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David DeRemer: All right. Hi, Teresa. Thanks so much for joining me today. 

Teresa Wu: Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you, David.

David DeRemer: Yeah. 

Nice to see you. Um, so it's been a while since we met in person last, um, we've spoken since then, but almost a year since Flutter Con in Berlin last year. Uh, how, how are things been going? How's your last year been? 

Teresa Wu: Well, I have to say it's pretty, really, it's really busy. And it's been actually, uh, the year is flying. And I'm going to FlutterCon again this year. I'm really, I'm really excited. It's just like this year was like, yeah, really fulfilled with lots of things, exciting news. And, um, yeah, super busy year.

David DeRemer: Amazing. Yeah. That's coming up. It's, uh, so there's gonna be one in Berlin and then there's one in New York City as well. You think you'll make it to New York as well? 

Teresa Wu: Oh, I didn't know that. But I hope so. Someone, if someone invited me, I'll definitely fly there.

David DeRemer: Alright well I know some people, so I'll, I'll put a good word in. Um, so why don't you, let's take a step back in that. Why don't you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about your background and what you're doing Right. now.

Teresa Wu: Right. Hello everyone. My name is Teresa Wu. Oh, wow. Um, actually I started, uh, my career, actually, it's not from it. I [00:01:00] self-taught it myself. I really enjoyed it. Then I just applied for my, a computer science master master degree course, and then I started my IT career. Since then, I've been mostly in fronted.

Try the different frameworks at the moment. I'm in love with Flutter. And then, um, I started to share things. I know I'm excited about in Flutter field. That was many years ago when just Flutter just started. I got noticed by the Google team and the community. And later on, they sent me the invitation to join the GDE, the Google developer expert G roup since then, uh, that was two years ago.

Um, Then I had one side of me is to work in a fintech industry as an engineer. The other side of me is joining lots of community events, be a, be a very active speaker, share my knowledge, my experience to the wider group.

David DeRemer: So you started in Flutter just, uh, um, on your own time as [00:02:00] your own personal interest.

Teresa Wu: So back then Flutter was just like a new framework that came up and we hear different side of stories about product releasing by Google team, as we know, uh, how supportive they are and how positive the community is. That is my personal interests. And I talked to lots of engineer back then in London.

Cause Flutter in Europe is, uh, quite, uh, popular. It has a huge community and that's how we all started. I met Simon, I met Remy, I met like lots of very, uh, good engineers here. Sorry if I didn't mention your name, but that's how we all started this together.

David DeRemer: Um, and you, you, I think Tide, you were at Tide for a bit. They are Flutter. They're using Flutter there as 

well. 

Right. 

Teresa Wu: when I was working in tight, we are 100 percent native, right? And there's a start. There was the conversation started with. We should go. We should think about a cross platform tool to accelerate [00:03:00] our, uh, development and make have a better dev experience. Our CTO back then, uh, suggested the real native. To begin with, we did some research and then we started the Flutter.

I was the first one, uh, not, not the first one, but I was the, the, the key person who is very excited about Flutter, but Flutter hasn't released. At the time, the version one didn't come out, but luckily it does actually released, it was released in London in 2018 and we went to the events and people started to learn, and also we had a conversation with VGV group.

You, your team really is really supportive back to them, although we, we didn't actually, um, collaborate, uh, on the, on the financial term, but we had lots of great, um, Conversations and the nice meetings from people in your team and that you, you, you support us through the journey. In the end, we actually decided that Flutter is the framework we're going to use.

So now, uh, even though I'm not working for Tide at the moment, but while I was working Tide, we switched from native [00:04:00] to Flutter.

David DeRemer: I love that. I mean, I think that's a good recipe for people getting into new technology. I have someone like yourself, a passionate leader who loves the technology and is the champion within. And then I think just the benefit of a supportive community, right. Which we just consider ourselves to be a part where, um, you know, the rising tide raises all boats and we figure as long as the community helps each other out, you know, um, that's all that really matters is for, for these technology adoption things.

So that's a wonderful story. And now you're at a JP Morgan. Is that correct? 

Teresa Wu: Yeah. Then after that, um, I joined JP Morgan because I also have some other interests about learning more about the fintech industry. Cause this one is for me, it's, It's old and new. There's lots of things involved in this field. I want to learn a bit more and also seeing the new product launching in the UK.

