Meeting Title: Brainforge SL Leads Weekly Sync Date: 2026-01-05 Meeting participants: Samuel Roberts, Uttam Kumaran, Awaish Kumar
WEBVTT
1 00:00:18.390 ⇒ 00:00:20.579 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, Sam, sorry about delay.
2 00:00:20.580 ⇒ 00:00:26.459 Samuel Roberts: You’re good. I was, I was actually just about to message and be like, if it goes a little longer, I may have to bounce, because my kid’s in the bounce behind.
3 00:00:26.460 ⇒ 00:00:28.790 Uttam Kumaran: Even if… even if you have, like, 10 minutes, I feel like.
4 00:00:28.790 ⇒ 00:00:32.309 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, no, totally, that’s good, I just wasn’t sure what was happening, and he’s getting a little fussy.
5 00:00:32.310 ⇒ 00:00:35.460 Uttam Kumaran: So all the meetings started getting, like… People are…
6 00:00:35.460 ⇒ 00:00:36.119 Samuel Roberts: That’s what I kind of.
7 00:00:36.120 ⇒ 00:00:37.200 Uttam Kumaran: I love this, that’s just.
8 00:00:37.200 ⇒ 00:00:38.170 Samuel Roberts: Good, good.
9 00:00:38.170 ⇒ 00:00:42.289 Uttam Kumaran: People are excited to chat about this new setup, and… Yeah, I am too.
10 00:00:42.800 ⇒ 00:00:43.560 Samuel Roberts: Totally.
11 00:00:46.140 ⇒ 00:00:47.190 Samuel Roberts: Excuse me.
12 00:00:50.010 ⇒ 00:00:53.199 Samuel Roberts: But yeah, busy day for you, I imagine, then, with all those…
13 00:00:53.480 ⇒ 00:01:01.200 Uttam Kumaran: Busy day, but, you know, I’m… I’m handing it, like, I’m feeling weight lifted, I’m seeing other people send messages.
14 00:01:01.200 ⇒ 00:01:01.620 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
15 00:01:01.620 ⇒ 00:01:08.450 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna hit… I know we’re gonna hit some rocky presentations, rocks, but like, it’s okay, like, it’s early in the year.
16 00:01:08.720 ⇒ 00:01:15.930 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And the faster I can offload, the more I can go get for us, you know? And everybody sort of learns.
17 00:01:17.070 ⇒ 00:01:19.559 Uttam Kumaran: Not so secret, does not need to be so secret.
18 00:01:22.820 ⇒ 00:01:25.800 Samuel Roberts: It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re playing this.
19 00:01:32.290 ⇒ 00:01:35.810 Samuel Roberts: Ugh, I’m waiting for, what was it, Awish, and… Yes.
20 00:01:44.310 ⇒ 00:01:45.280 Samuel Roberts: Okay.
21 00:01:49.750 ⇒ 00:01:50.420 Samuel Roberts: Okay.
22 00:01:52.020 ⇒ 00:01:53.180 Samuel Roberts: It’s okay.
23 00:01:58.340 ⇒ 00:02:01.200 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I know, I know, we’ll eat in a minute. Okay.
24 00:02:04.700 ⇒ 00:02:06.490 Samuel Roberts: He’s at that stage where, like.
25 00:02:06.710 ⇒ 00:02:09.770 Samuel Roberts: He can sit up and play with some toys.
26 00:02:10.560 ⇒ 00:02:13.329 Samuel Roberts: But if he, like, falls over, he can’t get himself back up.
27 00:02:14.080 ⇒ 00:02:29.589 Samuel Roberts: He can’t be just, like, left to his own devices right now, so he’s just, like, sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer… You’re looping again.
28 00:02:29.590 ⇒ 00:02:34.850 Samuel Roberts: sitting in the bouncer, which is sitting in the bouncer.
29 00:02:35.870 ⇒ 00:02:36.659 Uttam Kumaran: You’re back.
30 00:02:37.190 ⇒ 00:02:42.180 Samuel Roberts: Sorry about that, it’s… it’s funny, I was just talking to Mustafa because he was having mic issues as well.
31 00:02:42.510 ⇒ 00:02:47.890 Samuel Roberts: Nothing about this webcam, it doesn’t like… I might need to get a microphone, like, a dedicated thing at some point.
32 00:02:49.170 ⇒ 00:02:58.270 Samuel Roberts: This webcam is fine most of the time. It’s unpredictable, and it just does that, and I don’t hear it, so… I don’t know what’s going on.
33 00:02:59.840 ⇒ 00:03:01.630 Samuel Roberts: Ugh, yeah, cool.
34 00:03:06.760 ⇒ 00:03:18.280 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, well, even if… even if Oasis doesn’t make it, maybe we can go ahead and chat. Yeah, I’m just… I didn’t get a chance to look through all of your comments, but thank you, dude, for leaving a bunch of them.
35 00:03:18.280 ⇒ 00:03:21.140 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, sorry, it was only today, it was one of those things where I didn’t get.
36 00:03:21.140 ⇒ 00:03:26.009 Uttam Kumaran: No, I kind of want… I kind of hope people read it, and then read it again and again, and again.
37 00:03:26.010 ⇒ 00:03:26.450 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
38 00:03:26.690 ⇒ 00:03:30.030 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. And I think this is something that we’re going to…
39 00:03:30.290 ⇒ 00:03:35.000 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be… like, we kinda took it 80%, I think.
40 00:03:35.000 ⇒ 00:03:40.929 Samuel Roberts: this quarter, we’re gonna take it to 95, and then… Yeah. Dude, this is, like, I wanna make this public-facing, like…
41 00:03:41.020 ⇒ 00:03:48.459 Uttam Kumaran: I’m interested in how, like, companies like Basecamp and these guys run more openly. Like, Linear does this.
42 00:03:48.640 ⇒ 00:03:50.860 Uttam Kumaran: GitLab does this.
43 00:03:52.020 ⇒ 00:03:57.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t see why not, like, we have nothing to hide, and so I actually am much more interested in sharing
44 00:03:58.310 ⇒ 00:04:04.510 Uttam Kumaran: sharing this, and so… yeah, I’m… I’m excited that we finally got the chance to sort of do this, so…
45 00:04:04.550 ⇒ 00:04:05.670 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
46 00:04:06.020 ⇒ 00:04:07.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Hey, Wish.
47 00:04:08.460 ⇒ 00:04:09.600 Awaish Kumar: Hello.
