Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of Her Heads in the Cloud. We are currently live in season two.
I'm very excited to be joined by Margin today at afg, currently head of cloud engineering and but I'll let you do a bit more of an introduction to yourself.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Marjan, as you introduced me.
I am head of Cloud engineering and Technology operations and I have been with AFG for about a year and four months now. Time flies.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: It was just like yesterday when I was offered the role.
And prior to AFG I was with MyUp, which is a finance company, for about a year, less than a year. And prior to that I was with BanQuest for nearly 12 years.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: And I guess that brings us quite nicely onto our first question, but when you first joined Banquest as a graduate, did you already know cloud and infrastructure was the path that you wanted to take?
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Oh, my God, that. That's a hard no.
And that is a hard no.
So When I joined BanQuest, I was a graduate in software engineering. And even prior to that, when I was doing my university preferences, I was doing a selection as to what uni degree I wanted to do.
I pretty much put hardware engineering the lowest of the list.
Engineering and electrical engineering were the lowest on my list and software engineering was pretty high on the list.
But I think what makes this role, and I have learned that very well over the past year and a bit that I was with afg, is how companies like Amazon or Microsoft brilliantly changed the idea of what cloud means and infrastructure means by abstracting out that layer of hardware, physical hardware out.
And I still can apply a lot of those concepts that I enjoy doing as a software engineer, like all those design principles that I have learned and I have applied and for is code. You know, you can spin a whole entire new environment as, and you know, you could apply reusability, modularity, version control. All of it perfectly applies in today's world. And I think that to me was, was, was, was easily clicking. It was quite easy for me to adopt.
So I want to say, after all, I really didn't change myself for infrastructure. I was lucky enough that in today's world, infrastructure really talks my language, which is software engineering.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. It's a beautiful thing when everything aligns and it clicks and it almost feels natural.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: And when we've spoken previously as well, you've mentioned leadership almost found you, which is quite special in itself also, rather than you chasing it. So how did that transition happen naturally over the past few years?
[00:03:49] Speaker A: This is, this is a very good question and I want to actually use this opportunity to tell my story.
And I hope that someone else who listens to this podcast one day, a grad or someone interested in technology, feeling completely lost and not knowing where their careers is headed, can relate to it, can see that if someone like me can do it, they can do it too.
So I joined Banquest as a grad in 2020. Sorry, in 2013.
I was very lucky to to have been placed in an environment of people with lots of talents and high standards.
And when you have a place like that, then you have got role models, you've got people to look up to.
I was fortunate enough in my very first rotation, grad rotation at Banquest that I was put in a team that our tech lead was someone that I wanted immediately to look like in the future.
You know, his technical competency on one hand, so his ability to manage the team and talk through the requirements, ensure that customers needs are met at the same time, to me was phenomenal. And it already set the bar pretty high to me. I think it was really within the first month and this rotation that I thought, I don't know how long it's going to take me, but I want to look like him one day, I want to add value like he does.
It did not take me a year or two, it really took me about eight years to get to technical leadership role and it was really difficult to get there. At Banquest, standards were high and I did not really skip a step. I always went one step at a time. So I became a software engineer after grad role, a senior software engineer and then I was seconded to a technical leadership position and I applied for it and I got it. It was after eight years that I got there, but that was not the end of my story.
Throughout these eight years I was fortunate to have done a lot of community events, events.
I attended Coder Dojo, which is a great event for kids. You know, you get to sit with kids and you get to teach them how to like Raspberry PIs, programming robots, even like simple web applications to teach them like interesting concepts like event driven. You know, there is a cat and if you click on the cat it meows, you know, like small things.
It's been so cool to really like with the kids and teach them but also beyond that, you know, Perth web girls to, to, to, you know, to try to mentor women or females interested in technology to learn Ruby and Wells, you know, we were able in two days to teach them how to do their first hello World program. So all of it, you know, came as a, as a reward to me attending WA Information Technology Telecommunication Award as a judge.
