►
Description
The OpenJS Foundation had chatted with Ian Sutherland, engineering lead and Head of Developer Experience at Canadian fintech startup, Neo Financial. Ian has been with Neo Financial from the very beginning and has helped to grow the engineering team from 1 employee to over 150 in the last three years. He's also a collaborator on the Node.js project!
0:00 Introduction
1:15 Neo Financial products
2:50 Developed with JavaScript first
3:50 Benefits of working with Node.js
7:30 Dev experience and npm ecosystem
9:20 Security
10:00 Contributing to open source
11:45 Closing thoughts
13:32 End
A
B
Yeah,
so
I've
been
I've
been
working
as
a
software
developer,
for
I
also
want
to
say
15
20
years
or
something
now
it's
been
a
while
and
I
joined
neo
about
three
years
ago
right
when
right
when
the
company
started
so
I've
been
there
since
the
beginning
and
and
seen
it
grow
from.
You
know,
just
a
tiny
handful
of
us
into
the
quite
large
company
that
it
is
today.
A
B
Sure
yeah
so
neo
is
a
canadian
fintech
startup
and
specifically
we
we
offer
consumer
banking
products.
So
our
first
product
was
a
rewards
credit
card
and
we've
got
about
20,
000
or
so
partners
across
canada
that
where
you
know
you
can
use
our
card
and
get
rewards
and
then
we
also,
we
introduced
a
high
interest
savings
account
and
actually
we
just
recently
launched
a
investment
product
as
well.
A
B
A
B
Yeah,
that's
right.
We
actually
decided
like
right
from
the
very
beginning
that
we
were
gonna.
We
were
gonna
use,
javascript,
specifically
typescript
for
everything
we
possibly
could
so
front
end
back
end
whatever
we
could
use
it,
and
so
obviously
node
is.
You
know
the
technology
of
choice
for
running
javascript,
on
the
server
and
so
yeah
from
from
day
one
that
that
was
a
decision
we
made
and
part
of
the
reason
we
did
that
you
know
there
were
a
number
of
factors.
B
One
obviously
javascript
is
the
most
popular
programming
language
and
we
knew
we
were
going
to
be
scaling
our
team
of
developers
very
quickly.
So
you
know
anything
we
could
do
to
make
that
easier
seemed
like
a
sort
of
an
obvious
choice.
So
that
was
a
big
reason
and
then
yeah
node,
you
know,
has
worked
really
really
well
for
us,
some
of
the
some
of
the
things
that
we
particularly
like
about
it.
It's
really
easy
to
containerize
apps
using
node,
so
we
have
like
a
micro
service
architecture
and
so
yeah.
B
Each
of
those
services
is
a
node
container
and
then
the
other
benefit
we've
seen
from
it
is
just
in
terms
of
like
performance
and
scalability.
We've
been
really
really
impressed
with
the
the
amount
of
performance
we
can
get
from
from
a
single
node
instance,
and
so
it's
it's
definitely
helped
keep
our
our
infrastructure
costs
low
and
made
scaling
very
easy.
A
B
A
B
B
B
B
B
Yeah,
I
mean
that's
another,
that's
another
thing
that
we
do
a
lot
of
and
again
another
area
where
node
performs
quite
well.
It's
it's
really
easy
to
build.
You
know
serverless
function,
written
in
javascript,
running
on
node
there's.
You
know
no,
like
compilation
step
required
and
we
see
you
know
pretty
good
cold
start
performance
on
those
applications.
So
yeah,
that's
another
area
where
node
has
worked
great
for
us.
A
B
Yeah
we
we
did,
like
I
say,
like
I
said,
make
make
a
conscious
decision.
You
know
at
the
very
beginning
that
we
were
going
to
write
as
much
code
as
we
possibly
could
in
javascript
just
to
keep
that
just
to
keep
that
similar
across
the
stack
front.
End
back
end.
It
makes
a
lot
easier.
