Most people that pour some love into their career reach a point where they have their pick of great jobs. When those people choose Digistorm (and they seem to, quite a bit!), we’re happy as clams. Case in point: Sir Antonio Jhun, our Lead Web Developer.
A gun web developer with incredible leadership skills, Antonio is an integral cog in our website wheel. He sat down with us and chatted about running, learning, and life at Digistorm.
Buenos dias, Antonio! What do you do at the Storm?
I'm a lead web developer. My team and I focus on websites for K-12 schools and believe in making school websites that are easy to use, secure and beautiful for teachers and parents. I facilitate my team to accelerate their work and accelerate their special skills in this space.
We also make marketing websites for internal projects and handle all the new features that our teachers and parents want to have on their websites.
How did your web development journey start?
That's an interesting question. I always go really deep once I put my mind to something, so when I was in high school, I guess 17 or something like that, somebody asked me to build a website for their small tutorial course. It was very basic, I don't want to even show that one! But that got me thinking, how can I make this website better? So through my academic years, I developed my skills around website development and I got into multiple marketing campaigns to hone my skills to make high-converting websites.
And now I'm in Digistorm! I'm blessed to be working with so many talented people, so at the same time, I get to learn and share my knowledge.
Have you always been on the Gold Coast?
Actually, no! I was born in South Korea and then during my academic years I flew to Wellington, New Zealand and also to Melbourne to hone my skills in web development. After finishing my academic years, I flew down to Tasmania to explore nice food and the rugged nature there. Then I flew all the way up to Townsville, which was a little bit humid, but it was so beautiful and the weather was so nice.
Now I'm down on the Gold Coast where nice beaches are close by and I can even go to the mountains. So just such a great place to live and go because the location is very close to my house so it's very easy to commute. That’s one of the good things about the Gold Coast, there's not much traffic here, so it's very easy to get to work. I'm stress free, so that's really good.
The office is walking distance to the beach, which means at lunchtime any member of Digistorm can just stroll down to the beach just to ease our minds. It helps us to get back to our work and focus on our tasks.
Can you tell us a bit about your team and its dynamics?
We have six talented web developers in our team. My direct managers are Tim and Chris, who I personally think have created our company culture. It's all about being committed, having fun, and being competitive. We’re always friendly to each other and we respect each other. I think that helps to bond the whole team.
How’s the work-life balance for you?
I think work-life balance is really great. If you need to pick up kids in the morning, they give you the option to stay back a little bit. Or, if you need to take your pet to the vet, you can trade your hours around it. There's lots of flexibility.
How’s the company culture?
It brings everyone together and allows us to think together. A company can mean literally human company, which is needed! We build a product together and everyone has specialties in different areas. The Digistorm company culture helps us to shine our specialties and share ideologies and that shapes how we deliver the product to our client.
I believe having a team culture is really important, especially to have the same vision and mission to achieve. Then everyone's chipping in and trying to help each other out. We're not trying to isolate ourselves. We look after each other and say, ‘Hey, do you need any help? Is this something I can take on?’ It helps us to bond and build a cohesive team, especially when there are lots of projects going on.
You’re part of the Digistorm Run Club. Tell us about that!
I started this last year with Amy, Timo and Ricardo. I've never done any long-distance running before, but they were saying “we have a few people going for a marathon this year, do you want to join for like a 10km run?” And I was like, “I'll go for 5 kilometres, I'll give it a try”. And then something happened to build up to ten kilometres. We started a run club and began practising maybe once a week on the Friday before we came to work—a run along the beach towards Burleigh Heads and back.
Sometimes we jump in the water to just cool ourselves down and then have a shower and start work. It actually really helps to plan my tasks before the work itself, because when you run, you empty your head. It helped with my work and was also a great way to collaborate with different people in different departments.
How does the whole hybrid home/office thing work for you?
Yeah, great. Back in COVID, we had to stay at home. It was a different feeling back then. It was great to work from home—to wear anything I like and just use my time to deliver anything—but I found I really like to have time with people.
So having a hybrid work environment actually helps. We get to work from the office two or three times a week and on other days we get to work from home. It's a really great balance. You can do your own thing, manage your own time.
Talk us through your professional development at Digistorm?
Digistorm has really good professional development training courses in-house. If you put your mind to it, they will support you to learn and hone your skills.
Tim and Chris thankfully sent me to a leadership course. It was a 3-month course to learn about myself; how to manage myself, how to manage people and also how to forecast the big picture. It was a really fun thing to learn.
In the last employee survey we did, there were a few items that came up and one of them was that employees would like to have the opportunity to learn and develop their professional career. They actually listened and started running internal presentation training and interview training, and there are opportunities for us to attend outside training, too.
Any final words you’d like to leave us with?
Having these people around me is very important and very rewarding. Whatever you do here, you're not alone; there are always people to support you. Whether it's to do with personal hobbies, personal things going on in your life, or professional things. There is always someone you can ask for help and there's always someone who inspires you.
Our company is growing and we’re expanding, so I'm really excited to see our K-12 school websites going abroad. I'm really excited about Digistorm’s future.