On this episode of the NTP podcast we chat with Mitchell Bright, Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle. We discuss his career to date, his university experience and the transition into Design and Industry. Hope you enjoy the interview!

Listen to the Podcast

Watch the Episode

Show Notes

Here you can source all the things we have talked about in the podcast whether that be books, events, meet-up groups and what’s new in the Newcastle tech scene.

• • Mitch’s LinkedIn
  • D+I’s Website
  • D+I’s LinkedIn

Find all local Newcastle Technology Events

• Event’s Page

00:00:20:07 – 00:00:29:20
James MacDonald
Welcome to another episode of the New Tech People podcast. And today’s episode we have Mitchell Bright, lead electronics engineer at Design and Industry. Welcome, Mitchell.

00:00:30:03 – 00:00:30:17
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Thank you. I mean.

00:00:31:01 – 00:00:37:03
James MacDonald
Those of our listeners that don’t know who you are, can you give us a bit of an idea of who you are and maybe your career to date?

00:00:37:17 – 00:01:02:23
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So I grew up in the Maitland area. I went to university at Newcastle Uni. When I got there, I got a scholarship. I was called Eunice at the time and that allowed me to work at a company called Ramco Electronics over the summer. That turned into more and more work there in the testing department. And that let me see how engineering’s practice, particularly in Newcastle and doing product development while I was studying, which I found very valuable.

00:01:03:11 – 00:01:08:07
James MacDonald
Just on that portfolio guy. And he did five year at university and working at the same time.

00:01:09:12 – 00:01:26:04
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yep. So initially it started off as a scholarship just in the summer. So while uni is off for the year going and basically just working your entire holiday there and you get paid a small amount of money distributed over the whole year. So it ends up being like a few thousand dollars a year just to help a student.

00:01:26:04 – 00:01:43:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
But the really valuable part is the experience. Yeah. And then after the first placement I did, they asked for a job. At the time I was delivering pizzas and that is awful. And they needed help. So I let me join the testing team there. It was essentially what I was doing in the placement anyway, and then that just grew from there.

00:01:43:09 – 00:01:50:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I started working more and more time there and I spent a lot of time, as much time as I could spare outside of uni working there.

00:01:50:20 – 00:01:53:06
James MacDonald
And and I was as a three year degree.

00:01:54:18 – 00:02:05:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Four year in a degree in a scholarship, added an extra year where it was two year full time work experience. And I did a double degree in math. So was another year on top of that, six years in total.

00:02:05:08 – 00:02:26:15
James MacDonald
Six years in total. All right. University tends to be a topic we talk about on this podcast every time. Just because there are different career paths in technology, engineering. Different people go way around things differently. University tends to play a role in, I guess, a majority of people’s careers with different levels of success. Can you get your opinion piece?

00:02:26:22 – 00:02:32:16
James MacDonald
Obviously invested six years of your life in university, your overall experience?

00:02:33:14 – 00:02:55:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Really positive, actually. I, um, I heard a lot of people saying, you know, you never use anything you learn at uni and you just do it for the paper and then you learn everything you did on the job. I found quite the opposite. I learned like working at the same time as uni. I think that was the big difference because I could see learning something and then I would go and ask my engineering mentors how that was used and actually see how it was applied.

00:02:55:08 – 00:03:14:15
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And I think the mistake people make a lot is that they don’t look for where things could be applied. Now it depends on the job as well. I had the luxury of being able to see electronics being developed while I was at university. A lot of people go into doing policy programing and much higher level things, but it’s a lot harder to see the connection between the university theory and the practice.

00:03:14:15 – 00:03:22:21
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
But I can say it directly, you know, things like digital filters, circuit design and analysis, all of it translated pretty much directly. And I’ve used just about everything that I learned at uni.

00:03:23:04 – 00:03:43:05
James MacDonald
Yeah. And I think that’s as you said, the key is that marrying up of the theory and the actual application of that in real world and being able to, if you’re doing that at the same time a lot of advantages as opposed to learning the theoretical side of it for getting it potentially. And then years down the track being like, oh, I sort of remember doing a bit of that at university, right?

00:03:43:05 – 00:04:02:05
James MacDonald
Yeah. And as the before, go further down your career path, you mentioned Europe in Maitland. I imagine growth in Maitland, like looking at Newcastle, the Greater Hunter for engineering, Well they probably wasn’t thousands of them available when you’re growing out, right. I feel like across technology there used to be a train of thought that you got to university and you’d have to move away for a job.

00:04:02:13 – 00:04:14:20
James MacDonald
It sounds like you found it pretty easy to stay in Newcastle, as have you seen a bit of a change in the landscape as you’ve been in that in the Newcastle market in the amount of engineering roles locally these days?

00:04:14:20 – 00:04:37:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Definitely. Back then, to be honest, I didn’t really consider looking for jobs before I started uni. I didn’t base my decision on what I was going to study based on that. That is something I probably should have done. If I could go back now, I don’t think I’d change anything. But knowing where you’re going to have to work and the life decisions you going to have to make after uni is very important.

00:04:37:21 – 00:05:03:14
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
But I think the most important thing for me was studying something that I loved and so it didn’t matter. Everything else would just fall into place. And I guess being young and naive helped a lot with that as well. Not really considering those sorts of consequences. But I also assumed that if the university offered a degree that you’d be able to get a job and surprise, surprise, you can’t really get a lot of intensive electronics jobs in Newcastle, at least then.

