Show Notes
What does it really take to merge multiple tech companies, migrate millions of users and jobs, and come out stronger – with zero engineering layoffs? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, hosts Raph, Seamus and Elliott sit down with SEEK’s CTO James Ross to unpack the massive Unification program, why it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, why it had to be a big-bang cutover, and why the hardest problems were never just technical.
This episode's special guest: James Ross (SEEK CTO)
In this episode, we explore: • Why Unification was truly “transformative” – how SEEK turned multiple regional winners (SEEK, JobStreet, JobsDB and more) into a single employment marketplace, so every new feature is built once and shipped to 430M+ people across APAC, instead of re-implementing it five times. • How you even plan a project like this – choosing the modern ANZ stack as the unified platform, deciding to optimise ruthlessly for time over cost and scope, avoiding “impossible” two-way sync by streaming data one-way for months, and running high-stakes cutover weekends where there was literally no going back. • Why people and culture made or broke it – no engineering layoffs, moving Asia engineers onto the new stack 18 months early, navigating cross-cultural friction (like Australians’ hyper-egalitarian style), and using meaning, progress and repeated “why” storytelling to keep thousands of people aligned on a multi-year bet.
If you work in software engineering, data, infrastructure, SRE, architecture, product or IT leadership, this is a rare, candid look at what a real, high-stakes tech transformation looks like – technically, organisationally and culturally – from someone who’s been doing it for nearly 40 years.
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