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Q&A with Audrey Cheng, CTO @ Imagr

_Wanting to "do music" from a young age has really turned out for Aria Jones, Product Delivery Manager at Melodics._

_After studying music and social research, Aria set-off overseas to find a research based job, however after realising that roles in the field she was most interested in were few and far between, she eventually found her way into the tech industry and has not looked back._

_We caught up with Aria to learn more about her career journey into product management, what her role entails in the context of a fast-growing Kiwi MusicTech company and why she is loving her time at Melodics. Thanks for sharing your story, Aria._

> “I solve puzzles! I help to build computer programs and I help people learn to play music.” 

**Firstly, how would you explain to a five year old what it is you do?**

I solve puzzles! I help to build computer programs and I help people learn to play music. 

**And for the adults, what does that translate to in regards to your day-to-day?**

Listen; absorb; question; ideate; translate; record; repeat :|| 

Then facilitate the plan and help drive delivery.

As the Product Delivery Manager at Melodics I work to unearth and refine the many, diverse idea nuggets we have, across the company.

My role is about collecting, collating, and translating the details of an idea so that we can prioritise and plan the different pieces of work involved, in order to realise our goals.

A special sauce that I bring to the table is my desire to represent the needs of the Customer (or Musician). When it comes to software development, it can be easy to get bogged down in the technical details.

Staying in tune with our Melodics Players’ experience and weaving those insights into each mission we embark upon is the key to success.

**What are some of the common misconceptions about working in Product Management?**

People often have a confused, blank look on their face when I say that I am a Product Manager. The job title itself, as it relates to the tech industry, isn’t very widely known as far as I can tell.

It seems like originally the term belonged to the realm of ‘commercial business products’ and was simply borrowed over to apply to ‘software products’. 

I think the main thing that trips people up is the word manager or management. It can tend to imply that you are some major-league, shot-caller.

Leadership is an important facet of the job, but it’s vital that you understand your leadership style and how this plays out in the dynamic of the team.

Unilateral decision-making is not the name of this game. Good product management is about using data and insights, to make informed decisions with buy-in from the dev team and wider company stakeholders.

> “My main dream as a kid was to do music, so in that sense I have hit the jackpot.” 

**Was working in tech something you dreamed about doing as a kid, if not what was?**

Not at all. I have always had a penchant for problem-solving though. My main dream as a kid was to do music, so in that sense I have hit the jackpot.

**Tell us a little bit more about your career journey and ultimately about how you ended up working at Melodics?** 

After completing my music degree and my social research post-grad, I moved over to live in Australia. I was keen to find work as a researcher but quickly realised research jobs in the social policy, advocacy, or service evaluation spaces were rare as hens’ teeth. 

So I took a comfortable, day job as an Accounts Officer in the Finance department at a local shipping company, Monson Agencies, in Fremantle. 

I ended up satisfying my research itch with a three month sabbatical, volunteer internship at a legal advocacy centre, GRACE, in Houston, Texas. 

It was when I returned from this trip that my career path took a turn towards Tech. The shipping company was embarking on a massive data migration and software development project and I was nominated to be project lead.

From then on, I dove head first into cloud based, SaaS development and web programming. 

I learnt Java Script on the fly, drew up flow charts to understand how APIs worked, and conducted my first usability tests with users. This was an amazing spring-boarding experience which changed the course of my future. 

In 2014, I decided to move to Berlin to experience living and working in Europe. I managed to land a role as a Junior Technical Product Owner at the well-known, language-learning Startup, Babbel. 

A whole new world opened up; Agile training and Scrum methodologies were my new ideology. 

I was furiously writing on post-it notes, playing ping-pong and füssball with the engineers at lunchtime, learning to code Ruby on Rails in the evening and heading to Berghain on the weekend. After this first stint as a Product Owner I decided to branch out as a contractor. 

I started to explore the world of User Experience Research and Design, including running some projects for a pioneer, music-technology company (Ableton) and building basic, java-script, front-end for web applications.