That also was a very exciting process as well.

David DeRemer: Yeah. And so I, you know, as you were telling me a story once about how you're into skiing and I think about some of your career and your interest in kind of pursuing things on the side. Um, and things like Flutter and you're working at a place where, you know, you have to balance these new [00:05:00] emerging technologies and things you're interested in with the day to day of the work.

Um, and I, I, you had an insight that I thought was really interesting around sort of doing things that you don't have time to be great at, you know? Um, and I think skiing is just a really fantastic example of that. You know, you know, it's not like you can do it every day all year long. Um, unless I guess you're a pro skier that can travel the world.

Um, and so I'm curious like how things like that have guided you. Your technical, uh, abilities and skill development over the years. Cause it changes so fast. Right. And how do you, how do you stay up to date with things that it's hard to have the time as a leader and as an engineer and someone with a personal life and doing all these things that you might want to do, how do you stay up to date with what's going on?

Teresa Wu: Right. Actually, talking about skiing, something I'm quite interested in, but I agree with you. Ski for, you know, For people who have commitment for work and family, and especially I live in London, I don't have a ski place to go, like local. I have to fly or travel 10 hours to France, for example. That's, maybe that's part of my personality, right?

I do like to try different things. I [00:06:00] started to ski in, uh, How do I say in the common where people always go to those places in France and in, um, in Switzerland. Last year, I actually went to ski in a very unusual place in Hampstead, in Norway. That was negative 20, uh, in terms of the degree. It was really, really cold.

I just wanted to try out. Doesn't mean I will keep going back every year to the same, to the same place. I like to say something new. To try out. And one thing I would like to say is, um, just feel curious, always have the chance to try something new, but you don't have to be good at it. I know this is the opposite of what we learn in university, where people tell you just have to be good at something, especially when I come, where I came from China, right?

Education system basically says that you have to be the top all the time, but actually you don't have to.

David DeRemer: I think, Um, skiing is a fantastic metaphor for learning technology. Actually, I never, I'm a big metaphor person. I'm I often [00:07:00] speak in examples and metaphors and you're, you're, I think it's just such a good example because skiing is the thing where it's not really that fun the first time. If you're falling down all the time, you're catching edges, you're falling on your butt and your wrists hurt, whatever.

Um, but then eventually you kind of figure it out and you, you kind of get the enjoyment and the thrill, um, and you, you do it, but to be super good at it. You have to do it all the time, um, and I think that's just a good metaphor for a lot of things in life and things that we learn, um, no different from technology and as technology leaders.

It's so hard because the world around us is changing constantly. And so how do we maintain that expertise that makes us useful leaders or engineers when, you know, every I am flutter now is like getting a thing like back when it started, it was just like brand new thing. It was crazy. No one knew it. Now it's sort of like, yeah, of course we do flutter.

Like, why wouldn't we, you know, it's just, so what's next is the question. Um, So are there things right now that are taking some of your attention or your interest, right? Where this, this creativity and this curiosity you have, what, what's peaking your curiosity these days?

Teresa Wu: Um, one letter, sorry, one [00:08:00] word, two letter, AI. 

David DeRemer: okay. 

So, you're in on the A.I as well. Yeah. Yeah. 

Teresa Wu: I think everyone is right. Uh, not just Flutter engineer, even people are not engineer. I think that's where everyone talk about nowadays, right? People from product, from testing, from software engineer, from marketing, from product design, UI, UX. This year and last year was just the year of AI.

Even when I was on the tax, taxi drive to the airport and I was talking to the tax driver saying I'm going to attend the conference and he asked me what kind of topic I'm attending. I just said, I'm going to do a talk about AI, but in front end industry and he was like, wow. Yeah, that's very scary. Also fascinating.

So yeah, that's really exciting. It's not just me, but I think it's everyone's common topic as today, but I do have special interests in AI, not just to talk about it. I actually went diving a little bit more to understand this, the, how things works behind the thing.[00:09:00] 

David DeRemer: is this a personal interest you're, you're pursuing cause you were mentioning sort of before you kind of have to balance your professional needs and curiosities with your personal needs and curiosities are, are, is this kind of both? Is it driven by one or the other? 