I words, which is a national level as a judge.
All of it like built so much confidence in me that made me think about this whole mentorship and investing in someone else's career, you know, helping a senior dev, helping a developer, helping a grad to come up the ladder. And that's where I started thinking about leadership.
So it was, I think a year and a half into technical leadership role that I thought, you know, now I want to combine all of it with that passion in leadership and passion in people in general.
And I applied for a software engineering manager role at VanQuest.
It took me about 30 minutes of interview to fail.
So immediately as part of the interview they said, look, the resume looks great, you've done so well. We want someone who has that background. And in me, I was thinking, I just wish one person and I just need that one person to see that in me and trusts me.
And so I went through, I want to say, three interviews for different roles and every single one of them wanted an experienced software really manager. And I was getting to a very upsetting point that I said, like, you know, there is always that one person that needs to see that and you. Not everybody's born into the role, everybody has that person to trust them.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: So I was very lucky that eventually I got to an interview where I was accepted for the software engineering position role in the very first team that I joined as a grad and it was so cool. I was with the team for nearly two and a half years.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: And we did so much together, you know, lots of automation.
It was one of the, the most critical applications for the bank. It was a monolithic application that added so much value.
But with the team, we managed to do so much automation and that software and it was, it was honestly like the. One of the best times of my career at Banquest.
After that I was offered a similar role outside of Banquest and it was the end of the world for me to leave this amazing place.
But I wanted to do it because I knew that, you know, the sky's the limit. If there is a better opportunity outside, go for it.
I was with Mayup, which technology wise was so amazing.
Technology was moving a lot faster and I learned so much from it.
I was eight months into the role and I was thinking, you know, what is next? Like, up until I tech lead position the path was quite clear for me. You go one step at a time. The job description was quite obvious for me.
Software engineering manager was also the right career path for me from where I was with the passion that I had for leadership. But what is after that? Like, how do people become CTOs? How do people become GMs?
And that's where I, I, that's where the surprise came to me. So I got a LinkedIn message from my current manager who invited me for a coffee catch up.
And little did I know what was coming out of that catch up. But essentially he said, look, you know, I've heard so much about you and you know, you've been recommended to me by a few people from Banquest and I was all over the moon. I wasn't sure what I've done, but apparently, you know, when you've got a good reputation, it pays off. So he said, I've got a head of role.
And I said, what? What?
So this, this is how it, it came to me and it basically caught me by surprise. I remember calling my husband and saying, you know, I did not know like the head of role because in my mind I have no idea what it is. I just know it's somewhere much higher than senior, you know, engineering manager role. But I guess, I mean, it's been a year and four months into the role and I'm loving every single day of it.
There isn't a day without a challenge with the head. Overall, there comes a lot with, you know, financial side of things and budgeting and managing the budget and a lot of the things that I was not used to prior to this.
But I think it's important that you give your best to any job that you do because it gets noticed by some, someone else, a leader that has gone through the same exact path. They see you, they acknowledge you and then when they're comes an opportunity that they are asked, do you know someone, you could be that person that you know is offered.
I hope that this story becomes, you know, something good for someone who just enters, you know, into technology and you know, they see someone high up the ladder and they're like, no, this is too far away. I'm not, I'm not going to get there. I just want to tell them, you know, set the bar high, give your best, you are going to be seen like there is no way that your efforts is not going to be unnoticed.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Absolutely. And thank you so much for sharing that margin.
It's a really raw and authentic story and it's, it's also Amazing for people to hear because sometimes you do have to get those no's and you can't be disheartened by the no's because ultimately you know, everything happens for a reason and you have to believe that something bigger and better is, is coming your way. Um, and I guess that goes with
[00:13:40] Speaker A: your career a hundred percent. Just do not give up. Whatever you do, do not give up. Give your best. You are going to see the app one way or another.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
Um, and what would you say are some of the biggest challenges when leading cloud infrastructure and operations teams today?
