Life at New Relic: Leading with a Bold Spirit

Today’s “Life at New Relic” post features Kav Pather, a Sydney-based Senior Programmability Architect who joined New Relic two years ago. Prior to that, Kav was a New Relic customer at Tabcorp, where he was a technical lead until making the jump to New Relic and becoming one of the first hires in our Sydney office.

New Relic: What has it been like growing your career here?

Kav Pather: I’ve grown my career at New Relic by being bold. It’s been exciting to tackle various challenges and drive projects throughout my time here. One of the first challenges I overcame was the product-delivered implementation of StatsD, which was not up to industry standards as advised by our key customers. I redeveloped it 18 months ago, and now the product team has adopted my solution as their supported standard. I also developed a codeless integration solution called New Relic Flex, an application-agnostic, all-in-one tool that allows you to collect metric data from a wide variety of sources.

Additionally, when New Relic introduced programmability and Nerdpacks, I developed Cloud Optimize, which became recognized by Computerworld as a top-rated cloud optimization tool. Thanks to this, I was invited to a code retreat in Chicago, working on the new programmability platform. When programmability launched, I was responsible for 25% of the Nerdpacks developed and delivered at Futurestack. Since then, I have continued to add more.

Outside of work achievements, I've built great relationships with our CEO, Lew Cirne, and the product teams. I've helped many Relics across the globe, which has helped grow my career.

New Relic: What made you want to join our company?

Kav: Multiple factors attracted me to New Relic, including its people and product. Our CEO, an engineer at heart with a businessman’s smarts, and Jill Macmurchy, Vice President Customer Solution Group APJ, a knowledgeable and nice individual I had interacted with as a customer, inspired me. In addition to these individuals, I was always working in the observability space and appreciated New Relic’s toolset. The role sounded somewhat fitting with my existing knowledge and skill set. I was also excited to be the first architect in our Sydney office, exploring new territory in the sales space and a change from the typical engineering job.

New Relic: What do you like most about working with our team?

Kav: The people and our culture—I have been fortunate to have great colleagues, friendships, and business relationships.

New Relic: What are some things that you think makes this a great place to work?

Kav: Our people and culture, working on exciting tech all the time, and engagement with particular product teams all make New Relic a great place to work. I also like that I still get to keep coding, with the balance [of my time] focused on sales.

New Relic: What are three tips for success in your role?

Kav:

• Never stop learning and fail fast.
• Always be bold, and push the boundaries.
• Don't silo yourself just because you can work from home. Use Slack, pick up the phone or hop on a BlueJeans, and talk to your colleagues.

New Relic: Which company value do you identify with the most?

Kav: I'm bold, I’m driven by my passion for delivering great customer experiences, and I've found that being bold has helped me make that happen.

New Relic:  What is one thing that stands out to you the most about New Relic’s culture and why?

Kav: When I joined the Sydney office, there was a family feeling and looking out for each other. Everybody is really nice!

New Relic: What’s a project you’re particularly proud of?

Kav: I’m particularly proud of my development of Flex. I developed Flex, as a way to create codeless integrations that anyone could use; it grew extremely fast, it eclipsed some product developments and incited them to do more for our customers, which is the best outcome possible. I interacted with many Relics and customers to collect feedback and create improvements, which helped build many relationships. A highlight comment from Lew was, "Flex is the future."

Developing Flex definitely created some waves internally but reached a pinnacle where the Product team decided to support, maintain, and GA it as an official product-delivered integration. As a Relic, I’m proud to see such a great customer outcome from the collaboration between field and engineering teams. Thanks to this, my work exists and runs on thousands of customers worldwide, both big and small, and I find that just amazing.

When we announced Flex, we had a mini launch party, and I received an engraved Swiss Army knife with my name; this holds a lot of sentimental value to me as Flex was always described as a Swiss Army knife-style integration. This gesture further adds to the culture and is an example of the thoughtful people we have at New Relic.

New Relic: What three tips would you give to someone interested in joining the company?

• Speak to another Relic.
• Check Glassdoor—it really is a great place to work!
• Read about our CEO, Lew.

We are at an exciting time in the company and currently hiring across various geographies and departments.