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Tobi: Welcome to the Alphalist Podcast. I'm your host, Toby, and today I have a guest where I realized whatever time we pick, we'll both be a bit tired. It's Adam Shook. He's senior engineering director at Canva and Canva as a company founded in Australia and that's where he is, right? You're in Sydney.
Tobi: Absolutely. Dialing in from Sydney. Thank you so much for having me, Toby. And I guess it's a bit warmer there than here. Uh, even though you have Autumn, I just realized. Um, and um, I don't know how many people here like realized the sheer growth of candor. So. I think you raised like 600 million, uh, you have over 2000 engineers, right? Tobi: That's right. So our, our workforce is Adam: over 5,000 and over 2000 engineers globally now.
Tobi: And yeah, let's, let's talk about fundamentals later, but, but you've seen it all before, right? You worked at Google Maps, you built like Google Wave, Adam: I think partly. That's right, yes. Tobi: I, I dunno how many people here still remember Wave. Tobi: Uh, and you, you founded a, a startup acquired by Twitter, um, and then another one acquired by Canva. So you were basically an Acquihire.
Adam: That's right, yes. Uh, and then to Canva. Interestingly, I was not working at Zings when it was acquired. I was working on another startup, so I had a very nonlinear, uh, career history. Tobi: So, uh, you had that, you, you basically moved out because things weren't working out as, uh, expected and then you came back because Ken wanted to acquire you, or what
Adam: The, the actual story is that, is that, uh, I was working in New York, uh, for this startup. We built a, a realtime search engine. Uh, we sold it to Twitter and we formed a Twitter, New York office.
Adam: Uh, and, uh, maybe we'll talk about some distributed team stuff later. Uh. Uh, we were the first remote office for Twitter outside of London, and it was, there was a lot still to figure out, and I had a lot of time on my hands. So I started this zings company, uh, with a few Australians, uh, on the side. And the, the reason that I stepped out of it was once I hit the one year mark at Twitter, things actually started getting very interesting.
Adam: We started getting really exciting projects at Twitter, New York, and I couldn't both, uh, give the level of attention I wanted to, uh, to both Twitter and to zings the startup. So we, I stepped out and we, we hired a, a full-time CTO for Zings. Tobi: Okay. Okay. Yes. Sounds as if you, uh, like navigated well through like a series of exits and, uh, also.
Tobi: Uh, sounds, sounds, sounds great and speaks for you. And, uh, before we start digging deeper on Canva, like, uh, can you, can you rewind a bit and, and tell us about your personal nerd journey? Like where did it start? Why are you backend, front end, pure leadership? Like what, what, what are you and why? Um, and what, what, what drives your curiosity on, on, on computers?
Adam: Uh, absolutely I would identify myself, well, look now, now I'm an engineering leader, so I'm, I've got a team of 220 engineers and I don't get to code so much, uh, unless I'm using some fun AI tools. Uh, but when I was coding, I would consider myself a full stack engineer. I've done, I got to write, uh, web JavaScript code on Google Maps and Google Wave back.
Adam: Before we even had a Chrome browser, I was doing backend and, and, uh, in, uh, information retrieval and search indexing at the startup. And at Twitter I was doing some machine learning and, uh, I don't, don't feel like we use the term big data anymore, but, uh, uh, working on some really exciting, uh, machine learning and big data problems. Adam: So you, Tobi: you, you know how to use Hadoop. Adam: Oh, Hadoop Pig. All these wonderful things. UD Pig was great. Tobi: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah. You are transporting me back. Uh, interestingly, uh, it's, it's funny. I was, uh, when I was at my startup, I was invited. When I was not working at Canva, I was invited to come give a, a tech talk at Canva at a front end event.
Adam: And I had to tell our co, uh, Canva, COO. I'm not a front end engineer. I'm not the right person to talk. And he said, don't worry about it. Come, come talk to us Anyway. So, so I showed up at this event and my talk was titled, it was basically how not to be a front end engineer. The talk was titled From Front End to Full Stack, where I was trying to give this heretical speech on, you know, don't, don't, don't pigeonhole yourself into any one part of the stack.
Adam: So I think that's, I think that's served me really well throughout my career. Like being, being able to, uh, you know, I, now that I manage a complex cross-functional team with front end and back end and machine learning and data scientists and qa, et cetera, like having that, that breadth of skills has really helped me. Tobi: So would you consider yourself as part of the, um, marquee tech and center tech, um, generation still? So you remember that, that time or Adam: marquee tags or
Tobi: the marque techs? You remember those Absolutely. Texts like that was rolling tags. Tobi: Yeah. Yeah. Tobi: I Center was also phenomenal. Adam: I remember with, with, uh, with great, uh, great nostalgia, the early days of web programming.
Adam: I think for me, you asked my nerd history, uh, when I was, I, I think I knew I wanted to be a nerd, uh, very young. I'm, I'm very lucky in that respect. Uh, and, uh, my grandfather, uh, we didn't have a fa a personal computer, uh, back when I was a kid and my grandfather gave my parents $100. Uh, and he said to my, to my parents, you need to buy him a computer.
Adam: And you couldn't buy a computer for a hundred dollars. So my parents were obliged to buy me a computer, uh, and back. I just loved it. I, I was programming GW basic, uh, Microsoft dos, you know, monochrome computer. Uh, uh, I remember, uh, apparently I said when I was very young, I need to learn c plus plus while I'm a kid, otherwise it'll be too late. Adam: And my parents always thought that was very funny. And I never got the joke until I was an adult. Tobi: And do you learn c plus
Adam: plus or? I did, but, uh, 20 years later, not when I was a kid. Tobi: I think I was off Adam: by statement. Tobi: I personally bought myself a VC 20 on the flea market back in the days, uh, because like I, yeah, we also didn't have a computer and, uh, I don't know, my, my parents were not like totally into it and maybe they didn't see the value back in the days, so. Adam: Oh, I'm, um, did it myself. I'm very lucky that my parents did.
Tobi: Yeah, that's good. That's good. Um, but yeah, I mean, if there's curiosity then you're also curiosity always finds a way, right? Absolutely. And, um, how did you, I mean, why did you build your own companies? Adam: Uh, so let me think about, it was a different reason for each of those companies.
