Meet the Magnopians — Nigel Budden
We sit down with Magnopus Senior Engineer, Nigel Budden, to find out how he ended up pursuing this career, the most important lesson he’s learned, and the key skills needed to succeed in this field.
Nigel Budden is an Australian-born and LA-based software developer. With a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) focused in Software Engineering from Edith Cowan University, Nigel has over 12 years of experience in development.
What do you do at Magnopus?
I am a senior engineer that’s currently on the cloud-hosted services (CHS) team. We develop the backbone code base that allows us to create shared experiences. We provide multiplayer and user services and all of the things that allow the client team to make amazing stuff.
What made you decide to pursue a career in this field?
Well, I’ve always loved computers. I grew up in a little tiny country town in Australia where my dad worked at a satellite tracking station, so I got introduced to technology at an early age. I’ve been doing it for most of my life. I have a few side tracks here and there, but it’s pretty much-been dev-land the whole time!
In terms of coming to L.A. and working for Magnopus, well, that was a random happy accident. After deciding to try to get a job in the US, my wife said “you’ve got X amount of times that you can get knocked back. And then after that, we’re not going to pursue this dream anymore”. So that’s what we did, and I was being interviewed at Facebook, Amazon, and Magnopus all at the same time. I obviously chose Magnopus, and it’s been an incredible five years since.
What, or who inspires you?
From an internal work perspective, my teammates inspire me. They’re all super, super-intelligent, and really good at what they do. The fact that everyone works so well together and that we can just get in and create crazy, cool stuff is always inspiring.
The other big inspiration would have to be my wife. She’s just an amazingly strong woman and supportive of me, but at the same time, she likes to make sure that I’m down-to-earth. So yeah, she definitely keeps me in check.
What three skills are essential for anyone in your role?
Firstly, I would have to say communication. Especially now with more remote work, it’s super important to communicate what’s going on in tasks, get feedback, and ask for help when you’re struggling. It’s not as simple these days as just getting up and walking over to someone’s desk and having a quick chat.
Secondly, an ability to think outside the box. At Magnopus, we tend to look at something and go, that may be what it’s designed for but…let’s make it do this instead. Often we’ve got to look at something and go, “well, what we’re being asked to do is hard, but how can we make it work in such a way that it’s going to be useful and enjoyable?’’. It’s probably one of the biggest skills that the majority of the people in the company have, is that they’re able to just say, “Hey, someone said we can’t do this. Let’s prove them wrong.”
Lastly, time management. Managing the tasks that you’ve been given and being able to pivot when things come up. But also managing the boundaries between work and home life while working from home. You need to manage your time so you make sure you’re not just constantly sitting in front of the computer working. Recently, I’ve been taking time to sit outside and enjoy a cuppa, and it eases a lot of mental stress.
What has been your proudest moment while working at Magnopus?
The proudest moment, I think, would be the release of the Expo Dubai Xplorer experience. This digital experience for the World Expo allowed anyone, anywhere to experience the magic of the event with friends via a live digital twin and AR. So many different colleagues and partners across the globe worked together to get this phenomenal project up and running, so seeing it completed and being enjoyed by so many people definitely is up there as the proudest moment.
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your career?
I’d have to say that there are two big ones and they sort of tie together. The first is: never assume that the code that you’ve written is working correctly. Don’t go looking for problems in other code until you’re certain that what you’ve written is working as it should. It’s very easy to be able to go out, point fingers, and say, “hey, this isn’t working because of this”, but in reality, it’s either the fact you haven’t understood how that code works or you’ve made assumptions on how that code is going to interact with your code.
And secondly, this ties into the first one: code is just code. It can be awesome code, it can be crappy code, but it’s just code and there shouldn’t be any emotional attachment to it. When someone’s going over your work and provides a better way of doing something or points out that there are some flaws in the way that it’s been written, don’t take it personally. It’s not an attack on you. It’s just trying to produce the best piece of functionality that we can. It’s just words on a screen!
