This week in our ‘5 questions with…’ series, we put the spotlight on Ben Findlay, Head of Software.
Q.1 – What excites you most about Gill and your role here?
Gill is clearly going through something of a revival right now, with some recent additions to the talent pool and some healthy and strong changes to the way we work. The software running on our devices has a huge impact on how our customers interact with them and perceive their quality; getting it right is going to make a big difference to our growth. It’s exciting to find myself in a position where I can influence this, getting to understand our customers and meet or exceed their needs.
Q.2 – Tell us a little about what you do at Gill.
My role here at Gill is Head of Software. What this means in reality is that I manage the people who put the software into all our devices. At the heart of each product there is always a microcomputer responsible for converting the electrical measurements into meaningful human readable, understandable, and accurate data.
That’s a challenging task, and the solutions can take months to get right. The team here have honed their skills over a lifetime and are experts at what they do. The code they create is one of the essential elements of everything we do. It’s a privilege to manage and hopefully inspire them.
Q.3 – What’s the most useful skill you’ve picked up in your career, and did you expect to need it?
Listening. It’s a joy to spend time with the engineers, understanding how much effort needs to be applied to get the best results, what needs to be done, and finding the right way to do things. Although that sounds a bit generic, in the software world it’s surprisingly hard to see the big picture in one go, and taking in information from those around you is absolutely vital.
It’s not a skill typically associated with engineering, and so is probably forgotten about, but it has done me well over my career as a manager.
Q.4 – How do you see the industry changing in the next five years?
Without a doubt AI is now making a huge difference to the way we work. Its ability to create software on demand is astonishing, and extremely valuable. For those of us that adopt it we can become vastly more efficient, and it will leave others behind. This has helped electronics and software to become commodity items, with industry standard, off the shelf solutions available for almost every challenge.
In response, we will be creating less from scratch ourselves, and just assembling components from other suppliers more and more. That does allow us to concentrate on solving unique problems that become our core technology, while becoming more effective and efficient at delivering new products.
Q.5 -Tell us something about yourself that might surprise us.
I’ve flown hang-gliders on and off for the past thirty years, taking to the skies just by running off the edge of a cliff with an oversized kite holding me up. My favourite place and times for this are in the hills of Scotland with their wild and empty landscapes stretching out forever. The cross-over from aviation to weather measurements is enormous, and I’ve found my knowledge of meteorology to be extremely useful and applicable in my new role.