00:05:04:08 – 00:05:11:04
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I think that’s changed a lot now, particularly with with then I come to Newcastle, but I think there’s no shortage of work these days.

00:05:11:07 – 00:05:36:09
James MacDonald
Yeah, we’ll get it on the day and I coming to Newcastle then tracking this off. So but I completely agree. I feel like the amount of those roles that were available, even when I started recruiting tech in Newcastle, seven or eight years ago now that’s what they are now is nine day difference. I think there’s definitely more opportunities for junior engineers to get their first taste as well as we’re crying out for senior level talent locally as well.

00:05:36:09 – 00:05:41:02
James MacDonald
Yeah, so that, that, that space has definitely changed over that period.

00:05:41:10 – 00:06:03:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, I think with new degrees being offered like these medical based engineering degrees, I think the university creates the, the degree. But there’s no jobs in Newcastle that I’m aware of, very few of them for those sorts of degrees. And I think when I went through university I started computer engineering, which is like the start of these combination degrees, mechatronics, a very popular one these days.

00:06:03:13 – 00:06:17:19
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah. So electrical engineers find it very easy to go straight into a job in this area, but the more niche the degree and the harder it is. Um, but I think that’s changing these days, and I think the evolution of technology over the years has helped a lot with that as well.

00:06:17:22 – 00:06:43:11
James MacDonald
Yeah, I agree. And I feel like Newcastle and the great Hunter in general is a really strong space to take advantage of those type of roles and those type of companies coming to Newcastle and growing in Newcastle. I think there’s a lot of companies who obviously proximity to mining, proximity to agriculture in the Greater Hunter as well, having that those industries locally as well definitely help that career path and opportunities locally.

00:06:43:16 – 00:06:55:09
James MacDonald
Yep that’s right. So university degree in your spare time are you doing you’re doing some part time work. Got your first role after six years in university has a career grown from there.

00:06:56:22 – 00:07:23:02
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So by the time I finished university had already developed my first product under the supervision of other engineers at the time, but learned so much about the entire process by that point, which allowed me to get a job at AMP Control Broncos competitor and just straight into electronics. We’re also in control for a graduate program, but I was able to completely skip that and be straight into the engineering team doing product development.

00:07:23:13 – 00:07:53:16
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So I think again, that experience when you’re studying is crucial if you can get it. So fight as hard as you can to try and get a role like that. Then the mining downturn hit I was about to drive about for a year and a half, then decided to just got married as well. So around 2013 and decided if I was going to make a change, now’s the time and decided to move to Sydney to see what I could get work wise there, because there are a lot of exciting roles in technology and Sydney never really wanted to live in Sydney.

00:07:54:01 – 00:08:22:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I’ve always loved living in Newcastle in the sort of the whole vibe the place has got, but there’s just no work. So I moved to Sydney at a company called Acme Networks. It’s a startup from these two guys that were Broadcom making the embedded Wi-Fi module, and the role that I did there essentially was started off as automated testing a lot of python and testing the electronics that was being developed predominantly by guy in the US.

00:08:22:23 – 00:08:44:16
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
You had a lot of software very quickly, faster than we could test it, and we needed a solid test infrastructure to be able to constantly validate everything that he was developing. And over the years that evolved into mobile app development. So essentially I was filling in gaps in what the business could do because the good developer there was very solid at just pumping out code.

00:08:45:06 – 00:09:01:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And once we had a reasonable test infrastructure, I got interested in mobile app development. So I learned that in my own time. I used to catch the ferry into from Wentworth Point into the Sydney CBD and that was about an hour of a really nice smooth ride on the water where I could go and learn a bunch of new skills.

00:09:01:19 – 00:09:35:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So did Android development that evolved into iOS app development and eventually into React Native Development using Web technologies. And then an interesting opportunity came up just completely randomly, um, at a pub and there was a guy that I was working with that introduced me to another guy who was looking for a frontend developer for Seven West Media. Never thought I’d get a job like that, but just interviewed for it, explored the opportunity and ended up working there for a few months before getting promoted to running the front end development team at Seven West Media on the Seven Plus app.

00:09:35:18 – 00:10:00:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And I really enjoyed that experience, but I guess I really did want to come back home. And part of the reasons for making that change into web development was it was a pathway back to Newcastle because a lot of web development jobs, not many jobs in jobs in electronics or product development other than the mining, heavy jobs and from there they let me work remotely actually.

00:10:00:08 – 00:10:18:21
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So when I approached them initially, I said, You know, I’m originally back to Newcastle, I’d like to work remote if I can. And the guy that I spoke to originally said that was an option and they were hesitant at first, but it did work out. So I was sort of their experiment and the boss there at the time really wanted it to work as well.

00:10:18:21 – 00:10:39:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So I think you’ve got to have people that can see the potential for that sort of thing to work. Yeah, and just randomly while I was at a web development made up in Newcastle, he’s from New Ventures, turned up there and recognized me from when I worked with him at AMP Control and he was at Resnick and they worked very closely owned by the same people basically.