48 00:04:10.580 ⇒ 00:04:20.619 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, I mean, I guess I’m… really, this point of this meeting is just to be, like, here for you guys. I think you guys are, for me, like…
49 00:04:21.000 ⇒ 00:04:25.429 Uttam Kumaran: A breath of fresh air in terms of, like, the technical expertise that both of y’all bring.
50 00:04:25.570 ⇒ 00:04:28.849 Uttam Kumaran: I think in addition, y’all bring a lot of…
51 00:04:28.980 ⇒ 00:04:42.230 Uttam Kumaran: you know, client-facing expertise as well, which is what makes y’all really, really unique. It’s what makes, like, it’s what made me really unique in starting, you know, the company, in terms of, like, being really technical on the data side.
52 00:04:42.230 ⇒ 00:04:51.020 Uttam Kumaran: But I’m excited to have you guys in this role. I don’t think this takes you out of client stuff at all, but in fact, I think
53 00:04:51.050 ⇒ 00:04:53.720 Uttam Kumaran: This allows you to raise the bar of, like.
54 00:04:53.940 ⇒ 00:05:05.999 Uttam Kumaran: like, technical integrity, and the pace at which we work, and the sort of development discipline is… which is kind of, like, what we… what we wrote. I actually think this role probably has the…
55 00:05:06.250 ⇒ 00:05:09.319 Uttam Kumaran: Out of… out of all the two rolls, we probably spent…
56 00:05:09.780 ⇒ 00:05:15.529 Uttam Kumaran: the least time on this, because I’m, like, most confident in you two running it.
57 00:05:15.530 ⇒ 00:05:15.850 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
58 00:05:15.850 ⇒ 00:05:19.629 Uttam Kumaran: It is only two of you, so… and I think…
59 00:05:19.760 ⇒ 00:05:29.169 Uttam Kumaran: Awash, you are on all the data one, so we will quickly have to find someone to start helping to take on some of the data-related SL work.
60 00:05:29.170 ⇒ 00:05:41.519 Uttam Kumaran: But Sam, I think you have a lot of, you know, probably slots for a couple more. Yeah. And really where I want you guys to also think is a lot on team building and building engineering rigor, you know? So how do we…
61 00:05:41.690 ⇒ 00:05:49.059 Uttam Kumaran: do that with AI? How do we do that just from keeping people honest and really pushing people to deploy great, great code?
62 00:05:49.350 ⇒ 00:05:53.430 Uttam Kumaran: This is, like, what… like, this is a… it’s…
63 00:05:53.540 ⇒ 00:05:59.200 Uttam Kumaran: The toughest thing to check a box on, which is, like, actually being able to develop great work.
64 00:05:59.250 ⇒ 00:06:15.979 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s also, like, commonly underappreciated. I like our company because we’re all engineers, so we do have a really great appreciation for this. It’s also, like, typically what we’re the… we’re already pretty good at this. Doesn’t mean we can’t get better, and doesn’t mean I’m gonna start to push for more complex projects.
65 00:06:15.980 ⇒ 00:06:18.020 Samuel Roberts: Which in AI is gonna be…
66 00:06:18.020 ⇒ 00:06:35.860 Uttam Kumaran: doing things like training, doing things like, for example, the stuff Lilo wants to do with Cloud Code, we can go into a company and say, we’re gonna… we’re just gonna help you deploy Cloud Code across your engineering team. So think about stuff like that. On the data side of Wish, it’s gonna be, like, machine learning, data science, much more tougher.
67 00:06:36.010 ⇒ 00:06:41.139 Uttam Kumaran: you know, things like that. So those are all the things that I’m… I’m sort of interested in…
68 00:06:41.370 ⇒ 00:06:49.740 Uttam Kumaran: in trying to… to try to push for, and trying to… You know, challenge y’all, but…
69 00:06:49.930 ⇒ 00:06:55.459 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m here for you guys. So what I’ve sort of told the other teams is, like.
70 00:06:55.700 ⇒ 00:07:00.590 Uttam Kumaran: Each… each group is relying on the other, like, you’re… you guys are relying on…
71 00:07:00.590 ⇒ 00:07:02.499 Samuel Roberts: the EPs coming…
72 00:07:02.550 ⇒ 00:07:21.460 Uttam Kumaran: to the stand-ups with everything listed, and running a great stand-up. We did… I did tell Clarence to spend some time thinking about what a great stand-up looks like, and how does… how does success look like for the service leader, and I think we wrote that in the stand-up cheat sheet. It’s like, how do you go around the room and get everything from
73 00:07:21.960 ⇒ 00:07:23.289 Uttam Kumaran: From those folks.
74 00:07:24.470 ⇒ 00:07:39.279 Uttam Kumaran: But, yeah, I’m… I’m kind of here from you, whether you… you want to talk about recruiting, whether you want to talk about, like, how this… how we can talk about new service development, reusable playbooks, wherever we want this to go, like,
75 00:07:39.580 ⇒ 00:07:42.639 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m happy to sort of take it.
76 00:07:42.640 ⇒ 00:07:45.380 Awaish Kumar: Or we could even start with any questions about…
77 00:07:45.460 ⇒ 00:07:48.770 Uttam Kumaran: The doc, or sort of the plans for this quarter?
78 00:07:50.680 ⇒ 00:07:57.090 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like… I, like… like, I had the same question which I think I asked earlier.
79 00:07:58.080 ⇒ 00:08:05.279 Awaish Kumar: for… EPs, like, how a service lead is going to impact.
80 00:08:05.380 ⇒ 00:08:07.999 Awaish Kumar: Like, one thing I understand is that
81 00:08:08.710 ⇒ 00:08:14.570 Awaish Kumar: on the side, I’m looking at all the code output and see, okay, where we can optimize, and…
82 00:08:15.190 ⇒ 00:08:24.700 Awaish Kumar: But, like, where we can basically… maybe… we are having a lot of data quality issues, maybe we can put some more time here.
83 00:08:25.070 ⇒ 00:08:31.180 Awaish Kumar: But overall, like, if… If we are missing the deadlines, or if we are…
84 00:08:31.330 ⇒ 00:08:36.220 Awaish Kumar: And on some… there are some technical issues if they…
85 00:08:37.460 ⇒ 00:08:46.019 Awaish Kumar: don’t arise to the horizon, like, I’m not working on all the projects, I might be just service-leading.
