Xavier Caron

My wife, a Senior Java Engineer, new to Australia, working incredibly hard to establish herself in a competitive market, had a scheduled interview with Macquarie Group . We spent the entire weekend preparing. Researching the company. Practising problem sets. Believing in the opportunity. Tuesday 10:00 AM arrived. The meeting link didn't work. The stress that follows in those moments is real. Frantic emails. Silence. Then a brief apology. Then a phone call from HR, not to reschedule, but to say the role had been filled internally. I'm not blaming the whole company for this. A great organisation can still have gaps in its hiring process. But I do want to name what happened, because candidates deserve better than that. We gave up days, including the entire weekend leading up to it. We showed up with full commitment. The least we deserved was the same in return, a timely update, a working link, or better yet, the simple courtesy of being told the role was no longer available before the interview was scheduled. At the company I work for, we send promo codes to unsuccessful candidates after interviews. Not because we have to, but because we respect their time. That standard should be universal. To every hiring manager and recruiter reading this: the candidate experience is your brand. Every person you leave waiting, ghosting, or dismissing without acknowledgement, they talk. They remember. And to my wife, your resilience through all of this is something I'm genuinely in awe of. Your day is coming. #CandidateExperience #HiringCulture #Respect

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🔥𝐓𝐎𝐏 5 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐈𝐧 𝐀𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬🔥 I’ve worked with hundreds of software engineers, placing them in startup, scale-up, and enterprise teams here in Australia. People don't always quit because of their manager, but when they do, I'm on the frontline, so I get their uncensored thoughts and feedback about their management team. Here's the TOP 5 frustrations I hear on repeat, and how engineering leaders can potentially avoid them: 1. Invisible Engineer Syndrome The team does the work, but they get no credit. ➡️ Don't take the spotlight or forget about them. ✅ Give credit and praise your team every opportunity you get. 2. "Just A Quick...." You’re Devs are in deep flow, solving problems, and you drop in with “just a quick....” ➡️ Don't interrupt focus for 'quick' tasks. ✅ Protect your team's focus as if it were sacred. 3. The Meeting Vortex You book meetings to plan more meetings, and stand-ups last way too long. ➡️ Don't fill calendars and stop your team from being productive. ✅ Audit meetings and cancel or downsize as many as possible! 4. “Just A Button....” You're non-technical (or a bit out-of-touch) and expect tasks “shouldn’t take long.” ➡️ Don't make unrealistic promises to stakeholders that negatively impact your team. ✅ Ask your team before you commit, and trust and respect their judgment. 5. The Dangling Carrot. 🥕 You promise promotions, pay rises and new projects, but never deliver them. ➡️ Don't make false promises or lie about shiny greenfield work coming up. ✅ Be clear about feedback, promotion targets, and if it's BAU, just say it's BAU. Number 5 is the most common one I come across. Does anyone have any others that they would add to this list? #SoftwareEngineering #Leadership #EngineeringManager

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Thinking about moving from perm to contract in the NZ dev market? Here’s how it actually works 👇 How people really land their first contract? -> Recruiters they already know -> Ex-employers calling them back Cold applying almost never works. Who contracting actually works for? 👌 -> 5–10 years’ experience -> Strong backend/ full stack engineers -> Auckland enterprise = .NET land Think: -> C# / ASP.NET / .NET Core -> Microservices -> Azure -> Middleware & integrations (RabbitMQ, IBM MQ service bus, etc.) -> Not heaps, but a decent amount of mobile development. Large enterprise and banking environments in Auckland are consistently contractor-heavy in this stack. Timing (this is the most important bit) ⏲️ -> Best time: straight after redundancy, immediately available -> Worst time: quitting a safe perm role in a tight market hoping something turns up. Money 💴 💵 💶 -> Typical rates clearing: $80 –$125/hr -> These rates usually require sole contractor setup -> PAYE costs more for the employer → noticeably lower take-home -> Expect 4–10 interviews a year as normal churn If the market slows, you can be without work for 6–12 months. (I have someone on my books who has contracted for 12 years within NZ enterprises, and unemployed since 2024) P.S. - Contracting pays more because someone has to carry the risk. That someone is you ❤️ If you are considering a move like that, come chat.

