Tim Harrison trained at Makers in 2015. He’s now an experienced engineering leader and coach who has formed and led multiple Spotify squads. Here, he reflects on his career to date and shares advice with aspiring developers.
I worked at the BBC before joining Makers
For about 12 years, I was working at the BBC, doing several different things. I spent about three and a half years working in BBC R&D. With my work on video compression, we helped launch HD services for the first time on terrestrial digital TV and added HD red button services for the 2012 Olympics.
Then I left that role and went to work for BBC News for about a year and a half, sitting amongst all the journalists.
That was a very high energy, fast-paced environment.
I was running a project to buy hundreds of MacBooks and iPhones for all of the BBC journalists around the world, which we would send journalists then train them to use.
BBC offices
We also built a VPN so that journalists could report remotely back into London and submit their stories.
I travelled to Lebanon, China, all around Europe and around the States. I was with the trainers, making it all work, and it was quite practical, so there was no software at that point.
Then I took a break from the BBC and went to Makers.
I was part of the September 2015 cohort, and it was an amazing experience, I threw myself into it and had a great time. It was high pressure! But it got me into software.
My final project for Makers
After I finished Makers, I went back to my third and different role at the BBC. I was a team lead for backend developers, making tools for journalists and programme-makers.
While I had been helping to deliver the laptops and phones in my previous role, now I was writing software that we deployed to those.
BBC Engineer Qualified
I’m very proud of one particular app we built.
It’s an app that most of the BBC journalists now use — called PNg, Portable News Gathering. It lets journalists use their BBC-issued iPhone to record video and audio in the correct format, to get it straight on the news.
The backend is with AWS, and they push content into AWS. It’s transcoded and pushed back into the BBC’s production systems.
If you’ve watched the news or looked at the BBC website, you’ve seen content that’s gone through PNg, and my team built it, which is quite cool.
I moved to Spotify and started in August 2019.
I’m now working close to the front end, in a part called Core Experience. I lead a full stack team now, and we’re looking at podcasting. It’s all about creating new experiences for listeners around talk audio.
One of these is called Music + Talk. We’re also doing some work around transcripts that will come out relatively soon.
We’re exploring, how can we make a transcript interactive? How can we help people who are hard of hearing, with access to content? I believe we have an obligation to help those people.
I host a podcast called Music + Talk — here, the episode with Katarina Berg, Spotify’s CHRO
Makers can really help you through the transition.
You’ve got to be kind to yourself when you’re going through major life changes. As you switch career and grow, you’re going to find yourself experiencing all of these changes and Makers can offer some really helpful techniques to deal with all of that.
With my Makers cohort
Whether it’s meditation or yoga or a new way of thinking about things, I think it’s important to appreciate those. The way I saw it was, “Here are all of these practical tools I can use to get a cool job that I’m going to enjoy, that’s going to make me happy.”
Focusing on those things has helped me in my career.
My advice for aspiring developers
Think about your objectives and your ideal next steps. State the things you want to change for yourself in a positive way. When it comes to your next career move, what is going to make you happy?
What’s in your control to change, to keep moving forward? Try and avoid thinking about things outside your control and stay focussed on the things in your control.
Be patient. My experience of moving my career from the BBC was tough, and it took a year, and there were some setbacks. Now that I’ve made this change, I’ve seen that it’s essential to keep moving forward, keep being consistent, and just keep trying. Don’t get ground down.
Coming into Makers HQ to give a talk
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