Monzo Staff Weekly Q&A - Rhys Davies (COps, Cardiff Office)

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Note : All Monzo Q&As to date can be found here :grinning:

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Hello! Bonjour! Konichiwa! Hola! Namaste! Nihao!

Forum family, it’s your favourite time of the week. Question and answer time. You bring the questions. We bring the answers. It’s THAT simple! As Chandler Bing (or Chanandler Bong) would say… Could it BE any simpler? :joy:

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Recently we learned all about our Las Vegas office through a Q&A with Dillon!

However, it was rightly pointed out that some of our forum folk also want to learn more about our Cardiff office! :dragon:

Well, who am I to deny such a request? :grinning:

But first… catch up time!

Catch up on all the previous Q&A’s here!

Click here to see all previous Q&As

Week 1 : Chris MacLean, Customer Operations & Vulnerable Customers :santa:t2:

Week 2 : James Nicholson, iOS Engineer :green_apple:

Week 3 : Tara Mansfield, People Operations Manager :woman_technologist:t5::man_technologist:t3:

Week 4 : James Routley, Backend Engineer :hammer_and_wrench:

Week 5 : Hugh Wells, Customer Operations :man_police_officer:t3:

Week 6 : Naz Malik, Technical Specialist :computer:

Week 7 : Fred Morgan, COps Squad Captain (Calls & Social Media) :telephone_receiver:

Week 8 : Emma Northcott, COps Scaling Team :balance_scale:

Week 9 : Jarno Wolf, COps Financial Crime Specialist & Squad Captain :wolf:

Week 10 : Maria Campbell, Head of People :woman_office_worker:t2::man_office_worker:t4:

Week 11 : Jim Amey, Night COps Captain :bat: :crescent_moon:

Week 12 : Richard Cook, Online Community Manager :man_cook:

Week 13 : Beatrice Borbon, Content & Press Manager :newspaper:

Week 14 : Tom Blomfield, CEO :crown:

Week 15 : Ella Johanny, COps/Hiring :handshake:

Week 16 : Harry Ashbridge, Writer :writing_hand:t3:

Week 17 : Beth Scott, Overnight COps :cat2:

Week 18 : Georgie Parmenter, Executive Assistant to the Founders :blonde_woman:

Week 19 : Vulnerable Customers Team :sunflower:

Week 20 : Leah Templeman, Interim VP People :sun_with_face:

Week 21 : Daniel Chatfield, Backend Engineer, Fincrime & Security :closed_lock_with_key:

Week 22 : Valerio Magliulo, Product Manager - Revenue Team :money_with_wings:

Week 23 : Sam Watkin, Operations Analyst :thinking:

Week 24 : Kieran McHugh, Backend Engineer :desktop_computer:

Week 25 : Jonas Huckestein, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer :computer_mouse:

Week 26 : Annual Report Edition with Tristan Thomas and Julie Oey :calendar:

Week 27 : Zander Brade, Lead Product Designer :pencil2:

Week 28 : Richard Dingwall, Payments Engineer :moneybag: :wrench:

Week 29 : Oliver Beattie, Head of Engineering (Reliability Report Special) :watch:

Week 30 : Bruno Vaz Moço, Product Manager (Scalers) :balance_scale:

Week 31 : Dillon Van Auken, Remote COps Team Lead and Vegas Project Team Lead :first_quarter_moon_with_face: 🂡

All done? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

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We’ve got Rhys Davies in the Hot Coral Hot Seat™️ this week!!!

Rhys is one of our Cardiff COps and he’ll be more than happy to tell you everything about what our Cardiff office is like, and what it’s like to be a COp at Monzo right now in general!

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Rhys has been here since August 2017 (when we first started our Cardiff operation!) and is currently working on:

My Tom Jones impression (and helping our customers in whatever way we can).

Interesting Fact about Rhys

My leg hair ends in a perfect line at my ankles, so when I’m not wearing socks it looks like I’m wearing tights (made of human hair).

Not sure if that’s interesting or disturbing :thinking:

His fave thing about working at Monzo?

I’m not sure because he forgot to fill that part in. So we’ll ask him publicly instead :wink:

You know the score!

Get your questions in and Rhys will be here later in the week to answer them :grinning:

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Name the worst pizza topping! (Choose carefully :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :pineapple:)

Video of the impression of Tom Jones please!

Is there any “fun” office rivalry between the teams in your office and the London COps?!

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What teams are in your Cardiff office?

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Cats?