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✅ Solving Test Data Chaos in Performance Testing with Redis What a hard act to follow! Luckily Vidula Pataskar from Tritusa closed out Track 2 here at Testing Talks Conference Sydney as our final talk of the day. She took us on a deep dive into performance testing and test data orchestration using Redis, solving real-world challenges with smart engineering. Her talk was not only practical, but clever, engaging and totally useful for anyone who is trying to do solve test data issues in performance testing like their stakeholders have asked them for Champagne on a beer budget! 🍾🍻 #TestingTalksConference

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If youre an engineering Aus right now and you enjoy working with infrastructure either directly as a Platform/Cloud/DevOps/SRE etc or directly or indirectly as Engineer or Security then I’d be looking at getting to grips with GCP. The adoption rate of GCP is increasing by business because of their offerings in Data and Ai and a lot of business I am speaking to are pulling the trigger on these workloads. The overall talent pool for this space is small compared to other clouds. AWS have dominated the market, Azure has been on the rise over the past few years and now Google are well and truely coming to the party! #GCP

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Most senior software engineers in Australia are underpaid by $30-50k. Not because they lack the skill. Because the market can't see their seniority. After years coaching engineers, my take is this: The engineers who move up fastest aren’t always the strongest, they’re the easiest to trust from the outside.. Here are 4 mistakes that cost senior engineers money, scope, and access to the roles they actually deserve. 1. Confusing experience with evidence. "10 years of backend development" could mean you designed distributed systems serving millions of users at Atlassian. Or it could mean you maintained the same internal service at a mid-tier consultancy for a decade. From the outside, those look identical. Hiring managers don't hire time served. They hire demonstrated impact. What changed because you were there? What scale did you operate at? If your CV doesn't answer those questions in the first minute or so, you're being assessed below your level. 2. Describing work instead of results. I see this constantly. Resumes that read like task logs. "Built APIs. Worked on microservices. Maintained infrastructure." That shows activity. It doesn't show seniority. A Staff Engineer at Canva isn't measured by what tools they used. They're measured by business impact, system risk, and decision ownership. The fix is consequences, not duties. Reduced latency by 40%. Owned the migration strategy that unblocked delivery for 3 squads. If nothing changed because of your work, it doesn't read as senior enough. 3. Disappearing inside the team. "We built..." "Our team implemented..." "We migrated..." Strong engineers are collaborative. But at senior and Staff levels, companies need to know who drove the decisions, handled the trade-offs, and carried accountability. I worked with an engineer in Melbourne last year. Brilliant. Led the rearchitecture of a core payments service at a Series C fintech. His resume said "contributed to platform improvements." You can honour the team and still show leadership. "I led the architecture decisions." "I owned the migration strategy." These aren't arrogant. They're accurate. 4. Assuming the process will discover your value. A lot of engineers expect interviews to infer that you know your craft. In my experience, that's not how it works. They can only make a decision based on the hour you had and the signals they got. Everything else is guessing. If your impact requires explanation, context, or insider knowledge to understand, a weaker but clearer candidate will move ahead of you. Here's the question I'd sit with: 📌 If someone who has never met you looked at your profile for 60 seconds, what evidence would convince them you operate at your target level? In this market, your resume, LinkedIn, and first 90 seconds must make your value obvious, because if people have to figure it out, they may never see how capable you are. Hit 👍 if this resonated, it lets me know and helps it reach others who might need it.

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🚀 Tech Stack Trends in Australia 2025 Here’s what I've been seeing the most so far this year Frontend - React continues to dominate. Next.js is quickly becoming the default for full-stack apps. Backend - Node.js, Go, and Python are all heavily used, however, I'm finding a lot of businesses wanting more Python developers right now. Databases - PostgreSQL is the go-to to but MongoDB and DynamoDB are also common. Cloud & DevOps - AWS is the most widely used. Docker, Kubernetes, and serverless frameworks are also now standard. What does your current stack look like compared to this? Am I on the money?

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Software development is defying a national trend. Job ad numbers are declining all over the place. Overall, they've declined in seven out of the past eight months across Australia and New Zealand. But demand for software developers rose last month and is higher in November 2025 than it was in November 2024. We've seen this. Client demand for our services is high. Our TA Partners are busy. SaaS companies are getting investment. And clients like Canva are going hard expanding their GenAI capabilities, among other product developments. Looking forward to a big and busy 2026 in the tech hiring space...

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Melbourne (and beyond) — our April 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 Meetup is headlined by 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰'𝘀 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁, and it's a must for anyone building or leading software teams right now. We're unpacking 8 trends reshaping how software gets built in 2026: ✅ Where engineering teams are seeing the greatest productivity gains today ✅ Why effective AI collaboration still requires active human judgment ✅ Eight trends defining how software is built in 2026 Agentic coding isn't just a productivity story — it's a fundamental shift in how software gets conceived, built, and shipped. PLUS: a special instructor-led creative AI walkthrough We're going end-to-end: song idea → lyrics → full track → music video, using modern generative AI tools. 🎙️ Prompting + iteration in Suno (structure, hooks, tone, vocal style) 🎬 Building a consistent visual narrative in VidMuse (storyboard, scenes, pacing) 🎥 Here's the final clip we'll be unpacking on the night: https://lnkd.in/ghR_GsUP Two agendas. One evening. Real insights, live demos, Q&A, and drinks after! 📅 April 2 | 6:00–8:00 PM AEDT 📍 The Dock, Docklands, Melbourne (+ global live stream for EU & US) Grab your spot 👇 https://lnkd.in/gvFJUG2e #GenAI #AgenticCoding #CreativeAI #Anthropic #Claude #AITrends2026 #Suno #VidMuse #GenAIforDevelopers #MelbourneTech #BuildWi