Upon returning home to Aotearoa, I reached out to Melodics and expressed interest in their product. 

I worked as a User Researcher contractor for about a year during which I realised - there is something exciting going on here! I let them know that I wanted to get more involved, and the rest is history!

> “Know yourself and what inspires you. Meaningful work is rewarding work.” 

**What is the best piece of career advice you have ever received?** 

When choosing a career: Know yourself and what inspires you. Meaningful work is rewarding work.

When you’re going for a position: Back yourself! Know your strengths and how to market yourself. And be persistent - in every failure, there is at least one lesson.

When you’re in a new role: Know your worth but at the same time, be courageous to acknowledge when you don’t know something and ask questions. It doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job, it just means you’re curious and willing to learn!

**What do you love about working at Melodics?**

The beautiful synergy of music, learning, innovation and empathy.  
  
**Lastly, Melodics continues to grow and evolve, what are the key traits and characteristics of people that will be well placed to work there?**

People that are:

* passionate about music learning
* ambitious
* ethically conscious

Aria Jones, Product Delivery Manager at Melodics

_A childhood dream of becoming a Silver Fern or an entrepreneur has taken a backseat for the time being for Alice Alsford, Software Engineer at MOBI._ 

_We caught up with Alice to learn more about her journey into software engineering and ultimately MOBI. Alice shares some great insight into different ways people can get a feel for whether a career path makes sense and the importance of finding something you love doing. Thanks for sharing your story, Alice._

> “I’m a wizard. I type on a keyboard and make magic happen..” 

**Firstly, how would you explain to a five year old what it is you do?**

I’m a wizard. I type on a keyboard and make magic happen on the computer to help people easily get food. 

**And for the adults, what does that translate to in regards to your day-to-day?**

I write code that helps people order from restaurants. I get tasks from the product team who prioritise what work needs to be done for our clients.

I have meetings with people to plan out what the work is, how long it will take and what we need to get it done and then I do the work. 

**What are some of the common misconceptions about working in Software Engineering?**

You just work on computers all day and don’t interact with anyone. You need to go to university and get a degree to be a software engineer. You eat a lot of pizza (not a complete misconception)

> “I wanted to be either a Silver Fern or run my own business” 

**Was working in tech something you dreamed about doing as a kid, if not what was?**

Not really, I enjoyed playing the odd computer game but never thought of myself as someone who had a great understanding of how computers worked.

I wanted to be either a Silver Fern or run my own business (I used to collect my siblings possessions and wrap them up and make them buy them back as a “lucky dip”). 

**Tell us a little bit more about your career journey and ultimately about how you ended up working at MOBI?** 

I went to university to study Sports and Exercise Science, majoring in Management and Coaching and from there fell into the events industry and worked for Venues Wellington (TSB Arena, Michael Fowler Centre, St James and Opera House).

During my second round of maternity leave I realised that it was not really the career path that I wanted to go down. My husband is a software developer and over time I realised what he did looked like fun.

So when my daughter was three months I gave myself the goal to do two hours of self led study a night using online courses like Udemy and Codecademy. A few months into it I was certain that it was what I wanted to do for a career.

After doing about 10 months of self led study I signed up to do Dev Academy Bootcamp and after the intense 20 weeks I finished the course.

I had seen MOBI when ordering some food and thought it looked like a great company doing cool things and so when the job opportunity came up I jumped on the chance and have learnt SO much since.

> “We spend so many hours working in our job so you better find a job that you love.” 

**What is the best piece of career advice you have ever received?**

We spend so many hours working in our job so you better find a job that you love.

**Do you have any advice for people considering tech as a career path and how they might get there quicker?**

First, do some self-learning via websites like Codecademy or Udemy etc to see if it is something you want to pursue. Make some projects and get a real feel for it. Then consider doing a bootcamp if you are committed and want to fast-track your knowledge. 

**Lastly, MOBI continues to grow and evolve. What kind of candidates do you think MOBI is looking for in terms of experience, attitude and character?**

People who are motivated and ready to jump onto the rocketship that is the fast-moving MOBI.