[00:14:02] Speaker A: I think I've got about a couple in my mind. There's a lot, but I have a couple of them in my mind and the first one is not necessarily related to the cloud infrastructure. I have seen that in different companies that I have worked for and that is competing priorities.
Being in this level in the head of role, I fully understand that the company has got a strategic direction.
We want more customers, we want to make more money, we want to satisfy our customers, we want to stay relevant in the market, we want to be the best in the market. So I understand all of it, product team all the time like to build new features.
What's not communicated so well, and I think that's where the balance is not done right is the amount of tech that that is played into technical debt, that is displayed into the planning of the squads.
So one thing that I think it's important for the business to know is you can continue to build new features on top of new features on top of new features without maintaining your underlying infrastructure.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: So maintenance is a key here. And sometimes I even use a simpler example. You know, if you've got a car, if you don't take it for car service and you use that for 10 years, you know it's going to break down, you know you're not going to be able.
Maintenance is a part of the work that we have to do on a day to day basis.
Whether or not we're talking about a business application, we're talking about the third party dependencies making sure they're up to date, whether we're talking about patching the operating system need to stay on, on top of those vulnerabilities.
One thing that to me business need to know is if we don't tackle technical debt, it will become a business debt in the future. And then there comes a time that you've got to drop your features that you've promised to the business customers in order to tackle all that, you know, Massive tech that, that has been built on top of each other.
So that to me the competing priority is, is one thing.
The other one that comes to my mind is how fast technology moves these days. It's insane. Like we're talking about every day, we're talking about every month. You know, aws, you know, has got like yearly updates about this is the whole like 50 different like projects that we worked on and this is all in beta, but you're going to be able to use that in the next month or so.
How can we stay on top of it? Know you've got a small team to run operationally. You need to ensure that we service our teams, we bau, you know, business as usual, you know, goes well.
We keep the lights on our production environments, but how can we ensure at the same time that we stay on top of this tech that moves on super fast?
AWS Azure, these are expensive environments and we need to ensure that we make the best benefit and use out of them.
We need to ensure that we do our experiments with the new tech that comes out to ensure they are secure, they're fit purpose, they support the strategic direction of the company and offer that squad and we need definitely that balance. Finding that balance to let the operation run smoothly and at the same time, you know, work on what's out there, you know, what's the latest tech and we utilize that in our ecosystem is another challenge.
And maybe I just point out another one and I think that's the top three that I have in mind. And the last one is cost optimization. I think with cloud, with AWS Azure, you could see some hidden costs every now and then. So understand understanding what those are because you obviously want to keep your environment scalable, you want to ensure that they are secure, but at the same time you want to have an understanding about how a certain cost, you know, happen to you. And how can I ensure that, you know, this is the right cost if next month I get another bill, does that make sense? So staying on top of the cost, optimizing it, ensuring that you understand the waste as opposed to what are the right features to use is also very important.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
I was last week even I was at the AWS summit. And it's interesting because when I went, when I went two or three years ago, it's all about lift and shift and things have changed so drastically now and all of the talks are about AI, so you really do have to stick with the times otherwise you will
[00:19:12] Speaker A: get left behind, 100% present every time. We also have a Chat or a conversation with our AWS reps and even people out in the community. The very first answer to any question is, have you used that AI agent? Have you used the other one of have you used AI?
It seems to be buzzword these days, doesn't it?
[00:19:36] Speaker B: 100%.
And that brings us quite nicely onto our next question.
But do you think AI will change the types of careers young people should consider when entering the field and how so?
[00:19:54] Speaker A: I think AI will definitely change things, but not in a way that a lot of people fear.
So what AI is so good at is, good at is automating tasks, repetitive tasks.
You can never compete with AI to generate code. It's going to win. You know, it creates boilerplate code for you, it writes an email perfectly for you.