Adam: I think I was very excited by the startup, the emerging startup scene when I exited university. There wasn't much of a startup environment in Australia. Uh, you know, maybe Atlassian was the closest thing that we could point to as a startup. Uh, whereas now we have a number of unicorns in Australia and a thriving technology sector.
Adam: Uh, so I think for me, a big part of that drive was, uh, we need more jobs in Australia for competent technical people without having to move over to America. Uh, you know, at the time, my, my timing was exceptional that, that Google just happened to open an office just as I was, uh, looking for a job. Uh, but you know, each of the startups, uh, were working on very interesting, different problems.
Adam: The, the startup, the first startup I was working with that was based in New York and was called Ju Pan. This was the one that was acquired by Twitter. For me, this was just, uh, an exceptionally interesting technical problem, building a real time search engine. And half of the team, uh, was former Google search quality engineers.
Adam: So really, like, it was that, and then it was it, by the way, would you like to come live in New York? Which had always been a dream of mine. Um, so, you know, that that was, that was a big motivation then. Tobi: Okay. But you didn't stick to New York then? Adam: No. I, uh, look, I, I said I'm gonna spend one and a half to two years in New York.
Adam: I said to my family, uh, my then fiance and our wife, we, we moved our lives over there. We ended up there for five years. Uh, but look, Australia is an amazing country. Uh, you know, uh, it's, uh, the Australians don't tend to stick around in New York when they've got, uh, you know, family and, and amazing weather to return to. Tobi: And snakes, et cetera. Adam: Oh, I've got a great spider story, but maybe for a different podcast.
Tobi: Okay. And, um, now talk about Canva. I mean, I guess like everyone here knows Canva. Um, not, not really as a business. Um, so as I said, initially you, you have like 600 million in funding and you're worth 26 billion roughly, right?
Tobi: Uh, so that's, that's phenomenal. That's just like one of the like biggest unicorns that many of us have, have heard of. Um, and, and you, you do you, do you communicate your revenue and, and ebitda? Like, are you profitable or like how, how's that, how does that work together? Adam: Canver is, we're still a private company, uh, and so obviously that, that, uh, limits the amount of information we're sharing.
Adam: Uh, but we're very proud of a few. Statistics about our, our health as a business. You know, firstly, I think most impressively is we now have 230 million people around the world who are monthly active users. Uh, so, you know, when you say to me, we've all heard of Canva, like that absolutely wasn't true when I joined Canva.
Adam: And I'm delighted to hear that. And I, you know, think that's been a great journey. Uh, our revenue, I can share with you, we have annualized revenue now, uh, over 3 billion US dollars. Uh, you know, and that's been a really great, uh, growth story for us as well. And we've managed to do that by remaining profitable as a company over the past, uh, well eight years.
Adam: So that's, uh, that's I think, a real feather in our cap, especially given everything going on in the economic environment. Tobi: And how do you deal with AI in your product? I mean, there's right now, like if you, if you look at LLMs evolving, et cetera, then there's the, the depth of Photoshop already, uh, being, being, uh, being spread, uh, here and there. Tobi: Uh, how does that affect you? Is that something you take as a, as a challenge or?
Adam: Absolutely. Uh, I'd say we, we view AI as a huge tailwind to our business. Uh, it's, you know, our, what we're building here is a visual communication platform, and our mission is, uh, to democratize design. And so AI, we really see is this forcing function.
Adam: It's spreading like fire that just makes design so much more powerful, so much more accessible. Uh, so, you know, I've gotta give a lot of credit to our visionary founders who really saw. Opportunities very early. Uh, our, our first, uh, one of our first AI features magic, right? Uh, we turned that around from a hackathon, uh, demo insider team into a launched product in five weeks.
Adam: Which, you know, for a company of our scale, I think is, is really impressive. And like we, we have today, we've now got Magic Studio, which is over 15, uh, native tools in the product. So there's all sorts of things you can do around text and image manipulation, uh, and image generation. Um, we also recently acquired leonardo.ai, uh, uh, which is an Australian AI company.
Adam: And then, you know, even dating backed, I think AI has played a, a, a deeper role in our history as a company. You know, previously we had, uh, Kaleido, which was, uh, the background remover tool for Canva. And so that they really helped like pave some of our, our AI roadmap. Um, but you know, I think AI. It's, it's, it has the ability to be extremely disruptive to many industries.
Adam: And we, I'd like to think that Canva, we're doing a really good job of kind of predicting and getting ahead of where this is going. Um, you know, we, uh, we're, we're really quite heavily invested in, you know, I think that's honestly one of the things that's impressed me most about Canva compared with every other company I've worked at, is our adaptability.
Adam: Like we, you know, despite our size, despite all those big numbers that you shared before, Toby, like, you know, we, we are able to adapt our strategy and, and, you know, really shift the business. Tobi: So you're still paranoid, so Adam: wait. Yeah, and look, I think, uh, obviously there's a lot of very, we're exciting, we're curious to Tobi: put it formulated more, more positive.
Adam: We're we are, we are, we are on our toes. You know, we, I think, I think as a company we're really leaning in that like, you know, we take a mix of approaches there. So obviously we've, we're, we, for example, we, we partner with the big, the big, uh, foundational model companies. You know, we partner with philanthropic, we partner with Open ai.
Adam: Uh, and those have been fantastic for us, but we we're also building proprietary models within the company. Um, and on top of that, we have a whole ecosystem of AI apps. Uh, I think it's over 150 apps. So, you know, we're really, you know, I'd like to think that, um, one thing that, that, that positions us really well is that we're at the application layer.
Adam: Uh, you know, we, there's lots of standalone AI tools. There's lots of. Text based prompt ways to generate designs and images, et cetera. Uh, but you know, for us it's, it's that kind of all in one visual communication platform. Uh, and so, you know, we're, we're really making it much easier to, to, to build those designs, you know, and for our customers, it's like, how do we stay on brand at scale?
Adam: How do we collaborate, you know, all of these, like, we really bring all of that extra tooling, uh, and then, you know, I think package up that AI to make it really powerful.
