Meeting Title: Brainforge-Interview—Awaish <> Nicolas Date: 2024-10-21 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Nicolas Sucari
WEBVTT
1 00:02:30.830 ⇒ 00:02:31.900 Nicolas Sucari: Hi awaii.
2 00:02:32.340 ⇒ 00:02:33.120 Awaish Kumar: Hello!
3 00:02:33.890 ⇒ 00:02:34.980 Nicolas Sucari: How are you?
4 00:02:34.980 ⇒ 00:02:36.909 Awaish Kumar: I’m good. How about you?
5 00:02:37.910 ⇒ 00:02:39.490 Nicolas Sucari: I’m fine, too.
6 00:02:39.500 ⇒ 00:02:43.519 Nicolas Sucari: Thanks. Thanks for joining at this time.
7 00:02:43.590 ⇒ 00:02:45.590 Nicolas Sucari: So where are you right now?
8 00:02:46.450 ⇒ 00:02:47.630 Awaish Kumar: I’m in Canada.
9 00:02:48.170 ⇒ 00:02:49.699 Nicolas Sucari: In Canada. Oh, okay.
10 00:02:50.130 ⇒ 00:02:51.180 Nicolas Sucari: I see.
11 00:02:51.850 ⇒ 00:02:53.740 Nicolas Sucari: So what time is there in Canada?
12 00:02:54.580 ⇒ 00:02:55.630 Awaish Kumar: 3 Pm.
13 00:02:56.360 ⇒ 00:03:01.160 Nicolas Sucari: 3 pm, nice. Yeah, we’re almost at the same time zone. I’m from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
14 00:03:01.320 ⇒ 00:03:02.350 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
15 00:03:02.400 ⇒ 00:03:06.960 Nicolas Sucari: so yeah, a little bit far away. But it’s kind of the same side of the world.
16 00:03:08.030 ⇒ 00:03:09.190 Awaish Kumar: Yes, yes.
17 00:03:09.590 ⇒ 00:03:14.000 Nicolas Sucari: Cool, so how do you pronounce your your name? Awaish! Awaish!
18 00:03:14.330 ⇒ 00:03:15.430 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, it’s a range.
19 00:03:16.180 ⇒ 00:03:17.380 Nicolas Sucari: I wish, okay.
20 00:03:17.520 ⇒ 00:03:18.150 Awaish Kumar: Yes.
21 00:03:18.800 ⇒ 00:03:19.850 Nicolas Sucari: Excellent.
22 00:03:20.400 ⇒ 00:03:23.520 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna start
23 00:03:24.200 ⇒ 00:03:31.669 Nicolas Sucari: sharing a little bit about Brainforge. I don’t know who did. Did you talk about Brainforge with anyone from the team or
24 00:03:31.690 ⇒ 00:03:32.929 Nicolas Sucari: no one, yet.
25 00:03:33.200 ⇒ 00:03:34.510 Awaish Kumar: No, no, it’s 1st time
26 00:03:35.020 ⇒ 00:03:37.760 Awaish Kumar: I just got some messages from the.
27 00:03:40.760 ⇒ 00:03:45.056 Nicolas Sucari: Excellent. Okay, okay. So Brainforge is
28 00:03:45.710 ⇒ 00:03:49.149 Nicolas Sucari: a data company, we provide services
29 00:03:49.626 ⇒ 00:04:06.160 Nicolas Sucari: for clients. We have different clients and we provide data engineering services, data, analytics and obviously, analysis creating dashboards, visualization tools and whatever the client needs, we try to to provide them right?
30 00:04:06.410 ⇒ 00:04:17.910 Nicolas Sucari: They come with different problems they have. There we we have clients that have an e-commerce different type of of clients, and what we try to do is give visibility and
31 00:04:18.353 ⇒ 00:04:41.529 Nicolas Sucari: and provide them with information from their data that can help the the sea level of the company. Ceo, Cfos, and yeah, maybe. People. We, we try to help them make better decisions. About the actual data that they have in in each of the different sources that they are
32 00:04:41.530 ⇒ 00:05:01.070 Nicolas Sucari: selling, or that they are different tools that they are using right? We try to integrate. I don’t know if they are, if they want, like information about their orders, we try to integrate Amazon shopify, or any other tool that they are selling in. If they are running marketing campaigns we try to integrate with.
33 00:05:01.070 ⇒ 00:05:24.000 Nicolas Sucari: I don’t know. Google, Meta, Facebook ads, tick tock shops. Yeah, what? What whatever they need and whatever they have, the data we try to gather, all of those sources bring them into one place that mainly is Snowflake. Right now we create an account for each of our different clients, and then we try to provide analysis and and dashboards for them, using different tools. Right?
34 00:05:24.435 ⇒ 00:05:30.810 Nicolas Sucari: At this time we’re trying to increase our team. We’re trying to. Yeah, get more people because we are.
35 00:05:30.950 ⇒ 00:05:53.159 Nicolas Sucari: we’re growing. We’re we’re having like more clients. So the idea was to get to know you a little bit. Get to know about your expertise and ask you about some questions about not technical questions. I’m not the technical, the technical part of the of Brainforge. I run most of the operations I kind of, I’m the product manager
36 00:05:53.496 ⇒ 00:06:01.230 Nicolas Sucari: so I kind of lead the teams with each of the clients, and I try to communicate with the internal team and the
37 00:06:01.230 ⇒ 00:06:13.839 Nicolas Sucari: and and the clients so that we can have that effective communication through different channels and we can gather requirements and provide them with deliverables with what they are asking. Okay.
38 00:06:14.080 ⇒ 00:06:24.110 Nicolas Sucari: so yeah, my introduction is is that my name is Nicholas? I’m the product manager of of Brainforge, project and product manager. We are
39 00:06:24.260 ⇒ 00:06:49.369 Nicolas Sucari: kind of taking different roles for me right. Now, I’m more kind of the head of data practice. We’re trying to split our our services into data. And AI so I’m gonna be leading the the data practice and what we try to do is this that I was just selling. We try to gather the requirements from clients and try to provide them with the deliver deliverables. They were asking right?
