micro transactions…
You never "sell" software, you license it. A lot of corporate level software has annual license charges, and you don't pay every year - the software stops running. As long as your software is delivering value to a company, they will keep paying your license fees.
Theres a big difference between buying something and licensing it. A license means you can use something under certain conditions while buying something means its completely yours. This is why the issue of selling second hand games in places like EB is actually probably illegal.
My companies software license costs are in the high hundreds of millions and that's from mostly three vendors.
There are still places that have in house devs and custom software. Some software literally processes billions of dollars in transactions per day.
What advice would you give to a fresh graduate? I'm currently doing a 3 (bachelor) + 2 (masters) program but am wanting to skip my masters and go straight to the workforce. Would you recommend I complete my masters or will I be fine without it? Do employers really care about whether I have either a Bachelors or Masters?
If you're a fresh graduate and look to kick start your career, make sure you have up your sleeves these things when it comes to interview:
- A few handy algos: search, sort etc.
- Good understanding of data structure: stack, queue, linked list, binary tree, collection like Map, List, Set
- Know how and when to use loop and recursion
- Solid understanding of how database and model work, and be able to do some complex SQL queries (join, outer join, aggregation…)
- String manipulation
- High level knowledge of web services and system integration
- Positive attitude
- Ask why, then how, then what when it comes to solving problem
I assume you're doing Masters of coursework? If yes then it doesn't really matter, a Bachelor degree is as much valuable as a Masters degree. If you can, go straight to the workforce, earn and learn at the same time, then perhaps if you can squeeze in a bit of time do your Masters part-time.
If you're doing Masters in research, then it's a different story. Some particular fields like Machine learning and Big data prefer people with research knowledge…
Learn what good design is, including why and how to do things. Everythign else is just exercising that. Code is not about writing, its about reading so make it understandable and not a competition to enter as few keystrokes as possible.
(profanity) is with all of these AMAs? Is this like some new vanity thing? Is everyone trying their hand at motivational speaking or life coaching on here?
And I have no idea why people post these and then dodge or offer vague responses to many of the asks. No one knows who you are, just answer the question.
I agree somewhat but I just did one. Shares knowledge
Uhm I didn't dodge any question.
If these are your questions, I try to answer them:
(profanity) is with all of these AMAs?
Because people did AMA before, even Scotty… So I thought I could do it just to get to know people in this forum more. After all it's just a "Introduce Yourself" topic.Is this like some new vanity thing?
No.Is everyone trying their hand at motivational speaking or life coaching on here?
Dunno about other people but I didn't yet actually give any life advice or motivational speaking, I just shared my experience and what I observed.
If you have any other questions, I'll try my best to answer them :)
Wouldn't it make more sense to say "Hi, I'm Kaitok. I am a software Dev. with X amount of experience in these areas & with these languages. Happy to answer any questions people might have about this career path."
Perhaps there should even be a specific forum just for people to share insider knowledge about certain fields and careers. (Although most people would qualify any advice with disclaimers, rendering them useless)
AMAs are usually reserved for people with unique, odd, & unconventional careers. I am sure you are very good at what you do, but being a software dev is really none of those things.
Sorry. I just don't get this.
Yes it would have made more sense with your suggestion.
I didn't see any rules regarding AMA, I think AMA is just a fun, free way to people to get to know each other. And because it's the Internet everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
To me I don't really see any career as odd or unconventional as long as people work legally, take care of their family, and contribute to the society.
Having said those, let's agree to disagree. Peace :)
Did they check your university transcript when interviewing for jobs? I am in the same career path as you and may have some fails.
Yes. U will get asked why u think u failed these subjects.
For graduates, yes we do look at their transcripts.
People who on the interview panel usually don't like failed mark, however they look at which subject you got a fail on and if you re-attempted that, and if you got a good mark then it's fine because human makes mistakes. Just one tip, never cook your transcript because as a procedure HR do verify your transcript.
Ahh damn, I'm screwed then. I have more than a few. Thanks, at least now I know what I should be expecting.