Tobi: Uh, I just wanna say, you have quite an audience to package tools to, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and, and sell tool store, uh, not necessarily sell, uh, for money straight away, but, uh, you can give, give things for free at first, and then, yeah, I, I, it's, it's, um, it must be one of the biggest, um, PLG stories that exist, right? Tobi: Like it's kind of PLG and then you add SLG and you add enterprise, like typical playbook. But, um, it must be one of the bigger PLG stories, right?
Adam: I'd say, I'd say we're PLG at our core. Like, uh, I'm really, uh, our journey as a company, if you rewind all the way back to our origins 12 years ago, uh, you know, we always had the big vision.
Adam: We always had the big dream of we're gonna be in every company, we're gonna be in every team, but we started as much more of a consumer oriented product. Uh, and so, you know, it makes sense that in those earlier days, we didn't have the sales team, we didn't have the marketing team. It was much more, uh, product led growth.
Adam: Uh, I would say, you know, increasingly as the company grows, we have over 95% of Fortune 500 companies using Canva. Uh. So that, that fundamentally dictates a shift for our business. Uh, you know, it, it, it of course means we can't just POG our way into the, the an enterprise contract. Uh, you know, uh, and so naturally we do have a marketing team that's does amazing work.
Adam: Uh, we, we have a global sales force, uh, you know, and, and, uh, we've now got, uh, you know, this has been a muscle for us to develop as a company, but we're getting much better now at having that connectivity between the product, the engineering, the sales, the marketing, the growth team, and, and making sure we're working together.
Tobi: Uh, yeah, I mean that, uh, I think that's one of the fundamental shifts in engineering in the last years, right? That engineering department starts collaborating, ideally starts collaborating deeper, um, and people work on one. Direction together. Right. And, and, uh, like, I dunno, connect output to outcome ultimately.
Tobi: Mm-hmm. Um, uh, how do you, do you do that in such a large organization? So I, I And, and how does conveys law work for you? Like, uh, how, how, yeah. I mean, are you, you're, you're building like many apps, you're having apps teams, you're having microservice teams. Like how does it, how does it work and how does it draw one big picture ultimately?
Adam: Uh, I, I, I'm grateful, Toby, that you said Conway's Law before I said Conway's Law. It's, uh, it's a bit of a bingo buzzword in our team. Uh, we think a lot about Conway's Law, uh, as a company, ulti, you know, ultimately we're trying to ship a single product. You know, unlike many other companies, maybe where you've got 20 different products, uh, you know, that all feel independent.
Adam: We're trying to really, uh, ship that integrated all in one product experience where, you know, your, your design assets from a whiteboard you can use over in social media and like really kind of get all those benefits. So that, that has to show up in how we work. That has to, you know, I think all the way from like how our company and our different teams work together.
Adam: So for, you know, for a thought, let's go down to the team level. We have cross-functional teams. Uh, so all of our teams, you know, we, we we, a typical shape in, at least in a product organization would be, you know, you've got your product manager, your product designer, the engineering team, and then, you know, a mix of what we call embedded specialties.
Adam: Uh, I'd say another thing that's, that's, you know, we, we use a matrix organizational structure. So our language is, we've got. Groups and, and orgs. And then we've got specialties. And so, you know, I am part of the technology specialty. We have a product specialty. Uh, and so, you know, we have, uh, a number of different groups that, that are composed of these different functions.
Adam: Uh, but it's really important to us that people feel very much a first class citizen of their group. Uh, we also have this term super group, but uh, we, uh, I'm, I'm the engineering lead for Teams in Education, which is a super group. And we are really trying to rally that team and focus on like, what is that, that mission, you know, building that customer empathy, understanding like what we're running at, um, you know, and, and really being quite goal oriented as a company.
Tobi: And who sets the, like I. Paved road. Uh, you, you, you used that term I note from Netflix. Like who, who decides on that? Like who, how, how is that built? How is that shaped? Adam: Like kind of a how we operate or do you mean? Tobi: Yeah, well, no, how, which infrastructure you use as an engineering org. Like, I dunno, do you go for React or view or whatever?
Tobi: You build your own things. Mm-hmm. Uh, did are you, you mentioned that you use Java in the back mm-hmm. In the backend. Uh, like who, who decides that or who decided that? And how, how is it shaped in an ongoing basis? Do, do you have like a tech radar where things are put on the spot or like, and who does that?
Adam: Yeah. Uh, that's definitely evolved for us over time. Uh, you know, I'd say in our earliest days we're very lucky to have had some absolutely incredible, uh, engineers. Uh, my good friend Dave Ham was our CTO for many years of our company. Uh, we worked together back at Google and he, you know, I think we had like a group of senior engineers who did a great job of, uh, really being opinionated around what was the paved route.
Adam: So, for example, we adopted owners' files, which is something familiar to people who've worked at Google or Twitter. Uh, you know, we, uh, we definitely have been a, a microservices shop, and I think that that has served us well through the evolution of the company. You know, obviously we have today we have hundreds of, of microservices, but when we started, you know, on, uh, we never got into this trap where we had just the single monolith.
Adam: Um, you know, I think in our early days we, we set up our architecture, um, on the service side with kind of, uh, pseudo microservices. You know, like we, we maybe haven't actually extracted out the microservices into their own services, but we know that it's coming and, and being very mindful of what that means at the database level.
Adam: Uh, but yeah, language like choices around language and technology. We, we are a types, we are mainly a types script shop on the website. Um, if I fast forward to today, uh, you know, we, we have, uh, governance in the form of specialty teams. So we have the concept of the, you know, for example, we've got a web foundations team, uh, which is comprised of a number of very senior, uh, and, and in many cases tenured, uh, front end engineers who have been at the company for a long time.
Adam: And so this is a group of people that you can use to like, get consultation on your big project. You know, I'm working on a big front end project and I want kind of what's the company's view on, on how we should approach this, or this is a team that will make these steering decisions on, you know, like what are we adopting another language.
Tobi: But is that, um, is it like somehow. Like built through the matrix? Like are people in different functions and then also part of that, that, uh, that core web team or, uh, how, how is that like, or is it dedicated? Adam: Yeah. So, so as in, is it their full-time job or are they part of, of the Right, Tobi: right, right. Adam: Yeah, great question.
Adam: Uh, so yes, these are absolutely not people who do that as their full-time job. Uh, these are, uh, typically you, uh, you know, we have, uh, a number of different groups across the company, and you would typically see somewhat of a, a, a, a uniform representation from those groups. I think it's actually really important for groups.
