Pauline Cheung
About Pauline Cheung
I am currently a Business Analyst at HMRC. Previously, I spent seven years as a software engineer and then was made redundant for the first time in my life, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing these two unique situations simultaneously made me reflect on what I wanted from life. I decided I wanted to branch out into other areas of tech and be in a career where I would spend a lower or no proportion of my time coding. I decided I would love work that involving more interaction with people whilst still utilising my tech background. My first software job was at Compass Computer Consultants. The role at Compass wasn’t typical for a traditional software developer role - I had a lot of direct interaction with users. On reflection, it was these parts of the job that I enjoyed the most, more than the coding. Spending a significant amount of my time with customers helped me to really understand and meet their needs. Later at Communisis, I was the project lead for a software redevelopment project for a high-street bank. The project was high-risk but urgent, since another developer had previously worked on the project but it had failed. I spent a significant amount of time engaging with a variety of stakeholders - from client services to quality assurance, print production team and IT Operations, etc. I managed and led the project over a number of months, delivering it successfully. I've always had broad interests and much like the agile, iterative software development process, I am always evolving, developing, and testing my ideas of what I want to do. As I start on the next chapter of my journey, I hope my path will become clearer and that I will be able to specialise in a particular area.