Palmerston North software program developer Grey Hockley residing her dream

Grey Hockley resides her dream working as a software program developer for Palmerston North expertise firm Levno.

Hockley, 27, describes herself as “a little bit of a tech geek”. A gamer from a younger age, she’s at all times loved staying up with the most recent developments in expertise, whether or not it is new digital actuality headsets or robots.

Regardless of her eager curiosity in all issues technological, she wasn’t positive what she wished to do when she left faculty. Initially from Feilding, Hockley spent her early 20s bouncing across the nation working in retail and fast-food jobs. She dabbled in college papers too however was uninspired.

Then at some point in 2018, she was out on a one-day job trial with a weed spraying firm and he or she had a realisation that might change the course of her life.

“We had been principally simply traipsing across the forest all day making an attempt to identify a weed in order that it might be sprayed. I used to be considering to myself, this is able to be a lot simpler if we had a drone with a digital camera on it. We may simply fly over all of the bush to identify the weed, then we might know precisely the place to go.”

In that second, she realised she may put her ardour for tech to good use and make labour-intensive jobs like that yet one more environment friendly. When she bought house that afternoon she utilized to check software program engineering at Massey College.

By the top of 2021, Hockley was nicely on her option to finishing her research and had two extra papers lined up for 2022, then she may graduate. With the summer season break approaching, she wanted to discover a job, however she wasn’t eager on working in retail as she had in earlier years.

It was throughout this time she attended a tech meetup within the metropolis. The month-to-month networking occasion was open to individuals working in or within the expertise sector.

Hockley had labored on a software program challenge with Jonathan Giles, a principal Java architect from Microsoft, at college and he satisfied her to test it out. Whereas there, she took the chance to provide her curriculum vitae to Manawa Tech govt officer Steve Pavarno. He handed it on to Levno and days later the corporate provided Hockley a paid 12-week summer season internship.

“It was loopy,” she says. “Inside the span of per week I went from considering ‘oh no I’ve to get again on the job hunt and work in some crappy retail job over Christmas’, to abruptly, ‘oh my god! I am gonna receives a commission to work fulltime within the job that I have been eager to work in all this time’.”

On the finish of her internship, Levno provided her a fulltime place as a software program developer. The corporate was an awesome match for her, so she jumped at it.

Levno develops on-farm techniques that monitor milk, gasoline, effluent, water and feed. The info is then fed by to the Levno crew, who course of it into readable information. Hockley says they’ll alert farmers to points equivalent to water leaks and malfunctioning tools through textual content message.

Her function includes sustaining Levno’s cell app. She makes use of her data of software program coding so as to add new options and repair bugs, to optimise the shopper’s expertise.

For Hockley, the enjoyment comes from working throughout the boundaries of coding and creating one thing new.

“I am sat right here watching my strains of code, and then you definately hit ‘go’ and the world can see it on the app retailer. It is like, ‘there it’s. I made that! Look, it is all shiny’.”

Studying to code has been a steep studying curve however as “the child of the crew” she attracts on the expertise of her colleagues.

“I’ve to ask numerous questions, however everyone seems to be blissful to elucidate and coach me on how issues work and how you can do issues sooner or later.”

Six months into her function, she’s nonetheless simply as enthusiastic about working within the expertise sector as she was when she signed up for her diploma. She loves her job and is incomes first rate cash.

She’s going to full her diploma this 12 months and the longer term is trying brilliant.

So, what’s it like being a tech particular person residing and dealing in Palmerston North?

“I am having a blast. Thus far everybody I’ve met within the business has simply been so pleasant and keen to assist me.”

She encourages anybody with an curiosity in working in tech to observe their ardour.