00:10:39:11 – 00:11:00:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So once we got talking there, he was trying to basically approach me and say, you know, come and work for us doing products, electronics. And I thought about it and I first had worked very hard to get into the web technology sector, and I took essentially a pay cut and Seven West Media took a chance on me to transition into it.

00:11:00:07 – 00:11:00:15
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:11:01:07 – 00:11:18:18
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It worked out, but I thought if I had to do that again, might not be so lucky next time that I thought I was confident that I could do it again if I had to and if it didn’t work out. You know, I had a few months to figure out whether New Ventures was right for me or not and ended up being a really good choice.

00:11:18:18 – 00:11:44:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I think what eventually made me change back to electronics was it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my career is making things and being able to design hardware and software that runs on the hardware and deliver a product is all a lot more fulfilling than something that’s purely digital. I enjoy making all of it, but I think that’s the most fun that I’ve had, is actually making real things hardware and then rolled on to being acquired by design.

00:11:44:15 – 00:11:45:01
James MacDonald
Yeah, and I.

00:11:45:01 – 00:11:45:09
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Saw him.

00:11:45:09 – 00:12:10:02
James MacDonald
Tonight. That’s a very unique and I would say rare skillset that you’ve got going from the electronics background and the engineering background into learning web dev and becoming real well-rounded in the mobile space, in particular, running a front end team, then coming back to the product. Now picking up new skills is obviously something that comes relatively naturally to you.

00:12:10:02 – 00:12:12:07
James MacDonald
Is that is that accurate? Is it?

00:12:12:24 – 00:12:24:13
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Let’s say it takes a lot of hard work, so there’s a lot of hours that I’ve got of my own time into doing that. So like I said, pretty much every commute trip that I could, I was on the laptop learning something new.

00:12:24:13 – 00:12:25:20
James MacDonald
And how did you go about your learning?

00:12:26:10 – 00:12:50:24
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It started off in like online MOOCs, as I call them. Yeah, so Coursera was a start and there were some courses on there about Android development, but there’s only so far you can get with someone telling you how to do something. You have to go and do it. And a lot of that time was me trying and failing to to build apps and figuring out what’s going wrong and web development particular has excellent learning resources online.

00:12:51:14 – 00:13:10:17
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
There’s so many courses and so much content to go and pick up. So that’s one of the easiest things I think, to learn because of that availability and also the the development tools that are available for it. It’s all just sitting there in your browser. Push F12 and you’ve got this incredible debugging capability, whereas hardware to do the same thing, you need a lot of gear and it’s all quite expensive.

00:13:10:17 – 00:13:13:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It’s getting better these days, but still very expensive to get into.

00:13:13:11 – 00:13:31:01
James MacDonald
And so you would say your advice to young people or some people, let’s say transitioning from hardware to software, somebody that doesn’t have software experience trying to get there first. So your first job in web dev would be plenty of free resources online. Watch a bit of them and play, watch, build, watch, build, test.

00:13:31:11 – 00:13:33:23
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
The most important thing is to find something you love doing.

00:13:34:00 – 00:13:34:09
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:13:34:20 – 00:13:59:00
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Once you have that, then it’s a lot of hard work. But essentially the way to do it is seeing what you can get online. So if you know somebody that is already doing it, that can help you give you pointers. Because I was working with a guy at that network startup which ended up being acquired by Silicon Labs to ask him, you know, I’ve got this particular problem with CEO says it’s not moving where I want it to move.

00:13:59:00 – 00:14:11:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
What would you do? And then he would go and send me down a direction. So that helps. If you can’t do that, then I mean, there’s a bunch of forums online where people are generally pretty helpful. But yeah, I learn by doing yeah.

00:14:11:15 – 00:14:27:01
James MacDonald
My I can couldn’t agree with you more like a lot of people I’ve seen have success has been somebody that I can mention who’s got a passion around something so it’s a lot easier to put in hours after after work and and get better if you’re actually passionate about what you’re doing. They built I in your own time.

00:14:27:01 – 00:14:55:04
James MacDonald
I think that’s massive again people that are in a day job and that only do what they do during a day and have no interest in it as out of work, you know, really difficult to see them, you know, kicking and kicking on their part. You mentioned there is like that mentorship. I think it’s over or it yeah, I think there’s so many opportunities for people to gain knowledge through mentorship and doesn’t have to be a formal mentorship or just informal in knowing somebody and asking the question, Right?

00:14:55:06 – 00:14:55:12
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:14:55:21 – 00:15:14:13
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah. And it it helps the mentor a lot just as much as the student. Yeah, because it helps solidify in their mind what they’re doing. And I think in my experience, being a mentor is what helps round off your knowledge to the point where you are actually good at it. After that. But until then it makes you question actually what you know and why you know it.

00:15:15:08 – 00:15:16:17
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It helps complete your experience.

00:15:16:21 – 00:15:24:22
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think that’s really, really valuable advice for, you know, for younger people trying to get into web dev or or transition from Halloween to software as well.

00:15:25:01 – 00:15:45:09
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah. I think the other key thing is that you need to be willing to put in a lot of time yourself outside of work. So there was a guy I used to work with that he asked me, you know, how did you go from embedded software development to Android apps on to do the same thing? And I said, you know exactly what I said to you before working on the train and ferry and a lot of my own personal time.

