Interview with Mat Pigram

By Simon Cook

In addition to his diverse career in IT at such household names as Capgemini, Somark Innovations, Cheap as Chips and Computershare, Mat Pigram is also a co organiser of the FrontendADL group.

On Thursday 15 October 2020 he will be presenting at the FrontendADL October (Virtual) Lightning Talks - proudly hosted by the team at FrontendADL Dan Harris, Shane Smith and himself!

In this interview, Mat give us an insight into how COVID has impacted his thoughts on work and also what to expect from his talk next month.

Can you tell the FrontendADL community a bit about yourself?

I'm a full stack dev - like everyone else :)

Currently my main tech stack is a NRWL workspace with Angular and NestJS.

What is the title of your talk?

Cypress - Testing the Web

What is it about?

It'll be an introduction to Cypress (www.cypress.io), a javascript based framework for automated testing of anything that runs in a browser. I'll also touch on the needs and benefits of e2e testing.

Who do you recommend logs onto this talk?

Anyone who thinks testing their web app e2e is difficult.

How would your family describe what you do for work?

"He does something with computers - some sort or programming I think"

What impact has COVID19 had on your working life?

I think I've been very lucky that there really hasn't been any negative impact of COVID19 on my working life.

A postive impact would be a 6 week stint WFH which gave me the opportunity to do things that I generally miss out on, like the school drop off/pick ups.

What changes that have come from COVID do you intend on 'holding onto' after we return to normal?

I would like to think businesses have seen the benefits of a remote workforce and embrace this style of working.... hopefully the traditional 9-5 workdays are on their way out.

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to improve the life of software developers, what would it be?

Increase their memory capacity.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but it seems like there's some hot new framework or package being released every other week. I find it hard to keep up with everything.

Can you describe the Adelaide tech scene in 5 words or less?

Vibrant, innovative and undervalued.

What is one question I should have asked to make this an even more interesting interview?

Who do I follow on Twitter?

Who DO you follow on Twitter?

In terms of Twitter, Minko Gechev, Tracy Lee, Scott Hanselman, Aaron Frost, Deborah Kurata, plus a few local folk..

*****************************************************************

Sign up for this free event - hosted virtually on Thursday 15 October 2020 - now at bit.ly/frontendADL

This event is proudly sponsored by the team at Encode Talent