What's your job about?
The carsales company vision is to create number one digital marketplaces for vehicles around the world. I am a Technology Graduate, which has given me the opportunity to work in 3 different tech teams in “rotations” across the business for 6 months each.
My first rotation was in the Dealer tribe as a Full Stack Developer, writing code, creating new features, and squashing bugs in AutoGate, an application used by car dealerships. During my second rotation in the Machine Learning Platform and Engineering team I worked on a number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies used across carsales. Finally in my third rotation about to begin I will be working in the Member Experience squad, which will involve development work directly on the carsales website and app.
A typical day of work includes meeting with teammates to chat about ongoing work and how best to solve any problems we have, and coding away on new features I’m working on implementing, or bugs that I’m trying to fix. Life as a developer is highly collaborative, very rarely will a day go by that I’m not bunkered down in a call with colleagues chipping away at a problem or big task.
Most importantly though, work is almost always fun! Colleagues at carsales aren’t just co-workers, they’re friends. Whether we’re playing games over Zoom on a Friday afternoon, going out for lunch or coffee on an office day, or unleashing banter in our morning team catchups, there’s never a dull moment.
What's your background?
I was born and raised in Shepparton, a town in northern regional Victoria. I spent my childhood there, attending primary and secondary school locally. I graduated high school in 2017 and accepted an offer to study my undergraduate degree at Monash University. I loved computers, and enjoyed economics in Year 12, so I chose to study a double degree of Information Technology and Commerce. I moved to Melbourne for my studies and lived on campus in Clayton for a couple years before weathering the pandemic in a share house with university mates.
Despite COVID, I was given many opportunities to kickstart my career during my studies. I participated in the Monash IBL (Industry Based Learning) program, where I worked full time as a Cyber Security Analyst at ME Bank in the Melbourne CBD while earning credit towards my degree. I also worked part-time for Monash University as a Livestream Support Assistant, and later as an Administrative Officer taking on a variety of supportive roles across Monash.
In 2021 I graduated with my double degree and started applying for graduate roles in the tech world. After a thorough process and lots of deliberation, I accepted with carsales and started as a Technology Graduate in February 2022 where I’ve now been working for almost 12 months!
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Absolutely! The tech world, and particularly carsales, is filled with unique individuals with different ethnicities, cultures, beliefs, and life experiences. My background has nothing to do with my ability to do my job.
To succeed as a Technology Graduate, it doesn’t matter where you come from or how you’ve gotten to this point in your life. All that matters is you bring a passion for learning, a curious spirit, and a positive attitude to take on whatever is thrown your way.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
There is nothing more satisfying than seeing code you’ve written pushed to production for users to enjoy! I’ll never get tired of logging onto our website and seeing features that I’ve worked on.
carsales also has some really cutting-edge tech. During my second rotation in the AI team, I had the awesome opportunity to learn all about the Machine Learning process and contribute to the inner workings of some complex AI training pipelines and infrastructure. AI is the future, and it is already everywhere, and it’s so cool to be a part of it.
What are the limitations of your job?
Although rewarding, graduate programs with rotations can be challenging. Every 6 months, just as you’re really starting to settle in and get comfortable, you must put aside much of what you’ve learned and start again with a new team, new role, new technology stack etc. I love learning and experiencing new things so it’s great for me, but constantly leaving your comfort zone may be challenging for some.
And although it’s not as prevalent at carsales, there is a constant underlying pressure working in tech. The code, infrastructure and features we create must service thousands of concurrent users, and any outage that occurs is costly. Just as it’s incredibly satisfying seeing your hard work in users’ hands, it’s heartbreaking and stressful if it ever stops working as intended and it must be fixed ASAP.
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