How much focus are you/your company putting into Machine Learning?
And how hard do you reckon it is to make a transition from Web Dev to ML?
I’m a SE uni student who’s gonna do thesis in a year or two. And Machine Learning has piqued my interest.ML is such a hot topic now, everyone wants to try it but only a few people could understand and make it works. We've been trying it as well but we got to nowhere just yet since we haven't got the time we need due to other priorities.
IMO, it's not a transition from Web Dev to ML. It's a different learning path. And it's hard.
ML requires you to really understand different ML techniques, and how to apply them into your datasets. You have to know what you're doing even before starting any programming. For most part most of the algos you need in ML are already included in the frameworks (like Scikit learn, or Tensorflow).
A big chunk of work is to clean and organise your dataset prior to building your model, and it's really really boring work. Next part is trying different models with different learning techniques, and check the results… all these works will deter normal devs from even attempting ML.
If you wanna do thesis in ML, I reckon you should think about what the real world problem you try to solve with ML first, then if ML is actually the best option for it, and go from there.
That is the point. Everybody wants to try it, but very few can make it work. And the most of the top-end ML knowledge is confined to commercial/educational research facilities.
But from what online resources are available on ML, and it seems like it's a huge learning curve. But the future possibilities and the impact it can have still hasn't deterred me from ML…yet. Thanks for the advice, I should try to think what real world problem I can solve with ML, then it would give me a better sense.
Have you bothered to think or check how many ML jobs there are out there in Australia ? Probably almost zero, in the end most jobs are boring and basic.
Do you really think that boring CRUD app needs ML ? CRUD apps are probably half the jobs out there, so the answer is no.
There is a few in Sydney https://www.seek.com.au/machine-learning-jobs/in-All-Sydney-…
If you do ML right, it can be fun: https://medium.com/@timanglade/how-hbos-silicon-valley-built…
Of course there are a few, but thats the point, its just a few, just like there are a few lotto winners.
Well there are very few ML jobs at the moment in Sydney. But then again, Australia is always a few years behind Silicon Valley and it would take some time for us to catch up.
At the moment, most ML jobs/investments are in commercial/educational research facilities rather than companies. But that would certainly change as ML gets even more mainstream and Australia catches up with the trend.Note: I'm not currently looking for a ML job as I'm still in uni, but more like keeping tabs on a hot topic like ML which will eventually have a huge influence in the tech world.
I work on machine learning projects for an ASX10 company. AMA
Cool, which language and tool and framework you use there? And what real world problem you are trying to solve using ML?
When can you afford a house
Luckily I bought one at the first opportunity I had.
how long did it take you to save for a down payment? not sure where is worse, syd or mel
2 years for the deposit and stamp duty and other fees. Back then house prices were not this bad.
Syd and Mel are on the same bad level, but Syd has more IT jobs I reckon.
@kaitok: I'm in IT too and in a junior role, I calculated I need to save for 10 years for a 20% deposit on a house if i get off ozbargain..
You don't need 20% really, find a lender that is willing to lend you 90% and bear the LMI. The real sucker is the stamp duty.
How abt join force with someone to buy a property? A partner maybe?
@kaitok: yea, LMI would be bad and stamp duty even worse. Unfortunately, she has her own mortgage to pay (family reasons), the alternative is to find another partner :)
LMI is added to ur mortgage so u dont have to pay it upfront.
Housing prices will keep going up as Aus is gonna have more and more people coming. So if u can, get a property at ur first opportunity. Any chance of family lending a helping hand?
I'm interested in the house too. Five questions:
- What suburb?
- What size (e.g. sq metres or bed/bath count)?
- When was it brought?
- How long to commute to work?
- How long to reach the beach?
500 sqm 3 beds in 2011.
25 mins to work, 40 mins to nearest beach.
You can possibly work out which suburb
Do you like butt stuff?
No
wrong thread….youre looking for that other butt guy
For a while, that's how programmers talked to flash content creators.