Adam: It's almost like an ambassador to that team. You know, we view this as a great career milestone, like, you know, hey, so and so from our group, yes, they're shipping great code, and now we're recognizing them as this is a, a really key engineer. This is an expert on front end technology. And so now you know they've earned the right to be part of this, the backend foundations team, and now, you know, they can be part of that steering team.
Tobi: And, uh, do you create also visibility on that somehow? Like do you have, I don't know, I don't know. Some people have a, in Slack somehow that you have your different career steps and your achievements in the company and your profiles, or how do you create that, that visibility also remotely? Adam: We, yeah. We have, we're big time Slack users, uh, as a company.
Adam: We're quite a distributed team and, and we we're really big on asynchronous, uh, work as well. Uh, it's, that's always evolving. And so, you know, I can just reference like the backend foundations team, they, they do a newsletter and so, so, you know, every, I think it's month or so they'll share out here's what's going on in backend foundations. Adam: Here's, here's the big problems we're thinking about. Uh, so that's, that's one way. I
Tobi: mean, you have so many people, uh, you must think about, um, how to utilize AI as well. Uh, I, I assume like many, many organizations like, or the, the, the wet dream of the CFO right now is to like, I don't know, uh, kill half of the workforce potentially, et cetera.
Tobi: I don't know, uh, like I at least heard that from, from a couple of CFOs because like everyone can code now. Um, how do you see that? Do you also have a, um, a team around that, that basically, um, like advocates for AI usage, or do you see it as, as good actually if Yeah. People jump on it, or how do you see that?
Adam: Yeah. Uh, and by the way, but like, uh, this, this is also relevant to ai, uh, absolutely need to mention like we absolutely have platform teams. You know, we've got an amazing developer platform group. We have an infrastructure group, and so these, these groups also play a critical role in like building and defining our paved roles.
Adam: Our, our tooling. I think that's also showing up in how we think about ai. It is, uh, our CEO uh, often says to the company, well, 1% of the way there, uh, you know, we have extraordinary ambitions, uh, of how far this company Canva and what we're, we're going to be able to achieve. Uh, and so for me, you know, it's how can we, you know, with, with the amazing engineers that we do have, like how can we augment and, and uplevel the capabilities of our team?
Adam: I. So that we can achieve more of our dreams. It, it's absolutely the case that we have so many more goals and so many more ideas, great ideas, uh, that we wanna ship as a business, that we just simply do not have the people and the resourcing to build. So that, that would be my dream. I spend a good amount of my time, you know, uh, uh, kind of, uh, in, in, uh, resourcing contention, discussions.
Adam: And so, you know, if we could achieve, if we could do more of those goals with the team. Uh, but you know, the approach that we've taken, the term we're using at Canva is AI impact. Uh, and so, you know, last year the, the, the term was AI everywhere. It was really about, uh, we are experimenting. We know that this is an absolutely critical time in our industry, and we know one thing for certain is that we can't ignore this trend, but we see like huge, you know, the, the tools maybe a year ago, two years ago, were still.
Adam: In the infancy, they're still evolving, but we're now really starting to see in the last six months, uh, opportunities for some of these productivity benefits. And not just productivity, but also like improving the quality of our ideas, improving, uh, our communication and, and, you know, ability to find information scattered in, in the disparate knowledge base.
Adam: That, that is all the different tools we have ourselves at Canva. And so we, we we're, we're fostering an environment of, of, of curiosity. I think what's real exciting, and I'm so, I'm so grateful, uh, you mentioned the CFO, I'm grateful to the CFO, but also our senior leadership, uh, for, you know, really, uh, giving our team the access to the best tools.
Adam: Like, you know, we're not, we're not just picking any one tool. We're giving access to, to many of the main tools. Uh, and we, it's not just for engineers. We're giving everyone across the company, we're rolling out access because, you know, we really think. Irrespective of your role, technical background, uh, AI literacy is also a skill that everyone needs to know.
Tobi: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you, you right now run or like ship cursor to everyone's desk or in engineering or, or, or what does that mean? Or cursor or co-pilot and do you measure somehow if it's used, uh, as well or how does, how does that look like for engineers? Yeah. Adam: Yeah. We, we we're, we're definitely paying attention to the usage.
Adam: Uh, and we are seeing it increase, you know, we are now, uh, in a, in a position where yes, for, for a web development, we're encouraging cursor. Uh, and then for, as we're mostly Java on the backend, uh, you know, co copilot is, is being encouraged as a tool there. Uh, you know, and we're, we're, we're also seeing, for example, use of of cloud and chat GPT and tools like this to, to help our engineers be productive.
Adam: Um, I would, I would offer, uh, you know, there's been a lot of talk about vibe coding in the industry. Uh, it's a very hot topic at the moment. Uh, we are, you know, we're, we're really clear with our messaging to our engineering team that, uh, we, we don't, we're not entitling our team to abdicate themselves of responsibility.
Adam: That ultimately every line of code, uh, that is shipped at Canva, it the, it's a person responsible for that. Uh, and similarly, you know, I think this is where some of these fantastic development processes, you know, we've got great engineering processes at, at Canva. Uh, you know, where, if anything, it just reinforces the value of.
Adam: Our, our concept of strong ownership of code and, and, and services where it enforces the value of code review and, and, and, you know, really, uh, uh, leaning in there. So we, we ultimately view humans as the shepherds. Tobi: Okay. And did, did vibe coding incurs, um, like lead you back to coding? I assume like it's with 250 engineers, it might be hard to, to, to code every once in a while. Tobi: Like, but do you, do you do that?
Adam: I'm personally loving, uh, loving this. Like, uh, yeah, I, I, uh, I think I mentioned to you, yeah, now that I've got this organization over 200 engineers, I, it's, it's not a good use of my time to be writing code. I, I have to say with this, right? Uh, but I, I would say I've written more code in the last six months personally than I did in the three years beforehand.
Adam: You know, like little weekend projects, little toy apps, um, not production code, um, uh, but it's, it's really been exciting. Tobi: Hmm. Until you hit the wall. Right? Like with coding, at least for me, like, I try something, I have an idea, and it quickly shapes up and then, um, uh, like growth slows down, uh, or, uh, uh, like it, it decelerates. Tobi: And then, uh, I I find myself in an endless loop at a certain point. Uh, if I don't get like, deep down in the code.
