Meeting Title: Amber <> Awaish Date: 2025-05-07 Meeting participants: Awaish Kumar, Amber Lin
WEBVTT
1 00:02:14.440 ⇒ 00:02:15.560 Awaish Kumar: Hi ember.
2 00:02:16.040 ⇒ 00:02:16.725 Amber Lin: Bye.
3 00:02:18.160 ⇒ 00:02:19.080 Awaish Kumar: How are you doing.
4 00:02:20.990 ⇒ 00:02:22.149 Amber Lin: Tough day.
5 00:02:22.260 ⇒ 00:02:24.729 Amber Lin: Tough meetings, I have to say.
6 00:02:25.330 ⇒ 00:02:25.733 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
7 00:02:29.010 ⇒ 00:02:30.140 Awaish Kumar: Feeling. Busy.
8 00:02:31.140 ⇒ 00:02:32.480 Amber Lin: Yeah, what about you?
9 00:02:34.530 ⇒ 00:02:39.360 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I actually was working on some bank work.
10 00:02:40.150 ⇒ 00:02:40.740 Awaish Kumar: Oh, okay.
11 00:02:40.740 ⇒ 00:02:41.250 Amber Lin: Okay.
12 00:02:41.690 ⇒ 00:02:42.640 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, excellent.
13 00:02:43.150 ⇒ 00:02:48.787 Awaish Kumar: I do. Some do really focus work. So yeah, I just missed that meeting.
14 00:02:50.231 ⇒ 00:02:53.350 Amber Lin: That’s okay, like today. It was a lot of like.
15 00:02:53.850 ⇒ 00:02:58.140 Amber Lin: just internal planning. And then we talk about client stuff. So it’s fine.
16 00:03:03.790 ⇒ 00:03:09.849 Amber Lin: cool did you have a agenda for today that you kind of wanted to talk about.
17 00:03:10.890 ⇒ 00:03:16.910 Awaish Kumar: I like, don’t that the agenda is that we can go like
18 00:03:17.860 ⇒ 00:03:21.850 Awaish Kumar: any AI like we have an AI project where we have some
19 00:03:22.731 ⇒ 00:03:24.989 Awaish Kumar: internal work, some client work.
20 00:03:25.270 ⇒ 00:03:30.820 Awaish Kumar: and there is like, maybe some tickets in the
21 00:03:31.170 ⇒ 00:03:38.369 Awaish Kumar: so so like what I really be doing as Uthum mentioned that
22 00:03:38.976 ⇒ 00:03:46.889 Awaish Kumar: to help out. Like to figure out like, how long this task going to take? Or if they are correctly estimated
23 00:03:47.180 ⇒ 00:03:52.610 Awaish Kumar: and if not like, how can we encourage our
24 00:03:53.250 ⇒ 00:03:56.030 Awaish Kumar: team colleagues to like to to
25 00:03:58.120 ⇒ 00:04:00.429 Awaish Kumar: to like, try to finish it up, you know.
26 00:04:00.640 ⇒ 00:04:01.340 Amber Lin: Hmm.
27 00:04:01.340 ⇒ 00:04:13.730 Awaish Kumar: In a timely manner, and then also like, try to like estimate it properly. Maybe some tasks are going to take longer, but they are not proper properly estimated. Hence
28 00:04:14.120 ⇒ 00:04:20.947 Awaish Kumar: we have to like continuously, increase the deadline. So yeah, these kind of things. And
29 00:04:21.500 ⇒ 00:04:24.589 Awaish Kumar: the tickets like, if if we have, like a 1
30 00:04:24.830 ⇒ 00:04:31.870 Awaish Kumar: ticket which is like going to have like a big, bigger scope. And maybe we have to like.
31 00:04:32.180 ⇒ 00:04:36.039 Awaish Kumar: like, understand the like, what is the project and how it can be
32 00:04:36.170 ⇒ 00:04:42.900 Awaish Kumar: split it, and how we can like execute it. So yeah, like, obviously, as a
33 00:04:43.190 ⇒ 00:04:53.139 Awaish Kumar: like, my work is more like all the help you need in terms of technicalities. I I know, like you can create the tickets and all other stuff you you are.
34 00:04:53.440 ⇒ 00:05:00.649 Awaish Kumar: You can do all of that. But yeah, if you don’t have any context into something in some technical things, and you need
35 00:05:00.830 ⇒ 00:05:03.879 Awaish Kumar: any like engineering person
36 00:05:04.200 ⇒ 00:05:15.120 Awaish Kumar: to help you out with it, and in in terms of also estimation like you might not know, maybe like, how long it’s going to take. And then yeah, there, that’s where I can help.
