What's your job about?
Theta is an IT consulting company based in New Zealand, I work in the product team building software applications to sell to clients.
At the start, I worked collaboratively on the Mixiply project, a digital portfolio platform. Projects within Mixiply range from 3D models, video, images, code, text, web pages, and more. During this time, I explored the benefits of working with C# and .NET Core, using primarily LINQ and Blazor. From the third week, both my colleague and I commenced work on the ERoad Reporting SaaS, which is an exciting project designed to automate fleet management, health and safety, road user charges, and compliance obligations, alongside improving productivity and customer service within the system. In this project, I discovered how to set up an Azure SQL Server, studied how plug-in apps work, built a project from scratch, familiarised myself with ASP.NET Core and Entity Framework Core, alongside retrieved requirements with OData client protocol.
Our manager and senior programmers assisted our team in providing hours of live code reviews and tutorials, guiding us step-by-step. Although the daily exposure to these widely used and advanced technologies is challenging, I passionately believe this exposure will assist in increasing my confidence and is a fast-growing process.
What's your background?
I grew up in Northern China and moved to New Zealand after completing my business degree.
Over the next few years, I spent most of my time working in the commercial, hospitality, and customer service industries - a field unrelated to my qualifications. Working within various roles during my career has allowed me to adapt and I believe it is essential to create a meaningful social and environmental impact through my career as a Software Developer. After working for a few years, I realized I was more interested in technical work, so I studied on my own for a while and eventually joined the Master of Software Development program at Victoria University of Wellington's Graduate School of ICT. During this program, I began doing an internship at Theta, which offers a different challenge and a new start to my career, and I am very excited about it.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, for example, I got into programming and software development with no technical background and I was surrounded by people who did the same. However, if you want to change your career and become a software developer, I would suggest that you need to improve your skills before you get hired into such a role. There are many ways to improve your skills such as doing related work, self-study, or Bootcamp and related university courses.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
In this role, I'm constantly learning new concepts and technologies, and getting my first chance to do real projects. For example, I mainly studied Java in school, but by working at Theta, I was also exposed to the fundamentals of JavaScript and C#. It potentially provides us with future employment opportunities.
What are the limitations of your job?
The product group is a small development team and I am very lucky to be exposed to two projects with different features and frameworks, which means you may not always be able to focus on one thing or project at the same time. That's why teamwork and individual time management are so important. Also listening to and imitating how colleagues express technical vocabulary and asking questions when in difficulty is an essential way to help people who speak English as a second language to quickly develop relevant professional skills.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...