But what it does not do well or what it does not know how to do, it does not know the context, the judgments behind it.
And also eventually you are accountable for that email that goes out. You are accountable as a person for that piece of software written by AI. So these are the things that AI cannot do for you. So I think it's a wrong narrative that people think that they'll be replaced by AI one day. I don't believe if that's the case.
But what I want to tell young people entering this, this world is I think this generation is extremely lucky that they have such a powerful tool in their career.
It's not going to replace them, but you need to learn how to use it. You, you need to understand how that can help with your productivity.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Because what can be replaced is the person who doesn't know how to use it. You can be replaced by someone else who knows how to use it. And I think that to me is the, is the main distinction. It's not going to, in my point of view, it's not going to replace people. It's going to increase the productivity of the work that we do on a day to day basis.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's a nice outlook to have, to not be scared of it, but to embrace it. And if you're, yeah, coming into the industry with an open mind, it's almost easier to be fair if you've not had a career, if you've not had a career in engineering specifically and you're just entering the field, then you don't know any different really. So embracing AI is probably, could even be a little bit easier for the younger generation.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: 100%. I think older generation might feel more threatened by it because it's going to be a massive Trend for them to now having to learn more.
And when you are in a career path of like 20 something years and looking forward to retirement, like you, you were kind of just thinking, oh my God, I've got like, I don't know, five more years to go. Do I need to really learn about this? The reality is if someone else knows it more than you, then the chances of you not having that next five years in your, in your career then is high.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
And what do you think young women need more of in technology right now? You know, there's a variety of things, whether it's visibility or confidence.
What's your take on that?
[00:23:02] Speaker A: I think visibility is important.
Having right mentor is definitely important.
Representation is important. But the beyond all of it to me is confidence. And that's something that I want to be honest about even in my career. It takes a lot for us as women to get to that confident level.
We are in a very male dominant environment.
And I was reading some stats some time back that, you know, for the same role, for the same exact role, when a male applies for it, if they match that job description, 20%, they hit apply.
Us women, we need to match it more than 95%. We look at every sentence, we try to understand, do I actually qualify for that single, single line. And it makes us think about our ability, it makes us question ourselves.
So to me, confidence is very important.
Sometimes we are in a room knowing a lot about a topic, but feel that we should not express our point of view because there is someone sitting in front of us, dominant, who might just speak better than us.
So I'd say in my point of view, for us, confidence is key. And I personally would love to even hear it more from women in senior leadership to come out and talk through about their journey, how they got to where they got to, they should have gone through a certain path, how they increased that confidence in them to continue to work and go up the ladder in this male dominant environment.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. It's always inspirational, sharing their journeys just like yourself today, of course.
And finally, if you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of career advice when you first started as a grad, what would it be?
[00:25:21] Speaker A: This is a, this is a very good one, I want to say.
I have been hard on myself all the time.
A part of me always thinks that, you know, I needed to do that for me because it was important for me to have a career path and I chose to be hard on me.
And that's why I'M here. But the older and hopefully wiser that I've gotten, I have learned that learning how to enjoy this path is a skill.
All these years, past 17 years that I have been in industry is not gonna come back to me again.
So there were times that I could have been kind to me and say, good on you. You have this role now. Enjoy it for a minute, celebrate.
But when I got to that role, I started just going through, what are the job description, what are the tasks, I want to nail them and then what's next for me and the list, what should I do next? So I never actually just stood for a minute and appreciated, you know, and been kind to myself.
So ensure that's what I would do next time or that's a younger version of me would do is appreciate the moment, be kind to yourself, enjoy this path because it's not going to come back to you again.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. Be kind to yourself. I do tell myself that on a daily basis.
Very key.
But thank you so much for joining me today, Marge. It's been truly wonderful and inspirational having you share your thoughts and your journey.
And thank you, everyone, for tuning in to another episode of Her Heads in the Cloud.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you for having me, Sam.
