Clear Street Innovation & Technology Culture

Describe one of the principles, habits or rituals that differentiates your engineering approach. 

Though counterintuitive, not being attached to my code and rewriting it altogether. When developing software or thinking about a complex idea, it’s easy to get tunnel vision on a concept not worth addressing. 

For instance, I was working on a bug that would ultimately corrupt my application’s memory. I isolated the issue to a few dozen lines of code but couldn’t find a solution. I even reread the code — hoping for divine intervention — but nothing helped. Then, a coworker suggested I rewrite it. I was hesitant, but after a simple rewrite, the issue was fixed. 

Comparing my new implementation to the old one, the bug was painfully obvious. Rewriting isn’t always necessary, but a fresh perspective can change everything.

What differences have you noticed as a result?

The most significant difference was the amount of time rewriting saved me. Without being firmly attached to my work, I began to optimize my time by limiting how long I spent debugging code. If I’m unable to figure something out, I remind myself that I can always delete my work, start from scratch, fix the problem and compare my results to find the initial bug. 

I help build innovative technology to replace legacy infrastructure across the financial industry through a single-source, cloud-native clearing and custody system. Learning to locate bugs quickly and resolve issues is crucial when systems move around 2.5 percent of the national equities volume daily. 

Initially, I became eager to rewrite whenever I saw a bug. However, through experience, I learned not to delete the entirety of my work and recognized that chunks within a project can be quickly rewritten to solve a problem. 

What does this approach help you and your team accomplish?

Utilizing this approach helps my five team members and me keep our egos in check when writing and programming. Becoming attached to the code you create is common and understandable, but being overly attached can lead to individuals becoming obsessive and not accepting new changes to their work — even when it’s helpful. Implementing a methodology where all your work is on the chopping block levels the playing field and makes everyone more comfortable when contributing. In addition, being open to change and feedback leads to higher-quality work and a better final product. 

As software engineers, we must focus on delivering something that works and is a pleasure to use, rather than something with beautiful code that is a nightmare for users.

What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?

As a software engineer at Clear Street, I’ve seen that while we do participate in hackathons and lunch-and-learn sessions, most innovation comes from the rhythm of everyday work. Clear Street is modernizing the brokerage ecosystem with fintech and services that empower our clients, and that requires creating the right environment for inspiration to strike. 

Open communication is key. Most of our “meetings” happen as informal chats at our desks or in Slack, which keeps the team in the loop. This also provides a space for the entire team to share their ideas, feedback or insight. We are also driven by curiosity. Our team drives conversation with the simple question, “Why?” which leads us down productive conversations, uncovering problems or solutions that aren’t immediately obvious. Finally, we have created a sense of trust. Allowing people to do what they think is important instead of only doing the next ticket of work can often add unexpected value. When you combine curiosity, trust and a strong culture, innovation naturally follows.

How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?

Our firm recently began integrating AI into our tech stack. While everyone has likely seen how powerful large language models can be, incorporating them into financial systems can be tricky. During a conversation about AI development tools, we discovered that we could use AI to automate by parsing freeform client emails to translate them into allocation instructions. It was a perfect solution to an error-prone manual process. 

We quickly built an AI solution, and to our surprise, the LLMs did an even better job than we did at parsing convoluted client requests! I also had an opportunity to present the system to a wider audience of engineers. This sparked many more conversations across the firm with people who wanted to use AI but didn’t know where to start. Now we have multiple AI workstreams being kicked off in the firm, and it’s become another tool in our technology toolkit. 

It’s exciting to be given the time to explore and build out a proof of concept outside of the team’s immediate priorities, and the ability to do so is adding value to the firm. It’s hard to know in advance if something will succeed, but at Clear Street, we believe it’s worth trying. More often than not, it pays off!

How has a focus on innovation bolstered your team’s culture?

Like I mentioned above, innovation is often downstream of a collaborative culture, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an effect in the other direction! Innovation can enable a real sense of ownership on the team, and accomplishments can feel personal when your idea moved the needle on delivering a feature or you saved the day by suggesting something to your teammate. When you work on a team where each member cares and has ownership of the product, work becomes easy. Your innovative success can inspire others on your team to think outside the box, with AI as a case in point. The more innovation you’re around, the more you get inspired!