Adam: Absolutely. Yes. I, uh, I was having a fun cursor hacking experience on the weekend where I, I think I got 90% of the way there and I think I had to tell cursor 10 different ways that, uh, it wasn't cleaning up a port. Adam: So it's, you, you still, you still need that foundational knowledge. Absolutely.
Tobi: Mm mm Yeah. Let's see, let's see where it leads us, right? I mean, with, I dunno, a JI being around at a certain point, uh, uh, it might not be worth working anymore, but until then, um, until, I don't know, uh, AI writes, uh, its own database to host your application. Tobi: Uh, it might be an interesting time, right? It's, uh, it's an
Adam: exciting time. I mean, what if, what an i I just can't put, I, I feel so privileged to be part of this transition. Like, what an exciting time in the industry where we're just fundamentally seeing our, uh, our powers turn to superpowers. Tobi: Yeah. It's like the, the time when, um, punch cards were, were there and then a SM was invented, right? Tobi: And even, even better than that,
Tobi: so, um. Uh, one thing you also told me that, um, you were very late in, um, adopting a career framework, like with over a thousand engineers, you still ha haven't had a career framework. Was that before because you were like conservative on, on, uh, time consumption or conservative on, on, on, on generally adopting that? Tobi: Or like what, what was your, your, your, your take there?
Adam: Yeah. Uh, so when I joined Canva full-time, uh, so, uh, uh, I suppose I didn't mention in, in my background, also was an advisor to Canva when we were less than 10 people. So I've, I've had a firm Oh yeah. Had, so I've had a front row seat to this extraordinary success story.
Adam: Uh, but yeah, when I joined, I joined full-time. Uh, you know, we had 150 engineers, 300 people, uh, most like officially those engineers all reported to. A single head of engineering, so incredibly flat structure. Uh, and a lot of the language we used at the time, uh, as a company was minimum viable structure.
Adam: You know, we, we've really, we always have been trying to embrace all of the benefits of being a startup, you know, the, the adaptability and, and the ability to move quickly. Uh, but we talked about minimum viable structure. And when, when I joined, you know, I think we started to see that maybe in a few areas we had less than the minimum viable structure.
Adam: Uh, and in particular, you know, I think the career ladder was a really important one. You know, we were seeing a few challenges around. Uh, you know, I'll just give you a few examples, like expectation setting, you know, people didn't know, like you can't expect the same thing of a new grad as you expect of, uh, you know, your most senior experienced engineer at the company.
Adam: But we didn't have a common language to be able to talk about that. Uh, and so, you know, I think me coming in and a few others, like we, we recognized that maybe we were now at the point where it, it was actually causing more harm than good to not have these kind of frameworks and structure in place. Uh, and so that was, that was one of, honestly, it was a really fun project to get, to take our, our workforce on a journey.
Adam: Uh, you know, to, to introduce our career ladder, we call it. We have, uh, something called the growth and development framework. And, you know, so we, we, we, this was a cross-functional effort across the company. We absolutely looked at industry standards. Uh, and, you know, I think for us, a really important outcome was.
Adam: Helping our team understand how to grow, what is important to us as a company, uh, that we wanna see in our team members, and encourage them as skills we want them to develop. And so before we had this, you know, I'd say team members would typically, you know, there was a million things they could do. Oh, maybe I should give, do more public speaking, or, you know, lots of like every shiny object was, was attractive to them.
Adam: Uh, and so, you know, I think what we came up with this language around different role expectations, um, you know, initially we came, we established the C track versus the B track, uh, as well as we have a, a another track the E track. But for engineers it's primarily C stands for coach B stands for build. And so the, the key distinction there being, uh, you know, as you progress through your career, you, you get to make a choice which of these tracks you wanna progress through.
Adam: And as you progress through your career, the question you are making, the decision you're making as to which track is do I want to be having my impact primarily through people or is it, or is, you know, or is it through technology? Uh, and, you know, I think, uh, that was really important. You know, I, I'll call out that until we had that language in this career track, we had a lot of brilliant engineers who were managing, they didn't know, oh, I can do the other thing.
Adam: Uh, so, you know, I think it was really helpful when we built that. We gave them, you know, we built kind of these expectation bands, so we have numbers next to them, you know, a B one is, is a, an associate, like a typically graduates. Um, and you know, B three is a senior engineer, which we, we view as somewhat interchangeable with the entry level, uh, manager role, the engineering manager.
Adam: And then they start to diverge, you know, like principal engineer versus, uh, director of engineering. Um, and so that's, that's what we ended up building. I think what was really interesting for us is, uh, from all I know, uh, companies typically roll out such a thing when the companies are much smaller. You know, I've heard of companies doing this when they're 30 people.
Adam: When they're 50 people and they're hundred people. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, you can imagine like, how do we, firstly we've gotta make sure we've got, we're, we've got confidence that this is the right language. That we've, we're building the right incentive structure for our company, uh, you know, to encourage people to, you know, do do activities and, and grow in ways that are aligned with the company's interests.
Adam: But we had to, you know, the, the, the rollout plan meant we had to go through for every single one of those thousand plus engineers. Figure out, you know, okay, like retrofit, uh, is this person a B two or a B three? What's your Tobi: box? What's your box? Yeah. Adam: And then, and then we had to do, you know, roll out the communication of it.
Adam: And then we had to, you know, get people really bought into this idea that, no, this is actually a good thing for our company. This is a good thing for you. This is gonna help you understand, you know, when you have a conversation with your manager, uh, and you say to your manager, how do I, how do I progress?
Adam: How do I get, you know, ultimately, you know, how do I have more impact? How do I get a pay rise? Things like this, that they actually have a consistent language across our entire workforce. So, you know, I think that consistency at scale is really important for us. Tobi: Okay. And do you also introduce salary bans at the same time and stuff like that, or, yes. Tobi: Absolutely. So
Adam: I think, I think what was so fantastic about rolling this framework out is it solved, you know, like 10 different problems for us as a company. And so salary bans was one of them. Like before we had salary bans. We, we, we, we didn't have, uh, an equitable process for ensuring that we are consistently paying people who are having the same impact for the company, uh, in, in different places.