86 00:08:46.130 ⇒ 00:08:49.230 Awaish Kumar: And I might not know what… like, the…
87 00:08:50.270 ⇒ 00:08:53.249 Awaish Kumar: In the, like, the deeper, what’s going on.
88 00:08:54.530 ⇒ 00:08:57.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so ultimately, the CSO will come and say.
89 00:08:58.450 ⇒ 00:09:01.040 Uttam Kumaran: We’re missing deadlines, something’s taking so long.
90 00:09:01.410 ⇒ 00:09:04.569 Uttam Kumaran: Ultimately, your job is to work to identify, like.
91 00:09:04.800 ⇒ 00:09:08.239 Uttam Kumaran: okay, is this something I can fix in this stand-up, or is this something that…
92 00:09:08.450 ⇒ 00:09:16.640 Uttam Kumaran: how about me, you, whoever the IC on that project should meet after to understand what part of the plan is going wrong, and so you can help diagnose, right?
93 00:09:16.740 ⇒ 00:09:21.620 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s ultimately where, in stand-up, information about time.
94 00:09:21.830 ⇒ 00:09:24.020 Uttam Kumaran: Timelines not being met should go there.
95 00:09:25.310 ⇒ 00:09:26.070 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
96 00:09:26.370 ⇒ 00:09:31.939 Awaish Kumar: And, like, seeing, like, this… basically the size of our teams and the…
97 00:09:32.120 ⇒ 00:09:42.219 Awaish Kumar: company is small, so if something misses, it just, like, becomes an, like, issue, like, it just…
98 00:09:42.770 ⇒ 00:09:52.880 Awaish Kumar: raise, like, it becomes an alarming situation, and you all are, again, founders are in the problem. I see it at the same time you see it.
99 00:09:53.340 ⇒ 00:09:57.580 Awaish Kumar: if… if CSO is going to… Flag it, like… Yes.
100 00:09:57.580 ⇒ 00:10:01.059 Uttam Kumaran: So at the moment, I’m not the CSO on every project.
101 00:10:02.360 ⇒ 00:10:04.400 Uttam Kumaran: So, I’m a backup to the backup to the…
102 00:10:04.400 ⇒ 00:10:10.669 Awaish Kumar: For example, if a CSO is coming in and says a client is not happy, like, that’s an alarming situation.
103 00:10:10.970 ⇒ 00:10:11.940 Awaish Kumar: I’m good.
104 00:10:11.940 ⇒ 00:10:17.480 Uttam Kumaran: I… for… but what… so… but, like, that is not enough anymore for me to do anything.
105 00:10:17.810 ⇒ 00:10:23.699 Samuel Roberts: Right? And so the escalation is now to, like, the team, the leaders. And then, you know, you… that was the whole.
106 00:10:23.700 ⇒ 00:10:27.719 Uttam Kumaran: If the… So, yeah, exactly. Exactly right, yeah.
107 00:10:28.060 ⇒ 00:10:32.289 Samuel Roberts: There was something about, you know, putting suggestions together, coming up with a plan.
108 00:10:32.290 ⇒ 00:10:33.759 Uttam Kumaran: And then, coming to escalate.
109 00:10:33.760 ⇒ 00:10:38.050 Samuel Roberts: And then… and then escalating if needed, or resolving, I think is kind of the idea.
110 00:10:38.050 ⇒ 00:10:41.680 Uttam Kumaran: Because I’m telling you, by the time you put together a list of options.
111 00:10:42.080 ⇒ 00:10:56.370 Uttam Kumaran: you’ll hear my voice in your head, and you’ll decide on one. So my job is to release, is to let go. And so, consistently, if someone comes to me with a problem, my job is to listen to what Clarence told me, which is.
112 00:10:56.630 ⇒ 00:10:59.250 Uttam Kumaran: People need to go work with their client pods.
113 00:10:59.940 ⇒ 00:11:11.700 Uttam Kumaran: or work within their CSO group to solve the problem. So there’s multiple layers. They can go to their CSO EP group, they can go to all the CSOs, and then finally there’s, like, a last point of escalation.
114 00:11:11.790 ⇒ 00:11:22.719 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m not gonna… I’m not gonna take the escalations. Like, I’m… I’m gonna identify… understand whether they’ve taken it to the group first. For these first few weeks, I can’t… I have to… I have to help, but we’ve…
115 00:11:22.920 ⇒ 00:11:31.750 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve now created the escalation path for me to start to rely on. Before, there wasn’t a clearly defined escalation path, so, yeah.
116 00:11:40.650 ⇒ 00:11:48.860 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah, and like… There is one KPI under SL leads is about velocity lift.
117 00:11:49.160 ⇒ 00:11:53.850 Awaish Kumar: But that’s, like… I know we are not mirroring that immediately, but…
118 00:11:55.270 ⇒ 00:11:59.569 Awaish Kumar: it says Junior’s lift, but, like, right now, like, in our team, we are…
119 00:11:59.910 ⇒ 00:12:03.790 Awaish Kumar: Like, all the data people are almost at the leadership level.
120 00:12:04.040 ⇒ 00:12:05.430 Awaish Kumar: AP, CSO, and stuff like that.
121 00:12:05.430 ⇒ 00:12:06.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
122 00:12:06.790 ⇒ 00:12:10.200 Awaish Kumar: So how we are going to measure that lift, or…
123 00:12:10.980 ⇒ 00:12:15.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, this is where, like, we always want to get to a point where linear is up-to-date.
124 00:12:16.580 ⇒ 00:12:20.549 Uttam Kumaran: Linear isn’t a good place for at least, like, one or two… one or two months.
125 00:12:20.700 ⇒ 00:12:22.889 Uttam Kumaran: We can start to measure more and more.
126 00:12:25.470 ⇒ 00:12:31.200 Uttam Kumaran: And so we’ll… there’s a couple of different ways that we’ll try to measure Ticket velocity.
127 00:12:31.420 ⇒ 00:12:36.990 Uttam Kumaran: And the fact that similar types of tickets are getting done faster over time.
128 00:12:38.790 ⇒ 00:12:45.310 Uttam Kumaran: as you guys know, like, if you do something 3 or 4 times, and you’re not started trying to figure out how to use AI to get it done, like.
129 00:12:45.740 ⇒ 00:12:58.860 Uttam Kumaran: we’re not the right company for you, you know? Someone’s gonna come after you, and I’d like it to be you guys first. Right. You know? So that’s why you guys have the incentive. I don’t know whether we got it right on all the figures.
