From Engineer to Employer: Building a Business in Tech | Workplus Ep. 3

In this episode of the Workplus podcast, Tara Simpson, CEO of Instil and founding member of Software NI, shares her incredible journey from self-taught teenager to leading one of Northern Ireland’s top software companies.

Tara opens up about how a ZX Spectrum in the 1980s sparked his love for technology, why mentorship transformed his career, and how purpose-driven work continues to motivate him. From software engineering to leadership, Tara reflects on building a business from scratch, navigating the rapid rise of AI, and shaping the future talent pipeline in Northern Ireland’s tech sector.

Whether you are a young person, parent, teacher, or employer, this conversation offers unique insights into how early interests can lead to fulfilling careers, why curiosity and purpose matter more than qualifications, and how to thrive in a fast-changing world of work.

⏱ In This Episode:
• How a 14-year-old’s curiosity led to a lifelong career in software
• Building a business from zero customers to a thriving company
• Why Northern Ireland needs to invest in young tech talent
• The real impact of AI on junior and senior tech roles
• Why purpose is the key ingredient for meaningful work
• The crucial role of mentors and good leadership in tech careers
• Tara’s advice for young people navigating career choices today
• How Software NI is helping grow the tech sector for everyone

This is an episode for anyone who wants to understand how careers are built, why purpose matters, and how Northern Ireland’s software sector is evolving.

🎧 Thanks for listening to Workplus, the podcast that brings real jobs into the light.

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Transcript

Tara: 0:00

I went from somebody who was basically, I think, quite immature, thinking more about spending a weekend with a beautiful Danish girlfriend to actually becoming so focused on my career and my work within quite short order. I had this just an innate desire that I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what it was, and there was just a few sort of triggers that someone said. Made me realize, look, I'm getting to my mid to late thirties. If I don't do this now, I'm never gonna do this. I'm gonna be thinking about this forever. And ever, a little by little, you start to build up your confidence. Little by little, you start to go, oh, this is what this means to run a business. This is what it means to actually start growing a business. This is what it means to retain people.

Richard: 0:34

Welcome to Work Plus the podcast that shines a light on the people doing good work across Northern Ireland. I'm your host, Richard Kirk, founder of Work Plus. I've spent years working with employers, schools, colleges, and universities, helping young people and career changers to make better informed career decisions. Each week I sit down with real people doing real jobs to explore how they got there, what they've learned, and why their work matters. If you're a parent, teacher, carer, or just curious about what good work looks like today, you're in the right place. Let's dive in. Tara, good to have you with us today. When I think of software in Northern Ireland, I think of you. Thank you. But what, what first sparked, what first sparked your interest in software?

Tara: 1:17

So my story started with one of my neighbors. So this way back, way back in the early eighties when a computer was. Something that most people had never seen in a house, no lead, you know, in an office. It was just a very, it's a rare thing to say. And one of my other spoiled neighbors basically received this massive computer and I went round one day and it had a screen, had a keyboard, had a. Box containing some kind of magic that I didn't know what was in that box. And he had a big, thick manual beside the, this computer. And he brought me around and he was showing this thing. And he was just more interested in playing a few basic games on this. I was really interested in the manual on what was actually the instructions behind this thing. And the instructions were basically very early commands into the computer to Okay. To do things. And of course when you put a command in, something happened on the screen or happened on the, um, on the keyboard or, or whatever. But, um. That just completely flipped my brain. I, I couldn't believe this, I couldn't believe that suddenly there was something I could use to do stuff. Yeah. You know, build stuff. What age would you have been at that? I was about 14. Okay. I was heavily into railway modeling when I was, I was a kid, so I loved building. Yeah. And I love modeling and I love just the idea of, of world building. This was way before you could build worlds inside computers, but just the thought of this, this thing and what it could do was. Intriguing to me. So I, I went back home and I literally pestered my parents for months and months and months to buy me a computer. So the first computer I got was a ZX spectrum, so if anybody looks that up, you'll see. It's one of the classic early British computers, and it was invented by a guy called Clive Sinclair. I think it was a bit like getting a drum kit into the house because this thing is, was relatively expensive in those days. I think it was about a hundred. 20 quid or something back in the early eighties that was, that was a lot of money for a, for a young family, you know? Yeah. For my mom and dad. So it was a big commitment for them to get me this thing, and they thought it's gonna be bought and then stuck in the attic and forgotten about. Yeah. That's not what happened. This thing basically was opened and it was stuck into the back of a tv, um, cassette recorder attached to it so it could download games, but more importantly, I could save stuff as well onto the cassette tape so I could type games from magazines. Okay. Which invariably didn't work. So that was one of the key things that these things didn't work. You type them in, you learn the muscle memory of just typing in basic programs. You start to figure out how these, these basic programs work. And I think one of the first ones I typed in was at Connect Four. Okay. Wow. And I just loved it. I just loved what I was doing. And at the same time I was reading quite a lot of books. Um, when I was quite young, I was quite into fantasy books, so my. Thoughts of building worlds into this computer and what, how I would do it and how I would use machine instructions at the bottom level and visual and Sinclair basic spectrum basic on top of this to build these basic sort of venture games. Now the thing was, I was thinking about it, never actually went off and built some of these, because there's a lot of work involved in that, but yeah. Yeah, I did a lot of thinking and reasoning going, oh my goodness, I could do so much with this, this. This computer. Yeah.