40 00:06:49.692 ⇒ 00:07:08.370 Nicolas Sucari: How we do that is, we create different teams for each of the clients. We have a bunch of people, and we try to deliver what they ask. We try to gather the information, the data and provide them with dashboards if they want, or directly like data warehouse with all of the information. Right?
41 00:07:08.872 ⇒ 00:07:21.899 Nicolas Sucari: So yeah, Brainforge is kind of this cool place where we try different things. We’re always trying to use new tools. Leverage AI in, try to automate all of our processes so that we can
42 00:07:21.900 ⇒ 00:07:43.870 Nicolas Sucari: work faster. And yeah. And mostly we work asynchronously. We have a bunch of meetings, but to discuss specific things for each of the clients or some internal stuff. But we kind of work asynchronously. We have team in in Philippines. We have team in the Us. Well, I’m in Argentina. So a lot of people is around
43 00:07:43.870 ⇒ 00:08:06.680 Nicolas Sucari: different places, and we try to. Yeah, we we always try to have a meeting with everyone so that we can all talk and discuss client stuff. But also, if that’s not possible, we use slack. And we try to yeah message every day with everyone so that we know what is everyone doing. And we can ask and and answer questions for the team. Right?
44 00:08:07.406 ⇒ 00:08:34.419 Nicolas Sucari: So yeah. As I told you, we’re trying to grow. We’re trying to build more team. We’re trying to get more clients. We are doing a lot of effort. We’re putting a lot of effort in sales, staff going for more clients and trying to increase our team. So yeah, we’re we’re looking for that engineering and leading engineers and and more other roles. So yeah, I would like to hear about a little bit of your expertise. If that’s okay.
45 00:08:34.909 ⇒ 00:08:41.609 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. So my name is Avesh Kumar. And I have been working as a data engineer for 7 years now.
46 00:08:42.132 ⇒ 00:08:45.759 Awaish Kumar: In my role as a data engineer, I have worked on multiple
47 00:08:46.089 ⇒ 00:08:48.219 Awaish Kumar: different kind of projects
48 00:08:48.793 ⇒ 00:08:54.839 Awaish Kumar: in different tools and technologies. So I have been building scalable data pipelines for the
49 00:08:55.454 ⇒ 00:09:01.889 Awaish Kumar: For processing huge amounts of data. I’ve been architecting databases and data warehouses.
50 00:09:02.768 ⇒ 00:09:04.709 Awaish Kumar: I have worked as a
51 00:09:06.399 ⇒ 00:09:09.579 Awaish Kumar: like on a projects to like
52 00:09:10.263 ⇒ 00:09:24.129 Awaish Kumar: migration projects to move pipelines from on prem to cloud. I’ve worked on cost optimization projects where I’m optimizing the pipelines for speed and and cost.
53 00:09:24.823 ⇒ 00:09:27.079 Awaish Kumar: And I have also
54 00:09:28.407 ⇒ 00:09:30.599 Awaish Kumar: like work with the
55 00:09:31.139 ⇒ 00:09:40.739 Awaish Kumar: in A, in a similar kind of setting it it a 1 of one of one of the companies called Data Gpt, where they are providing analytical dashboards to the clients.
56 00:09:42.279 ⇒ 00:09:54.319 Awaish Kumar: and I was a 1st data engineer there. So I was basically talking to clients with gathering the requirements and like taking the data from their databases
57 00:09:54.429 ⇒ 00:09:57.179 Awaish Kumar: and moving it to the
58 00:09:57.696 ⇒ 00:10:08.409 Awaish Kumar: I’ve been trying to use dpt for the transformation and creating basically the data set on their own data warehouse and then integrate it with our system.
59 00:10:09.219 ⇒ 00:10:11.319 Awaish Kumar: But from that
60 00:10:11.329 ⇒ 00:10:20.739 Awaish Kumar: I have worked like I’ve been working in roles where I’m closely collaboration collaborating with the non technical people like sales marketing
61 00:10:21.804 ⇒ 00:10:22.839 Awaish Kumar: revenue
62 00:10:22.879 ⇒ 00:10:29.989 Awaish Kumar: from different and build the data solutions for them. So they can perform further analysis on top of what we have built.
63 00:10:30.715 ⇒ 00:10:36.119 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. But from that I’ve been doing code reviews, mentoring juniors, conducting workshops.
64 00:10:36.120 ⇒ 00:10:36.750 Nicolas Sucari: Cool.
65 00:10:36.750 ⇒ 00:10:41.920 Awaish Kumar: And yeah. And one of the thing I have been doing is also reverse. Etl.
66 00:10:41.950 ⇒ 00:10:45.450 Awaish Kumar: where we are taking the data from warehouse
67 00:10:45.610 ⇒ 00:10:47.730 Awaish Kumar: and some
68 00:10:47.800 ⇒ 00:10:50.800 Awaish Kumar: output which which is coming from machine learning models.
69 00:10:50.910 ⇒ 00:10:54.380 Awaish Kumar: And then you, and based on that, update
70 00:10:54.420 ⇒ 00:10:56.479 Awaish Kumar: the other operational systems.
71 00:10:58.010 ⇒ 00:11:03.399 Nicolas Sucari: Cool. Yeah. So you’ve been a long road on the data world trying to
72 00:11:03.410 ⇒ 00:11:19.340 Nicolas Sucari: to do a little bit of everything, hey? And I, I would like to ask you about maybe these interactions that you have with non technical people in in your team, or when you when you work in in these past experiences, how you manage to explain what you
73 00:11:19.787 ⇒ 00:11:34.790 Nicolas Sucari: what you were doing to them like, it was easy communicating that to them trying to get them. Understand that maybe your job is more like under the hood, and and they can’t see actually something live until some point.