Adam: Like that was very hard to, to regulate and, and, and control so that, you know, it unlocked salary bans for us, unlocked hiring for us. Like, you can imagine how hard it is to hire into a company of over a thousand engineers when someone's coming from a company used to being called a, you know, a staff engineer.
Adam: And we're like, well, you're just an engineer. So, you know, it helped us, uh, assess the talent, uh, sell the role, bring them in. Uh, you know, so I think, uh, it, it really, you know, I think it was a, a huge win for us. It was a, a big effort rolling this out. And, you know, obviously today, I, I, I think maybe the only other call out I'd make is that I think that Canva has done a really good job.
Adam: To get us to the scale that we are today, over 2000 engineers while maintaining a focus on success of the company. You know, I really do feel that comradery, that engineers are motivated by the mission of the company. You know, and we always saw that one of the risks of rolling out an engineering career ladder and an incentive structure is that potentially, you know, we end up with people who are doing work, not because they think it's what's best for Canva, but because this is, this is how I get my promotion, this is the next thing.
Adam: Uh, you know, and I think that one, we've had to navigate exceptionally carefully. We're always very careful to not overstate uh, you know, the roles and the, and the promotions. For example, I just had the, the privilege of announcing all of the promotions we've done in my organization, uh, to my, my technology team.
Adam: And, and we really try and focus it on here's what this person is doing, here's here's what they're doing for Canva and, and why we're so excited. And also their personal development. Seeing those skills bring, rather than, you know, kind of this perfunctory, uh, you know, I made it from T five to T six or whatever. Adam: I sometimes hear from colleagues at other companies.
Tobi: Yeah. I can imagine that. You, you, you, you want want to avoid that those conversations dominate, right. Um, or wanted to avoid that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And um, is it then, like, do you also integrate it in your, I guess you, you mentioned hiring, right? I guess you also have feedback processes, so your culture and as like you're both from Australia, uh, yes. Tobi: Like you, you basically, you basically inte integrate that assessment wherever you can or.
Adam: Against the, the roles. You mean like the, now that we've defined, yeah. Yeah. So we, we call these roles, are you Tobi: really there? Adam: Absolutely. Yeah. How to grow, et cetera. Yeah. And I think this is, this has been documented, uh, publicly in a few places.
Adam: Abs like this now unlocks that language around expectations, you know? So now a manager is, is able to confidently say to someone, you know, you, you are, we have this language of thriving or excelling, uh, to be able to tell someone how they're achieving. Um, yes, we do use CultureAmp and, and we do, we, we, we, a few months ago did, uh, our, uh, our, we call it our growth and impact process, which other companies might call a performance review process.
Adam: Uh, and yeah, that's absolutely a touch point where, you know, the whole 360, all the peers that the, the manager can, can comment on, oh, is this person operating? You know, how, how, how is their impact compared with, uh, the role profile that they are currently sitting in? Tobi: Mm, mm-hmm. Tobi: Um, 1, 1, 1, let's say detour to, um, your, the, the tech side of things.
Tobi: Uh, I mean, you mentioned Java, you mentioned TypeScript. So I, I like one, one thing that I find special about your application is that it's really like an app App, right? Like, it's not that like you really have a, a use case for single page web apps. You really have a use case for, for state in the browser, et cetera.
Tobi: Uh, which isn't the case for many companies that, that strive for that. What do you think is the fundamental secret of your, your, your Snappy app and your, your, the, the, the success of it? And on the tech side, Adam: yeah. Let, let's share some secrets to the whole world. Tobi: No, I mean, what is your, your note on the tech side?
Tobi: Like, is it like state management? Is it like, do you have like a proprietary self-developed framework that you're really proud of? Like what are you really proud of if you look at your tech stack? Adam: Yeah. Uh, look, I, I, I think we've done, we've, we've made some exceptional technology decisions through the course of our company.
Adam: You know, compared with the other companies I've worked at where, you know, years of technical debt define the technology team. We're, we're ver we're in a really fortunate position that we're able to advance, uh, uh, and really ship so much new product. Maybe I'd point to two particular examples that I think were fantastic, like foundations for us.
Adam: Uh, so one, uh, is our concurrent editing, uh. Uh, the work that we did there. Uh, I would like to, I, I mentioned before that I used to work on Google Wave, uh, uh, uh, a product that no longer exists. Um, but, uh, Google Wave in many, in many ways was like a dry run for a few of our, uh, uh, old engineers on how to build, uh, concurrent editing.
Adam: Uh, and so this was, you know, back, if I date back to the, the history of that, like back at Google at the, the Canvas first CTO was, uh, a tech lead on the Google Wave project. And, you know, we didn't get it all right when we built Google Wave, but at the time, I don't think people remember this, but, uh, concurrent editing was not a common feature. Tobi: Yeah.
Adam: In, in Word software, you know, uh, when Google Wave was shipped, uh, if two people edited a Google document, I. Uh, in, in a similar part of the document, you'll get this big popup that said like, I've saved what you're writing to clipboard. Please save and refresh the page and type it in. So, you know, we've, I think now, uh, people tend to think of concurrent editing as somewhat of a table stakes feature, uh, that you expect to cross your software.
Adam: Um, but, uh, you know, uh, uh, in our early days, so we did, uh, a re-architecture of our web editor, uh, which shipped in 2018. It was like a fundamental rewrite of our entire web stack. Uh, at its core, you know, the operational transformation logic and, and how we think about what is the Canva document and the document model.
Adam: And building that in a concurrency native way, uh, was really a huge success story for us. And that shows up in, you know, every new feature we build today. We've got this foundational concurrent editing, like the operational transformation library available to us. And it just so happened that that was fantastic.
Adam: You know, like it, obviously this was always part of our plan, but it, the timing of it, you know, we didn't, we didn't go, oh look, we wanna become a, a, a teams and enterprise product. We did, we better to build concurrent editing. Like, this was from day one. This was a feature that we knew we needed to, to, to build.