Teresa Wu: Um, so at the moment, AI just personal interests. That's why I couldn't go ski every, every, every month. I just have to cut some of my time to do some other things, but which is great. Um, I'm not using. Um, I'm not an AI engineer. I don't have any AI background. I don't use AI in my work. I don't write code to build AI.

It doesn't mean me or anyone else couldn't learn AI. It doesn't stop you from actually understanding how AI works, especially as a software engineer. We solve problems every day. And if you actually know something extra, Beyond your current level, it will help you enhance your, um, experience, your expertise.

You can actually add something more to your product. If you know how those things works.[00:10:00] 

David DeRemer: That's it. That's fascinating because I think a lot of junior engineers might think, Oh, I need to learn every, you know, every, uh, part of this SDK or every feature of this programming language or framework. Um, but it sounds like what you're saying. It's, it's just as important to have a wide range of experiences and insight to, to inform what you're doing.

It's very cool. How do you, how do you learn? Like, how do you, um, what are some strategies you found when you have a busy life, a busy career, a lot of things going on? Um, how do you, uh, what are, what are some effective ways you found to dig into some of these things like AI? 

Teresa Wu: So I would just share a bit of, of how I actually allocate my time. Hopefully this help others, right? Actually, I did the same, not just for AI. Um, I I'm doing the same all the time through. These years when I know Flutter, uh, self learning, uh, programming in the beginning is you definitely have to have a very tight schedule.

Um, I have a list. I have a to do list in the morning, and I look at what I need to do in the day, the next day. [00:11:00] And in the morning, I actually handwrite my to do list, so I memorize it again. And this might sound stupid, because we have Google Calendar, we have so many tools, right, out there. But I do handwrite it myself in the morning, and give every task a specific time.

Like, for example, nine o'clock, I have my morning meeting and from 10 to 11, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is why I'm actually able to allocate an hour or two each day, maybe three times in a week to learn something new, read a tech book, or study a course. Otherwise, it's just, for me, if I don't have this schedule, it's impossible.

David DeRemer: It's the chaos of keeping up with that. So, so a rigorous plan, you know, putting down, taking the time to do that. I love the idea of writing. I mean, I'm the same way. Like my, my to do list are these things right here. Some post it notes. Um, you know, it's like, you're right. We have all this technology and AI, um, and tools.

And I found that nothing is a better task manager than you. Just sticky notes littering my desk and, um, the urgent ones go right in [00:12:00] front, you know, um, no, that's, that's amazing. So, and, and I know you're very active in the community as well. Um, that's been something that you've, uh, seems like it's been an important part of your career and your personal and professional development.

Um, do you, like when you embrace a new thing like AI, is that, do you, do you reach out and engage those communities to learn as well and participate in them? Um, what's your approach to community? 

Teresa Wu: For myself, right, I don't ever have different learning style and study style, I, when I, Put myself as a goal to study AI. I found this one is a bit chaotic because there is a such a board topic. Not like when I was learning Flutter. I know this SDK need to use, but look at AI. It's just so general. So bored.

I don't know where to start. This is the time actually, um, Let's I will tell myself I don't get stressed about it. Pick up a easy course, like a beginner course for dummy to actually have a look what AI is all about. And once I understand [00:13:00] that the wider topic, then pick something more specific to dive in, because I wouldn't have time to know everything on AI.

I have to decide, for example, I'm not a data scientist. Maybe this is not the part I would be interested in. So I will give up the part in AI industry talking about data scientists, talk about data, talk about the feature engineering. I understand them, but I don't have to dive in. Just then from those 10 topics, right?

And once you understand all of them, pick one that you're really, really interested in, and then dive in. That's how I started to, um, my journey of learning AI. I'm not an expert. Once I learned those things, I look at them as from a beginner's view, and trying to, um, put myself in, in a, in a position where my audience, It's the same as me, who has lots of, uh, background as engineer, but may not have, uh, AI expertise or studied AI in university.

I put myself interview, put [00:14:00] starting to write study notes, and put them in the slides, and share the results. Um, share what, uh, honored with with the community. And so far, actually it's been great because I, um, I starting to talk about ai but combine, um, how we use AI technology, especially gene AI in front and project.

So I do actually associate with some of my work experience together, and so far those topics are quite well received.