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Morning Australia, This year from the get go has been strong from a daily rate contract perspective. The team and I have been placing people across technology with multiple different industries with some very exciting projects. We have a few open projects that we are helping clients with. Project 1: x2 Azure Kubernetes DevOps Consultant, 6 months initial contract, $1100 a day (East Coast Australia based, remote considered from within Australia). Sit within an Enterprise AI team, working with both business stakeholders, and AI teams on federating the do's and don'ts within the financial sector. Azure, Kubernetes, GitOps, Githubactions, (.NET, Go, Python) Ping me: Dan Bowers Project 2: x1 Mid level, Fullstack Developer, (front end leaning), 6 month initial contract, Melbourne based, $800 a day, integration project with a technology focused enterprise. Typescript, React, NextJS, NodeJS and need experience with AI assisted development with Claude/Cursor. Ping: Dennie Farmer Project 3: x1 Mid level Python Developer, 6 month initial contract, Brisbane based, $700 a day. Python, Pandas, ETL, Azure DevOps Ping: Dennie Farmer Project 4: x1 AWS AI Platform Engineer, 12 weeks initial contract, $1100 a day, remote Australia. Drive an enterprise to adapt a Gen AI way of working, across the AWS Landscape, working on Bedrock & Sagemaker. Ping: Sam Finnegan Project 5: x3 Senior Dell Boomi Integration Engineers, 12 month initial contract, $850-1000 a day Hybrid (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane), BASELINE Clearance needed. Large scale integration project within Australian Government. Ping: Dan Bowers Project 6: x1 Angular Developer, 4 month initial contract, $800-950 a day, hybrid (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane) Australian Citizen / Baseline Cleared. Large scale technology project. Ping: Brittany Bailey Project 7: x2 Senior Golang Developers, 12 month initial contract, $800-1000 a day, Sydney / Melbourne. Technology uplift and modernisation. Golang, AWS/Terraform Ping: Dan Bowers FILLED Project 8: x1 Senior Windows 11 & Intune Engineer. 6 month initial contract, $850-950 per day, hybrid in Brisbane. Large Windows 10, to Windows 11 Migration. Working for a global technology business. Windows, Intune, Powershell Ping: Jordan D'Aguilar Project 9: x1 Principal Data Consultant (Hands on & Hands off) 6 month initial contract $1100-1300 a day, remote from Australia. Large Snowflake Migration, working across SQL onprem to Azure SQL/Oracle, tableau to PowerBI. Ping: Sam Finnegan Project 10: x2 GCP Cloud Network Engineer, $1000-1100 a day, 6 month contract. Australia based, happy with fully remote. Large GCP Network project, NCC Hub & Spoke Architecture, SRE uplift in Observability (Logs, Monitoring, Tracing) and IaC with Terraform. Ping: Dan Bowers Expression of Interest: Senior / Lead AWS DevOps Engineer - Waiting sign off, but Sydney based, $900-1000 a day, 6 months initial, hybrid working. AWS, EKS, Terraform, Github Actions Ping: Dan Bowers

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“We stopped chasing unicorns. We build them.” That’s what a Melbourne tech leader told me this week. Their team gives junior devs: 🧠 Training budgets 🕐 Time to explore AI tools 💼 Real projects to apply them on They’ve made upskilling part of their retention strategy. Not just talk. Action. Here’s what they’re seeing: - Lower attrition - Higher engagement - Long-term capability built in-house But let’s be real… Not every org has the time to wait 6–12 months to build that. Sometimes, hiring externally is the only way to compete now. So what’s your take? Are we still chasing unicorns, or growing them? #AI #Upskilling #Recruitment #HiringStrategy #Retention #MelbourneTech #Leadership

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I’ve seen a few people suggest the US visa changes will make it easier for Australian startups to hire… I may be wrong but I’m anticipating an even greater appetite for high skilled remote workers from US tech companies, with an increase in salaries to come along for the ride too. Australian startups already compete with US startups hiring remotely when it comes to the top 1% of Aus based talent. (And in practice we don’t compete because our salaries are so much lower). My prediction is it’ll get worse. If you’re hiring the rest, then sure, maybe it’ll be helpful - but if you want the best I think it’s about to get even harder. Time will tell…