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Get ready to be bombarded with questions… feel free to answer all or pick and choose :slightly_smiling_face:

  1. Do any of you regularly visit the London office or vice versa?

  2. I hear you were in a temp office until some application or grant went through (post), are you now settled in a more permanent home? :house_with_garden:

  3. What challenges do you face if any being separated from Monzo HQ?

  4. What was the most difficult aspect about the Cardiff office being developed? And do you feel it’s provided a benifit to Monzo?

  5. How fast is the Cardiff office expanding?

  6. Are we able to drop off high value cheques at the Cardiff office?

  7. What are the reasons for choosing Cardiff as a base for cops?

  8. Which office has the better view, Las Vegas or Cardiff (photos please :slightly_smiling_face: ) ?

  9. Can you rival the Sin City Squad with a group photo? :thinking:

  10. Do you have a cool internal squad name like the Sin City Squad?

  11. Are any of you able to speak to customers in Welsh? (I was born here and lived here all my life, I can only manage one or two sentences :see_no_evil:).

  12. Photo? :sweat_smile:

  1. Because Simon said you forgot :grin:?

  1. What did you find most interesting/surprising when you joined Monzo?

  2. What’s your favourite place to grab lunch from in Cardiff?

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S’mae!

On the journey to a billion customers, Monzo is inevitably going to be joined by staff and customers who speak languages other than English.

I bet there are staff in the Cardiff office who speak (or would like to learn to speak) Welsh. Does Monzo have plans to officially offer customer support in Welsh? What about localising the app?

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What football team do you support? :soccer: (if any)

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Do you consider Wales to be abroad?

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Jack will be asking for your autograph too! Good questions though!

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  1. What’s your favourite place to grab lunch from in Cardiff?
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Easy…fresh royal arcade beef special or chicken and bacon with salami crackling

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I’ve not heard of it, I’ll check it out! Thanks

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I know it’s obvious, but I have to go with pineapple. I actually think combining pizza and pineapple in and of itself isn’t that bad, but I’ve just never liked pineapple as a fruit :pensive:

Just had a quick Google out of curiosity, and apparently apple pizza is a thing! That’s something to bear in mind :sunglasses:

Ol’ Tom is still in the research phase at the moment, I wouldn’t want to unleash him before it’s ready!

I’d say there’s a general competitiveness over who can be the most efficient and the most helpful etc, but to be totally honest it’s a united front most of the time! Teamwork makes the dream work :wink:

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So in our office we have the Monzillaz, the Leaky Blinders, and the Dragons typing away as they talk to users through the chat, as well as Call and the Gang taking care of our users over the phone

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We love them! None in the office unfortunately, although we do have two beautiful little puppers (Beans and Lola) who come in to keep us company sometimes :relaxed:

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1.) Absolutely - we have different people down from the London office pretty much every single week to share knowledge and work on new projects, and we often visit the London office for training sessions and just to say hello! :relaxed:

2.) We’ve been in a few offices so far, and chances are we’ll be looking to move into a new one as we continue to expand. Not sure how much more I can say on this topic, but hopefully the next one will be as cozy as the one we’re in now :+1:

3.) Not a whole lot to be honest. We have communication systems in place that let us share any information with anyone at Monzo in the drop of a hat - I’m sure if we all had to communicate by phone or email things would be a lot different :joy:

4.) So as you mentioned finding a permanent office has been a struggle, primarily due to how quickly we’re expanding and what goals we have set in the future. That being said having an entire office pretty much dedicated to serving customers means that we can focus pretty much on one specific goal, whereas the London office is split between COps, engineers, financial crime experts, scalers etc. So yeah, a definite benefit :+1:

5.) Again I’m not sure if I can quote specific numbers, but real fast!

6.) Not just yet, although it’ll likely be considered in the future.

8.) Definitely Cardiff, although I’m not in the office at the moment so I can’t provide proof. Lets just say you can see a LONG way away from the top floor (from Penarth to Castell Coch if you’re familiar).

11.) We do have a few Welsh speakers actually, but I’m not one of them unfortunately :pensive:

15.) Ooh good question - I’d have to go with Kin and Ilk In Pontcanna. It’s a bit out of the way for me, but it’s so good :+1:

Sorry I couldn’t get them all Jack!

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This is definitely something we’ll look into as Monzo expands, but in terms of specific languages it’s too early to say. There are indeed Welsh speakers in the office who I’m sure would love to see this implemented, but only time will tell!

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None I’m afraid, never been a big sports fan :pensive: I’ll vaguely support Wales out of patriotic obligation whenever they play, but as you can imagine that doesn’t get me very far!

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Well I was born and raised in Wales, so it’s home for me!

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So it’s England that’s abroad :wink:

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Thanks for answering @rjdavies !

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