Journey · Chapter 1 of 6 · Code · 2006 – 2012
Automating the friction
Early roles at O2 and Fidelity, where a pattern emerged: find the manual work that slows a system down, and replace it with software.
Context
I started out where most engineers start, inside somebody else's process. At O2 I joined a network operations team that tracked Ireland's access-network routes in spreadsheets. At Fidelity I joined the graduate programme and landed in fixed-income technology, surrounded by research analysts assembling reports by hand and developers losing days to environment setup.
The constraint
In every one of these teams the constraint was the same: skilled people spending most of their time on repetitive, error-prone manual work. The systems worked, but only because humans kept feeding them.
The intervention
I kept writing the tool nobody had asked for. Scripts that migrated thousands of network routes from spreadsheets into O2's new record system. A one-click installer that turned days of development-environment setup into minutes. A reporting tool that consolidated data across systems so analysts could build research reports directly. A Ruby on Rails support app that packaged common fixes so first-line support could resolve them without escalating.
Outcomes
- Network-route migration automated, cutting data-entry errors in the move to the new system.
- Research reports that took up to a week could be produced in minutes.
- Common support issues moved from engineers to L1 support.
- Dev-environment setup became a one-click install.
Capability gained
The instinct that shaped everything after: understand the system, find the constraint, and automate the friction. Also the craft basics: shipping production software in Java, C#, Ruby and JavaScript inside a regulated firm.
Capabilities in this chapter
Supporting evidence
Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer
Product engineering for fixed-income research systems, with a habit of automating the surrounding operational work.
- Modernised the decade-old research publishing and retrieval system (.NET, WPF, MVVM).
- Financial reporting tool that cut research-report assembly from about a week to minutes.
- Ruby on Rails support app that moved common support tasks to first-line support.
Associate Software Engineer
Graduate-entry engineering role following four months of intensive training.
- One-click installation application for full desktop development-environment setup.
- Decision-support system consolidating multiple data sources for portfolio managers.
Access Networks Operations Engineer (Intern)
Network operations internship during the upgrade from spreadsheet-based records to a dedicated system.
- Scripts automating migration of network-route data from spreadsheets into the new system, improving speed and cutting errors.