Richard: 4:07

And this was all, this was all in your own time, so to speak? There wasn't anything, was there anything in school that was stok in this far,

Tara: 4:15

no. I think around that time, I think about a year after that, the BBC basic came into school, I found it a little bit more inaccessible. It was a more complicated computer and it also had a different form of basic than I was. Learning. Okay. Same language effectively, but actually it was just the whole interface was completely different. The spectrum just made it really accessible and the magazine culture around it made it really accessible. Yeah. And if you actually go in my office, you'll find one of my original magazines, framed office. So it was just the accessibility and just the excitement of what I could do. And I think I knew at that stage this was it.

Richard: 4:48

Yeah. Yeah. And you had

Tara: 4:49

something in this that actually was. Really stoking in my imagination. What I didn't do though, was I didn't do the old level. There was no level available to me. But when I looked at the syllabus, I realized that, you know, the syllabus was properly written in about 1972. Okay. And I did my old levels in 1984. Right. Long time ago folks, but mm-hmm. You know, 10 years difference in, in a syllabus between, it's a long time in computing. Yeah.

Richard: 5:12

And

Tara: 5:12

it didn't bear any relation to what I was doing, so I, I just ignored the, the O level and just stuck to my home computing. Switched a degree. I, I knew I wanted to have some kind of software components in my degree, so I did a degree in microelectronics. Okay. And software engineering. So it was, it was both, the microelectronics part is really hard. And if I'm being honest, I probably didn't quite click with that in a way that, is it more hardware or It's It's completely hardware, yeah. Okay. It's, it's CPU design and Okay. Actually it starts with electronics. Yeah. So if anybody's familiar with electronics, you learn all this theory, but actually we put components on a board. Everything just kind of changes. And I don't like that. I like black and white. I like logic. I like this. If this is true, then do this. My brain just works that way. And um, yeah. The, there was a part to that course that really caught my imagination and that was working in what's called the kernel. So it's the, essentially it's the, the lowest part of the operating system. Okay. You know, so managing how programs are managed on the, on the computer, it's, we as one of the jobs of the operating system. Yeah. Yeah. And I got completely caught into that project work to my detriment that I became so focused on it that I actually, all other things suffered. Um, but it was clear to me then that's, that was the direction I wanted to, to take. Mm-hmm. Just, um. Software just bit by fire, basically. Brilliant.

Richard: 6:26

And a lot of that was then you were applying it, so to speak, in the creating new little worlds. But whenever you were going through university, did you have the opportunity to actually go and do a placement with a company internship or did you just wait until you finished your qualification before starting to work on this? For real, I

Tara: 6:44

was, um, there were quite a number of folks on my course who did, took the year out. Finding a position in those days was really hard. There was one place and 40 people going for it, and that's the reality of war. That's that I came from. I probably lacked maturity as well. I, I, from looking back, I, I probably wasn't as focused on. What a career looks like. I was just focused on getting through my degree really. And life and work seemed quite distance and far away. And you translate that to today, where young people are so much more focused on, you know, the transition between mm-hmm. And their career at a younger stage. Back then, I just, I just liked the, what the world would be. You know, it was a very different world, you know, we didn't have the internet, we didn't have things that constantly communicate to you about. The possibilities, so, oh, absolutely. Um, I just was happy to get through it and I spent about a year traveling, um, after I got out and then I went into my, my career and I got back. Great. And where did that start for

Richard: 7:38

you then?

Tara: 7:38

Well, I was really lucky, so I, I came back and there was probably about. Two or three software firms in the north at that time across the island. I dunno how many there were, but there was only two or three in the north that I knew of. Yeah. And I applied for a bit of a story, but I was seeing this beautiful Danish girl and I remember being St. Patrick's Day and I was down at my parents' house in, in the west of Ireland. And uh, my mom messaged me going, you need to get back up north now because there's a job in the Belfast Telegraph. You need to apply for it now. Okay. And, uh, she was just terribly aware someone's gonna end up on the, on the scrap, he somewhere. And I said, what? I'm with this beautiful dentist. No, you're getting up now. Get, get up now. I so get up. Uh, went for the interview and somehow I still don't know how I got in because they saw something in me. Honestly, some of the people in this company were. Extraordinary. You know, they, they'd been living and breathing in this world of Unix and low level system software for years, and I really came in unprepared for the interview. And years later, the guy that sort of brought me in and said, look, I just saw something different at you that, that we didn't have here. Mm-hmm. You know, just, we had a sort of stereotype of a person and I saw just something new that I actually, I think we needed in this, in this mix. He was amazing. He, he became my, my mentor in a way and seeing somebody. That exemplifies what good looks like. And if you're smart enough and you latch on to what good looks like, you start to mimic and start to see what you start to bring those into your own behaviors. And I was extremely lucky to land on the right firm, doing the right kind of software that really completely just sucked me in and with the right people. You know, it was like they really invested in me. I went from somebody who was basically, I think, quite immature, thinking more about spending a weekend with a, with a beautiful Danish girlfriend, to actually becoming so focused on my career and my work within quite short order, you know, within six months. Mm-hmm. My head completely flipped, flipped around and that, and I've been lucky enough to have been. Accepted first and secondly knew and believed in. Yeah. And secondly, just going for it.'cause I had good people around me to, to, to learn