So, um, 

David DeRemer: if I can recap your method here. I mean, first off, you have an innate curiosity. You want to keep up with it in order to kind of round out your expertise. Sounds like we had another conversation the other day with Karsten. Um, and he was saying about atomic habits. I don't know if you read that book and it sounds like you actually, I'm drawing some connections here because you're very methodical about planning out your time and making sure that like, even that, that insight there of you don't have to.

Yeah. Jump ahead to being the expert, but find that beginner content, find the bread crumbs to figure it out and get into it. And then lastly, like kind of share it back with people as a, as a teacher and a community member, I think [00:15:00] that's a good recipe. Um, uh, that's, that's really awesome. I mean, so what is it with AI right now?

Do you think AI is going to stick around? I mean, do you think that, you know, over the last couple of years, there's been metaverse and AR VR and crypto and. NFTs and, and now ai, blockchain, all these things, these like sort of trendy technical things that everyone goes crazy for and runs after really hard.

And then like, what happened to Metaverse , you know? Um, where'd that go? Um, what do you think about ai? Is this one a little different?

Teresa Wu: Um, it's probably not, it's probably be one of those topics that comes in and people just forget about them after one year or two, or it might just stay. Right. Depends on how the community accept AI and how we actually, because we will be the front line of, to push AI into a product. If we accept AI first and this community will grow and we will see the user accepting AI more because right now there are lots of conversation about UI, but when it comes to products.

It's still very limited in terms of the variety and how AI can actually be applied to different industry. So [00:16:00] as engineer, actually we are quite lucky to be in, in today's technology. We have the tools and platforms to do something about it. It's up to us how we actually want to shaping it.

David DeRemer: So how, as a product leader, you're VP of engineering at a, at a large company, a large FinTech company, um, when you get these sort of curve balls and all of a sudden the executives and the sort of corporate strategy suddenly pivots to, oh my God, we need to do ai. How do you approach those inputs into your team and your product and your roadmaps?

Um, how do you tend to react to those and figure out what to do about 

it? 

Teresa Wu: Uh, personal device, right? Don't quote me on this one because this is two part of me. One part of me is engineer who like to try something new and always be passionate about those new things. And the part of me being an employee of a company have to be responsible for our product for end user. This part of me wouldn't rush into something new.

Whenever we, I heard something new or let's put this [00:17:00] new SDK, let's put this new language in our consumer product. I actually put myself back and I think it few times before we actually go ahead and using it. Uh, but so when it comes to work and it comes to our end. End to end product, um, definitely do all your, um, MVP, do your, um, POC, test them out, try it out, and slowly introduce them in your product.

Because as, uh, when you work for a very mature company, a very mature product, when you have a very good consumer base, you want to continue the same user experience, make your customer happy, but minimize the risk as well. Because you don't want to repeat your work twice or putting something unknown for the future.

But on the other side, as a software engineer, I would encourage everyone to be curious about new things in the NUR. At least you understand what they are, so when you want to apply them, you can [00:18:00] make good suggestions, good advice, and basically you, you know what you are saying.

David DeRemer: Mm. And, uh, do we, how, how do we fend off the pressure? You know, I think non-technical people might assume, Hey, I don't get it. Just hook up the ai. Just make it work, right? Like, I don't understand, why can't we just add this to the product? You know? What, what is the, um, how do you see AI reshaping product as you go forward?

Um, and you, as you imagine that. You know, you have to be cautious, you have to be safe, but there's certain changes we have to make because if you don't have an AI story, you know, are you getting the valuation if you're a startup or are you getting the enthusiasm of Wall Street or, or investors? Um, like what, what is the, what do you, how do you see AI shaping the product development capability going forward? 

Teresa Wu: Um, it will definitely change how we work, how we use our product, and how we actually design our product. But you don't have, how do I say this right? You wouldn't have a single answer for this question because it's very wild. We need to look at this from different [00:19:00] angle. Um, for example, so let's say right AI, there are three part of it, right?

What, how AI can impact our end user, our consumer, our client, this is where we add a lot of fancy functions. Coming from you are coming from a I, for example, um, some a I document the chat bought a smart health care, a smart Jane trainer application. Those are the functions we added to our product to our user.

