What you missed from 'CTO vs. CTO'
Labour Arbitrage. Impact of AI on the Workforce. Data Sovereignty. And More.
Saba El-Hilo, CTO at Certn, and Cullen Jennings, CTO of AI and Audio Visual at Cisco, join Tech Thursday for a head-to-head on everything from labour arbitrage, AI’s impact on the workforce, optimizing for timezones, and data sovereignty.
→ Listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple
Cisco (CSCO) is a massive, global networking technology leader with a market cap of $310B, and an annual revenue of $56.654B, and a workforce of approximately 86,200 employees.
Certn, is a Victoria-based provider of AI-powered background checks founded in 2016, has raised approximately $125M across 9+ rounds to fuel global expansion. Major funding includes a $50M Series B in 2022 (led by B Capital) and a $30M Series B extension in 2023 (led by EDC), with over 400 employees globally.
We wanted to bring these two CTO’s together to see where they aligned, and where they disagreed across a variety of topics.
“ In the last 50 years there has never been a good metric of programmer efficiency and AI hasn’t changed that.” - Cullen Jennings, CTO for AI at Cisco
We covered (w/ timestamps):
(0:00) Intro
(1:30) Career Development & Leadership Philosophy
(6:06) Remote vs. Hybrid Team Management
(11:09) Labour Arbitrage
(14:08) AI’s Impact on Junior Developer Roles
(20:40) AI Tools in Development Workflows
(26:38) Is the QA role safe?
(30:39) Data Sovereignty Requirements
(33:15) Monolith vs. Microservices Architecture
(38:58) AI-Powered Cybersecurity Threats
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Labor Arbitrage & Global Talent Strategy
Where can tech companies find cost-effective talent without sacrificing quality? Cisco’s CTO Cullen Jennings shared insights on navigating the global talent landscape in an era of rising costs and shifting markets.
Key Takeaways:
Don’t just look at hourly rates – Focus on dollars per unit of work delivered, not just cost per hour
Tax credits matter enormously – Ireland offers ~35% back through R&D tax credits, making it surprisingly cost-effective, take advantage of Boast too ;)
India’s costs are rising fast – Prices per unit of work have roughly tripled in the past seven years
Quality hotspots – Canada, Ireland, and Israel consistently deliver high-quality engineers due to strong university systems
China becoming complicated – Both politically turbulent and progressively more expensive
“If you are doing a startup and you are not talking to these people and getting your SRED here, like, stop what you’re doing, go do that. All the other things don’t matter.” – Cullen Jennings, CTO at Cisco
The Bottom Line: Smart companies optimize for value, not just cost, and leverage tax incentives to make premium talent markets more affordable.
AI’s Impact on Junior Developer Roles
Is AI replacing entry-level developers? Two CTOs debated whether eliminating junior roles creates a sustainable talent pipeline – or if AI tools simply shift where those roles appear.
The Great Divide:
Saba’s view: AI acts like having “a bunch of junior developers at your disposal” – why hire and mentor when you can use agents?
Cullen’s counterpoint: Junior engineers accelerated by AI may be more valuable than seniors; innovation comes from all levels
The pipeline problem: If juniors aren’t hired today, where do tomorrow’s seniors come from?
The evolution: Entry-level roles aren’t disappearing – they’re shifting to non-technical teams that need automation help
“What AI has done is it democratized writing software. The biggest opportunity for tech companies is finding the areas in the business that are slower to adopt technology.” – Saba El-Hilo, CTO at Certn
Certn’s Bold Move: Instead of hiring traditional support roles, they’re hiring developers for customer service teams to build AI-powered automation tools.
Reality Check: The Quality Assurance role in any tech company might be dead.
Upcoming Tech Thursday - Join us on March 12th for a Fireside Chat with Adam Froese, Co-Founder at SecondShop one of the most exciting marketplaces in Canada.
3 Areas we’re excited to go deep on:
1. Building a Marketplace in a “Non-Sexy” Category
2. Logistics as a Moat
3. Operator DNA
AI-Powered Cybersecurity Threats
Deepfakes have evolved from obvious scams to convincing impersonations that fool even experienced CTOs. The arms race between fraud and detection is accelerating, and the attackers have the advantage.
The Threat Landscape:
Voice cloning is trivial – Cisco’s translation tech can clone a voice with less than 9 seconds of audio
Hiring fraud is real – Cisco unknowingly hired fake employees; one impostor wrote code for years before being detected
Detection can’t keep up – Attackers use your own detection systems to refine their deepfakes until they pass
The asymmetry problem – Defenders must win every time; attackers only need to win once
“We have hired employees that were not the people we thought we were hired. We have had people that were writing great code and later they were writing bad code. And it took us literally, this is embarrassing to say, but years to figure out that it was no longer the same person.” – Cullen Jennings, CTO at Cisco
What Actually Works:
Stop trusting your eyes and ears – Treat video/audio like suspicious emails; don’t assume they’re real
Process over detection – Strong identity verification, multi-factor authentication, and approval workflows matter more than deepfake detection tools
Identity verification at scale – Collect geolocation data, device information, and implement rigorous verification controls
“The race of fraud versus detection – fraud vectors are moving a lot faster than detection.” – Saba El-Hilo, CTO at Certn
The Paradox: During interviews at Certn, a candidate appeared human at first but showed flickering video and odd speech patterns. When asked a simple personal question “What’s your favorite thing to do outside of work?”, the AI completely stumbled and reverted to reciting the job description.
→ Listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple
All upcoming Tech Thursday’s
March 5th: International Women’s Day. Speakers include:
Shelly Badhesha, Director, Banking at RBCx
Daniella Jasper-Okumagba, Founder & CEO at THE BRDGE
Pam Krause, President & CEO at Centre for Sexuality
Mikenna Gault, Senior Social Media & Creator Lead at Arcade Studios
Angela Nguyen, Podcast Host at The Leader Within
Sabina Bruehlmann, CEO at Nimble Science
March 12th: Fireside Chat with Adam Froese, Co-Founder at SecondShop and former Olympian.
March 19th: The Tech Behind Data Centres. Speakers include:
Tom Farran, Vice President at Longbow Capital
Joe Gentile, Account Executive at eStruxture Data Centers
Ben Sutton, Product Marketing Manager at CoolIT Systems
Moderated by: Vlad Oujegov, President & Founder at Western Canada Data Centre Alliance
March 26th: IP Mistakes that Cost Founders, Co-Hosted by ElevateIP Alberta. Speakers are TBD
🫶 News from our Friends
Althra, in-person accelerator in Vancouver, has opened their second cohort. Althra, writes first cheques into ambitious Canadian founders and backs them inside a full-time. Capital, real mentorship from founders who’ve built venture-backed companies, and direct access to investors, all built to help you scale something meaningful. Apply at althra.ca.