37 00:05:17.850 ⇒ 00:05:19.690 Amber Lin: Yeah, sounds good. I think,
38 00:05:21.570 ⇒ 00:05:25.159 Awaish Kumar: We can like the linear ticket
39 00:05:25.490 ⇒ 00:05:28.890 Awaish Kumar: we can like open like you. You can share the linear
40 00:05:30.660 ⇒ 00:05:35.249 Awaish Kumar: like project like AI project, and then we can go over it if there’s anything.
41 00:05:39.570 ⇒ 00:06:00.319 Amber Lin: like? Do you mean to look at what what’s of like? What’s already there, and check if the estimations are correct? Or do you mean like down the few in the future? When we, when we look at these different things like that, we know actually to how to like, do these.
42 00:06:00.320 ⇒ 00:06:03.529 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, it’s up up to you, like, Oh, my gosh.
43 00:06:03.530 ⇒ 00:06:07.770 Awaish Kumar: if you’re okay with like, whatever it is, there is. And you you think like.
44 00:06:08.523 ⇒ 00:06:17.606 Awaish Kumar: like, you are leading the project. So if you think like, everything is okay, going? Well, then, it’s okay, like we can. Just, I can be. I can like
45 00:06:18.310 ⇒ 00:06:27.271 Awaish Kumar: be helpful when you are deciding for future tickets. But yeah, if you, if if you think like, we are stuck somewhere like anything like
46 00:06:27.750 ⇒ 00:06:34.320 Awaish Kumar: who might need to like split some things like, as I know, like one of the ticket about slack which
47 00:06:35.794 ⇒ 00:06:41.419 Awaish Kumar: up to to put into it took, add more context.
48 00:06:42.460 ⇒ 00:06:49.490 Awaish Kumar: And then, like properly scan all the slack messages. Is this still in research? Okay? Like, then we can
49 00:06:49.970 ⇒ 00:06:57.719 Awaish Kumar: formulated like, if we have open ticket. Maybe, like the junior engineers, they might
50 00:06:58.080 ⇒ 00:07:02.110 Awaish Kumar: keep on thinking about many, many options, and they
51 00:07:02.330 ⇒ 00:07:12.359 Awaish Kumar: we might not be able to conclude what to do like. We can give them some direction like, okay, let’s split this ticket into these 3. Have answer
52 00:07:12.490 ⇒ 00:07:17.630 Awaish Kumar: for this question, these and these, and let’s decide, then execute so like kind of
53 00:07:17.910 ⇒ 00:07:20.310 Awaish Kumar: path for them to execute.
54 00:07:22.570 ⇒ 00:07:24.200 Amber Lin: Yeah, I I think.
55 00:07:25.520 ⇒ 00:07:54.960 Amber Lin: yeah, I wanted to talk to you about this, too, of like, sometimes I’m just so stuck with the engineers. I’m like, I I don’t know if you’re doing enough work today, like sometimes. That’s how I how I feel. I’m like, I don’t know if you’re doing enough work, not enough work, too much work. Because they’ll say, like, you know, the most frequent thing like the engineers say, and it’s totally understandable for someone in that role is like, Okay, I’ll I’ll tell you later, or I’ll look into it today.
56 00:07:54.960 ⇒ 00:07:57.223 Amber Lin: And then it takes a whole day.
57 00:07:58.980 ⇒ 00:08:05.610 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, some, yeah, like this. That’s where we have to
58 00:08:05.720 ⇒ 00:08:09.160 Awaish Kumar: like, for example, we see that. Okay, that’s
59 00:08:09.700 ⇒ 00:08:18.549 Awaish Kumar: what is happening. And it’s continuously happening. And we are not getting the answers quickly, like.
60 00:08:18.730 ⇒ 00:08:23.329 Awaish Kumar: Then we can change over the strategy from an open ticket to maybe some
61 00:08:23.710 ⇒ 00:08:28.739 Awaish Kumar: like narrow down the scope for the team members so they can answer that
62 00:08:28.850 ⇒ 00:08:32.570 Awaish Kumar: like I as an engineer, I know, like if you give me an open, ended thing.
63 00:08:32.789 ⇒ 00:08:49.589 Awaish Kumar: I can keep on getting many, many options right if I want to to explore a lot of things. But then I might not conclude in the given time frame, so we have to give them direction, to move towards the final tangible outcome.