74 00:11:38.160 ⇒ 00:11:50.514 Awaish Kumar: So when I’m talking to the yeah, obviously, I we try to like I was not being very technical with them. What I’m trying to gather. So basically,
75 00:11:52.650 ⇒ 00:11:58.170 Awaish Kumar: I’m as a I’m looking as a like while this having discussions with them.
76 00:11:58.310 ⇒ 00:12:00.280 Awaish Kumar: I try to be in their role.
77 00:12:00.350 ⇒ 00:12:10.830 Awaish Kumar: So what if I am a like in that position? A non technical person? What metrics would I want to analyze? What kind of segments I’m interested in?
78 00:12:10.900 ⇒ 00:12:18.099 Awaish Kumar: How, if I want to see the like, the user acquisition or churn rate, or something.
79 00:12:18.110 ⇒ 00:12:23.140 Awaish Kumar: So what kind of things they want to see, and then.
80 00:12:23.566 ⇒ 00:12:27.733 Awaish Kumar: we try to then try to explain in some like
81 00:12:28.240 ⇒ 00:12:31.549 Awaish Kumar: whatever we have built in a similar patient.
82 00:12:31.690 ⇒ 00:12:32.830 Awaish Kumar: So
83 00:12:33.280 ⇒ 00:12:35.095 Awaish Kumar: obviously it it was
84 00:12:35.630 ⇒ 00:12:37.280 Awaish Kumar: kind of
85 00:12:37.610 ⇒ 00:12:38.880 Awaish Kumar: on
86 00:12:39.220 ⇒ 00:12:41.950 Awaish Kumar: sometimes hard to completely
87 00:12:42.070 ⇒ 00:12:56.529 Awaish Kumar: get to. Like, let them understand what the under the hood things are, how complicated it can be, how time consuming it can be but at the end, like we with all the
88 00:12:57.487 ⇒ 00:13:02.322 Awaish Kumar: like, we try to visualize the things instead of
89 00:13:02.910 ⇒ 00:13:05.070 Awaish Kumar: just speaking. So we try to
90 00:13:05.240 ⇒ 00:13:09.750 Awaish Kumar: create presentations or diagrams where needed, or charts, or whatever.
91 00:13:09.770 ⇒ 00:13:12.849 Awaish Kumar: and and with the facts
92 00:13:13.490 ⇒ 00:13:15.369 Awaish Kumar: which are coming from the
93 00:13:16.230 ⇒ 00:13:20.520 Awaish Kumar: directly from the data so based on that we try to convey our
94 00:13:20.650 ⇒ 00:13:23.310 Awaish Kumar: like, convey the information that we have.
95 00:13:24.700 ⇒ 00:13:32.746 Nicolas Sucari: Cool. Okay, yeah. Sometimes with working with non technical people is kind of difficult because they don’t kind of understand? Like,
96 00:13:33.380 ⇒ 00:13:47.147 Nicolas Sucari: yeah, the technical side of things. So explaining, that is always a challenge. I’m not of the tech, like I’m not the technical people, too. I I don’t have like a technical background. I’ve been in software development
97 00:13:47.510 ⇒ 00:14:11.279 Nicolas Sucari: companies in data analytics company. So I can discuss. And I can be a part of trying to understand what we are, what we are doing. But sometimes, like the details of the technical side side of things are kind of difficult for me. So yeah, it’s kind of useful to know that you work with these non technical roles, too. And you were able to to interact with them. Explain what you are doing? So yeah, that’s that’s.
98 00:14:11.280 ⇒ 00:14:16.649 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. So like I, as I mentioned in a similar job, we also had a
99 00:14:16.800 ⇒ 00:14:21.719 Awaish Kumar: will, every manager kind of doing a similar thing that maybe you are doing
100 00:14:22.183 ⇒ 00:14:31.780 Awaish Kumar: like running the process for the clients. Smoother. So yeah, we were, we tried to create with with him. We try to create Jira tickets.
101 00:14:33.060 ⇒ 00:14:34.030 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
102 00:14:34.110 ⇒ 00:14:38.760 Awaish Kumar: With the like Jira project. When then, you have subtask.
103 00:14:38.960 ⇒ 00:14:40.470 Awaish Kumar: and every
104 00:14:41.273 ⇒ 00:14:44.439 Awaish Kumar: task is like completely
105 00:14:45.233 ⇒ 00:14:52.510 Awaish Kumar: defined with descriptions and everything so obviously he was as a delivery manager. He was had to write everything.
106 00:14:52.970 ⇒ 00:15:02.370 Awaish Kumar: and and we had, like convey our information because it might not be better worded as you are. So
107 00:15:03.140 ⇒ 00:15:07.869 Awaish Kumar: so we we try to give the factual information reference links
108 00:15:07.880 ⇒ 00:15:11.870 Awaish Kumar: whatever is needed to justify the the work.
109 00:15:12.870 ⇒ 00:15:31.880 Nicolas Sucari: Excellent. Okay, I would ask you in this, if in these teams that you’ve been working on, you used like any methodology in order to like. I don’t know like agile methodologies, or or anything regarding that like, if you were are used to kind of those methodologies of working.
110 00:15:32.330 ⇒ 00:15:39.219 Awaish Kumar: We have been using scrum like right? So every we have the meetings every 2 weeks.
111 00:15:39.450 ⇒ 00:15:41.239 Awaish Kumar: and we define the set of
112 00:15:41.550 ⇒ 00:15:44.150 Awaish Kumar: rules and deliverables.
113 00:15:44.420 ⇒ 00:15:46.769 Awaish Kumar: And then we had multiple like
114 00:15:47.560 ⇒ 00:15:49.010 Awaish Kumar: at the
115 00:15:50.610 ⇒ 00:15:54.070 Awaish Kumar: before, the the spectrum, the the.