130 00:12:59.040 ⇒ 00:13:00.339 Uttam Kumaran: But I do think that
131 00:13:00.590 ⇒ 00:13:19.279 Uttam Kumaran: we will have to balance quality and velocity. Like, what else? That’s what we have, right? I think also I want… I wanna… I’ll put… I’ll end up having you guys think about how do you get people more certified, right? And so that’s why I ended up… in order to help you do that, what I decided to do is put, like, a $250 or scaled equivalent
132 00:13:19.320 ⇒ 00:13:21.600 Uttam Kumaran: To every certification that people get.
133 00:13:21.650 ⇒ 00:13:31.400 Uttam Kumaran: That way, if you guys are judged on people getting certs, you have all the ammunition to get people to go do that, because, like, yo, you’re sitting on free money. Like, just go… go do that, right?
134 00:13:31.510 ⇒ 00:13:35.250 Uttam Kumaran: So, it’ll probably be certifications, upskilling.
135 00:13:35.360 ⇒ 00:13:38.360 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe there’s something on training, I’m not sure.
136 00:13:38.360 ⇒ 00:13:41.559 Samuel Roberts: But it’ll be velocity and quality, right? Yeah.
137 00:13:41.810 ⇒ 00:13:48.010 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s always, like, we’ll always grow and grow and grow, and we’ll kind of figure it out, but I think we still have a… still have a ways to go.
138 00:13:50.120 ⇒ 00:13:53.380 Samuel Roberts: I think the first… A few months, getting everything, like.
139 00:13:53.600 ⇒ 00:13:57.120 Samuel Roberts: this whole, you know, initiative, I guess, rolling.
140 00:13:57.220 ⇒ 00:14:05.399 Samuel Roberts: you know, I imagine there’ll be kinks and quirks we gotta make sure to sort out, but, like, the idea of the KPI makes sense to me. I think it is.
141 00:14:05.400 ⇒ 00:14:06.020 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
142 00:14:06.020 ⇒ 00:14:12.100 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, exactly how it’s implemented in terms of every little nitty-gritty detail, I think, is where we’ll…
143 00:14:12.670 ⇒ 00:14:14.720 Samuel Roberts: we’ll settle And, yeah.
144 00:14:15.500 ⇒ 00:14:34.640 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, I also agree with that, like, the idea and the, like, the structure you have put in is okay. I’m just… like, I have spent most time with you here, and we have tried quite a few things, so I’m… I’m just, like, feeling, or I’m just…
145 00:14:34.640 ⇒ 00:14:37.189 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s fair, I think…
146 00:14:37.470 ⇒ 00:14:46.030 Uttam Kumaran: this is… the problem is that a lot of people are very nice, and, like, being like, okay, this looks good, looks good. I’m actually interested to hear what’s gonna go wrong.
147 00:14:46.190 ⇒ 00:14:52.730 Samuel Roberts: And how do I mitigate against that? We’ve tried to build a set of dependencies in this system.
148 00:14:52.820 ⇒ 00:14:55.669 Uttam Kumaran: Where each role is sort of dependent on the other.
149 00:14:55.780 ⇒ 00:15:00.979 Uttam Kumaran: And in that, it sort of hardens each, right? And, like, that’s how we’ve tried to think about this.
150 00:15:01.190 ⇒ 00:15:10.089 Uttam Kumaran: I do think that these roles are… have a lot of parallels to the traditional project roles, right? Like, let’s say if you think about a traditional Scrum group, you have…
151 00:15:10.200 ⇒ 00:15:16.469 Uttam Kumaran: An engineer, you have a tech lead, you have an architect, you have a project manager, you have an account manager, right?
152 00:15:16.770 ⇒ 00:15:22.289 Uttam Kumaran: So we sort of just, like, removed two of them and, like, collapsed them all into these three.
153 00:15:22.610 ⇒ 00:15:29.109 Uttam Kumaran: One, because we bet that It’s no longer taking the same amount of time to do these things.
154 00:15:29.260 ⇒ 00:15:33.879 Uttam Kumaran: we’ve proven that, right? Because think about how much we’ve scaled with such few people.
155 00:15:34.090 ⇒ 00:15:37.790 Uttam Kumaran: Second is that AI is just making it faster.
156 00:15:38.330 ⇒ 00:15:43.260 Uttam Kumaran: And then the… I would say the last piece is, like, the less people I can keep.
157 00:15:43.390 ⇒ 00:15:58.980 Uttam Kumaran: the more I can pay. And so, for me, to keep the strongest people, we need to pay more, and I need to build a system in which we can pay more. If we have a… if we have 5 people per project, think about how… what type of projects I have to go after, right? Yeah. It’s… the project size has to get huge.
158 00:15:59.020 ⇒ 00:16:07.410 Uttam Kumaran: And to have a minimum of 5, and think about 5 people on, like, some of these projects. Not… they’re not small in revenue, but they are maybe easy.
159 00:16:07.460 ⇒ 00:16:12.720 Uttam Kumaran: I want to throw 5 people on that? And so I just think we’re changing the model a lot.
160 00:16:14.110 ⇒ 00:16:24.080 Uttam Kumaran: And I… by… actually, where we’re gonna get judged on is our quality, and our speed, and our communication. And if we nail that, I can keep increasing price without… without…
161 00:16:24.700 ⇒ 00:16:25.350 Uttam Kumaran: having to…
162 00:16:25.350 ⇒ 00:16:25.690 Awaish Kumar: Yeah.
163 00:16:25.690 ⇒ 00:16:28.280 Uttam Kumaran: Linearly increase, like, the hours, you know, the cost.
164 00:16:28.280 ⇒ 00:16:28.810 Samuel Roberts: Check.
165 00:16:30.030 ⇒ 00:16:34.539 Awaish Kumar: Next question I had is around, like, communi… like.
166 00:16:35.670 ⇒ 00:16:39.709 Awaish Kumar: communication. Like, the CSO is now responsible for
167 00:16:40.020 ⇒ 00:16:47.089 Awaish Kumar: sending Slack or any… any comms to clients, and service lead is mostly focusing on tickets.
168 00:16:47.420 ⇒ 00:16:48.310 Awaish Kumar: And…
169 00:16:48.960 ⇒ 00:16:50.809 Uttam Kumaran: Hold on, one second, one second.
