What drew you to a career at Cyara originally and how has the company changed since?
Cyara’s vision and mission statement of combining innovation and quality, with customer obsession and humility aligned very well with my personal objectives when I was looking to start my software development career on Australian shores. Cyara is a world’s leading Automated CX Assurance platform provider and that captured my attention at the time and since then Cyara’s technology stack and people’s culture has been my motivation to continue to excel here.
What does a typical day look like for you and what are you currently working on?
Cyara allows us to schedule our own daily routines as a team and we plan our day-to-day activities based upon the strategy that works best for us. Our team decided to have our daily scrum/status meeting at 10:00 AM every morning which is effectively an hour later from the start of a typical day. That helps me finish off any unfinished business, gather my mind and thoughts to deliver status updates. As the day progress we try to finish ongoing work and pick up whatever is available at the top of Jira board. My team is working on important CX Modelling features such drawing/mapping of IVR on canvas and generate automated tests from there.
Tell us about your work life harmony at Cyara?
Cyara promotes a strong family first culture, with lots of flexibility around work hours so I’m able to maintain a very healthy work/life balance. When I plan my work, I’m able to provide task estimates with no pressure in mind. We’re encouraged to be realistic and it’s discouraged to work extra office hours. Come to think of it, there’s never been a moment when we’ve been asked to work on weekends or holidays.
Describe your current role at Cyara.
My role at Cyara is Senior Developer and I provide coding solutions, deliver new features and investigate/fix production issues within a Development team. Being a Senior Developer at Cyara, my role is also to provide mentorship to my team members and help wherever they need me. I work on multiple front-end and back-end technologies including Angular and Microsoft .Net – which is my main skills base – and I get to use all my skills within my team. I also get the opportunity to collaborate with other teams such DevOps and Delivery/Support teams to deliver these solutions.
How would you describe the culture at Cyara?
The driving force behind Cyara’s cultural core values are the people working here; people who carry out the vision and build solutions. Cyara’s cultural core values include customer obsession, innovation, quality and humility. We have a strong sense of belonging, we equally share in the success of the company and stay close to each other in tough times – this what we call a “no-blame culture.” This has been especially evident in the tough pandemic period, where Cyara was really helpful in providing all sort of financial and personal support to its employees. The HR department always ensures regular touch points with all employees. We’ve twice celebrated “R u OK” Day during this time. We have 1:1 meetings with our Engineering Manager to discuss everything with confidentiality and impartiality. Cyara has an Employee Assistance Program through an EAPAssist provider, where all the employees can receive counselling, support and advice and all expenses are paid for exclusively by Cyara. Another notable program we have is our Community Give Back Program, where you can take a day off from work to participate in community work and share it with fellow Cyarans. We share our stories on this program every month on our monthly All Hands meetings so its good to see what the groups are doing across the company.
Cyara is committed to investing in employees’ professional and personal development whilst emphasizing a learning mindset. Cyara allocates a learning fund for each employee, where we can use a learning stipend up to $300 AUD annually. That’s why Cyara has the highest score on Inc Magazine’s annual list of Best Workplaces for 2021.
What has been the most empowering moment in your Cyara career journey?
I feel empowered whenever my opinion is considered in making decisions. One such example is my inclusion in the hiring process for new Cyara’s Software Engineers. There are some very senior and highly experienced people around me here in Cyara, and selecting me for this opportunity to contribute in conducting interviews and to define the criteria for accessing/hiring new engineers has made me feel highly valued.
What are you passionate about in your role?
I’m passionate about the future of Cyara and its commitment to continuously improve Customer Experience and the platform. I’m also excited about Cyara’s technology stack. At Cyara I’ve had the opportunity to work on wide range of tools including Microsoft, .Net Core, Google’s Angular and transcription, translations, and speech recognition technologies. I’m empowered and continuously encouraged to improve my skills in both in back-end as well as the latest front-end frameworks across Angular and React. I’m also very passionate about working with a team of like-minded people from different cultures working under one roof, so we can regularly share experiences and technical knowledge as a team.
How does Cyara help support your sense of purpose in your career?
My personal career goals are aligned with Cyara’s objectives and outcomes. So, whatever I do for Cyara is helping me to serve my personal purpose, which is to come up with solutions whenever a challenge is presented. A job where you work on tasks/technologies that you genuinely want to work in your spare times increases your efficiency at your role too. Cyara has carefully designed career development programs to engage employees and provide necessary career development guidance. During 1-1 meeting with our managers, we regularly openly discuss how things are progressing towards achieving personal career goals so we all know where we sit and what we need.
What have you gained from working at Cyara from a career perspective?
Cyara’s adoption to SAFe Lean-Agile practices has helped me to work in a true Agile-based environment. I took part in a SAFe Agile Workshop along with many others Cyara Engineers from all of Cyara’s global offices. This global event was held in Melbourne and was a huge success in adopting true Agile practices. I am now a SAFe-5 Certified Practitioner through Cyara’s sponsored programs. Cyara has helped me to acquire technical skills as well as soft skills required for people-to-people interaction. I learned some of the practical skills required to work on SaaS-based products. The knowledge I’ve gained here is indispensable for working in a competitive environment.
If you could describe Cyara as an employer in 3 words, what words would you use?
Rewarding, Collaborative, Supportive
How has Cyara’s global approach to diversity helped you in your career so far?
Cyara is my first job in Australia and I belong to a different culture but I’ve never felt different from others because of Cyara’s approach to treating individuals with same level of respect. Cyara’s diversity and inclusion program has helped me to break barriers in communication and self-realization of unconscious bias. I’m a person with special needs and when I joined Cyara, both the Office Manager, and its Co-founder Luan, made sure to provide any adjustments I needed in the office environment. They even allocated a space to fulfill my religious obligations during office hours. This helped me to really have a sense of belonging, and I started feeling comfortable right from day one. This Inclusion and Diversity Program is now a mandatory course as part of employee Onboarding plan. We have a range of different Slack channels based on our interests where we can take part in different discussion. My favourite one is cricket-talk where some of my colleagues from different cricketing nations share our humour and experiences about cricket. Its great that you can have an open channel to ensure communication is maintained across teams – especially in a pandemic world – where the only communication is via such channels and Zoom. It helps to learn more about your colleagues in different teams and cultures.