Richard: 9:42

off. And what was the real spark for you in all that? Was it that you, you could see these problems and you were trying to solve them? Or was it the, the impact you were gonna make on the end users as you created these pieces of software solution? Like what were the big factors for you that really got you

Tara: 9:57

weird in those days? I don't think we talked so much about impact or product in the way that we talk about these things. Today we were specifically building software that emanated an existing piece of software, so we were taking something that was really complex but very well defined. Replicating it exactly into a different environment. So it was allowing people to run their programs that were designed for a big old IBM computer. They could run them on Unix and later windows.

Richard: 10:23

Okay.

Tara: 10:24

So we had a very well-defined problem, but since we were taking a whole computer that had been designed over 15, 20 years and disassembling this and reassembling it into a different environment, and it was a really challenging problem because we didn't have any instructions on how this thing was built. Yeah. Essentially we had its manifestation, how it looked and how it behaved. Yeah. But we had to get outta the cover and figure out how does this thing actually work so we can emulate this. Yeah. So the kind of problems we were solving, we were emulating its database, so we had to write its actual database. So that meant that we were building effectively a little Oracle database. Right. The heart of the products. Yeah. We were emulating its compilers, so we had four or five different compilers that were taking languages that were built for that, but recompiling 'em into C, which is what we ran on Elix windows. Mm-hmm. We had to build a runtime, so we had to build effectively an operating system for all this stuff to run in. We had to build editors, we had to build lots of stuff that today are just nuts and bolts. And by the way, today you've got lots of open source libraries to build upon. You've got, you're building on top of the shoulders. We didn't have any of that. Yeah, we were,

Richard: 11:33

no GitHub

Tara: 11:34

we had, we had no GitHub. We were basically building everything and we just started with a language and that was it. So if you wanted something like a link list, a list of items, way to build that today. Two seconds. You've got linked lists that perform optimally in a certain environment. You've got all that stuff that basically is, is available today. We built all that stuff from scratch, so we were solving lots of hard problems from first principles and attitude towards quality and attitude towards doing this right was, was deeply rooted in everything that we were doing and I think, I think the other thing I had was a bit of a crowd pleaser. I do like to please, I don't like to disappoint and I think that's, it's kind of an important attitude to have when you're building software to have that. View on today, we talk about the why, you know, why you're doing this and focusing on customer success. And every engineer, everybody in this industry should have their head up looking at what impact they're trying to make through this low level decisions. I think I was just sort of in it, in me that essentially I, I realized that everything matters and what I'm doing at this low level because. It impacts the big picture as well. Yeah.

Richard: 12:34

Yeah.

Tara: 12:34

So

Richard: 12:35

your MD event still now, was it something that, you talked about the change in the first six months did, did you think, oh, this is something I want to, to run my own organization and have a team around me? Or how what? What does the transition look like? I think