00:15:45:09 – 00:16:03:13
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And he said, Well, I just don’t have the time for that. So can you provide me with the opportunity at work to do it? And I said, Well, it’s really hard for a business to justify, you know, a big chunk of your day learning something completely new, especially when it’s only a few hours a day. It’s going to take a long time for you to come to speed.

00:16:03:13 – 00:16:12:09
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It’s going to be a huge investment if you can get it, fantastic. Invest in yourself and in your own time. And that’s where the passion comes in. If you really care about it, you’ll do whatever it takes.

00:16:12:12 – 00:16:27:18
James MacDonald
I can agree with you. All right. I yeah. Person I’ve been through it myself. I’ve got three kids. I still a lot of work when I they go to bed I kind of chat with my wife, had dinner chat with my wife until nine and kids go to bed at seven to chat with her. And till 9:00 she’d be gone to bed.

00:16:27:18 – 00:16:49:01
James MacDonald
I’d be working between 9 p.m. and like one or 2 a.m. and that sort of time with no distractions. And this is I was trying to teach myself how to build websites back in the day. It’s like if you’ve got a big enough driver for passion enough, you know that there’s a bunch of, you know, a bunch of time there if, if you passionate enough about it, like everyone’s got time or can make time, not everyone can work.

00:16:49:08 – 00:17:06:17
James MacDonald
You can’t work until one 1:00 in the morning, you know, forever. You know, you do burn out. But there’s a time if you run hard for a short period of time, to pick up a skill or something that’s going to change your career. I feel like it’s as time while I’m blessed everyone’s going to weekend. I know people.

00:17:06:17 – 00:17:26:19
James MacDonald
You have other passions, but as you said, if you’re if you’re passionate about changing your career, your passion about that becoming your career can change the entire trajectory of your life or your career for you. Doing Working awakens for a six month period. Yep, six months investment in that to change your entire trajectory career is worth it, right?

00:17:26:19 – 00:17:27:02
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:17:27:13 – 00:17:29:18
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And plus, it didn’t really feel like work to me.

00:17:29:23 – 00:17:30:04
James MacDonald
Yeah.

00:17:30:14 – 00:17:33:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I mean, it’s what I was doing on the weekend anyway.

00:17:33:12 – 00:17:56:22
James MacDonald
Yeah, it’s that passion, right? Yeah. I find that in particular in that I guess the hardware or that the product space, the people actually build products. They tend to be tinkerers or people that are building that sort of stuff on the weekends are side projects, you know, fixing up their home automation or things like that as well. That passion comes from, yep.

00:17:56:22 – 00:18:20:03
James MacDonald
And as you mentioned, I, you know, up at New Ventures before they were acquired new venture Shout at the Haith we will get Haith on the podcast one day We’ve talked a few times talked about probably half a dozen dozen times just Tommy hasn’t like that but my Haith probably one of the most well-rounded people I’ve come across in, you know, in my networks as well in having that well-rounded skillset.

00:18:20:18 – 00:18:25:02
James MacDonald
The was he by a bit of a mentor role for you as well in that new venture space.

00:18:25:11 – 00:18:52:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah he did. So I worked there for well about four years and it was the longest I think I’d ever been at one particular job for various reasons. But I think he cared about the team and we felt like essentially he had our back and engineering wise and he provided a lot of valuable feedback for our design. So he did these very detailed reviews on the work that we were doing.

00:18:52:17 – 00:19:14:04
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I think the thing that I added to the business at the time I was him and a junior engineer, and the thing that I added to the business was a bit more senior expertise in product management to let go and do other things without managing every single project. And the interactions that I had with him were mainly around these detailed technical reviews and he’s brilliant at that.

00:19:14:04 – 00:19:32:10
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
You can just give him a circuit, he’ll tell you the ins and outs of how it work. That’s what he loves doing as well. I think as the business grew, he was doing less and less engineering and more and more management and business development, and I think he got further and further away from what he really loves doing, which is the engineering side of it.

00:19:32:10 – 00:19:36:09
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And I think you may, I think, engineer. I use a good image of that.

00:19:36:14 – 00:19:56:01
James MacDonald
At the very humor and design industry have come to Newcastle. You give us a bit of a I had come to Newcastle through an acquisition, but can you tell me about how that journey has been for you? And I start there a little bit about design industry then we can gain maybe some of the more exciting stuff you’re working on now.

00:19:56:12 – 00:20:21:06
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So design and industry is Australia’s leading product design development consultancy, so they’ve been predominately doing industrial design over 35 years. It’s got a very impressive portfolio. So your website, the website up before Haigh’s and heaps of projects on there and very big awesome looking projects now, but predominately industrial design, it’s only very recently you started doing electronics, They started that in about three offices.

00:20:21:06 – 00:20:59:16
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So Sydney’s the head office, Melbourne and then now Newcastle. Yeah. And started electronics in the Melbourne office as an experiment went very well and the weak point for their projects was the electronics. So they’re using contractors, third party companies to do all the electronics and running into problems a lot actually. So there were a lot of success stories, but I’m noticing more and more issues starting to creep in, and it was holding up delivery of the projects for the sections they were working on, and so they decided to try doing that in-house because we got a successful model for industrial design and deploying that.

