For the past six months I seem to have been doing the job of three people, and it’s led me to think about a few things (in the rare moments I haven’t been thinking about work).

Firstly about the terrible opinion people have of public servants. We’re not all lazy OK?

But I’ve also been thinking about how fascinating it is being able to develop a really close relationship with clients.

I’m a software engineer. I started programming when I was six (BASIC on a Radio Shack TRS-80). Earlier today I was giving a code walkthrough on the C++ automatic address coding application to a couple of the guys from Census; being able to think through and explain the custom memory structures and funky pointer arithmetic after not seeing it for two years filled me with an odd sense of joy.

But the guts of my work for the past six months has been getting a good understanding of how National Accounts Branch work and how they could work more efficiently or effectively, then setting a vision for change and leading teams within the branch through change; as well as looking for opportunities to make Prices’ work easier by spending a lot of time with them understanding all about the CPI.

Dear God that paragraph sounds wanky. Next thing you know I’ll be talking about synergies...

But my time doing things that sound like clichéd buzzwords have had an interesting effect. I’m surprisingly enthralled with the work these branches do, and am even a little tempted to move to the statistical side of things.

Having the opportunity to work really closely with your clients means you’re constantly learning new things, challenging yourself and developing relationships. And, even better, you’re doing all this while delivering better value to your clients - Having an intimate understanding of your clients’ business will often allow you to predict problems before they occur.

And so I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that being a software engineer in a non-software organisation is really interesting.

Till next time...