Living regionally with a career in tech

Nick spent the first thirty years of his career in Sydney in various business management roles. At the age of 55, Nick decided to take a break from work and make a transition into tech.

Nick Collett, Product Manager, Phocas

While travelling around Europe in a campervan, he completed a Graduate Diploma of Data Science online at Monash University. Once back in Australia, he followed his wife to Orange in regional New South Wales, reached out to a recruiter and found his current position as a Product Manager at Phocas.

Phocas is a business intelligence software company that has a research and development team of 40 people based in Orange.

Nick is an avid advocate of the regional town that has a surprising burgeoning tech sector. While having the opportunity to live in a place with great food and wine, he also loves the variety of challenging problems he gets to work on in his role. He works closely with the management and the tech team, combining his skills in business management with his tech passions.

In Nick’s own words:

“My primary role is to talk to customers about how they’re using our software product and understand the problems that they’ve got that we can potentially solve.

“It’s very much a bridging role between a business problem or a customer problem and then a solution that the tech guys can create and making sure the tech guys build a pear instead of building an apple. If we’ve asked for a pear sort of making sure they build a pear, right?

“For me, one of the striking things about moving into the tech industry is the universal availability of information – there’s so many resources on YouTube and Stack Overflow.

“The second thing is the willingness of people in the tech industry to impart their knowledge and share their knowledge with people who are transitioning. That’s blown me away, as well as just how willing people are to take the time to explain things.”


Explore pathways into tech via our Australia’s Tech Jobs Opportunity – Cracking the Code to Australia’s Best Jobs report.