64 00:08:52.890 ⇒ 00:08:58.810 Amber Lin: Yeah, I understand that. So what would you say when it comes to like
65 00:08:59.010 ⇒ 00:09:10.119 Amber Lin: I don’t know, if my engineers are working too much, or if they’re being lazy and not working enough like, how do you? How do you balance that
66 00:09:10.220 ⇒ 00:09:10.980 Amber Lin: like?
67 00:09:11.130 ⇒ 00:09:18.769 Amber Lin: How do I know how much like is too much or too little that I’m giving my engineers, and how much they’re like
68 00:09:19.050 ⇒ 00:09:22.309 Amber Lin: exaggerating how big a task is.
69 00:09:23.980 ⇒ 00:09:33.449 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I like like to Mayer that like, it’s Ob, obviously, you need some technical
70 00:09:34.410 ⇒ 00:09:37.360 Awaish Kumar: know how of the things and the
71 00:09:37.530 ⇒ 00:09:42.246 Awaish Kumar: track of previous task. Maybe like some similar task. Okay, it took
72 00:09:43.460 ⇒ 00:09:49.210 Awaish Kumar: like, you create a baseline like, like, maybe some tasks. If I can do in a
73 00:09:49.370 ⇒ 00:09:55.319 Awaish Kumar: in an hour. I can say, okay, like, maybe in a junior engineer, maybe do it in 2 to 3 h.
74 00:09:55.530 ⇒ 00:10:01.129 Awaish Kumar: Right? That’s the like baseline for me. And then I can.
75 00:10:01.400 ⇒ 00:10:08.630 Awaish Kumar: And they can come up with okay, like where they struck or like. Things didn’t go as planned like what happened. And then we can
76 00:10:08.860 ⇒ 00:10:32.900 Awaish Kumar: assess that afterwards. Okay, if like, if that’s true or not. But yeah, that’s how we create some baseline like you can create it from like like 2 engineers working on similar tasks, how long they take? And maybe the same engineer working on one task, and then similar task again. How long like if he estimates like
77 00:10:33.100 ⇒ 00:10:40.600 Awaish Kumar: for one yesterday. It’s like 3 h, and the other one, it’s whole day like, what’s the difference? Right? If it’s if if it’s the same thing
78 00:10:40.950 ⇒ 00:10:47.110 Awaish Kumar: kind of same process like you have to move S. 3 data from a file.
79 00:10:48.150 ⇒ 00:10:54.780 Awaish Kumar: For slack, and then we have to move same thing for maybe linear. And then
80 00:10:55.360 ⇒ 00:11:00.400 Awaish Kumar: like it, it should take like almost similar, like, maybe one
81 00:11:00.600 ⇒ 00:11:15.790 Awaish Kumar: difference of 1, 2 h is okay. But but like it should not be like, one task is 2 h, another one is 10 h. So like like, that’s how you can create some baseline. But then, in the engineering, it’s not a black box. You cannot just
82 00:11:16.030 ⇒ 00:11:20.876 Awaish Kumar: say that. Okay, I think there’s 3 h, and then 3 h.
83 00:11:21.410 ⇒ 00:11:27.187 Awaish Kumar: Understand that as well like sometimes things happen which which are out of control.
84 00:11:30.990 ⇒ 00:11:35.189 Amber Lin: Totally, I think, cause most of my team is
85 00:11:36.038 ⇒ 00:11:40.749 Amber Lin: most of it is Miguel and Casey, and then I have
86 00:11:41.070 ⇒ 00:11:55.599 Amber Lin: say, Luke, Annie, and like mostly just them on a different team like, I don’t really manage any, or I don’t really work with anyone else in the company. So
87 00:11:56.150 ⇒ 00:12:13.430 Amber Lin: like. The problem I face sometime is that for Miguel and Casey they’re they’re very good friends, and they kind of think in the in the very same way. So like they’re a unit. So I don’t have like conflicting
88 00:12:14.160 ⇒ 00:12:37.780 Amber Lin: print like suggestions. I don’t think they contradict like they don’t contradict or bring up like different points from each other. So a lot of times I I can only take their word for it. So I can only hear, okay, they say, this is going to be 5 points, even though I thought I thought it was like a 2 point thing. They say it’s gonna be 5 points. I was like, okay, you were the engineer. Okay, this is 5 points.
89 00:12:37.980 ⇒ 00:12:42.609 Amber Lin: And then for, like, if we look.
90 00:12:42.610 ⇒ 00:12:44.140 Awaish Kumar: Like, that’s where.
91 00:12:44.842 ⇒ 00:12:56.010 Awaish Kumar: We like. That’s where I I can help like. That’s why I was asked to collaborate with you is the same thing right? That’s like, that’s where we fill in.
