Hi I'm Ben Clark I'm a software engineer in the user interface team here at Aviat Network
Hey I'm Sam I am a software test engineer also at Aviat networks.
So for a software test engineer that is a lot of
writing tests to test our software to make sure they do what they're supposed
to do. A lot of the times it would be reading requirements, writing tests,
talking to developers on what our devices are supposed to do and then I make sure that the devices
do what they do on paper.
Inside the user interface team we develop the code
and like the front end of our system so essentially we build what users tend to
see. So our C developers and the other software engineers might build the stuff
that actually makes the thing work but we put a nice shiny finish on the front
of it so that everyone can use it easily.
A typical day for me would usually be
first thing get in, start with my coffee or breakfast can't start without that either of them
and then just starting off the basic admin stuff like emails
checking up on things that were left the night before and then my day kinda
really starts by looking over the test run over the previous night to make sure
nothing has failed that shouldn't have failed or nothing new has come up and then after
that we have our daily stand-ups where we kind of report to the rest of our team
what we worked on the day before what we plan on working on today and is there
anything that's stopping us from achieving what we set out to achieve
today or and the period of time that we work inside.
For me kind of similar sort
of start got to start the day with some form of hot beverage. Similarly, check the
emails do that sort of admin and then because I'm currently working on
essentially a solo project for data visualization for our system I am
currently spending most of my days just going through either working on new
features to add to it or fixing any errors are found in the features that
I've added to it so far once that projects done I'll be joining
the rest of the UI team basically the the usual day-to-day UI work of building
the user interface for whatever the current product we're working on is.
It was a few things in high school for me actually I tried it out because you know
computers in early high school and then I really started to enjoy the sort of
logical approach to a lot of this because at the end of the day with software if
there's a problem it's most likely you've misunderstood the logic of the
system rather than the system has done something wrong. The fact that you can
lay it out logically and generally figure exactly out what's going on really appealed to
me - that and I had a really fun digital tec was what they called it in high school
and I had a really fun teacher through years 11 through 13 who really inspired
me to you know keep it up
For me it was probably the problem solving, I love solving
problems and trying to find different ways on how to do them and software
engineering to be honest was probably the one that doesn't have the most
Maths in them, I'm not too good at Maths but it has a lot of other aspects to it that made it very interesting
so that's kind of why I pursued Software Engineering.
I think the thing that I love the most is getting thrown into the deep end
into a challenge so most couple weeks we start a new
project and you probably never seen it before or worked on it and you look at it
and you'll think I've got no idea how to do it but somehow
by the end of the sprint a couple of weeks, you've figured it out or somehow
working so it's seeing something from nothing coming to something that's actually
working is quite exciting for me
In my opinion there's probably a couple of things,
one it's not really like it is in high school or it is like in Uni. Uni gives
you an idea and kind of teaches you the basic skills you kind of need but it's
like kind of that realization that in the real world that you don't just have the
answers always on Google you can just go to Google something and a lot of the times
especially with how we do things in a scrum method because you might spend a couple
of weeks working on something get it working perfect and then you get told we're
throwing it out we're gonna do something different. You kind of just feel like
I've just wasted all this time. But it's kind of good
though because it allows the team to kinda know this didn't work because of
this reason so next time we won't use this because of that reason kind of thing.
Another downside which it isn't
everywhere in the industry but there are some companies that are like okay tell
us the show us your side project show us what you're doing in your spare
time so be aware that there is areas of the industry where if you're not really
passionate and you're doing this in your free time there are some places where
that can negatively affect your chances of getting a job
I did software engineering with honors at Victoria University in fact I have just graduated
officially as of this week - thank you - doing soft engineering you are signing
up for software engineering you're going at university you are doing software
papers and engineering papers and that's it you're - you don't do other things
Engineering is very earth a set thing whereas computer science is more
allows you having more freedom compared to software engineering so I did
Computer Science at University of Canterbury so my Computer Science degree I did
a few papers in physics one paper in music but most of my papers were
targeted into more of the algorithms and networking side of Software Engineering.
It is possible to get into this without a degree but that's again going back to being one of those passionate
people yeah who did it all, learnt it all in their spare time
The main thing with software is be ready and really enjoy problem solving
because that's when you really simplify down what software engineering
is it's just problem-solving there can be very hard problems and it's very
difficult to figure out exactly what they are but at the end of day it's just
a problem that you have to figure out the solution for.
Well okay let's just list out the ones that we do here.
So we've got software test engineering, We've got Software Embedded Development,
We've got Software GUI development or web design, provision team
which deal with I think app development as well. We've also got signal processing engineers
who deal with more related towards the hardware side than actual
software but they need to write software for all the specific signal radio that
they're working on but then if you branch out from our company to other
companies you have data security analyst just regular analysts and business analysts more computer side related
You have DevOps basically the way I like to think
of it is there is essentially something vaguely analogous to pretty much every
real-world job these days software is involved in everything you can be a
coder involved in finances doing code to be embedded into cars basically
everything is digital as well as physical these days
If you can I always recommend if you can think of a sort of project that you'd
like to do in software try and do it. 'Cause with my side project I did, I never actually finished it
it's just sitting on the side - as all good side projects do - yeah, but it kind
of shows that you can use initiative to think outside the box and do extra learning
cause in my interview we ended up talking about my side project quite a bit and some
of the stuff that I did what I will do differently
why I chose to use certain components in certain parts of my code
but not only just side projects but also have a life outside of just code because it's a team
environment they kind of want people who will work well with the team.
In software like there is a bit of a stereotype of you know the
coders - the cliched nerdy coders who can't really talk and don't
have social skills that's not what it's like. Soft skills are the arguably more
important than hard skills at the end of the day it will take a company a lot
less time to get you up to speed on technical skills than try and deal with
someone who doesn't have the soft skills to go with it. So if you have the skills
of being able to pick up things really easily and you're open to feedback and you take
criticism well then most companies would be pretty happy to have you on board.