A presentation at FT News School - Product & Technology by Euan Finlay
Turning It Off And On Again How I made a career out of fixing things and helping people Euan Finlay | Senior Engineer @efinlay24 EMPTY SLIDE
Turning It Off And On Again How I made a career out of fixing things and helping people Euan Finlay | Senior Engineer @efinlay24 thanks JK and Nitasha! it’s lovely to see you all by the way - I’m quite excited to do this, as it’s the first talk I’ve written in over a year now I hope you’ve been enjoying the sessions so far - my name is Euan, and I’m here to talk about the role of Technology at the FT feel free to pop any questions into the chat as we go, and I’ll answer them at the end :) I will share my slides after the talk as well, so don’t worry about trying to copy any links that I share
How does FT Tech help deliver the news? What do I actually do? Why do I enjoy my job? What challenges do we face? Why start a career in tech? I’m going to cover a few different topics today, including what I do, why I enjoy my job, and why I think you should consider a career in technology but let’s start with how FT Technology helps to deliver the news to our customers
What even is “technology”? @efinlay24 technology can mean many different things to different people at our core, most of us write code and build tools that support the business - but there’s a wide range of different areas
ft.com the most obvious one that our customers see is ft.com we have lots of teams turning the great ideas and features that JK’s product teams come up with into a reality, as well as making sure that everything works so our customers can read the latest news
ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker another example is our Visual & Data Journalism team who Joanna Kao came to speak about yesterday - they spend a lot of time making sure our data, graphs and charts are clear and understandable however the Technology department helps build and develop everything that supports the business there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes - including things people outside the company will never see
some of our teams work closely with journalists, building the tools that let them write new articles this is Spark, the digital content management system used by journalists to publish articles, which was built from the ground up over the last few years
Photo: Hannah Sarney (@hannahsarney) we have teams that build the systems to print and deliver the physical newspaper to customers around the world while we’re focused on digital news via the website and app, the physical newspaper is still important to our customers many of them still want to read a physical copy of the paper every morning
there are teams in Data and Analytics that build pipelines and reports they summarise information about our customer’s reading habits, allowing our journalists to maximise the impact of their news articles and enabling them to write about topics our customers are most interested in
How does FT Tech help deliver the news? > What do I actually do? Why do I enjoy my job? What challenges do we face? Why start a career in tech? there’s many more teams and areas - far too many to cover in 15 minutes but hopefully that gives you an small idea of how varied the Technology department is so, where do I personally fit into all of this?
10 years ago, I started by fixing laptops. @efinlay24 in my first job, I worked in a helpdesk role, fixing laptops for my company and answering support questions I was fortunate to have a great team and manager who shared their knowledge with me and helped me learn eventually, I became responsible for designing and building the new systems that we sold to customers
Now I’m a Senior Engineer at the Financial Times. @efinlay24 after that, I decided it was time for a new challenge - I joined the FT as a Junior Engineer 7 years ago, and I’ve worked on lots of different teams since then earlier this year, I moved to the Cloud Enablement team as a technical lead
Who here knows that Amazon isn’t just a shop? @efinlay24 many people outside of technology aren’t aware that Amazon isn’t just a huge online retailer selling books, gifts and streaming video to people they’re also one of the world’s largest providers of internet technology services - or as the industry calls it, cloud computing
aws.amazon.com their platform is called Amazon Web Services, or AWS for short they provide us with a huge number of different tools, which makes it easier to create technology to publish and deliver the news
before we used the cloud, it could take us months to build and develop a new service we would buy physical servers, wait for them to be delivered, then install them in a huge computing warehouse known as a data center the wait time meant it was very slow to go from a new product idea to actually turning it into a reality
web.archive.org/web/20090121095011/http://www.ft.com/home/uk this is what our website looked like 12 years ago - back then, making changes was scary, and could take a whole weekend sometimes, we found that the code we released broke the website, and we had to frantically try to fix everything overnight before our customers started reading the news in the morning things have changed a lot since then, both for the FT and for the technology industry in general
we no longer manage physical servers ourselves - Amazon handles that for us our teams can build and deploy systems across the world at the click of a single button as Nitasha mentioned earlier, when she talked about minimum viable products the cloud lets us experiment, quickly create a new product, and then put it in front of our customers to get their feedback before, that might have taken us months - but now, we can turn those ideas into reality in just a couple of days
Every day, we serve 14 million page views to our customers. Our teams change our systems over 100 times daily! @efinlay24 our customers view around 14 million different pages on ft.com every day, from all over the world our Product & Tech teams are constantly working on new features and fixing problems, and as JK hinted at earlier, we release over 100 changes every day
My team helps other engineers build services quickly and easily. @efinlay24 this is where the Cloud Enablement team comes in our goal is to make it as smooth and easy as possible for other teams to create infrastructure and make changes so that they can focus on developing new products
my day can vary depending on what we’re working on, but we generally start with a quick catchup video call every morning many of us are working remotely from home due to the pandemic, so this helps us review our team priorities, see if anyone’s stuck and needs help and - most importantly - make sure that everyone is happy
for the rest of the day, I might work on a variety of different tasks some of it will be writing code with my team, building solutions for our current projects we work together on tasks so we can share knowledge and learn from each other, and fix any problems as we go I really enjoy it - my team have taught me a lot, which has helped me to become a better engineer!