170 00:16:51.440 ⇒ 00:16:52.220 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
171 00:16:53.030 ⇒ 00:16:56.979 Uttam Kumaran: Wait, hold on, let me, let me, let me, let me unmute, hold on.
172 00:16:59.790 ⇒ 00:17:01.099 Samuel Roberts: Oh, shit!
173 00:17:01.100 ⇒ 00:17:04.590 Uttam Kumaran: Hey guys, or you can sit down, like, they can hear you from there.
174 00:17:04.599 ⇒ 00:17:05.359 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
175 00:17:05.920 ⇒ 00:17:07.229 Uttam Kumaran: This way. Okay, there we go.
176 00:17:07.790 ⇒ 00:17:13.890 Uttam Kumaran: I want to add, from a really strategic perspective, what we’re doing is also class-leading on the types of
177 00:17:13.890 ⇒ 00:17:35.089 Uttam Kumaran: of ways people are going to work in the future, right? What is AI doing? It’s pushing out that individual contributor and bringing everyone to a level that is going to be a manager of something. It could be you managing a bunch of AI automations and tools. It could be you managing a process or a lifecycle, or other people.
178 00:17:35.090 ⇒ 00:17:45.999 Uttam Kumaran: So, the real harsh reality, gents, is, like, what I know for sure that’s coming for the next 5 to 10 years is that we absolutely need to create more leaders.
179 00:17:46.120 ⇒ 00:17:58.090 Uttam Kumaran: Right, because what’s gonna happen to all this margin cycle is that we can’t keep stacking it with people, everyone’s gonna find these AI efficiencies, and everyone’s gonna be expected to function as managers somehow.
180 00:17:58.230 ⇒ 00:18:13.629 Uttam Kumaran: Right, so if you think about that as a future 5-10 year end state on all the life cycles of, you know, companies transforming, like, we are preparing you guys for that massive ramp before any company has the wherewithal to start doing it.
181 00:18:13.910 ⇒ 00:18:15.789 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So,
182 00:18:16.200 ⇒ 00:18:35.189 Uttam Kumaran: Whether you… whether… I don’t know how you guys feel about it, right? But, you know, everything is going to end up, you know, where, like, anybody working on a project is going to lead something. And this is, you know, our first way of, like, just saying, everybody here, y’all are leaders, and here’s ways that you’re leading, right?
183 00:18:35.190 ⇒ 00:18:43.649 Uttam Kumaran: So, just wanted to add that on top of what Utalm was saying on, you know, leadership and, you know, job growth.
184 00:18:43.780 ⇒ 00:18:44.880 Uttam Kumaran: In future.
185 00:18:46.520 ⇒ 00:18:49.600 Uttam Kumaran: Sorry, I just totally butted in your meeting.
186 00:18:51.580 ⇒ 00:18:57.830 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that, that article about… Park structures income, and, like.
187 00:18:57.830 ⇒ 00:18:58.260 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
188 00:18:58.260 ⇒ 00:19:01.259 Samuel Roberts: And the managers of, like, agents and things like that.
189 00:19:01.260 ⇒ 00:19:03.030 Uttam Kumaran: No.
190 00:19:03.320 ⇒ 00:19:05.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I forgot what the… I’ll find it, I’ll send it.
191 00:19:05.940 ⇒ 00:19:07.649 Samuel Roberts: Somewhere, yeah, exactly.
192 00:19:07.650 ⇒ 00:19:14.410 Uttam Kumaran: It was really, like, sort of, like, Ford… Thinking, but…
193 00:19:15.450 ⇒ 00:19:23.500 Uttam Kumaran: It’s this article, which is, like, what the AI revenue rocket ship, what 5X growth in 6 months? Or wait, maybe it’s this, or… hold on.
194 00:19:23.500 ⇒ 00:19:24.270 Samuel Roberts: Is that the one? No.
195 00:19:24.270 ⇒ 00:19:26.810 Uttam Kumaran: Oh yeah, wait.
196 00:19:32.170 ⇒ 00:19:50.089 Uttam Kumaran: Another story, while he’s looking at it, I want to tell you guys about is, so one of the clients that I have is a billion-dollar manufacturing company that makes all sorts of different things, right? And they have a bunch of factories and locations everywhere. They started an AI team.
197 00:19:50.090 ⇒ 00:20:01.509 Uttam Kumaran: And part of standing up this AI team was a premise that by 2032, they will not have a single person who isn’t managing something.
198 00:20:02.550 ⇒ 00:20:08.469 Uttam Kumaran: So, a lot of the conversations for people, like, in back of office is, what kind of automations are they going to manage?
199 00:20:08.470 ⇒ 00:20:23.480 Uttam Kumaran: for the people on the factory floor, it’s, are they going to manage robots that are doing pieces of the production? Are they going to maintain the robots? Are they going to make sure they’re plugged in? Right? People always, like, like, a lot of these things, like, I probably, like, we’ve read…
200 00:20:23.480 ⇒ 00:20:32.080 Uttam Kumaran: some interesting ones where, like, it’s all ideas and premises. What’s crazy to me is that there’s companies who are already starting to do that right now, today.
201 00:20:32.140 ⇒ 00:20:48.029 Uttam Kumaran: And it’s not your big leaders, it’s companies this size. These are the innovators that are going to crush it in the next 5 to 10, because, you know, we have the agility, and ambitious people like you, who are energized to take on, you know, these kinds of leadership roles.
202 00:20:48.450 ⇒ 00:20:52.200 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s a lot of value in this if you look across the time horizon.
203 00:20:52.400 ⇒ 00:20:58.270 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, like, I think on the data side, Awash, you know, I think a lot of our job can be done by AI. Like…
204 00:20:58.510 ⇒ 00:21:11.049 Uttam Kumaran: I think the requirements collection and the communication cannot, though. But the inner workings are getting faster and faster, so more of what we’re looking for is great people that can collect those requirements, structure the context.
205 00:21:11.050 ⇒ 00:21:20.289 Uttam Kumaran: to then pass to Claude, or pass to… right? So, more of what you guys need to be thinking is, like, how do we nurture an engineering group that does a great job capturing requirements.
206 00:21:20.350 ⇒ 00:21:28.129 Uttam Kumaran: and then uses whatever the latest is to ship. And don’t worry, I’m not gonna price… I’m not gonna price on… I’m not pricing anything on time anymore.