This is for the customer part, and those are very attractive. Even if you are building a very mature product, or if you are startup companies, right? Adding those functions in your product, will be a very attractive shining point in today's market. And if we look at from the enterprise level as from a company's view, how do we build those features in our product?

What are the platform, the technology out there that we can use? Because we have ideas, everyone have smart ideas. But how do [00:20:00] we make this true? How do we make this end product? What platforms are there? This is where Uh, as engineer, we will make a device to try out, uh, doing some PLC to make some small product, a viable product that's from enterprise level.

How do we make those features? And as for engineers, software engineers, we want to use AI to accelerate our work, to make our life easy. How can I make an AI bot that can just code for me? That's for AI dev experience. Depends on the company, right? So like, some companies, they emphasize a bit more on and, uh, and, And the product, some companies, actually, they have analyzed the market.

They are know what they want to build and they need a solutions for the enterprise level. They want to understand which platforms I can use, which technology I can use or for like startup or for, um, uh, a community, uh, use. They actually looking for solutions for dev [00:21:00] experience. What tools are there, like, for example, uh, code a pilot, um, the IDX project.

What are those tools I can use in my developer team to help our engineers code in a better quality.

So there's a lot of talk Right. now, or I don't know, a lot of talk, but people say, Oh, you know, AI is going to replace all these workers and it's going to replace developers. Do you buy into that at all? Do you, or like, what's your, what's your perspective on that? Because I think what, what I'm hearing is that actually these tools just add leverage and capability to our engineers.

Um, So what is your vision or what do you think these tools are going to, like, if you, if you were to fast forward a few years. How will these be influencing how we develop software?

Right. 

So that's where I actually have this story of when I go into a taxi, uh, taxi on the way to airport, I chat to the taxi driver and he was saying to me, AI, right here, and then he just posed and say, that's very scary. And the reason people feel scary is because they, they, they are facing something unknown.

They actually don't know what AI can do. When you [00:22:00] don't know what this tool can do for you, you will feel frustrated, scary, and the, the, the end conversation might be, Oh, AI is here to steal my job. Right, but let's think about whether it will, or how can they, right? There's a study by, uh, by the Google team.

They look at the percentage of coding in the AI, uh, in the AI project. The actual lines of code that in the AI project is only 5%. The other 95 percent is on data. Um, clean the data, preparing the data, and, uh, and then train your model, refine your model, and then, uh, build up the whole AI, um, Uh, the, uh, the machine learning pipeline to, to deliver the AI model, build API, monitoring it, and the feedback to your product and then restart the whole process again.

So even AI can't replace the, the, the tool to build AI themselves. So I, I mean, I don't think AI will [00:23:00] steal our job, but, but if, if, for example, um, if that was five years ago, when we just started to learn Flutter, we spent. Days, weeks, months to analyze how we can use Flutter in our project. Are we able to build MVP?

Are we able to build a feature of our existing product in Flutter and all this work, we'll have to do the manually. But if back then I had a tool of IDX project, um, by Google, it's a web browser, smart IDE. What it does is it transfer the language from one language to different language. So if I have a Java project, I want to see how this project will look like in Dart language.

I can just convert it. It won't be production ready, but at least I can see how this project will look like in a different language. How many lines of code are there, how many files, what's the [00:24:00] processing time, are there any bugs, any libraries I couldn't use. I will have a very quick analysis. This will help me to make decisions of whether this new framework We'll actually improve our product or not.

So those are tools there to help you make decisions. But as engineers, we still have to do the work to make the product 

ready. So super fast way to do 

David DeRemer: proof of concept, both to validate maybe an idea, but also I think that's a good insight around as an engineering leader. You want to validate what that code looks like? What is the performance of the runtime? What is the structure? What are the best practices? I mean, I think that's an area where AI probably has some room to grow up a little bit.

Some of the hallucinations and, you know, is it giving you a best practice, you know, Flutter dark code base when it's giving you that example, but it certainly is not a thing you had before. Um, you would have had to find a, uh, an open source package or a library or something along those lines, um, or some content out there that helps you illustrate that.

And there's a lot of work, so it saves a lot of time. And I think one of the things that I often think about is like, to me, Flutter and AI, they're like the [00:25:00] same thing. When you think about the value they provide for an engineer, I mean, technology wise are obviously very, very different, but like, why is Flutter interesting?