Tara: 12:48

some people go into something with a big idea to see a problem and they feel they've got a solution and they go at it this way. I came at it from, I basically wanted to build a business, but I didn't know what it was going to be. But that was from probably seeing my mom. My mom built a small business and, and grew it. And so I, I knew that, okay, I'm gonna stay an employee. I need to be an employee forever, or I can give this a go, whatever this is. So I'd worked for this, this local software company for 10 years on and off, and went down Dublin for a while and did some work in, in some cool technology companies down, down there, and then came back. Um, and then I moved to another local, well-established, uh, foreign direct investment firm. Liberty, who are a brilliant firm. They are a brilliant firm in the way that they invest. And their people and the way that they use technology, um, and the way that they're led, they're just really good and they have been for a long time. I did well there. I got to position and, you know, I probably could have continued there and prospered and thrived and, but I had a young. Family. My first child was, was born. Um, I had this just a innate desire that I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what it was. Um, and there was just a few sort of triggers that someone made me realize, look, I'm getting to my mid to late thirties. If I don't do this now, I'm never gonna do this. I'm gonna be thinking about this forever and ever. So, um, I went to invest. I got, I, I did this like course that you have to do to get a Go for it Grant. Yes. Um, I think I was surrounded by hairdressers, a couple of white van drivers who had no intention of just intention of taking the money and then, and then doing nothing with it. There was probably one or two of us there who actually thought right. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna do this. So I resigned and I spoke to Willie Hamilton, who was uh, managing director at Liberty, and Willie was brilliance. Willie was like, of all the reasons I love to see people resign, this is it. People who've got the desire to go off and build something. I didn't have a plan. I had one. Customer lined up, um, in the States, and I was lucky enough in the day I resigned, word got out a little bit that I'd, I'd left Liberty and two or three people got in touch with me literally that day and said, oh, I heard you resigned. Um, I had built up decent reputation for what I did, um, software engineering and, and attention to detail and called and all that stuff. And day one, they got in touch and suddenly had two or three customers for the first two or three years, it was just heads down. Building stuff. You know, I had literally from my go for grant, I had my salary for one month and 700 pounds and that was it. Mm-hmm. And I couldn't fail. I had to pay the mortgage, I had to pay everything into the house of all that stuff. So really, I was just taking whatever jobs I could get and building up slowly. That's very different from taking an investment where you've got an idea and somebody invests in your idea and suddenly you can, you go at this in lots of different ways. Yeah. I had to build up a, an nest egg of, of cash. Um, it was probably 2005. It was 2009 before I felt confident enough and had enough money that to employ somebody. The reason for the delay was that actually I was concerned that if something went wrong, did I have enough in the tank to actually support this person through thick and thin? And that turned out to be a wise philosophy in this first hire because I had a job lined up. The first guy that came in with me was a guy that worked with me back in liberty. I knew him. He was brilliant. I'd mentored him. And he started to fly on his own. He was, he was just gonna be, um, exceptional. But on that day, the contract got pulled. Suddenly. Yeah, I had a high salary and no money. And I think we all know if you're game of your career and you're just trying your experie of your business career and you've suddenly the Ws from the rocks going under your feet, you know? Yeah. Goodness me. But thankfully I had enough in the tank basically to support that. I stay. A week later I got him involved and put another project I was I was working on and it was all good. And within two or three weeks,'cause he was so good, he was knocking outta the park and the client was excited. And then that starts to build up your confidence. Yeah. You know, so you're starting off, basically coming from a, for me, it was coming from an engineering background, I can't have this thing fail because I've got a family of support and you're just learning, but you're also delivering, and it takes a long time to get your head switched from being a contributor and bringing in cash to actually having you feeling enough people to replace. Amount, rate that you can charge. Yeah, so they can obviously quite straightforward. And if you're charging personally a hundred pounds a day, but you're making a margin of 10 pounds on a person, how many people do you need to replace? You as a single person. So you need to just the thing you need to think through. Yeah. A little by little. You start to build up your confidence. Little by little you start to go, oh, this is what this means to run a business. Mm-hmm. This is what it means to actually start growing a business. This is what it means to retain people. People being probably one of your hardest parts of running a business. You're just learning little by little basically how to, to, to grow a business. Mm-hmm. I hadn't done any of that with any previous company. Yeah.

Richard: 17:35

Yeah.

Tara: 17:35

I was just. Delivering. So I would say that my route to leadership has probably been one of the most windy, torturous route, because simply I've been learning a lot on the job with this underlying sense that. I can't have this thing fail. So, which prevents you from making certain, let's say risky and, and yeah. Moves. Mm-hmm. You're making things much more steady and making sure you're on a good bedrock. You're delivering brilliantly that you exceed expectations, but it's also a time where work was still hard to come by as well. Yeah. You know?

Richard: 18:06

Yeah. As an engineer, what are those, you mentioned some of the qualities there, but attention to detail. Like what are, what are the, the characteristics, the skills, forget about qualifications. What are the skills characteristics that make people great? Software engineers, software developers.

Tara: 18:22

It's not just about being brilliant at problem solving or writing brilliant code that other people can work with and reason about and use, which are really important. You are creating artifacts that you personally don't own. You are creating artifact that will be owned by the team. The cost of maintaining that artifact is one of the, is one of the biggest costs in software development. It's not just writing at once, it's about maintaining it. Mm-hmm. You know, for every minute you spend writing a piece of code, you easily spend 10 15 maintaining it over its lifetime. Mm-hmm. So. Having good sense of what good looks like in that, but you've gotta balance that with trade offs. Every decision has a trade off. You've got to go, look, this is, and now those trade offs. You gotta understand what good enough is. Mm-hmm. For the context and the situation you've got today. Context matters. Hugely. So if you're working in safety critical software, every line, every detail will matter because if you get something wrong, get a floating point wrong or whatever, suddenly a rocket is going to explode. Versus building a proof of concept to find whether there's a return investment in taking this project through to it's completion, that's a very different set of decisions that you make around that, and having that flexibility to under understand when you need to lean in hard on the, the detail. But also lean back and go, look, actually this is about driving value for the customer. Mm-hmm. Um, I would say they're really good engineers. Have that absolute attention to detail at their core, but they get their head up and they get their head up to ask why, you know, why am I doing this? What's the impact I'm making on the end user by making these decisions or by not making decisions, you know, if this code is not secure enough, what is the impact to the business? What's the threat? Potentially existential threat to the business if I don't get this, get this right or doesn't matter in this case. So there's these constant trade offs, but the really good folks have got their, their heads up. I think the other thing I see in really good engineers is that they look after those, around them. They spend a lot of their time growing, the people around them as well. Mm-hmm. And they stay one step, two steps ahead of those, those, those engineers, but they ensure that they are ready for that next shift. One of our really good engineers, he's the way he talks about things sometimes it's just so. Exciting. He's been coaching some of our junior engineers. We're, we're going through like a lot of engineering companies right now. We're going through a lot, lot of software consultancies right now. We're going through a lot of change. It's a very disruptive world. What he is saying to a lot of the junior engineers who are apprentices in particular is, yes, there's lots of change. Don't worry. This is about opportunity. It's gonna be loads of opportunity for you to actually grab here because there's loads of new, uh, roles, company emerging, lots of new things emerging that we need to lean into. So there's your opportunity. Mm-hmm. So rather than being scared about it, grab that opportunity. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's real technical leadership. Yeah. You know, he, and he shows that from the front. He shows how exciting this world can be. So rather than being scared about this change, it's about being excited about it.