116 00:15:54.070 ⇒ 00:15:54.690 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
117 00:15:55.150 ⇒ 00:15:59.870 Awaish Kumar: Where it it is about to end like 2 weeks. Then, before that, like, we just meet it
118 00:16:00.030 ⇒ 00:16:00.869 Awaish Kumar: and figure out
119 00:16:01.470 ⇒ 00:16:02.999 Awaish Kumar: manager like what is
120 00:16:03.070 ⇒ 00:16:06.589 Awaish Kumar: fully determine what needs to be moved into the nexus
121 00:16:06.610 ⇒ 00:16:13.120 Awaish Kumar: like Spot. Sorry, like the next weeks. So yeah, that’s.
122 00:16:14.140 ⇒ 00:16:15.660 Nicolas Sucari: Okay? And
123 00:16:15.730 ⇒ 00:16:25.400 Nicolas Sucari: how do you feel about like like the daily updates? I I think, did did you do daily updates or daily stand ups with the team.
124 00:16:26.270 ⇒ 00:16:28.160 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, it was like, kind of
125 00:16:28.673 ⇒ 00:16:33.900 Awaish Kumar: in my, the role we I’m talking about. Yes, we have daily stand ups
126 00:16:34.230 ⇒ 00:16:38.829 Awaish Kumar: like in my past experiences. It is varies company to company.
127 00:16:39.030 ⇒ 00:16:47.730 Awaish Kumar: Sometimes we have daily stand up, sometimes it’s just weekly, sometimes. Yeah, it’s a different. But in that role we had daily stand ups like maybe 30 min
128 00:16:47.770 ⇒ 00:16:55.449 Awaish Kumar: where everyone just comes in and talks. If there’s any blocking, we just talk about it. Otherwise we just give Update.
129 00:16:56.220 ⇒ 00:17:25.750 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, excellent. We don’t use daily stand ups right now. I mean, it depends on on the project. Obviously, sometimes we do like weekly or 2 times a week like meetings. But then we kind of work asynchronously like we try to message everyone on slack and try to be online during some time around the day that, all of us are online so that we can discuss stuff. And if we need to jump into a meeting, we jump into a meeting. We try to
130 00:17:25.810 ⇒ 00:17:47.400 Nicolas Sucari: not spend a lot of time in meetings. We know that meetings are time consuming right and sometimes when you are in meetings you just like I don’t know you. You don’t know where the time go off, but you are in meetings so we try to avoid that. And only just join meetings. When we really need to discuss about specific stuff. Right? However.
131 00:17:47.400 ⇒ 00:17:48.600 Awaish Kumar: Which is kind of easy.
132 00:17:48.930 ⇒ 00:18:15.829 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, this is, this is good, because we kind of reduce the amount of time we are in meetings. But also it’s it is kind of challenging for everyone in the team to be proactive on the communication. When I say proactive in the communication is, we kind, we are. We’re not like waiting until me or anyone else on on the team is is asking for something. But like everyone on the team needs to be proactively communicating and
133 00:18:16.164 ⇒ 00:18:32.200 Nicolas Sucari: taking responsibility for what they are trying to to do. So we don’t need to be like asking every every day, every every day. The same, the same questions. Right? So how? How do you feel like working like more asynchronously like? Being more kind of
134 00:18:32.200 ⇒ 00:18:48.600 Nicolas Sucari: proactive in in that kind of way like not waiting until anyone comes and says, Hey, I wish we need this done by tomorrow but you like taking the initiative to build new stuff, maybe integrate new new things, create new pipelines and that kind of stuff.
135 00:18:49.630 ⇒ 00:18:55.229 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that’s what I was about to say that we I work in the companies where we have been doing exactly the same
136 00:18:56.004 ⇒ 00:19:00.539 Awaish Kumar: like pushing the like. We were working asynchronously, more
137 00:19:00.580 ⇒ 00:19:03.060 Awaish Kumar: then going into the meetings.
138 00:19:03.581 ⇒ 00:19:11.429 Awaish Kumar: That being said like we had the stand up every day. But it was like just 30 min where you give updates.
139 00:19:12.170 ⇒ 00:19:14.360 Awaish Kumar: although it could be, have been just
140 00:19:14.420 ⇒ 00:19:23.749 Awaish Kumar: sending a message on a slack. But our manager required like, it’s 30 min we can just bear it. But otherwise we had like conflict documents
141 00:19:24.201 ⇒ 00:19:49.390 Awaish Kumar: where normally, everything we do like, it’s documented. So whenever there’s some task we refer to like there was Jira tickets and a conference documents. So if there’s a task, it goes through Jira. And then if there’s solution, or maybe if there is just proof of concept, we want to discuss something, it is still a conference document. We share with everyone. Everyone reviews asynchronously.
142 00:19:49.510 ⇒ 00:19:50.930 Awaish Kumar: gives their comments.
143 00:19:50.990 ⇒ 00:19:54.460 Awaish Kumar: and if needed, we go for a meeting. Otherwise we had the
144 00:19:54.490 ⇒ 00:20:02.039 Awaish Kumar: even have the check boxes where you just sign it. Okay, I agree with the with the results, or whatever it is.
145 00:20:02.040 ⇒ 00:20:02.620 Nicolas Sucari: Cool.
146 00:20:03.440 ⇒ 00:20:05.780 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, that kind of thing. And
147 00:20:06.610 ⇒ 00:20:11.709 Awaish Kumar: yeah, and but obviously, as I shared on the slack, we are available on slack.
148 00:20:11.830 ⇒ 00:20:21.010 Awaish Kumar: Or if there’s an issue we just post. We have multiple purpose, defined channels where you define if there is any new idea you diff
149 00:20:21.440 ⇒ 00:20:27.130 Awaish Kumar: posted in a in a channel, or if there’s a bug you found, you can post in that channel.
