Some superheroes come from a planet far away, or were bitten by a radioactive spider. Our superhero is a father of 4 from the suburbs of Wellington, based in our Dunedin office.
Mark ‘Goldie’ Goldfinch is Modica’s Head of Engineering. His critical role involves ensuring backups work, taking care of the network, and everything else operational and functional to ensure our products function quickly and safely.
His superpower is knowing how to achieve a balance at work and the best way to balance our impact on the planet.
Work-life balance
One of Goldie’s passions is to encourage the team and the wider organisation not to work crazy hours. He believes it’s important to normalise work being done in work hours. “Not at Modica, but across the industry, tech is infamous for chewing people up and spitting them out, and that is not OK. Working crazy hours is not normal, not required”. Instead he encourages others to work smarter, more efficiently and stay super focussed during business hours. “Overdoing it, sacrificing your health or time with your family, is ultimately a terrible way to live”.
Goldie also asserts that working crazy hours isn’t good business. “It doesn’t result in top performance, but rather can lead to mistakes and burn out”. For example, as Head of Engineering, Goldie encourages the team to deploy during the day (rather than at night), without causing disruptions for clients.
With a super competitive employment market, employees can be picky about where they work - so offering a healthy, balanced work environment is a big plus. “The challenge is on the industry to offer an appropriate culture and work environment that reflects what employees want and should have”. Goldie hopes working smarter becomes the new normal in tech, and Modica’s success is testament to this approach.
Responsibility to our children
Humans are creatures of habit. Those habits over the past 50-60 years have done massive damage to our planet. Ever pragmatic, Goldie says “Habits are hard to change, but we have to think about our kids. What is the planet we hand to the next generation going to look like and what did we do to help the situation?”. He believes everyone has a role to play and each person should do what they can.
Not everyone has the ability to utilise solar power or set up a battery unit, but so many can and should do their part. It’s still early days with electric vehicles. “There are some inconveniences with these new vehicles, but prices are coming down, there are Government incentives available and the technology is improving rapidly”. For those who are worried about charging electric cars at home, Goldie suggests that “if you’ve got power to your garage then you are 90% of the way to setting up your charging station”. He advocates starting small, “Sit down with your children and discuss the environment and their concerns. Then plan out some small steps you can take, review these and make bolder efforts”. Goldie is confident that there will soon be advancements to electric battery recycling, carbon recovery and maybe even the achievement of fusion power.
Whether it’s helping others working more efficiently or helping to reduce our impact on the environment, Goldie sees a problem and works hard to achieve an elegant solution. That’s pretty super to us.