207 00:21:28.160 ⇒ 00:21:41.690 Uttam Kumaran: I’m pricing on our impact, and we will become a luxury good because of how fast we ship, how the quality of it. So, like, our job is to continue to move faster and faster, and to raise the quality bar at the same time, you know?
208 00:21:43.180 ⇒ 00:21:44.220 Uttam Kumaran: So…
209 00:21:44.780 ⇒ 00:21:45.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
210 00:21:47.640 ⇒ 00:21:50.530 Samuel Roberts: Sorry, just going camera off, because I’m grabbing him.
211 00:21:50.530 ⇒ 00:21:51.290 Uttam Kumaran: Where’s…
212 00:21:51.580 ⇒ 00:21:53.020 Samuel Roberts: Trying to get him calm a little bit.
213 00:21:53.320 ⇒ 00:21:55.500 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. Okay.
214 00:22:02.980 ⇒ 00:22:03.730 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
215 00:22:03.730 ⇒ 00:22:05.220 Samuel Roberts: What else?
216 00:22:10.200 ⇒ 00:22:11.809 Uttam Kumaran: I need an office couch.
217 00:22:12.600 ⇒ 00:22:14.190 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’d be nice.
218 00:22:14.860 ⇒ 00:22:19.029 Samuel Roberts: That was… that was one thing I was super excited about when we moved in this house, is I have, like, a big, like.
219 00:22:19.140 ⇒ 00:22:23.169 Samuel Roberts: top attic room that I was able to fit a couch, and I love it, yeah.
220 00:22:23.170 ⇒ 00:22:28.110 Uttam Kumaran: Nice. The animals chill on it mostly. Like, like Hutan’s dog.
221 00:22:28.670 ⇒ 00:22:29.939 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s just the dog.
222 00:22:30.080 ⇒ 00:22:30.760 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
223 00:22:32.820 ⇒ 00:22:35.719 Samuel Roberts: I lost my train of thought there.
224 00:22:38.820 ⇒ 00:22:43.459 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, I’m excited to see the start running and really start to get into the…
225 00:22:44.180 ⇒ 00:22:46.610 Samuel Roberts: like… like I said, nitty-gritty of the…
226 00:22:46.900 ⇒ 00:22:47.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
227 00:22:47.470 ⇒ 00:23:02.719 Samuel Roberts: the, you know, push and pull with the other roles, and making sure… I… yeah, I’m… you know, even reading through the document, I was just like, we could read through this and critique the document all the time, but I think, like, once we start running with it, we’ll have a much better…
228 00:23:02.840 ⇒ 00:23:09.360 Samuel Roberts: grasp on where the friction is, where the, you know, what’s working well, what’s not.
229 00:23:09.810 ⇒ 00:23:10.890 Samuel Roberts: And I think…
230 00:23:11.080 ⇒ 00:23:19.909 Samuel Roberts: I mean, there were some things that were already working well, and I think that’s embedded, like, you know, exactly like you said, you know, you were doing a lot of these things, it’s just kind of making this codified, and…
231 00:23:20.390 ⇒ 00:23:21.469 Samuel Roberts: Spreading it around.
232 00:23:21.470 ⇒ 00:23:30.330 Uttam Kumaran: Also, like, look, the worst case, I told this, I told this to Robert, the worst case, we go back and we hire project managers, we hire, like, leads, we hire architects.
233 00:23:30.700 ⇒ 00:23:32.629 Uttam Kumaran: Right, right. That’s the backup.
234 00:23:32.780 ⇒ 00:23:36.639 Uttam Kumaran: Right? So the backup plan is what’s already working.
235 00:23:36.770 ⇒ 00:23:55.379 Uttam Kumaran: The problem is, I just don’t see a world in where those jobs exist, because we’ve already done… all of our team already does that in their spare time, so all we’re doing is sort of codifying it, paying people appropriately, and then again, we’re gonna have more projects with more ICs on it, so not every.
236 00:23:55.900 ⇒ 00:24:04.569 Uttam Kumaran: a project lead, we just have a small team. But as I hire people, I’m hiring them with an understanding of which path they’re going in.
237 00:24:04.570 ⇒ 00:24:07.669 Samuel Roberts: Right. So nobody… everybody here has to go up.
238 00:24:07.880 ⇒ 00:24:14.390 Uttam Kumaran: Like, nobody’s gonna stay in IC, you know, hopefully for more than 6 months at a time.
239 00:24:14.390 ⇒ 00:24:14.870 Samuel Roberts: Right.
240 00:24:14.870 ⇒ 00:24:16.190 Uttam Kumaran: Everybody moves.
241 00:24:16.810 ⇒ 00:24:23.000 Uttam Kumaran: Right, or at least, like, exclusively in IC, I’d say. Yes, or yeah, I don’t know, if you’re exclusively in IC, then yeah, you must be…
242 00:24:23.420 ⇒ 00:24:24.380 Samuel Roberts: Well, no, I’m saying, like, I feel
243 00:24:24.760 ⇒ 00:24:32.570 Samuel Roberts: you hire someone as an IC, and then they move into, like, one of these roles on a client, and then another client, and you see how it goes. But yeah, I definitely like the idea of…
244 00:24:33.000 ⇒ 00:24:37.930 Samuel Roberts: You know, not just hiring for pure, like, raw technical talents, because that’s…
245 00:24:37.930 ⇒ 00:24:38.330 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
246 00:24:38.330 ⇒ 00:24:39.940 Samuel Roberts: Exactly what you’re saying, Clarence.
247 00:24:39.940 ⇒ 00:24:44.889 Uttam Kumaran: Well, I don’t think that’s what makes us… I don’t think that’s what makes us successful. Like…
248 00:24:44.890 ⇒ 00:24:45.840 Samuel Roberts: No, and I don’t think…
249 00:24:45.840 ⇒ 00:24:50.520 Uttam Kumaran: We’ve always been good, technically. Yeah, we’ve always been good, technically. I’m never worried about that.
250 00:24:50.520 ⇒ 00:24:57.890 Samuel Roberts: No, I… yeah, I agree. I just… I think this gives a little bit, yeah, from the hiring perspective, like, you know what to look for in terms of, like, where people can grow into it.
251 00:24:57.890 ⇒ 00:25:05.940 Uttam Kumaran: And I can disqualify some people that won’t grow into this. So that’s the biggest thing for me. True, true. Is recruiting and sourcing is actually about disqualifying faster.