150 00:20:27.350 ⇒ 00:20:28.080 Awaish Kumar: and.
151 00:20:28.080 ⇒ 00:20:28.570 Nicolas Sucari: Correct.
152 00:20:28.570 ⇒ 00:20:36.240 Awaish Kumar: Similarly, when I obviously had multiple places where I had different ideas, where I want to work
153 00:20:36.555 ⇒ 00:20:41.509 Awaish Kumar: for I didn’t got like from upside. But but I want to see like I can optimize this.
154 00:20:41.540 ⇒ 00:20:42.760 Awaish Kumar: So it was
155 00:20:43.230 ⇒ 00:20:46.580 Awaish Kumar: how it was done. It was like, I just create a document
156 00:20:46.810 ⇒ 00:20:50.679 Awaish Kumar: kind of a Jira, the confluence document where I define
157 00:20:51.297 ⇒ 00:20:52.639 Awaish Kumar: what I found.
158 00:20:53.110 ⇒ 00:20:59.430 Awaish Kumar: what are the current challenges, and how I’m going to resolve, and what will be the benefit to the
159 00:20:59.470 ⇒ 00:21:02.520 Awaish Kumar: company, how it will improve the existing thing, flow.
160 00:21:02.520 ⇒ 00:21:03.190 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
161 00:21:03.790 ⇒ 00:21:08.769 Awaish Kumar: And then it. It got shared with manager, and he can then decide to move forward or.
162 00:21:10.010 ⇒ 00:21:25.020 Nicolas Sucari: Cool, like a brainstorming document, where you can just add ideas and see what’s the impact. And see when that could be could be done. That’s nice. Yeah. And what about client facing you? You’ve been in meetings, I mean these this all.
163 00:21:25.230 ⇒ 00:21:40.130 Nicolas Sucari: James. You work with a delivery lead, for example? But if there, if there is not, deliver lead, have you been like working directly with clients like going to the clients meeting, sharing the like in the demo what you’ve been doing.
164 00:21:41.270 ⇒ 00:21:44.560 Awaish Kumar: As I mentioned that we had this delivery lead.
165 00:21:44.570 ⇒ 00:21:50.190 Awaish Kumar: it was more about in handling internal work not related to the clients.
166 00:21:50.774 ⇒ 00:21:58.449 Awaish Kumar: But I I can say that we still we had some people they would call like customer representatives.
167 00:21:58.840 ⇒ 00:21:59.230 Nicolas Sucari: Okay. Well.
168 00:21:59.230 ⇒ 00:22:05.270 Awaish Kumar: In the in those meetings, but they were not highly technical people as well. Right. They were more about
169 00:22:05.340 ⇒ 00:22:09.860 Awaish Kumar: sharing, giving the presentation, sharing the insights. I figured out
170 00:22:10.210 ⇒ 00:22:21.230 Awaish Kumar: they maybe properly, are trying to tell a story in a much better way than I could. But obviously, if there are some technical questions in the meetings.
171 00:22:21.270 ⇒ 00:22:24.760 Awaish Kumar: I were there to answer those questions.
172 00:22:25.000 ⇒ 00:22:28.549 Awaish Kumar: We were both worked. We worked as a
173 00:22:29.030 ⇒ 00:22:31.549 Awaish Kumar: like supporting each other so they can
174 00:22:31.930 ⇒ 00:22:43.229 Awaish Kumar: like create a a better presentation and and tell what we have found. And I’m I’m then there. I’m still in the meeting to answer technical things.
175 00:22:43.780 ⇒ 00:22:47.350 Awaish Kumar: Obviously, what from what data you, you found this
176 00:22:47.440 ⇒ 00:22:51.909 Awaish Kumar: fact? Right? So obviously, I I need to bear there and explain
177 00:22:52.170 ⇒ 00:22:59.459 Awaish Kumar: from where it comes. So in the client side. We had some manager level people, but we also had technical. So it was.
178 00:22:59.460 ⇒ 00:22:59.880 Nicolas Sucari: Excellent.
179 00:22:59.880 ⇒ 00:23:06.770 Awaish Kumar: It was very. It was very common that we are not just getting the business question, but we are also getting the technical
180 00:23:06.840 ⇒ 00:23:08.749 Awaish Kumar: kind of questions there.
181 00:23:08.850 ⇒ 00:23:11.609 Awaish Kumar: So yeah, okay, I’ve been in a
182 00:23:12.449 ⇒ 00:23:16.209 Awaish Kumar: you know, in every like. We had a weekly meeting with the client.
183 00:23:16.380 ⇒ 00:23:19.969 Awaish Kumar: So we had for having it done in those meetings.
184 00:23:20.680 ⇒ 00:23:27.329 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, that’s kind of what we are doing here, too. We have like our client meetings once a week, maybe.
185 00:23:28.054 ⇒ 00:23:51.355 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah. But all of the team as as we are small teams for each of the clients, like everyone is in that meeting, and we we try to get the actual people who is working on the project to to step, to step out and and step in and and and explain what we’ve been doing to show the results, and also to ask to ask and answer any question right?
186 00:23:51.670 ⇒ 00:24:17.760 Nicolas Sucari: as we as we are like one that engineering, for example, one analytics engineering, maybe a couple of analysts, and me and any other of the team. We try to be all on that meetings and try to explain and share what we’ve been doing, and also ask any questions like we give the freedom to anyone on the team to ask the questions they need through the slack channel or in the meeting in order to to achieve the results. Right?
187 00:24:18.560 ⇒ 00:24:19.139 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah.
188 00:24:20.097 ⇒ 00:24:30.579 Nicolas Sucari: cool. I don’t think I have like like no questions. Let me know if you have anything, any, any question you’d like to to ask me about Brainforge, about me.