92 00:12:56.220 ⇒ 00:12:59.040 Awaish Kumar: I feel in that. Okay, let’s
93 00:12:59.190 ⇒ 00:13:01.120 Awaish Kumar: let’s see, like, if there’s 5
94 00:13:01.320 ⇒ 00:13:06.969 Awaish Kumar: point task, then why it’s 5 like, let’s understand the technicalities and
95 00:13:07.200 ⇒ 00:13:17.159 Awaish Kumar: and it and and see if it’s justified, and get some baseline out of it. Things like that like I see like right now. Still, I’m as a
96 00:13:17.350 ⇒ 00:13:23.319 Awaish Kumar: as team member. I’m working along alongside. I don’t have a
97 00:13:23.560 ⇒ 00:13:32.669 Awaish Kumar: kind of a decision making thing. So I I see that like we are working on like I have built an
98 00:13:32.930 ⇒ 00:13:41.150 Awaish Kumar: pipeline which does the same thing, but then we have. They are creating a same flow on any 10
99 00:13:41.966 ⇒ 00:13:48.120 Awaish Kumar: to do the same thing and like without
100 00:13:49.101 ⇒ 00:13:52.950 Awaish Kumar: without any like justification of why.
101 00:13:53.170 ⇒ 00:13:58.100 Awaish Kumar: what they are doing is better than the data. Already we have in S. 3.
102 00:13:58.100 ⇒ 00:14:12.589 Amber Lin: Yeah, I I agree like a lot of times for this team. They like. I think their strong point is an execution. They’re not the greatest about thinking about different possibilities, which is okay, like
103 00:14:12.690 ⇒ 00:14:23.949 Amber Lin: like to give you a context of today. Why, it’s such a tough day is because me and Utam and Miguel, we’re just on a call for an hour, and we’re like, nothing is happening
104 00:14:24.060 ⇒ 00:14:30.350 Amber Lin: like this. Project has been going on for months, and we have no output like
105 00:14:30.560 ⇒ 00:14:33.800 Amber Lin: who who fucked it up. I was like, oh.
106 00:14:34.930 ⇒ 00:14:41.500 Amber Lin: some parts of it is me. Some parts of is Miguel, like we all contributed to this fuck up, and then
107 00:14:41.710 ⇒ 00:14:46.349 Amber Lin: where Miguel is like. He didn’t think about the strategic part of
108 00:14:46.600 ⇒ 00:14:51.850 Amber Lin: of of the whole project he was just executing, and
109 00:14:52.680 ⇒ 00:15:04.000 Amber Lin: sorry I got derailed. What was it? Yeah, I think it will be really, really helpful for to have you in the meetings, and when they bring up something because you already have that
110 00:15:04.120 ⇒ 00:15:08.020 Amber Lin: have that knowledge of the technicalities like
111 00:15:08.170 ⇒ 00:15:32.970 Amber Lin: I want to. I like, I want to officially grant you authority just when when in the meetings, like, if you see something and you hear something doesn’t sound right like, can you just say, like, I feel like this could take just 2 points instead of 5, like, just just say it in the meeting, and then we can have a healthy discussion of how things should go cause a lot of times. What I run into is that
112 00:15:33.620 ⇒ 00:15:37.229 Amber Lin: maybe I will say, Oh, yeah, that’s not like either.
113 00:15:37.230 ⇒ 00:15:41.865 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, that’s where I want to like, have a different approach, like
114 00:15:42.730 ⇒ 00:15:46.540 Awaish Kumar: we like, I don’t want to contradict
115 00:15:46.810 ⇒ 00:16:08.849 Awaish Kumar: team members in in front of everyone. So they feel like demotivated and uninterested to work. But my approach would be that we can meet. We can assign some points, and in the meeting you can then discuss with them. Okay, we thought, I and Avesh discussed about this. And we thought, it’s
116 00:16:09.160 ⇒ 00:16:11.560 Awaish Kumar: 2 points or 3 points like, what do you think about it?
117 00:16:12.030 ⇒ 00:16:13.260 Awaish Kumar: That’s like a different.
118 00:16:13.260 ⇒ 00:16:13.870 Amber Lin: Oh, okay.
119 00:16:15.370 ⇒ 00:16:35.730 Amber Lin: okay, okay, that’s you bring up good point. So we should do that. I think we could do it in the grooming. So I definitely would love you to come to the grooming session, so we can assign like points, for even in planning my only point about like doing this beforehand is that the engineers are gonna say, no. It actually takes 5.
120 00:16:36.640 ⇒ 00:16:49.189 Awaish Kumar: Yeah. But then we can like, then I can come up like, okay, why? I thought, it’s 2 point and not 5. Right? Then we? We are having a conversation, and we are not contradicting like we are just giving our opinion.