Richard: 21:25

Yeah. But what impact is AI having? On the role of, of your team right now?

Tara: 21:31

That's a big question. AI is here. AI is, it's not just inevitable. It is going to change our roles. My view is that somewhere between pure skepticism and the hype is the truth, the hype of vibe coding, hype of AI replacing jobs. To me that is nonsense. You need an adult in charge of the car and the adult needs to know exactly where they're bringing the car. So that that expert needs to understand deeply what good engineering looks like. I need to understand that in this fantastic partner that can help them drive the car a little bit faster, they need to understand exactly where they're going. Mm-hmm. As opposed to being a passenger. Yeah. And letting the car drive you. Fundamentally, no matter how good copilot gets, which is one of the AI tools that we use for engineering, it is a stochastic machine. It's a slot machine. It gets things largely right, but occasionally it gets wrong. So you have to have the good sense basically to determine when it's right and when it's wrong. When it gets it right. My goodness. It allows you to accelerate things you've done before really quickly. Mm-hmm. It's really good at that. It's exceptionally good at building prototypes because. Your level of you, you care less with the prototype about the, the i's being dotted and the t's being crossed. You, you can trade off perhaps cyber vulnerabilities that may be in the code that's being produced. Because actually it's about proving the concepts. Yeah. Yeah. So there are areas where it's, it's just unquestionable you if you're not using AI now to drive even just development of, it doesn't even have to be an AI technology underneath it. It's just about using AI to, to drive the prototype wireframe, prototype wireframe, put that. I was speaking to consultancy last week about their data and AI AI strategy. What they were saying actually is that, um, AI is certainly driving their conversations and driving their data conversations. But generative ai, which is probably what most people are familiar with today, it's actually only about 5% of what they're ending up with. Most of the, the, the work is, is resulting in, um, data work, for example. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Can't do a lot of ML modeling, machine language modeling. Or out with like good data. Mm-hmm. Clients, data, normalized data, all that stuff. So a significant amount of the work is actually happening down in that sort of data space. But also within this space. There's lots, lots around governance. Around making sure that the data that's going into feed the models is cosent and isn't filled with discrepancies or lies, because that will actually affect the output. So there's lots of new roles and lots of new responsibilities emerging from this world that didn't exist a few years ago. So rather than people feeling fearful about what that this change is going to be, there's actually quite a lot of excitement around what it will be. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the other thing that I think it's doing as well is it's, it's putting into the hands. It's democratizing to a certain degree. Software development software is still really hard. Building software is, is, will remain a hard activity. It's really, it's undefined problem. Can't line up. Three things go. That's the way it is every time. There's, there's all kinds of complexities, but what it's doing from democratization point of view is it's, it's putting the hands of innovators. Tools that they can go off and go, look, this is what I'm trying to build. And we had a story last week where I was speaking to somebody who basically has gone off innovated. They've known nothing about coding. They've gone off, they work in the, in the pharmaceutical industry. They've gone off and build a number of prototypes and they've come to us and gone, this is roughly what I want to build. That would've taken about five or six months previously. Mm-hmm. Trying to untangle what's in their heads. Yeah, yeah. Out onto a page, and then translating that into software. They're able to do that directly now, and we're able to come into that conversation and go, aha, we can help you bring this through to production. Yeah. So in many ways it could end up accelerating innovation'cause it's short-cutting parts of the process that previously were tied. I think anybody who's listening into the AI conversation will heard of Devon's paradox, this idea that I explain this, this rather than reducing. The amount of software that we're just able to increase the amount because it's gonna increase the, in the innovation. Yeah. And that's the paradox that we're in. Will AI actually result in less software? I would say it's gonna end up with more software.

