Software Developer

My name is Gareth Bowen. I’m a senior software developer for Orion Health.

So what I do from a day-to-day basis is try and solve problems, which means taking the data that we have in the database and trying to represent it on a screen, or allowing users to add more data to solve their specific problems.

I first joined Orion Health as a graduate from Otago University, and as a junior I got a lot of help in my day-to-day job to solve problems. But as I’ve become more experienced and over the following years, I’ve got a lot more autonomy now in what I do. And I get to pick how I solve the problems or sometimes even what problems I choose to solve. As you develop, you also get to choose to specialise a bit. You might be a database programmer or you might be a back-end programmer, or as I am, working on the front end.

What that means at Orion Health is working on web applications, which are basically complex websites that show and modify the data in the database. It’s a really exciting field to work in, there’s a lot of change especially at the moment going on – with web browsers and things – you get a lot of money put into them, and the technologies themselves, the languages we use are evolving at a quick rate, so that’s very exciting. Orion Health came and did a recruitment seminar at Otago University and I was really impressed with what I saw so I applied – that was about five years ago now, and I’ve loved it ever since.

The working environment's fairly relaxed – as you can see, I’m sitting here in my T-shirt and jeans. Also the working hours are quite flexible – some people come in at seven or eight in the morning and leave quite early. Other people come in at sort of 10.30 in the morning and leave at seven or eight – it’s really whatever suits you.

After trying some various other career opportunities, I found myself at a loose end for a year or two, and eventually sort of realised that what I was spending a lot of time doing was either creating websites for fun, or just spending a lot of time on the computer anyway. And so I thought that programming would probably be a good job for me, and went to Otago. So I ended up getting a degree in computer science. Since then, I’ve gone on to get a couple of trade certifications, and there’s plenty more for further qualifications out there, and the various fields that you might be interested in.

So my typical day starts off with checking my emails and seeing what tasks have come in overnight. It generally then goes on to problem solving and how I can solve the issues that our customers are having – whether they are actual bugs or improvements we can make to the software. So, given the inputs, which is the data we have and the existing code base, how can I produce an output? It’s sort of like putting together a puzzle of trying to solve this problem.

So, starting off as a junior developer, you might expect to get around $40,000 a year. As you get more experienced and get promoted, you might get up to about a $100,000 a year. After that, you can go up the management track and become a team leader or a development manager. Or you can go up the technical route and become a technical leader. And obviously, the remuneration is greater on those.

For working conditions, it’s fairly comfortable. You get four weeks’ annual leave, which is standard for New Zealand.

One of the things I love about a digital career is you have the opportunity to help a lot of people around the world. For instance, what we do here at Orion Health is we make health care software. So it’s really exciting to know that the code you’re writing can be used in hospitals helping save lives in America or Spain or back here in Auckland.