Meet the Clickers – Pete De-Ath

Hello all and welcome back to Meet the Clickers! For Episode 50 I sat down with Infrastructure Manager Pete to discuss his dabble in the music scene and Japanese handheld games!

Hi Pete, I hope you’re good! Could you tell us all how you started at Click please?

Hi Alex, I’m good thank you. I used to work at a car dealership and we switched over to using the Click Dealer DMS system back in 2005. This is where I first met Gerry!

Skip ahead a few years, I began taking on some freelance work for Click, until one day in 2015 Gerry gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come down and sit with Graeme, the single developer at the time, I went in, had a chat and started there the next day!

Side Note: When Gerry called me I was actually self-employed, I had some work on for another client at the time, but they called me and told me not to come back!

Sounds good. Interesting! How has your job changed since you started with us?

I’ve bounced around Tech a lot in my three years at Click. I originally started working alongside Graeme as a PHP Developer, from there I progressed to New Product Manager and finally I took up the role of Infrastructure Manger. In my current role I’ve helped to completely rebuild our infrastructure from the ground up!

Any plans for your birthday next month?

I’ve never celebrated my birthday, so my answer would have to be no, just another day for me!

So, should we give your presents to charity or? If you were stranded on a desert island, what 3 items would you want to take?

Do we have power on the island? If we don’t I’d probably take a solar panel a battery and mobile phone (maybe a satellite phone). Then I’d be getting out of there.

Practical as always! What’re you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?

I’d probably say Neural Networks, I doubt many people have heard of it. It’s basically a biologically-inspired programming paradigm which enables a computer to learn from observational data. There are so many possibilities with it too, from gaming to fraud detection to colouring in black and white photos! I promise it’s nothing like Skynet!

I’ve heard about this! I can’t wait to see where it takes us. I’ve been told you’ve got a pretty crazy sleeping pattern, is it true?

It’s more of a lack of sleeping pattern really, I’ve been improving lately but I’ve got a long way to go! I’ve been tracking it with an app recently and last month I think my average was 2.2 hours per night. It seems crazy but think about all those extra hours for my productivity! Some of my best work comes when you’re getting your beauty sleep.

What three guests would make up your perfect dinner party?

I’ve given this a lot of thought and it’s a bit of a nerd fest! It’d be incredibly interesting, but I imagine there would be a lot of disagreements too! It’d be Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I’d love to know more about the two Steve’s early days!

What trend do you want to see make a return?

Tamagotchis!

They’re great fun until you forget to feed them! Could you tell me about ‘the donk’?

In my earlier days I attended the Harmony Youth Project in Bolton. I learnt to produce music tracks there and I happened to work on the track ‘Put a Donk on It’ by Blackout Crew. “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah that’s sick”.

A bit before my time but still a classic! If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I don’t know really, I’ve already made the move from Bolton to Stoke so I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon!

I’m sure you’ll make the trip to Crewe on a Saturday, at least then you’ll avoid the hoofball at Port Vale that  Ben Wood  chooses to watch! What do you love most about working at Click?

When I first started at Click we were a very small team, it had a great family atmosphere and it really felt like home. We’re at over 70 employees now and that family feeling is as strong as ever.

The Directors set a great example for us all to follow, it takes Gerry 10 minutes to get to his desk with all the conversations he has along the way! Click is genuinely one of the best places to work and I don’t believe there is another company like it.

That’s great Pete! I completely agree, Click is one of a kind!

If you enjoyed this week’s episode of Meet the Clickers, why not read our previous instalments here. If you’re up to date, make sure to come back next week for episode 51!

Al Bakes