apart from that, I might be in meetings with other FT teams who need our assistance, helping design solutions for their problems as a tech lead, I spend time thinking about the bigger picture, considering wider problems that my team can help solve, and what challenges the FT might face in the coming months I make sure to spend time mentoring and training our junior engineers, helping them to grow their skills and their careers
🙈 sometimes all of that can mean a lot of time spent in meetings or video calls collaborating with people I’m sure Jon and JK’s stats probably look much worse than mine! but I really enjoy it - I love helping my friends to solve problems and build new tools, or watching my junior teammates get promoted
How does FT Tech help deliver the news? What do I actually do? > Why do I enjoy my job? What challenges do we face? Why start a career in tech? that’s just part of what I enjoy about my job I wouldn’t stick with a career in Technology or at the FT if I didn’t get some personal satisfaction from it
Every day is different. @efinlay24 I think it’s great that every day is different for me I might be working on new projects, fixing problems that have broken the website, or doing talks like this to all of you!
There’s always something new to learn. @efinlay24 we’re constantly learning new tools, languages and ways of working 10 years ago, I had never heard of Cloud Computing, but now it’s a huge focus for the technology industry I love that our junior engineers have never known a world where they can’t create new services in hours - for me, that’s really cool!
I’m proud to work at the FT. We view technology as an investment, not a cost. @efinlay24 I enjoy working at the FT because we’re treated with respect, and we’re trusted to do the best job we can there’s a big focus on career progression and mental wellbeing, and our management teams ensure that we have a good work / life balance as JK mentioned in his talk earlier, they believe that Technology is an essential part of the business they invest in our department to ensure we can help journalists to deliver news in the best way possible
I’ve had opportunities that I never expected. @efinlay24 and thanks to my friends at the FT, I’ve been able to do things that I never would have thought possible when I started my career
noti.st/efinlay my manager Sarah Wells encouraged and helped me to speak at technology conferences around the world at first it was completely terrifying - I was so scared of public speaking, and the idea of getting up on stage in front of thousands of people made me feel physically sick! luckily lots of people at the FT gave me help, support and feedback, and now I really enjoy it - it’s been an amazing way to travel and meet new friends
another thing I didn’t expect was that the company decided to build a new technology office in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria a few years back, JK asked me to help with recruiting new engineers and training up our teams this meant I spent a year living in Sofia helping make the new office and teams a success, which was great fun!
How does FT Tech help deliver the news? What do I actually do? Why do I enjoy my job? > What challenges do we face? Why start a career in tech? before I finish with some reasons that you should consider a career in technology, I want to talk about some of the challenges facing the FT, and the wider tech industry as a whole let’s talk about what I worry about!
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/people/nic-newman looking at the FT as a media and news organisation, people no longer trust journalists as much as they used to there’s been a increase in people and politicians claiming “fake news” when they disagree with what journalists have to say Nic Newman is a researcher for the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, and he presents an annual talk about trends in the news industry to the company from his research this year, we’re one of the most trusted media brands in the UK but our journalists have to work hard to ensure we are fair and unbiased, while still holding business and politicians to account
bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58570353 in the wider technology industry, there are also concerns around social media you might have seen some of the recent controversy in the newsaround Facebook, Instagram and social media usage amongst teenagers
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/30/facebook-sad-manipulating-emotions-socially-responsible-company back in 2012, Facebook ran a separate research study which deliberately influenced the emotions of nearly 700 thousand users, trying to make them happier or more depressed ethically I feel that’s a huge concern - I personally think deliberately making your users sad is an awful thing to do as tech companies continue grow in reach, how do our ethical and moral responsibilities weigh up against the drive for increasing profits?