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Seeing the news about layoffs at Atlassian today was genuinely sad. Redundancies are never easy. Behind every announcement are talented engineers, product managers, and operators who have spent years building products used by millions of people around the world. This moment must be incredibly difficult for those affected. It also made me reflect on something from an engineering perspective. In many companies, a large portion of operational costs comes from subscriptions and infrastructure — contact center platforms, CRM systems, support tools, analytics suites, cloud services, and many other SaaS products. Often, organizations only utilize a small fraction of what these tools actually offer. With today’s AI-assisted development, it has become much easier and faster to build internal tools that address very specific needs. For example: • Contact center or telephony workflows that once required expensive platforms can now be built faster using modern APIs and AI development tools. • Cloud environments can accumulate unused resources — test environments, obsolete datasets, idle services — that continue generating bills. AI tools can help analyze usage patterns and identify areas for cleanup. • Large enterprise platforms (CRM, support systems, analytics tools) are sometimes used for only a small percentage of their capabilities. Even modest optimization across these areas can translate into tens of thousands of dollars saved each month. Perhaps moments like this are also an opportunity for engineers to step forward — to build smarter internal tools, reduce unnecessary complexity, and help companies operate more efficiently. Sometimes innovation inside engineering teams can protect budgets, create new opportunities, and ultimately help protect jobs. To everyone impacted by the Atlassian layoffs — wishing you strength and the very best for what comes next. The industry still needs great builders.

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Atlassian cut about 1,600 roles yesterday, roughly 10% of the company, and the shares rose on the initial after-hours reaction. Block saw a similar market reaction after its own cuts. That does not prove a permanent trend on its own, but it does suggest the market is starting to reward a particular story: smaller teams, more AI, and the expectation of similar or better output. Whether people like it or not, the tech industry is being pushed into a different shape. AI is clearly changing what companies believe they can get done with fewer people. I do not think the answer is as simple as “everyone should go build now.” Real life is messier than that. People have different runway, family pressure, confidence, energy, and appetite for risk. But the option set is changing. It is much cheaper now to learn the tools, test an idea, and build something small around a problem you understand from the inside. That does not make sales easy. It does not make distribution easy. It does not make product-market fit easy. But for some people, using that period to build capability or test something useful may be a more direct way to create longer-term leverage than focusing only on the next role. Not because everyone should build. But because the cost of testing whether you can build something useful has dropped sharply. Not easy for the people affected, and I do not say any of this lightly. If this trend continues, what becomes the smarter move for technical people between roles — optimise only for the next job, or use some of that time to build leverage as well?

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Reminder to self: working in pairs is often frowned upon and seen as inefficient method to solve engineering problems, but if each can put pride aside and have the time working together scheduled strategically - pair programming, pair work, whatever you call it - can boost understanding and output profoundly. Minimizes human errors, too :) #culture #collaboration

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Tomorrow I'll be speaking at DDD Melbourne for the first time, giving a talk about Platform Engineering in the age of GenAI. In this talk, we’ll explore how platform engineering and generative AI can work together to improve developer experience, if you get the foundations right. We’ll look at common organisational and cultural challenges that limit productivity, and how to start addressing them with simple, practical steps. From there, we’ll show how “everything-as-code” patterns and AI-assisted tooling can accelerate platform maturity and reduce friction across teams. Hope to see you there! #DDDMelb

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As someone with ties to the Australian tech scene and an ex-Atlassian employee, I’m naturally deeply shocked by the recent layoffs. This will have a significant impact on the industry in the coming months. It’s not the time to “praise Atlassian for their sincerity” or criticise their work-from-anywhere policy. This is a time for empathy and to remember that such things can happen to anyone at any time. This means finding a balance between being prepared and not letting anxiety consume us. Stay strong everyone. I’m sure brighter days are ahead for all of us.

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2025 Testing Market Insights: - In Australia, women make up 20% of Software Engineers, however 46% of QA/Testers, making QA roles significantly more gender-balanced than other areas in tech. - AI is taking over repetitive tasks, including test case generation and bug prediction, and all are becoming smarter, allowing QA teams to focus on high-value work. These technologies enable faster and more accurate testing, allowing QA professionals to focus on complex scenarios and strategic quality initiatives. - Shift-left is the new normal - testing’s starting earlier in the dev cycle, which means fewer surprises later on, and faster releases. - The majority of QA roles are contract-based, with permanent roles (slightly) less common, driven by the project-based nature of QA work and a growing shift toward flexibility in tech. #qa #testing #qualityassurance #shiftleft #ai #softwarengineering #manualtesting #automationtesting

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Too many teams are still chasing DevOps unicorns. The truth? Retention comes from clear roles, growth paths, and building environments where good engineers can become great. Here’s how smart companies are fixing it... 

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