Two little ducks: my Kainos career (so far)
I joined Kainos as a software engineer 22 years ago, after graduating from Queen’s University Belfast with a master’s degree in Computer Science.
It seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Roger Federer hadn’t won a grand slam. A black woman had yet to win an Academy Award for Best Actress (it would be another 10 years before we saw a female Best Director win). No iPhones. No Facebook or YouTube. However, cans of Guinness did have widgets (yeah!) and Star Wars 1: The Phantom Menace had been released (boo!).
Powers of ten
Kainos has changed a LOT in those 22 years. There’s a great video on YouTube from 1977 which tries to help people understand orders of magnitude. Sometimes that’s what it feels like as I look back over the years since I joined…
Kainos employs over ten times the number of people it did back then (and counting). We operated in a handful neighbouring countries, which has grown to dozens, all over the globe. We now work on projects that are hundreds of times bigger in size and complexity.
The opportunity for personal growth today would be unrecognisable to the nervous young guy who walked into the Belfast office for an interview in an ill-fitting brown suit* in June 2000.
*Disclaimer: all suits were ill-fitting back then.
A game of two halves
I spent the formative years of my Kainos career building intranet applications and supporting a large telephony platform for one of our biggest customers at the time. Oh, and getting to know lots of great people. I learned a huge amount from my Kainos colleagues during those early years, both professionally and personally, many of whom remain close personal friends.
Those were also the days when Brendan (our CEO) would personally bring you a coffee on the morning of the Christmas office party. In a tuxedo. Times have changed a little since then, although I’m sure he’d still grab me a coffee if I asked nicely.
About 10 years ago there were signs that our customers were starting to place more emphasis on understanding the value of the platforms and services we were building for their users, and so I moved into the world of Product – helping large organisations understand hard problems, deliver solutions and get to market quickly. It sounds like a simple idea, but it was a paradigm shift in the prevailing approach to delivering digital services enabled by a much-changed technology landscape, and it prompted a change in my own career path.
The NHS App
For the last four years I have been Product Delivery Lead for the NHS App, which connects the citizens of England with all their health and care services in a single place. I’ve had a lot of help on my personal Kainos journey but it’s incredible to think how far I’ve come – leading a team of 100+ people and supporting a product with over 25 million registered users.
It’s both exciting and humbling and every day brings a host of fresh challenges, which is what gets a Product Lead out of bed in the morning.
COVID-19
Working for the NHS during the height of the pandemic proved an unforgettable experience in many ways.
It first started when we were asked to build a new service which would allow UK citizens to request and download an “isolation note” online. This note replaced the requirement to request a traditional GP fit note for those with COVID or who had been told to isolate, removing the need for millions of people to visit their GP surgery in person. We did it in two weeks.
Indeed, most of my time during the pandemic on the NHS App was spent looking for ways to stop the spread of the disease and reduce the burden on NHS front line staff by making primary and secondary health and care services available online, accessible to as many people as possible.
Tomorrow's world
Having worked in Kainos for so long, it would be easy to become complacent or blasé about the opportunity I have – both in nurturing new talent within Kainos and in helping to create services that change lives within wider society by leveraging technology.
But I’m not. I work with far too many clever and inspiring individuals who are constantly pushing boundaries and reminding me how lucky we are to be in a position of influence.
In another 22 years it’s unlikely I’ll be here. I’ll probably have grown into that ill-fitting brown suit I wore to my first interview, although I’m not sure I’ll need it on the beach I’ll by lying on. What I do know is that there will be a Kainos that I can’t imagine today, solving problems in more and more imaginative ways, leading the charge towards a better and more inclusive society. And Guinness will still be Guinness.