One of my first clients when I started freelancing as an iOS developer was Fidelity Labs. iPhone was probably a couple of years old and it was becoming clear to a lot of big companies that "Mobile" was taking off and they needed to have an app in the store.
Not having much exposure to the financial services industry, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but my initial expectations was that this was going to be a boring, stuffy job working with a lot of suits.
While the suits thing was true (I think everyone was actually required to wear one), I was pretty shocked at how creative, innovative, and fun it was there!
I was really fortunate because it turned out that I was at the right place at the right time. What started as kind of a "toy" project inside of Fidelity Labs quickly morphed into a project to ship the first version of the flagship Fidelity iOS app. 😱
I was the lead iOS developer on a small, collaborative team of in-house Fidelity designers and engineers. I was really proud of the work we did. Not only did we deliver all the everyday features that users naturally expected from the company - trading, quotes, etc.. We also managed to add some nice UX/UI flair with things like interactive, dynamic charts. (Lots of fun writing Core Graphics code for that charting engine! 🤓)
I feel so grateful to have contributed to that project and having made so many great friends that I still keep in touch with.