Richard: 25:40

And what about those sort of early talent? You, you've been so, you've been so focused on bringing in people, either through generation innovation, through internships, apprenticeships, graduates. Are there tasks that they would typically have been doing in the past where you're thinking actually. AI is probably gonna be doing those sorts of tasks. Is there still a place for early talent and an AI enabled instill?

Tara: 26:05

Oh, a hundred percent. Mm-hmm. But I would say that AI, not talent, it doesn't reasonably complex. I think one of the fears is the talents coming in thinks that they can just shortcut everything.'cause AI is kinda just give them the truth and they have to understand that the AI is not giving 'em the truth that they need to understand what the truth looks like. Like to drive my driving a car analogy. Yeah. You know, they need to know how to drive the car and what and how to and where it's going to. And then use the tools basically to augment their skills, not to replace their skills. They don't just accept the output of these tools largely. It's gonna get it rights largely. It's gonna short circuit a lot of what they're doing, but you need to know exactly what it is they're, they're producing. Mm-hmm. So I think that that knowledge and that know-how has to be baked in. What we're saying as an industry is that senior engineers, they are enhancing, they are accelerating their ability to deliver because they know what they're trying to, to achieve. Yeah. Whereas junior engineers are more liable to create more what we call technical doubt Debt. Technical debt essentially are prob stored problems that need to be resolved later and a cost that we're paying down later rather than sooner. So in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing, you're avoiding a lot of that technical debt because you know when the truth is being told, you know how to correct the machine, but the rest, you know, it's telling the truth. That's, that's fine for a junior engineer who doesn't know the difference between good and bad.

Richard: 27:20

Yeah,

Tara: 27:20

truth, truth or otherwise, they, they could end up being go down the wrong road with this as well. So you need to make sure that you've got the right structures around them. And that you're reviewing everything that's, that's produced. So it's ai, it's augmentation, but the engineering disciplines that go around this, around reviewing, particularly around reviewing, peer reviewing, pairing, we like to pair between experience and non like, you know, juniors. All that stuff is really, really important.

Richard: 27:45

Yeah.

Tara: 27:45

I don't buy into hearing about choice stories about certain companies don't mention names on, on there, but some of 'em fairly well known who are talking about replacing. Mm-hmm. Um, juniors with ai, that's just absolute nonsense. You know, where, where are your seniors gonna come from? Mm-hmm. Down the line. Now you've got to invest now, um, and it is an investment and it is a cost, but you've got to invest.

Richard: 28:07

How do you make a decision around that? So you say it's a. It's investment, it's cost, the hope of return. How do you, as someone who is running a business, make those sorts of decisions? Well, for us it's,

Tara: 28:19

it's a little bit harder than some, so we charge our people out. We charge 'em out at a day rate. Invariably, as a consultancy, many of our clients aren't prepared to take on the risk or the cost of one of our apprentices. So that's a cost we have to bear. Mm-hmm. And even when they're in maybe a year, two years, it's still gonna be quite difficult to convince a customer that we've got a really amazing apprentice here who's gonna deliver? It's just very hard to convince them. What happens is that we put, technically put them on projects for free, and then a few months later we threaten to pull them off and once they see how good they are, they're like, oh my goodness, no, no, let's, let's hold them in there. That is a problem. I think it's pretty universal across. Many of the consultancies, you know, how do we grow from the bottom up? A, how do we charge them out and how do we create enough of an umbrella around them to give them the support? Yeah. And if you're not structured correctly, if you've got too many juniors. It's really hard to bring it on on more they, they need the structures around them. And AI is not that mentor, by the way. Yeah. It's not gonna replace that person.'cause it's about behaviors. It's about seeing the examples of what good looks like around you. Yeah. Day to day. It's not just about coding and producing stuff, it's about the whole package. Yeah.

Richard: 29:31

Together. But you talked about being. Accepted and and believed in. Yeah. At the start of your career, that's exactly what your pairing is, is all about. Absolutely.

Tara: 29:39

You know, and the really, really smart apprentices will see what good looks like and just, just copy and we see that. We see that in our own company there. There are a number of apprentices who are, who are unbelievable. They're smart. They're looking around them and going, that's

Richard: 29:51

what I want to be.

Tara: 29:52

Mm-hmm.

Richard: 29:53

Is there a mindset change you think is needed in a client there around that? Because surely they're looking for. Return on their investment, they've invested in you as a, as a business to commission a piece of work. Are they that interested in the detail of the inputs? Are they not interested in just what the outputs and outcomes are? Sometimes yeah. And sometimes

Tara: 30:13

when you're talking, especially you're talking to, yeah. Some, they're just, they're hiring you for your, for your expertise and go, look, I, I know how this works. They'll say this to you. I know how this works, but I'm not, I'm not going to train your juniors. My coin. That's, and even if it's free, they'll still see it as a, as a, as a cost on their coin. So, but, but others are actually very open to the possibilities. The ones, once they say it works, they, they, they, they get bought in. Mm-hmm. And we have a mix of customers, some who would be longer term. That relationship with trust is, is built up and they believe more in, in what? And they trust you in terms of building your teams. Others would be more project based. So we come in to deliver a product that's typically time box and they're expecting a team of a certain a. Um, mix, basically. Yeah. But we have to figure out in that mix how we actually structure and bring people through. And it takes commitment. My my view is that in the markets, particularly the local market, is that some people might take on bridge to this, but I don't think that load is shared. So I, I think a small number of companies are investing in, in the junior channel of tomorrow. Lot firms are, and more firms are, are essentially looking at that senior level Yeah. As their, as their key point. Absolutely. You, you need, you need the experience. Yeah. Every