252 00:25:06.950 ⇒ 00:25:07.850 Samuel Roberts: Of course, yeah.
253 00:25:07.850 ⇒ 00:25:20.809 Uttam Kumaran: There is a component to getting more candidates in pipeline, but for every 100 candidates, I need to disqualify, like, we need to find the perfect person. The faster I can disqualify them, because they don’t fit into this, the better, you know?
254 00:25:20.810 ⇒ 00:25:21.440 Samuel Roberts: Right?
255 00:25:21.570 ⇒ 00:25:22.970 Samuel Roberts: Right. Yeah.
256 00:25:28.490 ⇒ 00:25:30.270 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. You like that, Tim?
257 00:25:34.580 ⇒ 00:25:36.790 Samuel Roberts: Alright, well, I gotta run kind of soon to go pee.
258 00:25:36.790 ⇒ 00:25:37.360 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
259 00:25:38.170 ⇒ 00:25:41.069 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, anything else, guys?
260 00:25:42.350 ⇒ 00:25:46.990 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, like, I don’t have any questions right now, like, we have tried it…
261 00:25:48.650 ⇒ 00:25:55.019 Awaish Kumar: like, same kind of things earlier, but now it’s with more structure, so I would like to…
262 00:25:55.540 ⇒ 00:25:57.940 Awaish Kumar: Experience it, and how it goes.
263 00:25:59.030 ⇒ 00:26:03.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m interested in your guys’ feedback. I think both of you are really thoughtful. I think you guys…
264 00:26:04.000 ⇒ 00:26:07.630 Uttam Kumaran: Me and Robert have probably spent the most time
265 00:26:07.790 ⇒ 00:26:21.690 Uttam Kumaran: in industry, like, in technical industry, so ultimately, like, your feedback really, really matters, but look, I think I’m also doing my best to make sure that, like, in order to deal with the ambiguity, I can get you guys
266 00:26:21.910 ⇒ 00:26:27.110 Uttam Kumaran: As much money to compensate for figuring out this process with us.
267 00:26:27.340 ⇒ 00:26:31.220 Uttam Kumaran: So, we’re gonna kind of find out together, but…
268 00:26:31.340 ⇒ 00:26:36.189 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think we’re gonna… if this works, then there’s a lot of upward mobility.
269 00:26:37.300 ⇒ 00:26:42.789 Uttam Kumaran: And, you know, this will naturally filter out engineers that can’t communicate, which is, I think, a huge part of what we do, so…
270 00:26:42.820 ⇒ 00:26:43.930 Samuel Roberts: Totally.
271 00:26:44.110 ⇒ 00:26:50.630 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let’s… let’s see how it goes. At least this next two weeks, we can measure and see, and then we can make changes and keep going.
272 00:26:51.580 ⇒ 00:26:55.160 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I think, a waste, like, I… I…
273 00:26:55.460 ⇒ 00:27:13.230 Samuel Roberts: I’ve seen a few of these, like, you know, trials of different, maybe not as much as you, like, different strategies and stuff for this, but I think what this one is, is it’s… it’s a little more, structured, and it’s… I think people… there’s more buy-in from everyone going into it now, too. Like, it seemed like people were…
274 00:27:13.500 ⇒ 00:27:27.150 Samuel Roberts: excited about this in some way. Like, maybe, maybe, you know, it’s not like, oh yeah, let’s hit the ground running, necessarily, but it is like, oh, okay, I see how this helps you move up, I see how, like, the work is getting done, and it’s freeing you. Like, I think there’s a good amount of…
275 00:27:27.640 ⇒ 00:27:30.590 Samuel Roberts: I don’t want to say momentum, necessarily, but I think there’s…
276 00:27:31.060 ⇒ 00:27:36.409 Samuel Roberts: There’s something here, you know, and we’ll find it if it’s… if it needs to be, like, polished a little bit here and there.
277 00:27:36.410 ⇒ 00:27:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, we’ve been thinking about this for probably 8 weeks.
278 00:27:40.160 ⇒ 00:27:40.840 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
279 00:27:41.070 ⇒ 00:27:58.910 Uttam Kumaran: So, we haven’t done much where we’ve thought this long about anything. Yeah. And we made it… and we made it this far. Like, so, I mean, always, you know, like, think about it, if I’ve thought about something for 8 weeks, like, we… I’ve already asked Clarence, like, every question about why this isn’t gonna work.
280 00:27:59.020 ⇒ 00:28:16.809 Uttam Kumaran: And we spend a lot of time, and I really push to try to pay everyone a lot more, and do so even though we know that, like, we may not hit our goals, but either way, I don’t want people to feel… I don’t want people… this is not something that’s meant to feel like, oh, I have to get a second job. This is meant to feel like.
281 00:28:16.810 ⇒ 00:28:17.210 Samuel Roberts: Right.
282 00:28:17.210 ⇒ 00:28:19.589 Uttam Kumaran: strategic growth. It’s meant to feel like
283 00:28:20.070 ⇒ 00:28:23.040 Uttam Kumaran: the Brainforge pod makes sense for clients.
284 00:28:23.040 ⇒ 00:28:23.640 Samuel Roberts: Yes. Yeah.
285 00:28:23.820 ⇒ 00:28:29.289 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also meant to just put words, so a lot of things that everybody was doing, sort of, just by, like.
286 00:28:30.500 ⇒ 00:28:33.960 Uttam Kumaran: But they’re good, you know, so… Yeah.
287 00:28:33.960 ⇒ 00:28:34.940 Samuel Roberts: No.
288 00:28:35.110 ⇒ 00:28:37.440 Uttam Kumaran: Sam, one last thing before you…
289 00:28:37.440 ⇒ 00:29:00.099 Uttam Kumaran: I want to say to both of you that this new structure now gives you a bunch of people that you can think with. You have a lot of thinking partners now with all the same stakes and incentives as you. For example, if there’s, you know, something that you want to accomplish in the project, you can just drop in the project chat and say, hey, other leaders, I’m trying to accomplish this, what do you think the best approach is?
290 00:29:00.100 ⇒ 00:29:14.050 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Now you have horizontal thinking partners that are within your project pod. And now, Sam, like, if you wanted some feedback on running stand-ups, or, like, there’s a SL-specific challenge, you have a wish now.
291 00:29:14.090 ⇒ 00:29:22.050 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Or you can also chat about that. So now, it’s not just an individual struggle, right? This is a shared struggle. We’re all.
