Welcome to REA, Matt Baddour

In our new People of REA blog series, we're chatting to and welcoming newbies by finding out a little more about their career experience and what brought them to REA.

We recently welcomed Matt Baddour to REA Group, who has joined us as a Product Manager in Data Services. In this interview, Matt shares his journey to making a big career change into Product Management with us, and why REA is the place for him.

1. What attracted you to REA?

I hadn't heard of REA before I moved to Australia earlier this year. I did a coding bootcamp here in Melbourne and I was looking to work for a company with a strong emphasis on engineering and product. REA has a reputation in this city as a great place to work from a tech and culture perspective. I had some conversations with people inside and outside the company before applying and all signs pointed to REA as the place to be!

2. Tell us about your career background?

Like many others, I had a roundabout journey into tech. I studied English Literature at university and ended up working at a cloud monitoring start-up writing technical docs out of school. That led to a customer support role which then eventually led me into technical program management. Along the way I learned how to code to sharpen my technical skills and eventually realised where I really wanted to be was in product management.

3. What was your previous role?

I spent six years at Google before this. I started out in the US in Boston and NYC as a Program Manager in GCP working on cloud monitoring, logging & alerting. I moved to London after a few years and worked with UX designers and UI Developers on internal tooling for SREs.

4. What are you looking forward to most in your new role?

I've recently made a big change in my career, and REA feels like a fantastic place for me to grow and learn. I'm new to product management and to data as a service and everyone I've worked with at the company so far has been incredibly patient and willing to teach at a moment's notice.

Also, coming from a massive company like Google it was easy to sometimes feel like a cog in the machine. It's been refreshing to see the clear connection between the work I'm doing, how it helps different squads around REA, and how it ultimately impacts our customers and consumers.

5. What is your superpower?

I'm good at keeping myself and those around me calm and focused, particularly in high pressure situations. It sometimes surprises me because I'm not always like that in my personal life, but I always try my best to stay focused at work.

Welcome to the REA family, Matt!

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.