Richard: 31:25

company should be looking at bringing people through. You said it's quite an uncertain time right now, a lot of moving parts, opportunities that come in in that as well. But in, in terms of the throughput of people, do you anticipate an increase in the number of people that are needed for the software sector

Tara: 31:41

if Kevin's paradox, uh, holds? Yeah. Yes, but I think the skills will be different. I don't think they will be different. There will be some disintermediation. So some roles that exist today mm-hmm. Will be replaced by technology or replaced, not completely, but significantly. Do you think about the person I'm speaking to about this pharmaceutical problem? Previously? For them to purchase an application they would've had maybe needed a product designer, a developer, a ba. They can now go off and build a good enough prototype without the product designer, without the ba, without the engineer. Now to get that to production, you will definitely still need, need an engineer and you probably will be, need a BA and you will may need a product designer as well. But I see a sign, significant talk of the work that we're doing. It's just being replaced by the person who's driving the technology. Mm-hmm. There's a whole bunch of problems this creates as well. So if you're getting right into generative AI and working with models, there's a whole stuff, a bunch of stuff around governance and the quality of your data. And by the way, that core hard, hard engineering stuff still exists in there as well. Yeah. So there's, there's gonna be an, an expansion of roles that didn't exist. Yeah. You know, five years ago. Yeah. Look at cyber. Cyber today. Cyber today's blossoming as an industry, we would've thought 25, 20 years ago that this was. Going to be so large. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, it's just the way it is. There will be new roles emerging. I do think though, right now is at this moment, we are between two epochs of relative normalcy, whatever normalcy looks like. And in this period we are being disrupted politically, socially, environmentally, and technologically. It's just so much in the mix right now, and everyone's just. A little bit confused as as to where this is all going to to end up. So people running in businesses are concerned, concerned that they need certainty, they need clarity on, on where the direction is going.'cause if they've got clarity, they can plan, you know, it's just coming out of a recession. Goodness knows what the last few days and world politics will, will, will create more another recession, who knows. So that lack of clarity and you mix it in with all this disruption around technology as well. It's a very uncertain time for most businesses. Mm-hmm. Um, but there's also opportunity in there, right? Exactly. Yeah. So the ones that will come through this are the ones that are really nimble, they're adaptive, they move fast, and they're also entrepreneurial. They're adaptive and they, they, you know, as, as my CEO, uh, said, today's got some great expressions. You know, they're street fighting. Mm-hmm. That's the world that we're, that we're in now, that we're really get getting in and, and fighting the beds here, because I think that's, that's, that's today's world. Yeah. But being normal will turn at some point. Yeah. In the next, in the next year, two years, who knows? So right now we're in probably one of the most disruptive periods that any of us will, will experience. Mm-hmm. I think even more so than say the iPhone or. Internet because we're throwing politics at society and the environment and lots of, um, economics. All of it's happening at the same time. Mm. Mm-hmm. That's what it feels like in my head. Certainly, certainly plenty,

Richard: 34:57

plenty, plenty going on right now. Um, so you talked about, so we talked bit about it and still, and say as a, as a private business, you're, you want to take opportunities and provide services. You, you are one of the founding members of software Ni as it's not known and. Tell us a bit about why you're involved in that rather than just being off as in still.

Tara: 35:17

Yeah, I think, I think for all of us involved in this industry, it's about doing our best to rise the tide for all boats. We need to take the view that we're all in it for sales, and I'm RI Jack, or we can help each other actually try to prosper, uh, more. This is a competitive world and we are about a pimple. Side of it, you know, so Northern Ireland is a small place. Some would argue that we're punching, but we do have to punch and we have to punch hard, basically. So we, we had, we had reasons to, to create this, which I, I think have thankfully sort of diminished a little bit. Uh, there were just concerns about companies coming in and taking senior staff that we spent years. Developing and elevating rates in the market and making us a lot less competitive globally. Um, and that, did that happen. But rather than complain about that 'cause it's everyone's problem, the challenge then became, well, how do we grow pipeline together? So how do we actually enable more companies to come in or more indigenous companies to actually prosper and grow by create increasing the pipeline of talents? So that became one of our. Key goals as as a, you think of it as a business almost. Yeah. But collectively, you know, our, our, our goal is, is to grow the, the software industry in Northern Ireland. Um, and I would, three or four of us came together initially with, with a few pitchforks around some of the concerns we had, but actually I think we turned this into something really productive for everyone. And it's, it's great to see that we've got a fantastic chair who, um, now runs, runs the board. He's, he's the real deal. We've got a fantastic CEO, who's, who's young, hungry, um, who's lives this every day. Mm-hmm. Um, who has experienced of working with government and who genuinely wants to change this industry and, and create opportunities for all in the industry as well. He, he totally believes in, in, in the, in the mission of, of software and I, I think it's been really well led and I think its sense of purpose is, is today. Really strong, not in the mix. We've got all this disruption and crazy stuff happening as well. Yeah. But I think the long term vision of, of what we're trying to do here is, is, is pretty clear. And I don't believe anybody who's on the board, um, or close involved in this is thinking about this as for themselves and thinking about this as. What can we do for the software industry in Northern Ireland? Mm-hmm. This is 100000000% the right attitude to, to have towards this Yeah. Sector entity. Yeah.