Alice Alsford, Software Engineer at MOBI

_Dreams of becoming a fighter pilot morphed into a career as a Firmware Architect and Alastair Bain couldn't be more happy with the direction. Having spent his summer holidays milking cows, it didn't take a long pitch from [Halter](https://halterhq.com/ "Halter") Founder, Craig Piggott to convince him what they were working on was going to be revolutionary for the farming industry._ 

_Alastair shares with Matchstiq some more insight into how he got into tech in the first place, what he loves about his role at Halter and some great career advice for anyone interested. Thanks for sharing your story, Alastair._

**Firstly, how would you explain to a five year old what it is you do?**

I’ve got kids about this age and I’m not sure I’ve managed to explain it to them yet, something along the lines of making the collar keep the cows where they should be.

**And for the adults, what does a typical day-in-the-life working as a Firmware Architect at Halter look like?**

I lead the technical development of the software that runs inside our collars, known in the industry as firmware. Like a lot of firmware, implementing any new feature requires a lot of trade offs, for power consumption (the collar is solar powered and must keep running 24/7 through the darkest winter days), memory, compute power and communications bandwidth. 

As well, we're always striving to improve our development process to get new features out to farmers faster and more reliably. Finding the source of issues is a challenging process, you literally have a black box device, and problems could be hardware, software, people or cow related.

**What are some of the common misconceptions about working as a Firmware Architect?**

That I’m in IT! I probably can help you fix your computer, but it’s not what I normally do.

> “Thankfully I changed my interests from being a fighter pilot to tech at a pretty young age and since then it was definitely my major interest.” 

**Was working in tech something you dreamed about doing as a kid, if not what was?**

Thankfully I changed my interests from being a fighter pilot to tech at a pretty young age and since then it was definitely my major interest.

**Tell us a little bit more about your career journey and ultimately about how you ended up working at Halter?** 

I started out studying electrical engineering and my first role was as a product development engineer at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. I worked in a smaller department there, which gave me the opportunity to get involved with many aspects of product development, from designing the electronics, building production line testers and jigs to writing firmware and application software. 

After several years I decided to focus on software, keeping my hand in the physical product development game by specializing in firmware. Firmware is everywhere these days, there’s very few products out there without at least a little sprinkling of it.

> “..it’s rare you find something that is as challenging and satisfying on so many fronts.  
> ” 

The next (and longest) chunk of my career was spent developing firmware for military training products, this has a great range, from designing novel, fault tolerant and low power wireless network systems to engineering a software development platform to support rapid product development with a small team and a large number of products.

Ultimately I ended up at Halter due to the persistence of an old colleague who was convinced I’d be right for the role. I’d grown up on a dairy farm and had spent most of my summer holidays milking cows so I was pretty well acquainted with the challenges of the job, and after a quick pitch from Craig (Piggot, the CEO) I was sold. 

We’re in such a fantastic location to be developing this technology with the most advanced dairy industry in the world and it has the ability to significantly improve the lives of farmers; it’s rare you find something that is as challenging and satisfying on so many fronts.

**What is the best piece of career advice you have ever received?** 

Come and work at Halter obviously!

> “One of the core values of Halter is hunger over experience; this doesn’t mean that we don’t value experience..” 

**What do you love about working at Halter?**

Being a part of such a fantastic crew, everyone is so passionate and skilled and pulls together to get the job done. The pace of change means that a feature you working on one day is in the hands of customers the next day, the pace is both exhilarating and sometimes a bit scary, but you know you’ve got a great team to back you up.  
  
**Lastly, Halter continues to grow and evolve. What kind of candidates do you think Halter is looking for in terms of experience, attitude and character?**

One of the core values of Halter is hunger over experience; this doesn’t mean that we don’t value experience, but that nobody who wants to take ownership and drive a project through to achieve a good result will be held back. Halter best suits candidates who want to do their best work and grow personally and professionally. 

Alastair Bain, Principle Firmware Architect at Halter

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