121 00:16:49.830 ⇒ 00:16:54.419 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good. And probably this should have been like
122 00:16:54.610 ⇒ 00:17:11.190 Amber Lin: in grooming and in planning like right now, unfortunately, sometimes it still happens in stand ups, but ultimately like, I don’t want you to have to be on every single call, because then it just takes up so much of your time. So.
123 00:17:11.190 ⇒ 00:17:17.969 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like what? I? What? I? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Like, maybe like, when we are planning the week right? We have one meeting.
124 00:17:18.200 ⇒ 00:17:31.930 Awaish Kumar: plan out the week, give the points, and I join the standards normally. As I do now. So then, we can discuss those like as we move them in progress. We can keep on discussing.
125 00:17:32.896 ⇒ 00:17:37.270 Amber Lin: Okay, sounds good. So oh.
126 00:17:37.570 ⇒ 00:17:45.370 Amber Lin: that’s a good thing. Let me sorry my brain is so occupied the past few days, like I have 0 capacity for thinking.
127 00:17:45.370 ⇒ 00:17:47.240 Awaish Kumar: A grooming meeting is like
128 00:17:47.550 ⇒ 00:17:51.680 Awaish Kumar: I I don’t think we should do grooming every day like it’s like once a week, or something like.
129 00:17:51.680 ⇒ 00:17:54.059 Amber Lin: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, let me
130 00:17:54.544 ⇒ 00:18:06.905 Amber Lin: at least for the AI team, because all the other project teams are just like existent. Right now they just run. I think we need a lot of help on the AI team.
131 00:18:08.140 ⇒ 00:18:10.119 Amber Lin: so let me.
132 00:18:14.040 ⇒ 00:18:32.570 Amber Lin: yeah. Let me set the schedules, and then I’ll invite you to the meeting cadences. I think that will help us like get started on it. And yes, I I really appreciate you offering to help as I. I needed this help, and I probably should have reached out to you. But, like thank you for reaching out to me.
133 00:18:33.620 ⇒ 00:18:39.189 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, no, no worries. So yeah, that’s that’s where I like. That’s what how sprint planning works right?
134 00:18:39.630 ⇒ 00:19:04.740 Awaish Kumar: We made like, maybe make. Maybe right now we don’t have enough clarity. We can go one week sprints, and when you have more mature project we can go for even 2 weeks, sprint. So in the sprint we decide on tasks. We decide on points. And then we see, okay, we estimated that based on points assigned, we can deliver this in these 2 weeks.
135 00:19:05.440 ⇒ 00:19:06.759 Amber Lin: Yeah, I really appreciate.
136 00:19:07.150 ⇒ 00:19:27.240 Amber Lin: I think our AI team really, just we’re missing an engineering lead. And that’s also kind of what popped up in the meeting with Utam and Miguel earlier is like we have no one leading, and so, like I physically cannot do, pming and and sleep at the same time. So like
137 00:19:28.030 ⇒ 00:19:34.219 Amber Lin: we’re kind of dropping the ball there on, like in the AI team for engineering leads. So that will be great.
138 00:19:34.680 ⇒ 00:19:36.189 Amber Lin: Thank you for this meeting.
139 00:19:37.300 ⇒ 00:19:39.189 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, that’s.
140 00:19:39.190 ⇒ 00:19:40.070 Amber Lin: Alrighty.
141 00:19:41.420 ⇒ 00:19:44.049 Amber Lin: Okay, I’ll I’ll make the meeting. I’ll invite you.
142 00:19:45.140 ⇒ 00:19:50.079 Awaish Kumar: Okay, sure, thank you. And is there anything else you wanna discuss?
143 00:19:55.450 ⇒ 00:20:01.750 Amber Lin: nothing on my mind yet.
144 00:20:02.630 ⇒ 00:20:05.210 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, that’s what I have like through
145 00:20:06.747 ⇒ 00:20:10.650 Awaish Kumar: to discuss about planning, and then how we
146 00:20:11.190 ⇒ 00:20:17.000 Awaish Kumar: handle the stand ups. And that’s all from my side. If you have anything, otherwise, we can drop off right.
147 00:20:17.330 ⇒ 00:20:21.760 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah, okay. Sounds good. I’ll be in touch with you pretty often.
148 00:20:22.680 ⇒ 00:20:24.940 Awaish Kumar: Okay, thank you so much for your time.
149 00:20:25.320 ⇒ 00:20:27.550 Amber Lin: Yeah, you, too. Bye, bye.