189 00:24:31.460 ⇒ 00:24:33.020 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. So how
190 00:24:33.040 ⇒ 00:24:37.500 Awaish Kumar: you mentioned like, like, how big is it you mentioned? Like, small team.
191 00:24:37.500 ⇒ 00:24:46.869 Nicolas Sucari: We? Yeah, we’re a small team right now. We are. I think we are almost 7 8 people working on
192 00:24:47.284 ⇒ 00:25:13.819 Nicolas Sucari: different clients. We are trying to organize the team right now in those in these 2 practices that I told you, the data practice and the AI practice, the AI practice practice has only one people, for now. We are, we are looking for more AI people to join there and try to start looking for clients. Right now, we have 4 different active clients that we are providing services on the data side.
193 00:25:14.154 ⇒ 00:25:40.610 Nicolas Sucari: And and yeah, so we have another data engineer. And then we have 2 analytics engineers working differently with those clients. So yeah, like, that’s that’s the team. For now we are not a big team yet. But but the idea is to start growing. We are, as I told you before, we were focusing a lot on on growth, on on getting new new clients a lot of effort on marketing side of things.
194 00:25:40.610 ⇒ 00:25:46.899 Nicolas Sucari: And we are now getting a bunch of new leads. So that’s why we’re trying to to increase the team.
195 00:25:48.000 ⇒ 00:25:49.270 Awaish Kumar: How like
196 00:25:49.390 ⇒ 00:25:56.303 Awaish Kumar: like the how you assign people to clients? Or is it? Is it based on client requests.
197 00:25:56.710 ⇒ 00:26:10.769 Nicolas Sucari: We like, we we don’t. We don’t assign. Yeah, I mean, we assign people to clients. But you’re not. You’re not gonna be like directly working with them without interaction from us. Right? It’s it’s not kind of
198 00:26:11.140 ⇒ 00:26:31.319 Nicolas Sucari: It’s not a staffing stuffing like like. Work. It’s more we are the team we have. It’s more kind of projects. We have, like different projects with the client. And we try. We we create a team, we work on on everything as a team here, and then we deliver the results to the client.
199 00:26:31.370 ⇒ 00:26:46.219 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah, I mean, each client has maybe as a data engineer. You will have 2 or 3 different clients at the same time, because the work that we need to do it’s it’s it’s you can do simultaneously for 2 or 3 different clients.
200 00:26:47.740 ⇒ 00:26:49.150 Awaish Kumar: And how
201 00:26:49.280 ⇒ 00:26:49.990 Awaish Kumar: then?
202 00:26:51.890 ⇒ 00:26:53.176 Awaish Kumar: like, if
203 00:26:53.940 ⇒ 00:27:02.160 Awaish Kumar: so the tools and technologies are then defined by the right. So data is coming from their store system.
204 00:27:02.160 ⇒ 00:27:03.180 Nicolas Sucari: Yes, I.
205 00:27:03.490 ⇒ 00:27:08.679 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, yes, yes and no, because it’s it’s kind of a mix we try to
206 00:27:09.160 ⇒ 00:27:29.229 Nicolas Sucari: recommend the tools to the client. But if the client comes in and says, Hey, I want to use these tools specifically, we try to go with that. And that’s not a problem. I mean, we’re always trying new new tools, learning to use new new tools. But we as a team, we use mostly dbt, snowflake. 5. Tran.
207 00:27:29.590 ⇒ 00:27:58.809 Nicolas Sucari: Obviously aws, assure. Yeah, I mean, we code everything in SQL. Python, depending on what what we are needing like, we use those tools. And then if the client comes in. And, for example, we had a client that we that they wanted to use click house as a data warehouse layer on top of Snowflake, and we use click house for them. It depends on what the client needs and and what we are
208 00:27:58.880 ⇒ 00:28:23.070 Nicolas Sucari: trying to do with with the different clients. For some clients we try to to. We we like to try new tools, for example, for visualization. We are using real by now. And maybe we will be using Hextech for other clients. And we try to use different tools so that we can try different ones. Obviously, the the price of each tool is different, and the client pays for that for the tools. So maybe
209 00:28:23.070 ⇒ 00:28:38.329 Nicolas Sucari: one client is okay on paying tableau, and another client says tableau is too expensive. So let’s go with a different one. And we decide to go with a different tool. So yeah, it depends on what the client needs and what they want, and we try to be flexible on the different tools that we choose.
210 00:28:39.370 ⇒ 00:28:40.699 Awaish Kumar: Okay. So
211 00:28:40.750 ⇒ 00:28:48.290 Awaish Kumar: the snow that when data comes into the snowflake, like the the cost which incurred on that pro database or project
212 00:28:48.700 ⇒ 00:28:51.470 Awaish Kumar: will be like paid by the client. Right?
213 00:28:53.130 ⇒ 00:28:55.539 Nicolas Sucari: They sorry? What can you repeat? Again.
214 00:28:55.540 ⇒ 00:29:01.580 Awaish Kumar: You. You mentioned that this data is coming from source systems of the clients, and then it ends in the Snowflake
215 00:29:02.310 ⇒ 00:29:04.580 Awaish Kumar: brain brain forge, snowflag.
216 00:29:05.110 ⇒ 00:29:11.279 Awaish Kumar: So warehouse. So if and for a single client you have a single database also.
217 00:29:11.280 ⇒ 00:29:32.730 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah, we have like a single account of snowflake for different clients. Yeah, it depends. I mean, for some clients. Yeah, I mean, we have a different account of snowflake for each of the clients and different databases, and then we have our own where we do internal stuff, and we create our own schemas and databases that we want to use for internal stuff. Yeah.
218 00:29:33.160 ⇒ 00:29:36.439 Nicolas Sucari: But each client has his own snowflake. Instance. Yeah.
