What's it like to work in the Engineering team?

I love being in our #dev Slack channel - there’s always something interesting going on, such as what’s the Lunch & Learn topic for this week, funny dev memes (50% chance I can understand) or pics of dogs / cats / people’s cute kids bombing Zoom calls. Every now and then there’ll be a summary shared from the regular employee insights or Alex’s thoughtful updates around any team changes or direction around a technical choice. 

Diversity and inclusion is something that we’re quite passionate about at First AML and actively try to work on making it an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds, as well as building diverse teams. While gender is just one factor to consider, we are proud of the work we’ve done to bring together a 40% female to 60% male mix in the Engineering team - but realise there’s a lot more we could be doing. 

Having never worked on the tech side myself, I was curious to learn more about what it’s actually like for the women in our Engineering team, and what they care about - so I asked a few of our team for their insider perspective.

What’s it like working at First AML?

Reshmi: It’s a very collaborative environment and people work to solve problems together. The team is always willing to teach you stuff, and if you ask for help they’re not judgmental about what your expertise is or what you don’t know. There’s also a lot of great initiatives to get involved in aside from just coding - our diversity committee, organising social events etc. 

Anna: My manager communicates frequently in our 1-1s, and I like the ‘no surprises’ approach to performance reviews. I’ve worked in a place where we did bi-annual performance reviews, and we’d get an email from a system to fill in a form, then my manager fills it in - but no one ever looked at it. Very different approach here, where managers are pro-active about your development.

I also appreciate that we are given so much trust. No one is telling us what to do, we are all encouraged to have ideas and bring them up. It might not always be implemented, but you know it’s always heard - even as a new joiner.

Aroha: One thing I love is that diversity is front of mind - whether internally promoting women into leadership or being deliberate about building up the candidate pipeline. 

Our HR team has been putting jobs on FlexCareers to open up the opportunity for candidates who can’t commit to a full 40 hour week. This can help increase diversity as it creates opportunities for parents who are returning to work or have small children, as well as people who have a range of other commitments. 

We also have a great leadership group - I joined FAML to learn and there’s a lot of things I have already learnt from working with the team. Not only are people experienced but they are also very approachable and available: even though our VP Engineering Alex is a very busy person, he will prioritise helping you if you have a problem. There’s also regular skip level meetings from the most junior dev on the team to the most senior.

Dineshi: Because we’re a growing company, there’s a lot of room to learn different skills. Even though I work as a software engineer, I have also been given the chance to work on our business intelligence project as I am really passionate about data science and data analytics. When I talked about my interest in this area, Alex encouraged me to get involved in the BI project. Overall, this is never a boring moment since there are always opportunities to try out new areas of skills.

Also everyone agreed...

Leadership is very invested in our career progression and learning: there’s a clear career path documented so that you can have open conversations with your tech lead or manager about your career path if you’d like to grow within the company. 

They regularly ask us: where do you want to go, and how can we help you get there? And then come up with strategies to invest in our learning, such as trying out feature leading or improving our leadership skills etc. It feels like they’re genuinely watching out for us.

And if you’re curious… the onboarding is very welcoming, and many were struck by the first day friendliness of the team and goodies on your desk. From day 1 you feel like you’re part of the FAML crew!

Find out more about what it’s like working at First AML or our roles open here: https://www.firstaml.com/careers?

Written by Lucy Luo, one-time intro learner of Ruby on Rails and attempts at CSS/HTML on Coursera…