From what to serve at Whisky Club to solving tech challenges - what Antony loves about Iress

From what to serve at Whisky Club to solving tech challenges - what Antony loves about Iress

Antony Nevis is a Technical Lead at Iress, working on the software that financial advisers around the world rely on. Outside of solving tech challenges, Antony is also the ‘unofficial’ president of the Iress Whisky Club, which brings together whisky lovers across our global offices to sample different whiskies every few months. We spoke to Antony about what’s kept him at Iress for over 14 years.

Tell us about your role at Iress - what do you enjoy most about it?

I’m a Tech Lead, and Tech Leads at Iress have the great job of helping improve not just the technical aspect of Iress software, but also helping individual engineers improve their skills through coaching and mentoring.

What got you into the technology industry?

From a young age I liked to solve problems and build things. When I was introduced to computers I loved how computers could help people by making life easier and solving certain problems faster and more accurately.

Tell us about the Iress Whisky Club

The Iress Whisky club started over 8 years ago (nearly 10) when a group of us got together to socialise and taste whisky. Now it has grown much bigger and it’s one of the key enablers for socialisation at Iress.

Everyone at Iress is welcome to join, especially if you are new to Iress - the Whisky Club is a great place to socialise with colleagues and make new friends.

You’ve been at Iress for 14 years - wow! What has kept you here for so long?

There has never been a dull moment during all of my years at Iress. In the last 14 years I’ve seen Iress change a lot. In the tech space we have moved from traditional software deployments to datacenters into the Cloud, helping us to improve speed, scale and quality. Change has not been limited to the tech space - our ways of working have changed as well.

It’s a friendly and accessible place where you can come to work and find the CEO sitting at the desk next to you.

What got you so passionate about whisky (aside from it being delicious!)? If you were to pick one whiskey to recommend to someone, what would it be?

Every whisky has its own smell and taste and being a person who likes food, especially the tasty kind, I was drawn to whisky. Being part of the Iress Whisky Club increased my passion for whisky.

My favourite whisky is Starward. I might be a bit biased here, but Starward is an Australian distillery based in Melbourne that makes great whisky.

What’s been your career highlight since you started working here in 2008?

Besides the Whisky Club (haha!), I would say it’s the Global Iress Hackathon. The Iress Hackathon is a way for Iress’ people to come together around the world and use technology to solve problems and find new ways to help the financial services industry. In 2021, 177 ideas were generated through Iress’ Hackathon and we had NFT - digital art as a new form of trophy and participant recognition.

I’ve had the privilege to be part of teams that have won regional prizes in the Hackathon a couple of times. I’ve also won second place in the precursor to the Hackathon - the winning ideas were: (1) Sticky notes, which is a feature that lets users of Xplan create virtual post-it notes in Xplan on various screens, and (2) Uncaged, which is a software health and development metrics tracking tool. It is a great feeling to see your idea come to life and become a real product or service used by real people.

How would you describe the culture at Iress in 3 words?

Fun, helpful, inclusive.

What’s your favourite piece of tech?

What’s the favourite piece of tech I own? I would say it’s the smartphone - who doesn't love their smartphone? It’s sometimes smarter than me. I’ve been on the smartphone wagon even before Apple released its first iPhone. My first smartphone was the HP iPAQ hw6515. Smartphones have changed the way we do a lot of things, like how we make calls, finding people in emergencies, banking, etc.. to name a few.

Hear more about Antony’s life at Iress here or visit: https://www.iress.com/join-us/careers/.