219 00:29:36.440 ⇒ 00:29:42.899 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. My question was for that snowflake instance, the cost which is incurred for that account for a client
220 00:29:43.592 ⇒ 00:29:51.230 Awaish Kumar: like. Normally it is handled by the clients, as you mentioned, for the visualization pools. Clients pay for that.
221 00:29:51.270 ⇒ 00:29:53.380 Awaish Kumar: Is it same for the warehouse as well.
222 00:29:54.010 ⇒ 00:30:13.890 Nicolas Sucari: I mean, it depends depends on the client, actually. But yeah, may mostly all of the time is like the client is paying for their tools they are using. Obviously, we kind of provide a service. So yeah, it’s it’s more kind of we recommend using. I don’t know real. Okay, we need to understand what is the pricing for real
223 00:30:13.900 ⇒ 00:30:18.840 Nicolas Sucari: real data. And we communicate that with the client. And if the client is okay, they pay for that, and we use it.
224 00:30:19.170 ⇒ 00:30:20.170 Nicolas Sucari: But yeah.
225 00:30:20.340 ⇒ 00:30:44.109 Nicolas Sucari: some. Internally, we do a lot of different things. And we obviously, we we are in charge of those pricing tools. And and we decide which tool we are using internally. So we pay for that. But with clients they they always kind of try. We. We try to give them the actual price of each of the tools, and they pay for that.
226 00:30:45.910 ⇒ 00:30:53.789 Awaish Kumar: And one more thing is about you mentioned that data is coming from social media sites. Also, like Facebook, Instagram.
227 00:30:54.510 ⇒ 00:30:55.579 Awaish Kumar: this kind of thing
228 00:30:55.620 ⇒ 00:30:59.789 Awaish Kumar: and twitter. Maybe so, is it?
229 00:30:59.890 ⇒ 00:31:02.499 Awaish Kumar: So? You are maybe using 5, 10 for that.
230 00:31:03.410 ⇒ 00:31:25.429 Nicolas Sucari: Yes, I mean, we use. Yeah, exactly. We for that movement. We are using 5 trend right now. But we are. We are looking into different options, too. 5 trend. We’ve been using it for for some months now. But yeah, we are always trying to look for different tools. We have, like 2 other tools that we’re looking into right now. I can tell you the names that we see.
231 00:31:25.870 ⇒ 00:31:28.190 Awaish Kumar: In my last job. We tried like
232 00:31:28.210 ⇒ 00:31:29.350 Awaish Kumar: air bites.
233 00:31:30.410 ⇒ 00:31:31.050 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
234 00:31:31.050 ⇒ 00:31:32.330 Awaish Kumar: Super metrics.
235 00:31:33.300 ⇒ 00:31:39.270 Nicolas Sucari: Super metrics. Yeah, I know that. But that that super metric is just for marketing data, right? Like from social media.
236 00:31:39.640 ⇒ 00:31:40.130 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
237 00:31:40.130 ⇒ 00:31:40.710 Nicolas Sucari: Yeah.
238 00:31:41.750 ⇒ 00:31:47.790 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, we also use air bytes, which is an which is an open source solution for the data movement. Yeah.
239 00:31:48.440 ⇒ 00:32:08.419 Nicolas Sucari: Nice. Yeah, we have. We have different options. We’ve been using fivetran right now. And yeah, we are looking into portable and polytomic, too, like, those are 2 tools. But yeah, I mean, we’re always trying to find new tools. Yeah. And we encourage everyone on the team to provide and suggest new new stuff to work on
240 00:32:08.739 ⇒ 00:32:23.750 Nicolas Sucari: on the visualization stuff you’re using real. But we’ve used evidence. We’ve used Meta base. We’ve used. Yeah, amplitude. I don’t know. We’ve been using like a lot of different tools. It depends on the client, as I said before, but for data movement we are.
241 00:32:23.760 ⇒ 00:32:31.399 Nicolas Sucari: We are mostly using 5 tran and obviously well, snowflake as data warehouse to to to have all of the tables.
242 00:32:32.483 ⇒ 00:32:35.819 Awaish Kumar: Okay. And we are also using DVD on top of.
243 00:32:35.820 ⇒ 00:32:43.679 Nicolas Sucari: Dbt on top of snowflake. Yeah, yeah, that’s kind of our main process on the data integration side. Yeah.
244 00:32:43.680 ⇒ 00:32:44.270 Awaish Kumar: And then.
245 00:32:44.550 ⇒ 00:32:46.579 Awaish Kumar: yeah, the same kind of
246 00:32:46.710 ⇒ 00:32:49.840 Awaish Kumar: scenario like, where I have been also using Dbt
247 00:32:49.900 ⇒ 00:32:52.570 Awaish Kumar: airborne supermatrix, and similar.
248 00:32:52.670 ⇒ 00:32:53.420 Awaish Kumar: So.
249 00:32:53.420 ⇒ 00:32:59.850 Nicolas Sucari: So I think it’s everything is similar. Right? I mean, I’m not the technical guy. Probably you will have like a next
250 00:33:00.231 ⇒ 00:33:14.919 Nicolas Sucari: a a next meeting with someone more technical from our team. But yeah, I mean, it’s pretty similar, I think, in all of the you know, different places we kind of use 5 trend and Snowflake and DVD to mobile everything
251 00:33:15.375 ⇒ 00:33:40.760 Nicolas Sucari: and then it depends on what the client needs. For example, that one that I told you before, they needed movement of a bunch huge data sets. So that’s why we we use click house, too. And yeah, maybe if there are other specific clients with different scenarios that they need, they need us like new or different things to be done. We we can look into any new tool and do it. Yeah.
252 00:33:41.890 ⇒ 00:33:44.359 Awaish Kumar: Okay, that sounds good. Right?
253 00:33:44.660 ⇒ 00:33:45.820 Awaish Kumar: I think.
254 00:33:45.820 ⇒ 00:33:46.470 Nicolas Sucari: Month.
