I went to Wealthsimple's Toronto Tech week event and learned a lot, so here's some of my thoughts.
Blurring lines
They talked a lot about things that I think are obvious when you hear them, but it's still nice to hear from a company because it solidifies the idea you already had in your mind. For example, now that AI makes it easier to do a lot of tasks, designers can handle certain requests themselves rather than going to the engineering team; if it's a small fix or a quick mock-up they need, it's very easy for them to do. And on the flip side, engineers can do quick designs themselves without needing sign-off from anyone high up on the design team. That was very cool.
Ideas galore
The other idea — which I think is a bit more widely talked about — is rapid prototyping, and how much that's changed things. They can literally just start prototyping, come up with a bunch of different ideas, and rather than saying "we think we should do this one but we're not going to do the others because we don't have the time," nowadays they prototype everything. It's been a crazy influx of prototyping.
I've wondered how they manage the inevitable build of a graveyard of code, because I feel like it's in our nature to save it "in case" something is useful. Save too much, and it becomes impossible to traverse, so what's the point of having it in the first place?
New connections
Honestly, though I didn't come out of that day with any revolutionary new information, I enjoyed it the most. It felt very personal. I started out by introducing myself to a group of younger looking people who I assumed would be close to my age but it turned out they had actually applied to Wealthsimple as part of their launchpad program for high school graduates. Then some others joined as they left and I talked to some guys newly into their careers at spots like Shopify and Robinhood. Really interesting hearing their perspectives on their companies. The best thing is that they all enjoyed their work. It's cool, there's good teams, and other good stuff that makes me excited to explore the possibilities once I graduate.
Pushing for growth
I tried using tech week to help break out of my introversion and I'd say these chats showed me that I can do a pretty good job of initiating and holding conversations with new people. My biggest win was explaining my work on the Algorithmic Trading desk at Scotia. Some of them were super interested in it, and it felt good to realize that I really have absorbed a lot of knowledge from my time there and have a lot to contribute. I gave them an overview of what algo trading is, why it's necessary, and some cool asides like what dark pools are and why they exist.
Moonshot
I later saw that their CTO, Diederik, was in a group so I went and joined the conversation. I listened in, introduced myself in a gap, and the others left so I was left alone with him for a bit. Before others came over, I had multiple questions that I wanted to ask but I only got to the one I considered a "hook". I wanted to start off fun rather than something boring like "How do you measure productivity in this new age where code can be written so easily?". So I asked about new technologies other than AI that interest him, to which he replied stablecoin. I wish I could remember how the conversation went from there, but I do remember it was really good. He's super down to earth and easy to talk to.
It always come back to slop
Our group slowly expanded as people joined, and there were some really good conversations going on. One guy brought up creativity and AI slop, and how he wants the content that he consumes online to feel human. A bit of errors, not perfectly polished, and uniquely feeling like the creator's content rather than AI. He doesn't get how AI content can get so much attention and we talked about how we think there definitely are many people who want human content above all, since AI content is often very repetitive. I made a point that everyone found insightful about how tropes exist precisely because people enjoy repetition. They enjoy knowing what to expect and seeing it come to light in a new manner. So while there are definitely people who want human content like he does, I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of the population just wants to turn their brains off and enjoy AI content because it's "comforting" in a sense. I got many nods for that one.
I wish I could remember all of the other conversations, but it was such a great experience to be surrounded by others interested in technology, sharing their own stories and opinions, and discussing our thoughts on various topics. If every event was like that, I'd be going to as many as I could before my social battery runs out.