Life after PhD

An insight and a few tips to kick-start your career in the industry.

Malinda Kapuruge

Hi,

• PhD at Swinburne (2008 – 2012)• Postdoc (2012 - 2013) • Now a Consultant at DiUS Computing

2004 2008 2014Acedemia (~ 5 yrs)

The contents are based on my experience.

May/may not be applicable to others.

Industry vs Academia

Financial

Flexibility

Ownership

Team culture

Work-life balance

And the Winner is …

The Parameters !

As a researcher,

• What skills do I need in order to kick start your career in industry?– Transferable skills– Extra skills

Transferable skills

Critical thinking

Data management

Perseverance

Report writing

Self-motivated

Time management

A doctoral thesis

• Not just yet another book• A process • You will be transformed• You will acquire those transferable skills

How about extra skills …?

What it like to be a SE consultant?

• Short gigs• Newt tech, processes, people (& coffee shops)• Technical spikes / feasibility studies• Learn fast and move quickly• Mentoring existing staff• Polyglots• Bench time

Team composition

DEVs QA UX PM

Rituals

[ Daily ] Standups Retrospective Sprint Kickoffs

Extra skills

• Communication • Networking• Understanding the “customer problem”• Ability to add value from day 1• The Software Engineer mentality

The Software Engineer Mentality !

Code !

Code !!

Code !!!

Thinking performance

Thinking scalability

Master the CLI

Develop good S.E. habits

Go to bed at 3AM?

Automate everything! Save time !!Use suitable tools

Appreciate others

work ! Fix things !!

Practice TDD

Write Test

Write codeRefactor

Start

Learn Agile

Be aware of trends

• Big data• Internet of things• Flying robots• Scripting languages

Technical meetups

• Small groups• Like-minded• Various roles / organizations• Mutual benefits• Quick feedback• Interactive

.com

Open-source projects

• Visibility• Communication• Something Tangible• Free testers / contributors ;-)

Join a good organization

• That value your research skills• That promote learning• The size does not matter• But the culture is

culture

Brown Bags

• Lunch time - every Tuesday • Free lunch ;-)• Fun ! and social !!• Someone participated a conference• To pitch a crazy idea• Invited talks

Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

• Similar to a technical meetups• Focused groups to improve technical skills– E.g., IoT, Cloud, UX

Hack days

• Twice a year• Paid to go NUTS !!

Some interesting projects…

Intelligentli

To upload and monitor your sensor readings as annotated time series data, e.g., geo locations, tags

E.g., sample demos: https://smokealert.intelligent.li/https://livevu.intelligent.li/

Pact framework

• Integration Tests are a Scam – J.B. Rainsberger• Unit testing for Micro services• Consumer driven contracts • DSL• Available in Ruby/JVM/JS

Aerial sensing