Cause it's a, it's a way to give leverage to an engineering team. It's makes engineers vastly more productive. Like one engineer can make iOS and Android, you know, at a bare minimum, let alone windows, Mac, and. Linux and all these other things. So it's extremely high leverage for that engineer who learns that tool because they can do all these extra things.

And when I think about AI helping an engineer, to me, it's the same thing. It's making an engineer more productive. I don't think it's replacing, you know, I think when, uh, another parallel there is early on in the Flutter ecosystem or react native or any of these cross platform solutions, there's a thing of like, buy one, get one free.

Like, Oh, cool. I can just have one engineer. They can do iOS and Android. And I can fire half my engineering team because of my adoption of Flutter. But I think like what actually is really the value is it's not that you don't fire half your engineering team. What you do is you do twice as much with the engineers you have, you know?

So you move twice as fast because I think that's a more, uh, at least an equally motivating factor for a [00:26:00] lot of companies besides cost is how do I move faster? How do I improve my product better? How do I generate revenue sooner? Things along those lines. So I think AI is doing the same thing. It just helps us move faster.

You know, it helps us do more with the resources we have. And I think the narrative about it being replacing people seems, seems wrong to me. Um, I think people are scared, right? I think AI, same thing with metaverse, I think metaverse, everyone got excited about it cause they could see like ready player one and snow crash and all these like sort of, um, you know, pop culture references and they're like, Oh, we're going to all like upload to the metaverse.

Um, and then you see things like AI where people are thinking about Terminator, you know, and they're like, Oh, it's just gonna. It's the existential crisis of mankind. Um, and, and I think that fuels a lot of this. Um, but I think people get a little ahead of themselves and, uh, really we got to just focus on how this is going to make, um, I think people far more productive than ever.

Teresa Wu:  Yeah. I think actually you have a very, very good point. I had never actually thought about a comparing AI with Flutter as in, in terms of from, for the developer, what they actually say those tools and what you were saying just now, it reminded me how DevOps works. This [00:27:00] becomes, uh, uh, becomes DevOps.

Because back then we have to actually, uh, uh, shipping our product manually. So the product team, the design team and the engineering team, we just write the code and to do the product in three months and the, just dumb this to the, um, to the test engineering team to the release team. Operation team, and they have to manually package these products and testing them and then put them to the, to the, uh, to the industry.

That's then after so many years, right? Of being in it, we say, we say the racing of DevOps, the idea of making things automated and we can ship a faster and the build a quicker. The, I think that's how we can use AI ways as for engineers, how, how the, how we, I can actually accelerate our work. Yeah. But we still, we will be the one actually behind the thing, writing those, um, AI, uh, tools, maintain them.

David DeRemer: I wonder if long run, I mean, maybe one difference between the crypto, um, blockchain trend and metaverse is that AI has sort of a front of house and back of house, um, benefit, right? It's like people [00:28:00] want to add it to their product. They want a chat bot to for customer support or something, or, you know, they want to, everyone wants to emulate a chat GPT type experience.

But I think it also has a huge productivity, uh, benefit. Um, it's a back of house thing, operations, and sometimes I feel like, uh, at least what I read or see that maybe we're putting a little bit too much emphasis on the user experience side of what AI can do, and, and maybe focus a little bit more on like, hey, let's figure out how to make this more productive so that we can, Figure out how to do cool UX faster, uh, because we can iterate our products quicker because of our increase in productivity.

Uh, given that you work at a large company, large enterprise, what are the impacts? Uh, like I think enterprise has a different, it's a different world, right? Um, if we're talking startups, people can be like, whatever, I'll just take the latest API and like, give it a shot and see what happens. Right. And I can fail and risk and who cares?

And I don't care about my privacy policy. Like whatever, I'm a small company, but. 

Teresa Wu: Are we able to say this? 

We care.

David DeRemer: well, I'm just saying like, you know, startups, I think maybe move a little fast and loose, um, enterprise, definitely not, you know, my example as a consultant working with enterprise that I've always said as a, as a metaphor is like, you know, an enterprise is a big tanker [00:29:00] ship and we as teams, individual people working for that company or a consultant or anybody.