Adam: We knew it would be significant. Uh, we didn't want to build into the first version of Canva because you need to have product market fit. You know, we need, we really needed to establish Canva as a product first. Uh, but then, you know, we did this rewrite, uh, which we called E two Editor two. Um, and, you know, uh, and, and with it came a complete like restructuring of our web code base that really, you know, some fantastic decisions that were made by, uh, some of our top engineers that really set up our code base for scale.
Adam: So I think that's, that's one. Um, the other example, I think we went on a bit of a journey with mobile. And so when I joined Canva, uh, we had Android developers, iOS developers, web developers, and you know, as you're familiar with that product, there's an extraordinary amount of functionality. Like we're real, you know, we, we, we really have been pushing the browser to the limit in what you can do.
Adam: Uh, and, uh, you know, uh, you mentioned now a good friend, the CFO, like, we're not in a position to have three times the engineering workforce to build every feature. Um, uh, you know, and we really, we were seeing just the timelines were blowing out. We ship a feature to Web First. It's not an Android, you know, month delays.
Adam: Um, you know, what does this feature mean Native? So, uh, we had a program, uh, uh, a program of work which we refer to as Mobile X. Uh, or, or sorry, WebEx, uh, where we, you know, we, we adopted Electron and basically like, you know, at its core our product is a web product. Um, but, you know, I think we've done an exceptional job from, you know, in terms of performance, in terms of usability.
Adam: We make sure that our product has very native functionality, um, you know, on, on each of these respective platforms. Um, but, you know, I think that was a, that was a, a, that was not an obvious decision at the time. And if I reflect on, you know, the, what is it, the five years since we, we made that, that transition as a company, no question that that was the correct decision.
Adam: And, you know, I, I really can see the benefits, you know, not just in terms of not having to hire triple the engineering, but in terms of just building a really smooth, high performance product. Tobi: Mm-hmm. Tobi: Mm-hmm. Um, maybe 1, 1, 1 step back on your first example on concurrent editing. What does that concretely mean? Tobi: Uh, if I, if I move an object, um, on, on your canvas, like, um, is there, you, you basically, what, what do you transmit to the server?
Adam: Yeah. Um, I, for anyone who's not familiar with what's it's called operational transformation, which is the fundamental, uh, uh, it's like a computer science concept. Uh, it, we, uh, we did not invent this at Canva.
Adam: This is a, this is a term that's been around, uh, for decades. I think Jupiter or a few others pioneered it. Um, but the idea there is that, uh, when you type something, when you move, you know, you move a graphic when you add something, we are not per, we're not sending an operation to save the entire document, state.
Adam: Rather, we are transmitting an operation. Uh, and so every, every mutation to the document is represented as an operation. And, uh, operations have some really nice properties Like, you know, they're composable. You know, if, if I I type this, then I type that, you know, we can compose that into an operation, which is, I've typed both those things together.
Adam: Uh, and then when it gets interesting, so, you know, we are, we are, we have the stream of operations going between the server and the client. Uh, and every now and then we're kind of, you know, persisting what is the document state, which is, is important information to have. But what's really fast? Uh, I highly recommend, uh, for any, any, uh, of, of the true geeks on the call.
Adam: Uh, if you're not familiar with operational transformation to, uh, to have a read, 'cause it's, it's really ex uh, exciting and interesting. You can then take that, that relationship between that client and server and expand that to multiple clients. And then, uh, and then what you need is kind of a way of resolving conflicts.
Adam: So you can imagine, Toby, if like you and I are in the same document, we both type in the same place at the same time. We need eventual consistency. We need the document. You know, we can't have, I type A, you type B, and we end up with a B, and you end up with ba That's obviously not, uh, uh, uh, acceptable product, uh, outcome.
Adam: And so there is, uh, you know, uh, mechanisms for resolving how do we, uh, uh, kind of, uh, compose these different operations from different clients. Uh, and the beauty of it is it's, it, it kind of, um, you know, if you just solve the kind of operational composition at the lowest levels and you, and you design your document model in a certain way that's compatible with this.
Adam: Scales all the way up to, you know, and now we, we are commenting on documents and, and you know, I have a thousand people in a documental dropping images, uh, which is, you know, really exciting to see how well that scales. Tobi: So, and who results to conflicts? Is that the server? Right? That's, yes, the server results conflicts.
Tobi: Okay. Otherwise that would, there would be like complicated voting mechanisms, like which client is doing that, et cetera. Ly some very, very fun algorithms. Also. Theoretically, theoretically interesting. But yeah. And then it becomes very Adam: interesting questions around tenancy and whether this docu, you know, who the document belong to. Adam: Right, right,
Tobi: right, right. Absolutely. Um, so it's basically journaling, um, uh, at, at the, at the core. Right. And, uh, does that then mean that you're one of the biggest. Kafka uses round or, Adam: uh, yeah, I, I'm trying to remember if we talk about exactly what technology we use under the hood there. Uh, but yes, uh, uh, we're, yeah, it's, uh, quite, quite significant the amount of information that we've got flowing back and forth on these concurrent. Adam: Editing.
Tobi: Oh, okay. Okay. Can't imagine. Can imagine. Yeah. Super interesting. Um, but, uh, looking at the time, uh, I mean, you have to sleep soon and I have to work, not really, uh, but, um, coming slowly to the end, is there anything that, that, like, uh, on, on the top of your head that you recently discovered that made you way more productive or that was a fundamental shift in your thinking?
Tobi: Uh, apart from obviously, I mean G-P-G-P-G-P-T bubbling up, uh, at a certain point, any, anything where you, you think this is like a fundamental cheat for your life, uh, really helps you being more productive,
Adam: it would be very easy to be technology with some AI for that one. Yeah. Uh, I mean, look, I'll certainly give that answer like, uh, is absolutely the case that, uh, um, all of my weekly processes, you know, that I've, I've taken a good hard look at like how, how can I use various, uh, LLMs to improve my life.
Adam: Um, I would say like a non-technical answer to that one. You know, I am, uh, in terms of productivity, really owning my calendar and, and, uh, you know, like, I like to start from what are my goals? You know, I set, I set goals for myself every six months. This is something we all do at Canva. Uh, but then breaking that down to, okay, what are my goals for the week?
Adam: And then, you know, I am ruthlessly defensive with my calendar in terms of like, I start the week with time blocked off, no meetings for planning my week. I end the week with wrapping up the week, reflecting on the week. You know, I make sure that I have mm-hmm. Uh, focus time blocked out. I think a lot of people look at my calendar and they, and they, and they get very scared.
