Meet Andrew Gould, a Lead Software Engineer who joined WiseTech’s Melbourne office in October 2022, bringing with him a robust background in front-end development. With a unique career trajectory that started with part-time work as a web developer during high school before moving into a full-time role at university, Andrew brings a wealth of experience and a fresh perspective to his role at WiseTech.
Discover how Andrew's non-traditional path aligns seamlessly with the culture of continuous learning and growth at WiseTech, and what excites him about his future here.
Can you share a bit about your background?
When I was in university I wasn’t the best student, so after a couple of years I decided to take a gap year and work full time as a web developer. Until that point, I had been working as a contractor picking up little jobs here and there that worked well around my studies. But then working in my first full time job was really fun, and I really enjoyed making money and getting exposure to lots of different projects and different technologies.
After finishing my gap year I went back to uni for a little bit, but decided after a couple of months that I really just wanted to go straight into the market and be a developer. So I quickly picked up a full time senior developer role without ever finishing my degree, and I’ve never looked back.
Sometimes when I’ve interviewed at companies they’ll question it, but everyone at WiseTech was very supportive and it was never an issue. In terms of my experience on the job market, I've never needed a degree based on the work that I do day-to-day.
How did you come to join WiseTech, and what was your experience?
My wife has been a freight forwarder for 20 years, so I'd known about WiseTech many years before I joined. I’ve also been a WiseTech shareholder since 2018 and had wanted to join the company for a while. So I've had a really unique insight into the company and our different products and services well before joining, which has given me a great foundation to really understand our business and how everything works.
Over the years, I’d been looking at the WiseTech website and had seen some developer roles, but as a web developer with no C# experience, I never felt that I could apply. Over time I eventually saw that WiseTech were recruiting for web developer roles. They were looking for people with good quality UI and UX experience, who have done lots of web things, and who are willing to upskill and learn new technologies as part of the job. Coming across this role that aligned perfectly with what I was looking for was just amazing.
Being able to talk to people at WiseTech and have them understand that although I don't have the exact experience they were looking for, I've got a really good understanding of most of the ideas and reference points in general that would actually be used here without having the specific tools. By having a really good understanding of what makes code tick from different perspectives, I was then able to come in and contribute without knowing everything perfectly.
How has working at WiseTech supported your professional development?
WiseTech was a blessing because I had been looking for the right role for a long time before that. Unfortunately, because I had spent so many years working with Angular, and Angular was no longer in demand in the market, I found myself needing to learn some new tools. React was a very popular tool when I was looking, and I didn't have experience in that either because I had been fully focused on Angular, so I kept getting rejected for roles in the job market.
I'd been wanting to train up in a new language like C# for a long time, and when I joined WiseTech I had no experience in it at all. Since joining WiseTech, I’ve been able to learn C# to a level that I didn't think was possible previously. It's been a really good opportunity for me to learn a language that I had been very aware was missing from my CV. It’s meant that I can tick that off, knowing that there will be new technologies that continue to be relevant to my work that I haven't yet learned or haven't even touched on, but I will get the chance to do here so that's great.
WiseTech is very unique because it actually invests in its people and is focused on the bigger picture. We have so many people who have been here for 5, 10 and even 30 years, because we invest in our people and we actually build their skills.
For me, it’s been a great place to work because I've been able to tick off many things that I've been wanting to do as part of my career, and I've been able to do so in a short amount of time.
What excites you about the future of WiseTech?
We have a very solid plan for growth and are continuing to hire more and more developers, so it’s a really exciting time for us. The logistics industry will always be there, so in terms of job security it’s a very safe industry to be working in. We work with many different modes of transportation, and as a result, we will always have products to offer and plenty of roles to fill.
My team and the broader groups overall, we're building the next big thing and we are so passionate about it and cannot wait for it to see the light of day. Being able to build these new technologies that solve real problems for our customers means that we can continue to get products over the line.
With my wife working in the industry as well, I’m in a really unique position because I can do something at work and see the impact it has on our customers by actually getting that feedback at home. If I do something at work, I know that my wife and her colleagues are able to actually see these changes in CargoWise and get excited. So being able to road test as we go and get that good quality feedback has been absolutely incredible.