Is it true the market is flooded by Indians ?
Not really
100%
Is it true that more than 80% of resumes are fudged ? Are you happy to share a resume /story where you immediately knew the guy was a fake ?
Kind of. A lot of resumes are really really bad.
We can guess if guy is fake based on his resume as a group of interviewers. But we cannot tell until we interview someone if they are just good on paper. We can immediately tell if someone is bad if they can't implement their own method to sort an array of integers.
And I cannot share a real story due to privacy reason.
Resume only determines whether you get an interview or not. The interviews decide whether you get the job or not. For IT, if you fudged your resume, it will be very obvious during the interviews. Also, based on where you worked before (as written in the resume), people will do their own pre-interview reference check sometimes.
Its probably 90% +. Half of all programmers cant even program. You would be surprised how many are "offended" when you ask them to do a simple exercise with you watching.
Resumes are worthless, the best thing to do is make them solve a problem in front of you, eg find a bug in a simple screenful of code, or perhaps write a very basic thing like a HashMap etc in an hour with unit tests.
Have you ever installed gentoo? gnu/linux or just linux?
Oh boys I am gonna get trolled by this answer.
No.
I use a Mac.
"use a mac", nuff said
Hey OP and other IT guys - any opinions on the Google sponsored Udacity courses? Is recruitment interested in them at all? If I could complete a few of them and build up a portfolio of little projects, what would be the likelyhood of landing a job? No industry experience at all and work history is all council work/plant operating.
IMO, Udacity courses sponsored by Google are quite good & quite technical.
Doing what you said would increase your chance of landing an interview for Junior position, if you do well in the interview then u may get the job.
I am a CS student looking to become a developer/SE. Finished 2nd year.
I have Big 4 bank internship. Any idea on how to leverage it to a proper engineering role? The Big 4 bank has literally no programming haha
I was thinking of doing the following in the summer:
1) Master DS (my Data Structures is awful) through coursera courses
2) Contribute to open source projects (JAVA is my language of choice)
3) Create a website using Java Script (never done front end before)Do you think this might be enough to get a shot at an interview with the top software companies?
Also, has anyone applied directly to US (Microsoft etc)? Would not mind going to the states on the E3 (Would take it over Sydney tbh)
Also open for PM, BA, Big Data roles in engineering companies (I only want to work in engineering companies)
Hey mate, 2nd year SE student interning at a top tech company…but not in an engineering role. I'd also would like to leverage it into a proper Engineering role inside the company/outside. Any suggestions?
Over the summer I'm also planning on taking online courses on Cybersecurity, Machine Learning and Web Dev.
I don't know haha
I would be happy with interning at any of the engineering roles (does not have to be pure SDE) at any of the top tech companies.
Doing 1 2 3 in your list + get good grades should increase your chance of landing an interview with top comps here in Aus.
Amazon has been doing recruitment in Australia every year for the past few years, and they offer sponsorships for people to relocate to the States, so you may want to look at Amazon if you want to go there.
I reckon Software engineer has more prospect than BA or PM in engineering companies, but it's just my opinion.
Thanks!
I did apply for Amazon internship this (their very first intake). Got rejected in round 1 LOL.
I would definitely love to move to states. Especially the bay area :)
When you mean by good grades is Distinction okay? (very hard to get HD in CS)
How do you recommend I make the most of my 2 months internship at the Big 4 bank, to leverage to a proper SDE role? I dont know that the banks do lol. Start next week and only know that I am at some tech division?
Good grades = D or HD only.
I got a friend who got all HDs (seriously) while I only got 70% HD, 20% D and 10% C during my time at Uni.
Having an internship at a big bank is a good opportunity, I think u should make the most of it. But I haven't worked for them so can't really tell how to leverage it to a proper SDE role
Banks are the most boring job. Just think theres not that much in banking in the end compared to other places.
True this! Banks outsource most of their stuff. I used to work on a bank outsourced project for a few years.