00:20:59:16 – 00:21:34:02
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So electronics started owning more of it and also expanded to the same time in the background. So they were doing this in the background while they started working, giving us work at New Ventures. The connection was between head, now the head of Dean on Newcastle, now John Lincoln and the founder of Dana and Murray Hunter. So they know each other way back when John actually was a customer of, you know, so John and Mary have this connection from way back and John essentially called Murray up and said, I’m working at New Ventures in Electronics is like in Newcastle, you’re got to work for us.

00:21:34:02 – 00:22:01:14
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And I said, Yeah, we’ve got too much work. So they gave us one project to start with, then another, then another, and before we knew it were predominantly doing work forward. And I guess over the years that I was at New Ventures, we were doing lots of little projects, such a that’s what took us from a very small business working out of the telephone, I don’t know, four to being on a moving to our own office and then really start building our internal capability up and sort of accelerate the growth of the business to the point where it was doing less and less engineering.

00:22:01:23 – 00:22:15:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, essentially that’s how we started with Denny. And then as time went on in the background, apparently those talks between Dana and Hayes about just taking them, taking us over because it was going well, NASA’s history.

00:22:15:21 – 00:22:40:05
James MacDonald
Now before. But how has that changed from a I guess an internal employees perspective going through an acquisition and acquisitions in technology can go one of two ways. I get multiple ways that I can have very positive stories and some hardship stories. Has the experience been fair for you going from a smaller company to and a big part in a small company to a, you know, a smaller part in a bigger company?

00:22:41:07 – 00:23:04:01
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
This has actually been really positive. So I did get I went through an acquisition when Silicon Labs bought Zen three at the time it rebranded a few times. So one from academics was entry to Silicon Labs. And at that point in my career, I was really wanting to use Linux day to day. And so all of a sudden you get this corporate laptop with all the antivirus stuff on it and you got to work in a in the company’s way.

00:23:04:22 – 00:23:23:16
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Essentially, we were able to keep operating for six months or so, but then eventually we transitioned and that’s around the time that I left. Silicon Labs itself was a great company, but I just didn’t really want to work in a big corporate again at that time. So fast forward, I think the DNI acquisition of New Ventures came at just the right time for new Ventures size.

00:23:24:01 – 00:23:55:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
We grew quite rapidly. So when I joined, like I said, I was what, the third engineer at the time. And now we’ve got a team of six or so and Melbourne team have about five and essentially we were at the point where we really needed some investment in more equipment, but also to standardize our approach internally. So we all had, you know, some people running Windows, some people running Macs and people running Linux, and we didn’t really have any strict internal standards.

00:23:55:03 – 00:24:18:15
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It was all about just making you efficient at what you’re doing. But the size that we were at, we really needed to start working together a lot more and nailing down what getting into friction points, essentially. So sharing documents internally, we had to take a custom aspect from external sources like or in a word format, for instance, and been out of metadata.

00:24:18:15 – 00:24:42:18
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Send them straight back. So what then I provided was all that infrastructure. So they’ve got this time management system called Pulse. Um, which helps streamline that custom designed that bit of software. So that helped us with all that time shading and project management as well, which was something we were doing manually before, takes up a lot of time, which was fine when you’re doing one or two projects, but when it all started, doing ten gets a lot harder.

00:24:42:21 – 00:25:01:00
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So that system helped a lot. Also bringing in, you know, everyone running windows on the substandard software suites and helped us just get more efficient at doing that mechanical stuff. And you know, had all these document templates which were, you know, now we’ve got to make a packing list template. And that was the way we’re doing it now.

00:25:01:00 – 00:25:20:19
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
We eventually we didn’t really need any of that stuff at the time, but just over time suddenly needed it. The experience was going from a very small company doing just what was needed to outgrowing that mode and then just getting an injection of capital and equipment and infrastructure to allow us to continue building that team.

00:25:20:19 – 00:25:43:00
James MacDonald
Yeah, and us. Yeah. I feel like what you just mentioned then that that that growth the challenges come with growth and scaling up as you build your business and you had success based on the quality of the work you put together but then to scale from there further you need to standardize the processes and, and really build out the, you know, the company or the organization behind just the really talented engineers.

00:25:43:05 – 00:25:59:06
James MacDonald
Yep. I feel like that’s that’s a common thing in the consultancy space where you can win a bunch of work on the quality of the engineers that you have and the work that you deliver. But like that, that infrastructure behind it, having a big company obviously super beneficial.

00:25:59:19 – 00:26:16:07
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I mean, Dana, I isn’t a huge company, but they’re they’ve got a very slick system internally to be able to deliver. And without that, I mean that takes a huge investment like I said, they’ve they’ve developed those tools internally.

00:26:16:07 – 00:26:25:00
James MacDonald
Which I imagine makes your life easier as an engineer as well. You can concentrate on the stuff that you’re good at that you actually enjoy doing as opposed to the other work.

00:26:25:04 – 00:26:38:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yep, definitely. Yeah. So at New Ventures, we try to avoid that as much as possible to lean on the companies that clients are working for to provide us a laptop with all that sort of proprietary software on it. But we were getting to the point where we were having to do more and more of it.

00:26:38:19 – 00:26:44:07
James MacDonald
And the Day and I Growth story, the acquisition happened about 12 months ago now.