We're like a little. skiff just banging into the side of that thing, trying to get it to shift course a little bit because it's hard to move a big enterprise. Um, so how do you see AI shifting or impacting the enterprise, right? Given that there's a lot more constraints, a lot more, Um, like less tolerance for risk, more things that need to be buttoned up.

Um, how is it different inside of a, of a large 

enterprise? 

Teresa Wu: I think you just summarized really, really well. That's what enterprise do, right? Not just for company I work with, but in general, uh, enterprise are slower. Adapting to something new because of we are under lots of regulation, especially for fintech industry, we are being like lots. There are less people watching us of what we do.

So because we have to be very, very careful on what we deliver and what we don't deliver and what the risk we are bringing to our product, giving to our user because our user [00:30:00] data, how do we protect those data are the key. Of all this, um, of our product, our daily life, that doesn't mean enterprise isn't, uh, innovation or they are not innovative.

It just, um, there are different ways, different approaches of how we look at those, uh, new technology. Some companies are trying. New things every day doesn't mean they will actually use the mean are in the end product, but they are getting ready. Warm up getting ready. Understand. Study them. And when actually, when on the day when they have to, when they will use them, they will be super quick, super fast.

It will be just a term of a flag. And this product will be just be released, um, by the year. But in terms of dev experience, again, these are different from building consumer products, right? In dev experience, we are definitely even more slower in the game because, um, again, it has actually higher priorities of our consumer data.

We [00:31:00] need to understand what we are. given away to the public and what we should protect and not give away. So yes, um, there are differences, right? So this is why engineers, uh, actually prefer, they prefer to work for a startup a bit more than joining an enterprise because they have more freedom to try out something super, super new.

David DeRemer: Yeah, I think the flip side of that though, and this is something that we, we wrestle as, as you know, BGV is a consulting company and what are the types of the shape of client we want to work with? I mean, on the flip side, you get to impact things at such a huge scale, right? The, like when you push a product out, the impact and influence that has, and the number of people you can reach is so fast.

You might bang away your whole career at startups and. They all fail right Like, you know, a lot of them fail and, Um, maybe you don't. get to make that impact. So it's a challenge. It's a trade off I think we have to make. Um, and I think it's, um, different type of game. It's very much so. And, and I kind of like the skiing thing, I think, right?

It's like, Um, if you're getting out on the bunny hill and you're falling down and you're learning and then you hit some blues and you're like kind of enjoying it, but that's totally different from being a professional skier trying to make the [00:32:00] Olympics is doing the moguls like crazy and running through the gates.

Like that requires a dedication and a commitment. That's probably a little bit more like getting through the enterprise, right? Like You got to work hard. There's a different set of rules, different commitment you need to do to get through that. It doesn't make it any less interesting than that beginner.

You just have to have a different passion, right, to get through it. Um, so, I'm curious, because we talked a lot about Flutter, I know that's an interest of yours, and AI, and it strikes me as that at least, you know, I similarly have interests in these areas, as you know, and, um, these are two very transformational technologies, I think, that we've seen over the last, um, You know, five or six years.

And I'm curious, like, is that by accident that you are, are passionate in those? I mean, um, or, or how do you identify a transformational technology, right? Some of these technologies that they emerge and you're, it's just like, wow, this is like flutter became a thing. It went from small little project at Google, like, you know, super popular mobile framework, AI, same deal.

It's sort of like a, one of those, uh, 20 year old, um, success overnight successes. Like it's not like AI and ML wasn't happening. Two years ago, it just suddenly became, um, really popular. Um, how do you like pick up those transformation? Like [00:33:00] what is a transformational technology and how do you identify them?

Teresa Wu: Um, you don't. You just have to try it out. I studied, I studied the PHP, I studied C I studied Java. So, you don't know which one will stay. But, pick the framework is actually so, sorry. Pick the community is more important than picking the actual product. Um, I study Flutter. I actually spend a lot of time building, uh, um, learning Flutter because of the community.

Actually, I have, I have a, um, I have a high hope in, in Flutter because the technology behind it, I can say it will be successful. There's something actually, uh, really, I really love about Google. Of how they are building their ecosystem of each engineer is also their client is their user. So they're treating engineers as the end user as well.

So they have this very healthy community behind the Flutter. This is one of the key reasons that for me, right? Were you thinking about choosing something new? A [00:34:00] new framework and industry. Look at how, how the look at what the companies are behind those technology and how much sure the community is or are you able to shaping it?

