INTERVIEW WITH OUR IT ENGINEER

Whenever friends ask me, "So how many staff members do you have?" My reply of "I have three therapists and an IT Engineer." never fails to draw a surprise "WHY do you need an IT Engineer?"

Here's why... 

Interview with Hon Tjuin, our Trusty IT Engineer

Me: Hi Hon Tjuin, great to finally have this interview with you. You have been with us for more than six months and everyone has been asking why Summer's needs an IT Engineer! Please help me clear the air. 

Hon Tjuin: Hahaha! Great question! My main role is to oversee the IT needs of the company, such as maintaining the company’s website and choosing IT software and services, with the aim of improving productivity. In addition to that, I also revamp existing apps, while developing new ones.

Me: Thank you for clearing the air. That is for sure a lot of work and that is why Summer's need an IT Engineer. I hope everyone's happy with hearing it from the horse's mouth. Can you share with us how you came to join Summer's?

Hon Tjuin: I came to know Summer's in 2017 when I was looking for a company's website to revamp as part of an informal online coding course. I was doing this online course because I was stationed back in my hometown in Malaysia, to care for my grandfather who has advanced dementia. Before that, I was working in Singapore and was trained in the fields of aeronautical and mechanical engineering. However, my passion has always been in coding. So, in between one of my previous jobs, I picked up coding iOS apps as a hobby. I never knew that one day it would be useful. Coming back to Malaysia to care for my grandfather has not been easy. It is a full-time job; initially it was especially difficult when I had to spend a lot of time getting a reliable helper. After quite a while, things were finally more settled. When the homefront was slightly stabilized, I signed up for an informal online course to deepen my coding skills. Towards the end of that course, I also learnt web development. This skill proved to be useful when I found out that Summer's was in need of their website’s rebranding. Hui Ting was very pleased with the work that I had done. Hence, after I had completed their website rebranding, I was offered freelance gigs to manage the company’s IT needs. For example, setting up their email service, online collaborative platform and website maintenance. When Hui Ting heard that I was interested in app development, she gave me my next major freelance gig - to rebrand their flagship app, Sing-To-Talk. It was renewed not only aesthetically, but also in terms of the app flow and user experience. Being much more intuitive and streamlined as it is today. After this project was completed, both Hui Ting and I were very keen to have me onboard as one of Summer's staff members. So on March 2019, I was formally employed as their IT Engineer... and the rest is history.

Me: Beautiful story... Glad to have you onboard Summer's. It is not a coincidence for sure. So can you share with us what have you been up to lately?

Hon Tjuin: For the past few months, I have been carrying out a major update to Sing-To-Talk. The purpose and focus of this update is to make the child master the targeted sounds more effectively, by practicing them repetitively. To keep things fun and enjoyable for the kids, we employed Augmented Reality (AR) strategies... for example, to generate animals whenever the app detects the kids’ voice. This would encourage the child to speak more in order to see the animations run. It was especially exciting to see the fruition of 3-4 months’ worth of labor on the App Store. From the conceptualization of using AR that I had read about in tech journals, learning the code to generate AR animals, Googling speech recognition codes from scratch, and learning AR animation - bird flapping its wings, ice cream on the cow’s head... and finally to launching. Sometimes, when I reach one of these milestones, I would jump around in joy upstairs in my house, and my domestic helper below would later tell me she heard the booming sounds above... hahaha! Over the following few months, I have also learned basic graphics design online. This became handy in designing the slider ad that is now on Summer's website home page. Please go check it out! Graphic designing is also a complimentary skill to coding, because in this way, we won’t have to rely so much on outsourcing designing, and can lower costs in the process.

Me: Hahaha! I love your excitement and passion in the work you do. This is priceless! So do share a bit more about your joys and tears of your work at Summer's?

Hon Tjuin: What I really love about my role in Summer's is that there is a never-ending series of exciting things to do. So exciting that sometimes I can’t sleep at night while waiting for the results the next day. Other things I love about this job is the flexibility in work hours and location, factors that are very important in my highly unpredictable home caring job. Having a supportive team of colleagues and boss also makes working here a joy.

The Summer's team in Sitiawan to visit Hon Tjuin.

The difficulties of working in Summer's lies more with my role as a caregiver. Many a times having an overload of errands makes it difficult to meet the required hours of work. Other times, when my grandparent does not sleep well, I would have to manage/correct the situation in the middle of the night. Therefore, having both not enough time and energy are things that I struggle with the most.

Me: Yeah... full-time caregiving is indeed demanding. However, I am glad that the work at Summer's is deemed meaningful and exciting. This seems like the respite for your stressful caregiving work. What's your hope for the future?

Hon Tjuin: Going forward, the top two goals for my role in Summer's is to firstly, support the front-line staff members (the therapists) in all their IT needs. Secondly, I hope to develop products/apps that can provide a leap in value to the end user's life through blue ocean strategies. I hope to achieve this on three fronts: (1) constantly upgrading my skills and staying up-to-date on the relentless pace of change in the tech world, (2) maintaining a strict self-discipline by meeting my daily time and task goals, and (3) continuously improving productivity and efficiency in my caregiving role. As a conclusion, I am deeply thankful to God above, for providing me with this opportunity to not only earn a living, but to enjoy what I do (until I can’t sleep) and also to work in a very supportive and understanding environment whilst learning new skills on the way.

Me: Thank you so much for your candid sharing Hon Tjuin. Looking forward to greater times with you at Summer's!