00:26:44:07 – 00:26:49:04
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, that’s I was around, I think September ish last year.

00:26:49:06 – 00:26:53:18
James MacDonald
Yeah. And mine is their growth plans for the future.

00:26:53:18 – 00:27:15:21
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Definitely. So we can’t have it fast enough at the moment. The essentially were considered an extension of the Sydney office. So while the Melbourne team have industrial design and electronics capability under the same roof, Sydney industrial designers and they’re expecting us in Newcastle to be the electronics arm of that and they’ve got so much work it’s not even funny.

00:27:15:21 – 00:27:29:02
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
We don’t know how we’re going to do it, so we need people as soon as we can get them, but they can’t just be anyone. We don’t want bums in space. We want really passionate people that love what they’re doing and can essentially take some of the slack at the moment. Yeah.

00:27:29:18 – 00:27:35:16
James MacDonald
And is there any projects in particular that you’re glad to share at the moment that you guys are working on? That might be pretty exciting. Yeah.

00:27:35:16 – 00:27:56:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So a lot of medical staff actually. So we’re also studying for it. Five certified and we’re doing more and more medical products, which I think will be of interest to people studying. There’s medical engineering degrees in uni, and one of these projects is a company called Advanced Cell Making this nuclear isotope generator. Essentially, they’re revolutionizing the treatment of prostate cancer.

00:27:57:12 – 00:28:15:00
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So there’s this particular isotope that’s very short half life in a matter of hours. And so you can’t just make a batch of it and then ship it off and store it somewhere. You have to use it straight away. So you need to generate it on site. And obviously there’s issues with generating nuclear isotopes on site. So eventually come out with this process.

00:28:15:00 – 00:28:49:21
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And then I have been developing a product with them to allow a hospital to generate this particular isotope and then be able to inject that into a patient within hours. I think that’s one of the ten. There’s also a, um, a robotic arm which is essentially a, a printer that’s going to help burn victims regrow their skin. So essentially printing skin onto people and they take this this small patch of skin and I can fit that in this magic solution that then is able to generate up to 30 times that area in new skin for people.

00:28:49:21 – 00:29:15:17
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So it’s like cutting edge medical devices that you can be involved with. Yeah, it’s amazing what what comes through the door there. So we’ve also doing work with Harvard Medical School, so there’s a few robot based projects for that. And there’s also one particular one where we’re trying to identify signatures of bacteria in urine, in catheters in hospitals to be able to detect infections early before they get to a dangerous point.

00:29:15:24 – 00:29:16:07
James MacDonald
Wow.

00:29:16:14 – 00:29:18:06
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So, yeah, so much going on now.

00:29:18:07 – 00:29:23:24
James MacDonald
That’s I guess you’ve probably, you know, growing up Maitland, you probably weren’t thinking about these sorts of projects.

00:29:23:24 – 00:29:33:13
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So I was quite happy developing industrial protection relays. Yeah. And I wouldn’t even dream of working on projects like this. I mean, cutting edge stuff.

00:29:33:14 – 00:29:43:19
James MacDonald
Yeah. All right, quick shout out then. If you are Newcastle based and have an interest in these other hours and say easiest way for them to get in touch with you and maybe what sort of skills would you be looking for?

00:29:44:02 – 00:30:08:08
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, I guess just call the Newcastle office. I mean we’ve got ads out on all the platforms, but yeah, we can make that information available. I think what I’m looking for in people in particular is this passion that’s really important. If you don’t have that, then yeah, I don’t know how you’re going to succeed in this. Yeah, so wanting to really enjoying making things, but also having a really solid fundamental backing.

00:30:08:08 – 00:30:36:19
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So understanding the theory about what we do and how we do it. If that’s electronics, you know, knowing your circuit theory in and out, and you’ll do that naturally by using it. And so in interviews, I tend to ask people a few questions that will tell me whether they’ve used any of their uni or not. And for software, it’s essentially having experience with a bunch of different frameworks, but mainly about planning what the software needs to do before you do it.

00:30:37:05 – 00:30:57:18
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And that’s another important thing that people don’t do, is think about what they’re trying to build before they build it. There’s an element of, you know, prototyping where you need to come up with a concept and then test it out before you go. And you now write this really long product specification. But being able to picture how you’re going to build something will help you ask the right questions that you need to know before you go and build it.

00:30:59:02 – 00:31:21:01
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And the other key attribute I look for is people being humble. So if you come out of university thinking that you know everything and you don’t need to learn any more or you can do the job, then you’ll stagnate very quickly and you might be able to learn what you need to learn. Yeah, I think you’re going to spend an entire career trying to learn everything about either electronics or software or both and fail.

00:31:21:21 – 00:31:30:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
There’s just too much out there to know. So being able to recognize that I think is the only way that you’re actually going to be able to soak up as much as you possibly can.

00:31:30:11 – 00:31:53:16
James MacDonald
And us mean, I think that’s some good advice and, you know, really good advice for people that maybe want to work under at some point. But just advice just in general. Yeah, we’re trying to build a career metaphor for a guy like yourself. I’d say it sounds like it’s a pretty you know, it’s a massive role as the product designers, but, you know, hardware and software element to it, it’s an all encompassing role.