twitter.com/efinlay24/status/1236649782401171456 social media means that it’s very easy to spread misinformation as well, especially in the wake of the pandemic one of the more depressing moments of the last couple of years has been trying to explain to my mother that she shouldn’t believe everything people send her over WhatsApp or Telegram, even if it sounds vaguely true
reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G there are also worries around the increasing use of artificial intelligence Amazon had been trialing an AI-driven recruitment process, only to find some years later that it was biased against hiring women engineers because of the data they used to train the model imagine if that had been sold to lots of different tech companies, or rolled out across the industry and nobody had noticed! AI can be a powerful tool, but it’s only as good as the data we use to teach it - and humans are innately biased
datacenterknowledge.com/energy/study-data-centers-responsible-1-percent-all-electricity-consumed-worldwide in addition to that, we can’t ignore the environmental cost of technology I mentioned earlier that we can create systems at the click of a button - but they still run on real, physical computers somewhere in the world, and they require power the tech industry is moving towards being carbon neutral but the data centers we all use consume around 1% of global energy usage that may not sound like a lot, but we can and must do better as an industry to ensure the energy we use is renewable and sustainable
ft.com/content/1aecb2db-8f61-427c-a413-3b929291c8ac Bitcoin is a high profile example of this - cryptocurrency mining uses a huge amount of energy, which in turn produces a lot of carbon dioxide by itself, Bitcoin accounts for roughly 0.5% of global energy usage - that’s around half of the technology industry as a whole! does the value it provides as a currency outweigh the fact crypto mining consumes more energy than countries like Argentina and the Netherlands? I’ll let you decide…
How does FT Tech help deliver the news? What do I actually do? Why do I enjoy my job? What challenges do we face? > Why start a career in tech? however, I don’t want to end this talk on a depressing note, so let’s be a bit more optimistic despite all of those challenges, why do I think that you should start a career in technology?
Technology is for everyone. @efinlay24 the first reason is most important to me - I believe that a career in technology can be for everyone, if you want it to be
Technology is for EVERYONE. @efinlay24 while I personally went to university and did a computing-related degree, that’s not true of many of my friends
When I first joined, I didn’t think I’d fit in at the FT. @efinlay24 before I started at the FT, I didn’t think I would fit in I thought the office would be filled with posh people in suits, talking about the stock market all day - but I accepted the job offer because it meant I could move to London 7 years later? clearly, I’m still here! part of that is because we do our best to ensure we have diverse people on our teams, from a range of different backgrounds - much like yourselves the work that Jacqui and Tiziana do has been a big help in that regard
medium.com/ft-product-technology/search?q=future%20leaders many of my friends didn’t start by working in technology, or go to university at all before they switched careers they were police officers, or working in call centers - or teachers, or paint salespeople they are some of the best engineers I’ve had the privilege of working with - I’m very proud to have been part of their teams :) there’s a great series of articles on the FT Technology Medium blog site, which really highlights that there is no single way to start working in technology
There’s some underlying skills that we all share. @efinlay24 we work on lots of different things, but there’s some common skills that we all share and if you identify with any of these, then a career in technology might be ideal for you
We love solving problems and being creative. @efinlay24 all of us have a passion for solving problems - whether that is thinking about how to make our readers experience as enjoyable as possible or whether the problem is more immediate, and we’re fixing problems that stop our journalists from publishing the news, or stop our customers paying for a subscription we spend lots of time being creative, and thinking outside the box
We love communicating and collaborating. @efinlay24 while part of what we do is write code, there’s a lot more than that to being a great engineer I believe that good communication skills, being able to work well as part of a team, and knowing when to ask for help are instrumental to working in technology
And finally, we love learning. @efinlay24 and finally, it’s really important it that we can adapt and learn new things working in technology lets us easily move teams or companies to gain a breadth of knowledge - or, we can choose to specialise in a single area every engineer can be presented with a completely new problem that we’ve never seen before but because we’ve all learnt how to learn, we can go away, do some research and then propose a solution that helps the business no matter which team or industry we’re in
I hope you will consider a career in technology too. @efinlay24 I hope you can tell from this just how much I enjoy what I do, and how much I love encouraging new people to join the technology industry - or the FT! to finish, I never personally thought I could have made a career out of fixing problems and helping my friends, but I’m very glad that I have and I will do my best to help you in your careers as well, whatever you industry you choose :)
~ fin ~ Thanks for listening! @efinlay24 thank you very much I’m quite happy to answer any questions you might have - JK over to you :)
This was a short talk for FT News School, a programme run to encourage and inspire young people from diverse backgrounds to consider careers in the media industry.
I presented a short overview of what the Technology department does at the FT, how I fit in, challenges we face, and why I think people should consider a career in tech.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
for free. You
can too.