Richard: 37:35

And what about that, that you talked about the talent pipeline, about increasing that. How, how practically do you think software and I or instill as an organization or can do that

Tara: 37:46

we can't do it individually? Yeah. You know, I think, so there are a number of initiatives that software and I has kicked off, um, around education. Skills and, uh, future skills. Mm-hmm. And they're on pro progress, um, and they're really being really well led. But the challenges that we've got are. They're pretty big. You know, they, they start right down in stereotyping of young kids and being put into various boxes of where their life is pretty much going to go, whether that's socially or, uh, based on their gender or, or, or whatever, um, or their parents. Mm-hmm. You know, so there's, there's sort of complex challenge to, to challenges to unpick there and, um, that is not gonna be solved overnight. Now, how do we bring more young women, for example. Into this, into this industry. How do we make it more attractive to young women that this is an industry for, for all, not just for the 75% of the young men that we get coming into the industry. Every, every year there, there are opportunities.'cause it's not just about coding, right. Oh. Although that's not, in a way saying that sounds like as if I'm gender stereotyping is, is it's not meant to be that this is a very wide ranging career. Mm-hmm. There opportunities across lots of different skills. Yes. Programming is, is sort of the core currency of what we do, but actually it takes, you know, it takes a lot of people to build software. Yeah. Many of them actually don't go near building software or, or coding at all. So it's, it's really starting to. Open up the possibilities to people about the excitement mm-hmm. Of building stuff and let them know that essentially the skills that we require are really broad.

Richard: 39:20

Yeah.

Tara: 39:21

Not just, not just coding. I'm of the view that essentially Yeah. It's interesting to teach coding at school. Like certainly I did coding at home and it my fire. I am more in interested in this education system producing people that are critical thinkers. That know how to work together with other people that have ownership, accountability, work together really well as teams. There's lots of skills that essentially we can focus on within our system today that our companies need tomorrow, frankly. So it's not all coding, and I think, as you know, I've got a particular preference for a couple of key topics on the curriculum, which I think are germane to everything we do English. Communication is central to pretty much every part of my job, and it has been since day one. And yeah, I wonder if an English teacher understands how close what they're teaching their kids in literature and language is to software engineering. It's incredibly close. I don't think they,

Richard: 40:22

they do. Yeah. We've gotta do it somehow.

Tara: 40:24

Yeah. You're taking a, taking a, a problem and breaking it down into smaller parts. Mm-hmm. Writers do that all the time. You know, it's, it's, it's part of the writing process. Mm-hmm. How to take something really complex and break that down into a series of paragraphs and sentences that essentially have structure. Yeah. And that decomposition is, is a key skill within engineering. Yeah. So it's not just for the mathematical, it's not just for the engineering, it's for people who basically have got a broad range of skills.

Richard: 40:48

Brilliant. Brilliant. Um, uh, last question. Um, so this podcast is called Good Work because we believe there's great work going on on across Northern Ireland. There are people that are doing it like you, but I'm interested to know what's so good about work. For you as you sit here, having had a significant career, still still in the middle of it, but what's so good about work?

Tara: 41:12

Work gives you purpose. If you're not waking up every day going, I've got a fantastic problem to, to solve, and I think I can figure that out either with help or by myself, then yeah, you might as well just stop. But I think purposes is really important for everyone. I know people who have. Come through this industry, done well by this industry, or people not even in this industry, have come through and have done well in life monetarily, but the moment they stop working, they feel lost because the reason, the purpose is suddenly gone, the work has become so integral to who they are. I think that's, that's great. That's exciting. I think you do need to be, by the way, when you get to a point in your career, you need to make sure you've got other things going on as well. You've got other hobbies, other, other activities that give you purpose as well. But I think a really good job will give you. Purpose. That's it. No word.

Richard: 42:03

That's perfect. Thank you so much. Great way to end. Tara, thanks so much for coming in to chat with us. No, thank you Rich. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in to work. Plus, if today's story gave you fresh perspective or helped you rethink what's possible, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform or hit like and subscribe. It really does make a big difference for more stories, resources, and tools to help guide the next generation. Visit Work plus.app Until next time.