I
mean
it's
easier
for
hiring,
but
it's
also
easier,
for
you
know
having
developers
work
on
different
parts
of
of
the
product,
and
you
know
shuffling
people
around
on
teams
and
things
like
that.
B
B
So
it's
a
it's
a
really
nice
experience
for
our
developers
and
then
also
just
having
access
to
you
know
the
npm
ecosystem,
there's
millions
of
packages
or
whatever
out
there,
and
so
you
know
that
that
definitely
lets
us
work.
You
know
very
productively,
like
you
mentioned
fastify
earlier
as
an
example
great
project.
We
use
that
in
all
of
our
services
and
just
having
access
to
such
a
rich
ecosystem
packages
and
plug-ins
really
makes
our
dev
work
a
lot
easier
and
faster.
A
Right
yeah,
so
you
don't
have
to
recreate
the
wheel,
and
you
know
this
is
something
that
we
kind
of
say
over
and
over
again
in
our
foundation,
but
that's
one
of
the
biggest
benefits
to
open
source
in
terms
of
getting
things
done
faster
and
making
sure
that
they're
more
secure
because
they're
constantly
being
updated
or
maintained-
and
I
would
assume,
since
you
guys
are
a
fintech
product
security-
is
pretty
important.
You
don't
have
to
go
into
too
much
detail
on
this,
but
you
feel
satisfied
with
the
node
for
that.
B
Yeah,
absolutely
security
is
definitely
you
know
top
of
mind
for
us
in
everything
that
we
do
as
a
as
a
financial
company
and
yeah
we're.
You
know
the.
I
know
the
no
jazz
project
has
a
number
of
people
focused
on
the
security
of
node
itself
and
yeah
we're
we.
You
know
we
feel
very
comfortable
running
that
in
production.
A
B
Yeah
I've
been
involved
in
open
source
for
a
number
of
years.
Now
you
know
I
made
some
some
smaller
contributions
initially
and
then
I
got
involved
in
the
react
community.
I'm
actually
the
maintainer
of
create
react
app
right
now.
I've
been
doing
that
for
the
last
three
or
four
years
and
then
about
four
years
ago.
I
think
I
got
involved
in
in
node.js
itself.
B
Yeah,
I
mean
that's
a
good
question.
I
I
mean
it
was
just
something
that
I
was
using
and
then
you
know
I
saw.
I
saw
a
few
little
areas
that
I
thought
were
were
room
for
improvement,
and
so
I
started
making
some
small
contributions
and
then
kind
of
just
got
a
little
bit
more
involved
in
the
project.
Work
worked
on
a
couple,
larger
contributions,
and
then
at
that
point
I
was
invited
to
to
be
one
of
the
the
maintainers
and
then
yeah.
A
A
Yeah,
we
have
an
awesome
community.
People
are,
you
know,
doing
development
on
open
source
projects
for
free
as
volunteers
when
they
contribute
lines
of
code
and
fixes
and
documentation.
So
we,
you
know,
wouldn't
be
anywhere
without
our
contributors
in
our
community.
So
I
agree
it's
great
and
yeah
like
great
to
hear
you
say
that.
B
Yeah
and
we
we
try
to
do
our
part
to
you
know
like
I.
I
do
myself
the
work
that
I
do
on
node.js
and
and
at
neo
we
try
to
you,
know:
we've
we've
open
sourced.
You
know
a
number
of
things
primarily
like
tools,
things
like
github
actions,
some
developer
tools
and
things
like
that.
So
yeah
we
I
mean
we
definitely
try
to
give
back
wherever
we
possibly
can.
I
think
that's
really
important.
A
Yeah
definitely
and
yeah-
it's
great
great
to
hear
you
say
that
thanks
ian
so
much
for
this
conversation,
it
was
really
cool
learning
from
you
about
all
the
ways
that
you
guys
are
using
node
and
also
just
participating
as
citizens
of
the
open
source
community.
So
yeah
thanks
again
for
talking
to
us.