Is this like a very open community or very close community? Um, but it's okay. If you choose something that they goes away next year, it's a learning, learning experience and you, you learn from your own mistake.

David DeRemer: So I pick up two key lessons there. One is, um, you can't. You can't pick the winner every time. The only way you can do that is by trying a lot of things and giving them a shot. And then the second thing I think is just an incredibly important insight. And I agree with you about the Flutter community. I think picking, uh, the community more so than the product or the tool or the framework.

I think that's probably not something that a lot of people really think about as like a key decision choice, but they should, um, without a doubt. I think you're absolutely Right. The flutter community has helped it to get there without the flutter community. I don't think it would have become what it is. Um, there's just no way. I think there's some broken things about our open source world and stuff [00:35:00] to where you have all these people that are pushing things forward and maintaining open source frameworks and. Not getting paid for it and having a lot of responsibility and impact on a community, um, where the community grew.

I mean, I think Flutter's a little bit in this spot right now where, uh, the Flutter was built on the backs of a lot of people who put a lot of energy, positivity, enthusiasm into the community. And as the rest of the world is like, Oh, yeah, I trust this now. They kind of maybe forget all the people, like some of the people you mentioned at the top of our conversation.

That like we got here because of the efforts of those people. Um, and so that's something I'd love to see companies that sponsor some of these tools is how do we make sure that those people thrive and participate? Cause they're so vital. The community is so essential to getting these new tools and tech.

Um, Off the ground. Um, that's fascinating. I love it. Um, so, you know, we've, we've got, we've talked about a lot here. Um, uh, this has been super, super awesome. I was just, uh, curious as we kind of wrap up, are, are, are there any sort of parting insights or advice you would give to product leaders or, or engineering leaders like yourself out there?

Um, guidance, maybe you would go back five or 10 years and give yourself, you know, advice, um, just curious if there's anything that you [00:36:00] would want to say to the world in terms of what we talked about today,

Teresa Wu: Right. Um, I could be wrong on this one, but it's just myself, uh, experience through my, uh, my learning and my, um, me working in this industry is, um, keep a curiosity about something new. Don't be afraid if a new technology will come here and steal your job. This is what I see this happening when we're adapting to Flutter.

Replace native language, and there are engineers who are super experienced in native language. They have these worries, um, just keep learning something new, but at the same time, you don't have to be good at everything. I don't know if they contracted with, with each other. Um, you, you could be like, for example, the, the, the, say of being a T shape engineer, right?

P. Be very experienced on one thing and have your board view on other things. You don't, you never know, maybe one day you will actually wanted to switch to different industry. As for myself, I studied language where I'm using today. And also people don't, people don't use them anymore. I did a [00:37:00] framework that I don't, I don't use today, but it doesn't matter.

I also have a key interest in release. Um, I actually, once I feel interest in Google Cloud platform and in the whole dev, DevOps experience. So I give myself two months to learn Google technology, Cloud technology. And then in the end, I just applied to, to take the certificate course I passed.

David DeRemer: Awesome. I love it. So the advice is just keep learning, right? Just keep at 

Teresa Wu: Keep learning and don't give yourself the pressure of you have to be the expert of this new field you are learning. Just be curious about something new and that's it. Don't feel the pressure of I have to be an expert. Also, when actually, um, as today I'm talking a bit more on AI and how we use AI in Flutter in front of the project.

I always say in the beginning of my talk, I'm not an expert. I'm just sharing my knowledge as I've [00:38:00] been learning so far, but I'm not an expert. And it's okay.

David DeRemer: I love that. I'm not expert, but it's Okay. Um, got us, you got to start somewhere. You got to keep learning. Well, Teresa, um, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking some time out of your day and your busy career and life and, uh, pursuit of, of passions and interests, um, uh, to take this time to talk with us.

And, um, so really appreciate it. Um, and I guess with that, we'll say goodbye. Bye.

Teresa Wu: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me and I really appreciate this opportunity to share my, uh, my own experience with everyone else. And, uh, yeah, thank you. And thank you for everyone who is listening to this podcast.

David DeRemer: I loved it. So hopefully we can do it again sometime soon. 

Teresa Wu: Thank you.