255 00:33:46.470 ⇒ 00:33:49.949 Awaish Kumar: How your yes hiring process will look like.
256 00:33:50.980 ⇒ 00:34:17.190 Nicolas Sucari: The hiring process. It’s a good question. So Utam told me to to meet you, to talk a little bit with you, to get to know you so I’m gonna give my feedback to him, and he will continue the the hiring process with you. He will let you know. What are the next steps? Probably we’ll have another interview with someone else on the team, more from the technical side. Another data engineer, probably, or maybe utam himself
257 00:34:17.430 ⇒ 00:34:28.500 Nicolas Sucari: so that he they you can talk with them a little bit more on the technical side of things. I know I I told you a lot about the tools we’re using and how we are doing some stuff. But they know exactly all of the
258 00:34:28.540 ⇒ 00:34:32.129 Nicolas Sucari: technical stuff. So yeah, maybe that’s the next step. Okay.
259 00:34:33.070 ⇒ 00:34:33.590 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah.
260 00:34:33.590 ⇒ 00:34:46.390 Nicolas Sucari: I’ll we’ll we’ll get it. Yeah, we’ll keep contacting you, I think, what I’m just gonna bring you through Linkedin. We already have your email. So we’ll be either it will be either email or linkedin. Okay.
261 00:34:46.750 ⇒ 00:34:47.500 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
262 00:34:48.340 ⇒ 00:34:54.320 Awaish Kumar: and how did you like how you’re hired? Like, as you mentioned that
263 00:34:54.520 ⇒ 00:34:57.780 Awaish Kumar: you are writing globally from maybe Philippine and
264 00:34:57.960 ⇒ 00:35:01.030 Awaish Kumar: Argentina and kutum is in
265 00:35:01.360 ⇒ 00:35:02.070 Awaish Kumar: us.
266 00:35:02.070 ⇒ 00:35:03.410 Nicolas Sucari: Texas. Yes.
267 00:35:03.410 ⇒ 00:35:16.209 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. So like, it’s a kind of remote jobs like in the previous role where I worked, it was similar globe global workforce. And they were trying to do contract with everyone, using deal
268 00:35:16.340 ⇒ 00:35:17.460 Awaish Kumar: platform.
269 00:35:18.330 ⇒ 00:35:19.000 Nicolas Sucari: Okay.
270 00:35:19.000 ⇒ 00:35:19.639 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. He’s.
271 00:35:19.640 ⇒ 00:35:25.710 Nicolas Sucari: It’s something like that. It’s something like that. It’s not deal the platform. It’s another one called Gusto.
272 00:35:25.840 ⇒ 00:35:40.760 Nicolas Sucari: who stopped. I don’t know if you know it or that’s the one I’m using. But yeah, I mean, you can choose once. Once that’s it’s it’s figured out, you will be able, I think, to choose any platform you you need. Yeah, that’s not a problem.
273 00:35:41.530 ⇒ 00:35:42.256 Awaish Kumar: Okay. Great.
274 00:35:43.090 ⇒ 00:35:47.000 Nicolas Sucari: And yeah, and time zone. Yes, you said we are. You’re talking about
275 00:35:47.271 ⇒ 00:35:58.829 Nicolas Sucari: kind of it’s it’s your time zone and my time zone is kind of the same. There is 1 h or 2 h difference between the ones that we are in this side of the world. So that’s fine, and the people working on the Philippines
276 00:35:59.246 ⇒ 00:36:04.649 Nicolas Sucari: or that side of the world they work kind of at night. We are
277 00:36:04.650 ⇒ 00:36:29.200 Nicolas Sucari: very flexible on the, on, the on the work times. But obviously, if we are getting the results that we need right? That’s why we encourage everyone to work asynchronously and to be proactive. But we need that to be working so that everyone can be flexible and decide when when it’s better to work for them. At some point we will need meetings. And and yeah, weekly meetings with clients to
278 00:36:29.200 ⇒ 00:36:46.199 Nicolas Sucari: to that that you all need to join. So yeah, some points you will need to be online at the same time as the other people. But if you decide to work different time zones, that’s totally fine. Obviously, when always when when we are getting the the results where we’re wanting. Okay.
279 00:36:46.970 ⇒ 00:36:48.160 Awaish Kumar: No. Okay.
280 00:36:48.270 ⇒ 00:36:49.210 Awaish Kumar: thank you.
281 00:36:49.850 ⇒ 00:36:56.920 Nicolas Sucari: It’s pretty really nice environment. Everyone on the team is really supportive, and everyone is kind of trying to
282 00:36:57.160 ⇒ 00:37:15.770 Nicolas Sucari: learn new things all the time and try to explain what we are trying to do to everyone on the team. So yeah, I think it’s it’s been. It’s been a great journey for me. I joined Brain for kind of 6, 5, 6 months ago, and I’ve been learning a lot. So I it’s kind of interesting.
283 00:37:16.350 ⇒ 00:37:17.880 Nicolas Sucari: That’s what I can say.
284 00:37:17.880 ⇒ 00:37:24.479 Awaish Kumar: Sounds interesting like. I had very nice conversation with you, so I’m excited about it.
285 00:37:25.530 ⇒ 00:37:37.089 Nicolas Sucari: Well, thank you very much. Let’s hope to to keep keep you. Keep keep talking with you, and I’ll I’ll send my feedback to, and we’ll contact you to continue the the process. Okay.
286 00:37:37.570 ⇒ 00:37:39.029 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, thank you so much.
287 00:37:39.420 ⇒ 00:37:41.099 Nicolas Sucari: Thank you very much. Bye, bye.
288 00:37:41.100 ⇒ 00:37:42.690 Awaish Kumar: Have a nice evening. Bye.
289 00:37:42.970 ⇒ 00:37:43.700 Nicolas Sucari: You too.