Wise was launched in 2011 with the vision of making international money transfers cheap, fair, and simple. Today, their multi-currency account helps millions of people and businesses manage their money across the world.
Cameron Worboys
Design Director
For those of our readers who don't know Wise yet. What's it all about?
Wise began with an incredibly simple and powerful mission. Money without borders. Instant, convenient and eventually free. To this day over 3000 people are laser focused on delivering that promise. But compared to ten years ago we serve a few more user needs and have grown to be so much more than money transfers. Unsurprisingly our customers who transfer money globally also want to receive, manage and spend, all kinds of money as well. So today our transfer product is just one part of our wider Wise Account offering. One account for international people and businesses.
At its core though we are trying to fix the problem of international money. Whether you're a person who lives a nomadic lifestyle or a small business selling globally, money isn’t designed to work everywhere. In fact today it’s the complete opposite, it's constrained by borders, and is beholden to the old rules of the banking industry. So what we are trying to do is break people free of today’s banking system and create a product that allows anyone, anywhere, to use any money. To me that’s pretty damn exciting, it unlocks so much economic opportunity, social mobility and reflects a world I want to live in.
Not because Wise was great or famous for design today but because I knew Wise could be one of the best design orgs in the world tomorrow.
Tell us about yourself, Cameron. What inspired you to join Wise and move from sunny LA to London, UK?
Tough one, I guess from a work perspective I've always made all my career choices driven by doing great work. Although simplistic, if I'm doing great work, more great work will follow. To date it’s been a very rewarding and successful strategy.
So that’s why I decided to join Wise. Not because Wise was great or famous for design today but because I knew Wise could be one of the best design orgs in the world tomorrow. All it needed was the right vision, some investment and guidance. Hopefully I don't get into trouble for sharing this but my manager sealed the deal by saying “Our product could be magical, it’s not. Our design could be industry leading, it’s not. Can you help us change that?”. If that’s not a strong pitch I don’t know what is.
So yeah, I joined Wise simply because of the opportunity to make great work. The opportunity to unlock the next phase of our mission through design. To make a very technical leaning org care about design and most importantly help designers here make the best work of their careers. To me that choice was a pretty easy one.
How did the pandemic affect you and your team? How did Wise adapt to COVID-19, and how are you planning your business life post-pandemic?
The pandemic has affected literally everything and everyone in some shape or form. At Wise we adapted in many ways like other companies did, moving to remote working, 100’s of zoom meetings, but you’ve read enough articles on that stuff. The most important thing I’ve repeatedly had mentioned to me is the trust Wise built with its employees through the way it approaches business. Let me explain a little.
Wise is a profitable tech company (imagine that), it has been for some time now. Where other companies are growing at all costs, we are not. We are the tortoise when everyone else is the hare. We don’t spend beyond our means and profitability matters. Everything from headcount to product development is driven by sustainable business planning. We don’t have free lunch everyday or fly business class everywhere. But this means when the bad times hit we are prepared more than most. I wasn’t at Wise for all of the pandemic, but at the end of the day the job security people felt in that uncertain period easily trumps all the perks and instant lay offs on offer at some hyper growth companies. People much smarter than me lead this but they should be very proud.
Last COVID-related question (we promise): How has COVID-19 affected Wise’s culture?
Right now we’ve got the next challenge, defining the new normal. Things have changed and making sure we retain our culture in our hybrid model is critical. I personally love coming into the office and collaborating face to face. But others get a lot more enjoyment staying at home. Ultimately we believe that teams do need to come together, and people should do what makes them happy. This focuses on bringing people together for big activities like planning, offsites and fun stuff then allowing people to work as they please in between.
So to date, we’re adopting a do what makes you happy policy just ensure you’re making great work still.
So unlike other design orgs we don’t make you jump through hoops, do unnecessary tasks or have more interview stages than the CIA (6 by the way).
You have quite a few exciting job openings. What does the recruitment process at Wise look like?
We’ve spent a lot of time trying to reduce the typical complexity that has grown around design hiring. So unlike other design orgs we don’t make you jump through hoops, do unnecessary tasks or have more interview stages than the CIA (6 by the way). We are keeping it simple and we can close candidates in a little as 2 weeks.
Meet and greet - not really an interview, just an informal chat.
Workshare - share some of your best work.
Partner interview - meet more people you’d be working with.
Offer - talk numbers and role.
What are the biggest mistakes you see designers make when applying for a job at Wise?
Execution is everything. Far too many designers today over-index on process when applying for jobs. You scroll to the bottom of the page, eager to see the final result and mehhh… Bitter disappointment. If a good process doesn’t lead to good output you’re doing it wrong. Simple.
I’ve personally lost count of how many portfolios, interviews and case study reviews that have spent 70% of their time on process and the final output doesn’t deliver. While “what’s good” is always subjective, I think it’s important to remember that we are designers and nailing the design part isn’t negotiable. All the product thinking in the world can’t save bad execution. As an industry I feel we’ve lost sight that our job is not about process, it’s about creating work that customers love.
A good tip I often give is to look at your case studies and if it’s not 70%+ design work, you’re probably doing it wrong. In our assessment product thinking is just one part of a much bigger criteria set we look at. So don’t over index on process and remember most people fail because they don’t reach our interaction/visual design benchmarks. Nothing else.
What would you like to tell us about Wise that is not written down in your job descriptions?
We lead through the work and don’t have professional managers. Where other tech orgs focus on splitting design management and IC work, we don’t. We want our design leaders to be the best hands-on practitioners in the world and great leaders. They are not in the pixels all the time, but definitely still could if they wanted to.
Getting to learn directly from people who aren’t only great at leading teams but are also phenomenal hands-on designers is pretty rare. I love that one day I can talk to my boss about a competency framework and the next day we can be reviewing some alts of some UI design i’m cooking up. We are building something pretty unlike anywhere else so if you want to do the best work of your career, I can’t think of a better place.
We’ve got a ton of roles open at the moment in design. You can check out the latest on
www.wise.jobs. To be honest though we haven’t got around to advertising everything yet.
If you’re interested to hearing more about our roles please reach out to Freddie Killick our recruitment lead.
If you have any questions about design at Wise feel free to add Cameron on LinkedIn.