The Big 4 bank has literally no programming haha
Err what? A Big 4 bank will have literally hundreds of engineering roles working on everything from mainframes to reactive front ends.
Really? I thought, this only applied to CBA. I dont have a CBA role unfortunately.
My bank has been notorious for outsourcing to India for IT.
I could go for cyber security (not keen), or a BA or PM at best. Could probably even go for Ux interface role. Will know next week!
Put it this way, I'm in a "just-out-of-the-Big-4" and we have something like 50 onshore software engineers working on one app. Plus a few system engineers/DBAs etc
I know which bank your talking about :)
Also, in the interview they mentioned that the bank literally does no coding/development. The apps are bought from third party and customised.
I guess, I will wait and see.
Westpac's a big 4. I am aware that their program is better than my bank.
Citi is an interesting one. Didn't see any job openings on their site with regards to tech.
I was thinking that johnno07 was talking about suncorp.
How do you see cryptocurrency?
Unpredictable, inevitable, fascinating (the tech), a legal form of gambling…
I think you'll find that gambling is the legal form of gambling.
Yeah recursively
Btw how's Dany?
My 15yo wants to get into game development. Any suggestions? Is TAFE any good or is uni the only way to go? I would imagine game dev is very competitive?
I've been to both TAFE and Uni. TAFE is much worse than Uni in pretty much all areas. Classmates, teachers, program design, culture, facilities, library, etc. In a TAFE, 20% of teachers are good, 80% are rubbish. In a good Uni, 80% of teachers are good, 20% are acceptable. That's my experience.
Are you talking TAFE vs uni in general, or ICT specifically?
Does ur kid want to develop game on mobile? PC? or PS4 or Xbox? Gaming industry is a vast space and I am not really qualified to give advices.
Your kid can start right away with a few Unity introductory courses, doesn't have to wait until Uni or TAFE to get a feel on game development. Personally I would prefer Uni to TAFE, if you can afford Uni for the kid then please do so :).
I did a video games degree at Uni. Was pretty good - though the cohort seemed to be very… young? Immature etc. Like a bunch of kids that finished school and were like "Oh sh*t I have to go to uni… oh I like videogames!" and promptly enrolled.
There is 100% nothing I learnt at uni that I couldn't have learnt myself given the self-motivation. The VAST majority of the Australian games industry is independent, so it really doesn't matter if you're officially qualified - it really only matters if you can take something from concept to completion, successfully market yourself and your product, financially and emotionally support yourself while you're doing those things, and then get lucky. That last point is particularly applicable to mobile gaming - which is a rabid, oversaturated, monopolised, and generally soul-destroying sector of the industry.
Do you see this job being taken away by developers in foreign countries? I've come in contact with several companies who has an Australian facade, but the developers at the back are all based in India or Philippines. What are your thoughts on this?
I'm not worried at all.
Companies always keep key developers onshore working on critical components. Offshore works are normally boring repetitive coding tasks. Any star developers offshore will always seek opportunities to come to work onshore at the HQ…
Ever done anal?
Tried, didn't like it…
yeah… some are givers, some are takers… But hey, gotta give it a go to see! :)
Clearly, some people don't get the "Ask my ANYTHING" bit, but hey neg away!
At least the OP is cool and gets it!
LOL
It was like trying to learn Perl, nah…
I'm surprised there weren't more of these and "what's the capital of Finland?" type questions!
So many AMA threads at the moment….
Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".
for (int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{
if (i%3 == 0 && i%5 == 0) // i is a multiple of 3 AND 5
print "FizzBuzz";else if (i%3 == 0) // i is a multiple of 3 print "Fizz"; else if (i%5 == 0) // i is a multiple of 5 print "Buzz"; else // i is all else print i;}
Edit: Formatting is weird…
I guess I didn't specify just to use one language… Is this a mix of C and Python?
Edit, PHP maybe?
C but don't remember the syntax exactly, and what is the print to screen function?… Is it print() or printf()? …for string? Are you doing an assignment? I shouldn't have answered ;)
we sell headphones too