00:31:53:19 – 00:32:01:10
James MacDonald
How do you manage your day? How do you get through? How do you manage? Productivity for Mitchell is tricky.

00:32:01:19 – 00:32:22:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Is far too much work to do. I’ve been using to do lists. They’re not working out so well for me because the to do list keeps growing, growing infinitely. And I was looking at a little motivational video on the weekend actually, which was saying that yeah, to do lists of where to go to die essentially, you know 40% of top that end up on they just don’t get done.

00:32:23:01 – 00:32:47:01
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And what I have been doing lately is using my calendar a lot more and that’s something that they recommended as well. So me and John sit down once a week and talk about all the projects we’ve got on and how are we going to resource them and come up with a bunch of essentially deliverables for that week. And then I go into my calendar and block out sections of time within that calendar where I’m going to work on these things to add up to that number of hours that I need to work on and essentially go off the calendar.

00:32:47:01 – 00:32:59:15
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
At that point, it’s essentially planned out your whole week and it doesn’t always go to plan. But I think having the plan to start with is really important and knowing that if you don’t do the task at this time, then you’ve got to find somewhere else in your week to be able to do it.

00:33:00:12 – 00:33:21:18
James MacDonald
And as you’ve mentioned, obviously you’re passionate about what you do and you do some things outside of work. Do you have some go to resources that that you come back to and that are a podcast you listen to all the time? Or I really book the found a lot of value out of all any of those work that you’ve done that you think I highly recommend, it’s no.

00:33:21:18 – 00:33:39:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Particular resource all the time. I think Google is getting so good now you can just go and search for whatever you need at the time. Yeah, but I’ve used a whole bunch of things over the years. If you find a good book or can get a recommendation for a good book, that’s a great place to start. But I do take a long time to read.

00:33:39:17 – 00:33:41:15
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So yeah, nothing specific comes to mind.

00:33:41:24 – 00:34:04:23
James MacDonald
Now that’s fine. But as you said, Google and YouTube in particular are phenomenal days as the amount of good quality free content out there. Yep, that’s really changing my advice for a younger version of yourself. You’re obviously downline your career and you’ve you’ve gone from know a very diverse career path and going down electronics and teaching yourself software and mobile development, then coming back to a more of a well-rounded role.

00:34:05:11 – 00:34:09:00
James MacDonald
She had advice for a young version of yourself on how to build decree.

00:34:09:05 – 00:34:38:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Don’t be afraid to look dumb. So when I first out of uni, I was petrified about just looking stupid in front of other engineers and trying to get to be considered a senior engineer as as possible. And I think I wasted a lot of learning opportunities in that way. And I met a particular guy and when I was at AMP Control who gave me some really good advice, essentially set me on the path that I’m on today, and that is it’s okay to ask questions.

00:34:38:09 – 00:34:57:09
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It’s the only way you’re going to learn, actually. And I saw so many people making the same mistakes I was that would say something, realize that they don’t know what they’re talking about and then quickly try to backtrack or hide that and then frantically go and Google it later. Yeah, try and learn it. Whereas if I just ask the question, people around them would have said, here’s how it works.

00:34:57:23 – 00:35:03:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And then other people would have also learned at that point as well, asking lots of questions and don’t be afraid to look dumb.

00:35:03:17 – 00:35:16:03
James MacDonald
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people that have those questions, you know, animating them. Put your hand up or ask questions. Many other people sit in the same same room and the same question. Just the fear of actually, as he said, looking down.

00:35:16:12 – 00:35:33:17
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I think the other thing is self-confidence. So it took me a long time to get any sort of self-confidence. You I self into so late twenties, early thirties. And I think that came because I suddenly felt like all of a sudden I could do the job and I didn’t feel like as much of an imposter anymore. But I didn’t need to wait that long.

00:35:33:20 – 00:35:42:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
I think if you can find a way to get that confidence earlier, so you’re just realizing that you’re not perfect.

00:35:42:15 – 00:36:01:10
James MacDonald
And no one’s perfect also. That’s right. You could be sitting there imposter syndrome as a junior or junior maid, not realizing that senior or the late or the company owner also doesn’t know everything and doesn’t have all the answers. I feel like just the acknowledgment of that that not everyone’s got the answers or have the answers to everything.

00:36:01:11 – 00:36:02:06
James MacDonald
Because one way.

00:36:02:10 – 00:36:06:11
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah. And they probably worried about um, being found out as an imposter as well.

00:36:06:16 – 00:36:22:15
James MacDonald
Yeah. I feel like that transparency goes a long way though. I feel like my experiences when somebody is willing to put their hand up and say, Hey, I don’t know that I’ll come back to you and answer that. You might not know actually that transparency on. I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ll find out and come back to you guys a long way.

00:36:22:16 – 00:36:50:12
James MacDonald
Yeah, definitely as I And yeah, it’s a lot easier to respect somebody on the back of that, right? Yep, Mate, we mentioned YouTube and Google as a nice and easy place to go for learning new information. You mentioned earlier in the podcast today about mentors being another way to help, I guess, juniors grow in their career. Have you had any mentors in particular that you found super interesting or valuable that have changed the the career shape for you?

