People and Purpose

Whenever I interview for a job at a company, there’s one question that I make sure to ask every single person I can.

What’s the one thing you would miss the most if you left $COMPANY_NAME?

When I interviewed at Readify, everybody said it was the people. Not in the “these people are my best friends” sense, although that may very well be the case, but more importantly in the “this is the smartest, most passionate, most supportive, most inspiring bunch of people I’ve ever worked with” sense. Seeing a handful of Readifarians present at DDD Brisbane in 2017 is what attracted me to Readify in the first place, so I had a strong feeling this was going to be a common answer when I was asking the question.

I applied for a job here soon after, and although I was unsuccessful at first, when my wife and I decided to move down to Melbourne and I started looking for opportunities again Readify was the first company that came to mind. This time I was lucky enough to get an offer, and I’ve been working here now for just over eight months. And now that I’m on the inside, I couldn’t possibly agree more with their answers.

Last month was DDD Melbourne, and this time I was part of the crew alongside a dozen or so other Readifarians. Throughout the day when I mentioned to people I’d meet that I work at Readify, I got universally positive responses. “It must be amazing working with so many great people.”

People are really important to me.

In my previous post Take a Step Back, I talked about how at the top layer of software development is the vision and focus of your business, how all of the layers below need to align to this, and how badly things can go wrong when they don’t. Everything in that post still sits inside the context of solving a genuine human problem. If what you’re building doesn’t matter to somebody, why are you building it?

The other main reason I decided to come work at Readify is because as a consultant, I have a constant stream of opportunities to help different companies solve their challenges and seize their opportunities. To help them improve their software development processes and culture, so that they can focus more on delivering better outcomes to their customers. To help them be more purposeful in what they do.

Purpose is really important to me too.

Today we announced that Readify and several other Telstra acquisitions will be joining forces to form Telstra Purple.

Change can be scary—especially changes to your identity. Rightly so, people get very attached to and emotionally invested in their identity. When we were first told that our identity—the Readify brand which means so much to us—would be put aside, it was scary.

But the fear very quickly went away for me when we all started talking, as a group, about who we are, what we care about, what we stand for. When I realised that we have a group of fifteen-hundred plus people who all care deeply about people and purpose.

We believe it’s people who give purpose to our technology, and it’s the power of purposeful technology that inspires people. Putting purpose and people at the core of everything we do brings a brilliantly connected future closer to your reach.

I love working for a company that cares about the same things as me. To care about them so strongly that we literally smash them together to make our name. People and purpose, purpose and people. Purple.

Readify has always cared about purpose and people. They’re embedded in many of our six beliefs. We trust and empower our people. We embrace diversity. We love learning. We live for our community. We apply an agile mindset to everything. We are invested in our customer’s success.

These beliefs will always be with us, with or without the Readify name. I’m really excited to be able to share these beliefs with so many more people in Telstra Purple, and to share in their beliefs as well. To work with an even bigger bunch of smart, passionate, supportive and inspiring people. And with access to such a broad range of capabilities, I really think we will be able to deliver on much more meaningful purposes.

To those who know and love Readify: don’t be afraid of this change, we’re only going to get better! My goal for next year’s DDD Melbourne is to be able to introduce myself as working at Telstra Purple and get an even stronger universally positive response.