“Part of it is also bringing more skills into the nation as well. I’ve taught cybersecurity at UNSW for 12 years now and some of the best and brightest we have, had to go to Silicon Valley for careers. We want to make sure opportunities for them exist in Australia.”
The move to rewind decades-long outsourcing arrangements follows a similar move by NAB in 2019. At the time these deals were made, there were fewer digital transactions and everything was still run off mainframes.
Of the 250 engineers, mostly hired in the June quarter, about 72 per cent of the recruits are based in CBA’s home city of Sydney and 18 per cent are in Melbourne, with other Australian cities home to the rest.
In the general manager ranks, almost 40 per cent of new hires came from other big banks, while 23 per cent came from energy and telecommunications companies.
In the lower ranks, which comprise the bulk of the 250 people, the bank did not have figures on which industries the new employees came from, but said it was having success hiring tech talent from a range of companies including consulting firms Accenture and DXC Technology, as well as smaller banks and financial services firms.
Ex start-up hires
The bank is also giving the tech giants like Atlassian – which is going on its own hiring spree, recruiting 1032 new research and development staff – some competition by snapping up former start-up employees amid the current lay-offs.
One new CBA hire, Dat Vu, said he joined after working at three start-ups that went through layoffs in a year.
Mr Vu has been working for CBA as a senior engineer for three months but said he had never intended to apply for a role at a bank.
“I worked for a start-up that was growing very fast, they grew from a very small team to a company of about 120 people, and then one day they made about 60 people redundant,” he said.
“From that point on, even though I was still interested in working for a start-up because there were exciting things building a product from the ground up, I would feel this pressure because there were periods where the company couldn’t receive funding from investors … and we were all let go.
“Three months in, CBA is a mix of corporate and start-up culture. The way that leaders plan and make decisions and pass them on to the team is corporate-like, but within the team I can feel like I’m working for a start-up, you still get opportunities to explore a lot of things … and you’re given a task, but you still have authority to make decisions on your own.”
Like Mr Vu, new CBA distinguished engineer Maggie Shi comes from a tech background.
Ms Shi worked for Meta before joining the bank and said the systems and processes were better established at the tech giants, but she was lured to the bank on the premise of tackling a challenge as big as modernising its tech stack.
“This is one of the largest organisations in this country, so if I can make a bit of a contribution here, I will be extremely proud of myself,” she said.
Cognisant of the need to retain talent in the tight talent market, Mr Hopper said the bank wanted to emulate a tech-like culture, in which the happiness and engagement of staff was maximised.
“We believe that’s the best short-term unlock [to get the best out of staff] right now, not just for CBA but for all tech companies,” he said.
Former Westpac employee Justene McDowell is one of the new general managers hired by the bank.
She has also worked with ANZ and Wesfarmers previously, and was head-hunted by CBA.
“I came to CBA because it’s the biggest acquirer in Australia. So, there’s investment there around modernisation … and it has a lot of opportunities from a technology perspective,” she said.
Mr Hopper said the bank received thousands of applications for tech jobs each year, substantially more than the number of roles on offer.
Of the hires, 199 were male, 48 were women and three identified as gender-neutral.
Mr Hopper said the bank’s diversity of its tech team was broadly reflective of the number of female graduates coming out of university courses, but the bank was taking steps to improve its diversity, including engaging with the Tech Council of Australia, partnering with the Victorian government to recruit talent for the new Melbourne tech hub via the state government’s Digital Jobs program, and creating pathways for women into tech roles from industries with adjacent skill sets, such as user interface design.
Mr Hopper would not comment directly on how many new staff CBA would try to recruit in 2023, but said the bank remained ambitious, but would only hire the right people.
“There are people at certain points in their life who aren’t right for what we’re doing now. Sometimes people are looking for the risk of a fintech, or a start-up,” he said. “It’s a two-way conversation. We also can’t have any lone wolves. In an organisation of our size, lone wolves don’t work … you need team collaborators.”