00:36:51:13 – 00:37:15:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah. So the mentoring I had early on in my career was vital in setting me up for the rest of my career, and that was engineers that were really good at what they did explaining things and the process of engineering to me recently, um, I’ve needed more help on the business of things, you know, getting requirements and also managing projects effectively and dealing with customers.

00:37:15:03 – 00:37:34:02
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
That’s really hard to do and that’s something that I figured out during the New Adventures Day is that I needed to work on a lot because I worked on a lot of the technical stuff up until that point, and that’s a big weak spot in my experience. So John Lincoln, my boss at the moment, he joined New Ventures as a general manager and he’s the original connection, as I mentioned before today.

00:37:34:02 – 00:38:03:04
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And I and he’s been incredibly valuable in teaching me a lot about how to deal with these client relationships and managing projects to be able to get good outcomes and, you know, focusing on deliverables. And he’s got quite interesting background himself. He he’s been involved with big movies like The Matrix and did the soundtrack for that. Also Heat and The Firm and him and his team won got awarded Oscars for scientific contributions to feature films.

00:38:03:10 – 00:38:24:03
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Wow. Very impressive background. Used to work at a company or run it called Fairlight, and that was he worked in the US for a long time, essentially joining New Ventures because he was bored and we were so lucky that he joined because he took us from a small startup into something that the thing I was interested in and also the work that we’re doing now, it’d be I don’t think we could do it without John.

00:38:24:12 – 00:38:38:07
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
So he’s helping guide the entire team in the client facing part of it and essentially managing their client relationship. And I can’t overstate the value that that adds oversight. It’s just incredibly valuable experience to work with him.

00:38:38:14 – 00:39:08:01
James MacDonald
Well, I find really interesting conversations I have with people in Newcastle, the more talented people that are on earth that most people don’t even know about. Right. You know, it’s more it’s when Oscar’s, you know, contributing to science movies like it’s phenomenal and and most people don’t know of these or of the talent or the skills that are local around that how if they knew the right people to ask that that is the people that you can ask the questions for and they have a wealth of knowledge.

00:39:08:04 – 00:39:30:12
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yep, definitely. And the other thing he’s shown me over the years is, um, the importance of relationships, not just client relationships, but also suppliers. Um, so we’re in an age where it’s very easy to buy things online now and you have to talk to anyone to be able to do it, and you end up just being what he calls a catalog engineer and just, you know, going, looking at a blast and parts, they arrive, you build the thing, but it limits you to what everyone else can get access to.

00:39:30:15 – 00:39:51:02
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Mm hmm. He comes from a background of doing cutting edge electronics in a very high end audio equipment. You can’t just use off the shelf bits for that. He was talking directly to the silicon manufacturers and getting chips designed for him, or at least getting early access to new designs so that you feel the time you came to market with your product.

00:39:51:08 – 00:40:19:23
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
It was a brand new chip that no one else had, and he’s shown me in the team that it’s not actually that hard to strike up These relationships. Essentially just need to reach out and talk to the suppliers instead of saying talking to a distributor as an annoyance or a sale. Yeah, they’re trying to make look at it both ways where you can get access to like early silicon that no one else has access to or at least be able to talk to people that can talk directly with, you know, vendors in China, for instance.

00:40:20:01 – 00:40:26:05
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
And if you know what’s coming onto the market before anyone else, all of out and you’ve just got an advantage that no one else has. And all it takes is a conversation.

00:40:26:09 – 00:40:42:21
James MacDonald
Yeah, as much as business and the world moves more digital, I feel like that genuine relationship building and those conversations that I had, person to person goes a long way and can be still a big, big differentiator in business.

00:40:43:05 – 00:40:47:07
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Definitely. I mean, we’re all people, the end of the day. Yeah, we work best by talking with each other now.

00:40:47:07 – 00:41:03:23
James MacDonald
I completely agree man made for those. And it might be more in particular to the juniors because I feel like you provide a real lot of advice for for junior engineers in trying to build their careers today. But for anyone in general that would like in touch with you, what’s the easiest way for somebody to reach out and have conversation?

00:41:03:23 – 00:41:09:14
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Well, I’m at LinkedIn. Call the Office Semi-nomadic and leave those details with you, but.

00:41:09:17 – 00:41:11:16
James MacDonald
I’ll put that in the show notes on our website.

00:41:12:10 – 00:41:19:05
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Essentially, that’s it. I think I used to go to a lot of meet ups haven’t lately and they they’re starting to start back up again on the circuit again.

00:41:19:05 – 00:41:33:09
James MacDonald
Yeah I think the made up saying start again in Newcastle is always really strong. Yeah for many, many years Kev. It obviously had a massive detrimental effect to that, but the made up signs are definitely coming back, which I think is beneficial for the Newcastle tech community.

00:41:33:18 – 00:41:42:16
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
Yeah, yeah. I mean I used to have too many to go to and then like everyone was getting a little bit tired of it, at least the people I spoke to. But I think they, they kind of get back out again.

00:41:42:16 – 00:41:47:21
James MacDonald
And I appreciate you coming on there on the show today and taking your time. So thank you.

00:41:48:00 – 00:41:48:20
Mitchell Bright Lead Electronics Engineer at D+I Newcastle
All right. Thanks for having me.

00:41:48:20 – 00:41:50:21
James MacDonald
Just.