Adam: They're like, oh my gosh, yeah, you, you, there's no white, there's no white pixels. Uh, but I think the bit that they don't realize is that that is, that is by design. You know, I think the kind of the, the, the mental shift there, especially if you move to kind of the, the manager schedule instead of the maker schedule is, um, your time.
Adam: Like it's, it's far too easy to steal someone else's time by just dropping, dropping a calendar entry in someone's calendar and. If I am only doing meetings and that is that I'm not doing my job. I need to actually be thinking, I need to be doing strategy. I need to be really, uh, you know, so I think for me, that's the biggest hack is like being extra, having an incredibly high amount of ownership over how I spend my time and how I spend my week.
Adam: Which Toby, yourself as a, as a parent, you know, like, so important, uh, to do this. You know, I, I think once we, once I had a kid. I no longer had the luxury of, I, you know what? I'll just work on this tonight. Like Tobi: Yeah, on the weekend, right? On the weekend. Adam: No, that's, that is no longer, uh, that is no longer my time.
Adam: Uh, you know, I mean, that's not to say that people don't, don't do a bit of work outside of hours. Um, but yeah, I think that that is a really important shift for me. Tobi: So that means that you manually block your calendar every week. You manually, uh, orchestrate that every, every sun Sunday or something? Uh, or is there some automa uh, automated mechanism, like I use reclaim ai, for example. Tobi: Mm-hmm. To kind of defend my calendar. I at least try it. Um,
Adam: yeah, I've, I've, I've, I've played with Reclaim. I do find, like, I am at the point where I, I just have such a strong, a strong opinion on how my calendar should look. I also, you know, I have teammates and I need to synchronize my calendar with them.
Adam: You know, I, I can't be in focus time when we need to be having a meeting. And so, you know, we do have a shape to the week, you know, like clearly Monday you're kicking off the week. Wednesday, the whole company, uh, one of my favorite things, we have meet free Wednesday, so from, from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM time zones make this hard.
Adam: But, you know, the, the culture is, this is when people are doing focus work. This is not a time, you know, you can, you can have a workshop or a meeting, but not a recurring meeting. Tobi: Okay. Um, yeah, recurring meetings quickly take over otherwise. Right. Um, and, and, and you plan that then every week, basically. I do. Tobi: You manually set your blockers, et cetera. I just, I, I
Adam: do my wanna, you know, a pro, a pro tip, one of my favorite hacks, uh, which I wish I'd done earlier in my career is I go I every Friday afternoon as part of my reflection. I tell my future self what I'm gonna do Monday morning because you, you know that feeling.
Adam: You come back to work on a Monday morning, you know, you had a good weekend and you can't remember what you do here. Uh, you know, I, I, I set my, my goals for the week. I really kind of give myself a kickstart. Uh, and I do that on Friday afternoon. Um, on a daily basis. This is extremely high technology, especially since I work at Canva.
Adam: But I use sticky notes, uh, uh, and so, you know, every day I have a single sticky note, which is what are my, my priorities for the day, and I cross 'em off as I go. And, you know, for me, the power of the sticky note is like, it, it, it's constraining, it limits like, it, it, it forces me that I can't just do 30 things today and I need to prioritize. Tobi: Uh, and you already achieved quite a lot. Well, the day is almost over for you.
Adam: I, I, yeah. This is, this is, this is, how do you say my last meeting for the day?
Tobi: Um, uh, great, great. Um, and, uh, you, you, you just said it, that you're talking to your future self. Um, I still have a little surprise for you that you, like, you, you'll now be able to talk to your. Um, to your past self. So, um, let's, let's, let's assume, let's assume there's a, a hidden feature in, in your journaling feature, um, or your journaling core at, at Canva that, uh, allows you like undocumented API, that, uh, you yourself as an inviter advisor coded back or coded into Canva back in the days.
Tobi: Uh, it allows you to travel back in time and, uh, we both now, uh, create a journal entry that, uh, lets us travel back to the year 2011. I think you were working back at, at Twitter in, in New York at that, at that, uh, date or that, that year. And, um. Know, observe yourself for a while, building real time search, uh, enjoying New York life, et cetera, uh, with your wife, and you now have the chance to whisper something, uh, into young, into young Adam's ears. Tobi: What would it be?
Adam: That was a very obvious answer to that one, which is Join join Canva. When they first offered me the job, Adam: um, I think, I think I was enjoying my life in New York too much. Uh, you know, a very exciting role at Twitter, and, uh, maybe didn't see quite the expansive, uh, you know, the, I didn't see the full picture for Canva that, uh, our CEO Mel has always seen. So that, that, that's an easy one. Tobi: Okay. Yeah. Cool. Thanks a lot.
Tobi: I, I hope you still got your stock options, et cetera, at a, at a reasonable amount. Kinda looks after Adam: all Tobi: of Adam: us. I mean, look, I, I, I don't regret any of the journey, you know, like, I think, uh, I went on, I went on a different path. I learned amazing things. I would definitely say that, you know, some of these experiences from the different startups and from Twitter and Google, by the time I got to Google, you know, uh, to not to Google.
Adam: So by the time I got to Canva, I feel like I, you know, I really was able to add a lot of value right from the get go. Because, you know, I'd seen some of these other experiences. Tobi: Thanks a lot. Thank you so much for, for being my guest here, um, and for, um, not staying up late in your case, but, uh, at least like giving me the, the, the, the power over your calendar for an hour.
Adam: This, this is what I would consider an, an excellent use of an hour in a calendar. Uh, thank you so much Toby, for thanks a lot and thank you to all of your listeners for, uh, for giving us their time. Tobi: Yeah, thank, thanks a lot to you and, uh, enjoy the rest of your day. Hope to see you soon in person somewhere. Tobi: Australia, Europe,
Adam: if you come to come to Australia anytime, I'll, I'll be more than happy to show you around. Thanks a lot. Bye. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye-Bye. Tobi: Thank you for listening to the Alis podcast. If you like this episode, share it with friends. I'm sure they love it too. Make sure to subscribe so you can hear deep insights into technical leadership and technology trends as they become available.
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