292 00:29:22.050 ⇒ 00:29:22.640 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
293 00:29:22.640 ⇒ 00:29:27.160 Uttam Kumaran: And we’re all connected. We’re forced to be connected by the structure that we’ve committed to.
294 00:29:27.620 ⇒ 00:29:28.310 Samuel Roberts: Right.
295 00:29:29.940 ⇒ 00:29:30.760 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
296 00:29:31.450 ⇒ 00:29:45.680 Samuel Roberts: No, that’s a good… that’s a good way to put it, because I… yeah, especially thinking of it as, like, some of this stuff was less, like, Utum handling a bunch of it for a bunch of clients, like, he was the thinking partner in a lot of that, and now free, like, spreading that around to other people, getting other people in is gonna be… gonna be big, I think.
297 00:29:46.080 ⇒ 00:29:53.240 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and there’s upside, right? Right. For everyone involved to want to engage with you guys and ideate better.
298 00:29:53.550 ⇒ 00:29:55.539 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s what I hope for in this.
299 00:29:56.340 ⇒ 00:29:57.050 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
300 00:29:57.150 ⇒ 00:29:57.820 Uttam Kumaran: No.
301 00:30:03.130 ⇒ 00:30:08.690 Awaish Kumar: So, like, are we… like, I saw this service lead, stand up.
302 00:30:08.880 ⇒ 00:30:16.030 Awaish Kumar: Data Service Standard, like, is this… this is something for all the data clients, right?
303 00:30:16.680 ⇒ 00:30:22.399 Awaish Kumar: But, like, will… Okay, so everyone who is on Data Client will be…
304 00:30:22.800 ⇒ 00:30:25.809 Awaish Kumar: also be some CSO AP, so they will be joining the same.
305 00:30:25.810 ⇒ 00:30:29.879 Uttam Kumaran: Most of the people working here have a project lead role now.
306 00:30:29.880 ⇒ 00:30:30.650 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
307 00:30:30.650 ⇒ 00:30:40.320 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s… the people there are mainly… are the EPs and the CSOs on data projects. They’re not necessarily… they don’t have to be the ICs.
308 00:30:41.770 ⇒ 00:30:43.740 Uttam Kumaran: Although, we don’t have any ICs.
309 00:30:43.740 ⇒ 00:30:45.759 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, that might change, like, project.
310 00:30:45.760 ⇒ 00:30:46.160 Awaish Kumar: You know?
311 00:30:46.160 ⇒ 00:30:48.940 Samuel Roberts: You know, different sizes and stuff, I imagine, but…
312 00:30:49.680 ⇒ 00:30:50.260 Awaish Kumar: Okay, yeah.
313 00:30:50.260 ⇒ 00:30:58.240 Uttam Kumaran: For example, wait, if I go get you another data engineer, another AE, those guys are either gonna start as engagement planners, or they’re gonna be ICs.
314 00:30:59.610 ⇒ 00:31:00.100 Uttam Kumaran: So…
315 00:31:00.100 ⇒ 00:31:00.700 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I…
316 00:31:00.700 ⇒ 00:31:01.370 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, yeah.
317 00:31:01.370 ⇒ 00:31:06.920 Awaish Kumar: We’re just confirming that we… do we… will we be having a separate spectrum between… So that’s up to.
318 00:31:06.920 ⇒ 00:31:10.860 Uttam Kumaran: the CSO, it’s, it’s, it’s… oh, what, different stand-up, for who?
319 00:31:11.900 ⇒ 00:31:22.539 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I was thinking that, like, all the CSO, EP, and service lead are talking about a client in a stand-up, but now that we… all of us are kind of…
320 00:31:22.540 ⇒ 00:31:25.109 Uttam Kumaran: It’s ad hoc… it’s sort of as you… it’s sort of as…
321 00:31:25.210 ⇒ 00:31:31.269 Uttam Kumaran: the team needs. So, like, on my projects, I’m going to definitely book time
322 00:31:31.560 ⇒ 00:31:33.530 Uttam Kumaran: To sort of talk to my…
323 00:31:33.790 ⇒ 00:31:36.690 Uttam Kumaran: Those two stakeholders on my clients.
324 00:31:37.240 ⇒ 00:31:49.050 Uttam Kumaran: like, probably every other day for a bit until I sort of don’t need it. I’m also gonna tell the other CSOs that they’re free to do that. What I’m not gonna do is book that meeting myself.
325 00:31:49.350 ⇒ 00:31:50.000 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
326 00:31:50.580 ⇒ 00:31:51.550 Uttam Kumaran: Right. Yep.
327 00:31:51.720 ⇒ 00:32:02.819 Uttam Kumaran: I’m not gonna book the meeting for them. I’m gonna say, here’s what I do as… I’m a CSO. On my projects, but also, like, look.
328 00:32:02.900 ⇒ 00:32:06.649 Samuel Roberts: I’m gonna run as much as I can through Slack as possible.
329 00:32:06.650 ⇒ 00:32:12.979 Uttam Kumaran: push Slack and Loom to the limits, and I’ll talk to you on the stand-up. We’re already talking, right? So…
330 00:32:13.100 ⇒ 00:32:22.289 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna… I’m gonna be really playing a project role, and trying to demonstrate to everybody, like, what it is, and I think CSO is, like.
331 00:32:22.440 ⇒ 00:32:25.910 Uttam Kumaran: One of the… one of the tougher evolutions for a lot of.
332 00:32:25.910 ⇒ 00:32:26.290 Samuel Roberts: tools.
333 00:32:26.290 ⇒ 00:32:33.069 Uttam Kumaran: grasp, and so that’s… and also, that’s what… that’s the hard… I can’t… it’s gonna be hardest for me to give some of that up.
334 00:32:33.070 ⇒ 00:32:37.110 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. But, like, this is where we’re all gonna learn from each other on how to do these, like.
335 00:32:37.110 ⇒ 00:32:41.210 Uttam Kumaran: What I’m expecting in this call, or in this channel, is that we’re discussing
336 00:32:41.400 ⇒ 00:32:50.739 Uttam Kumaran: like, if stand-ups need to get better, like, for example, if you guys are like, hey, on my stand-up, everybody’s video on, you should go ahead and do that.
337 00:32:50.930 ⇒ 00:32:51.530 Samuel Roberts: Praise God.
338 00:32:51.550 ⇒ 00:32:57.450 Uttam Kumaran: This is where I’m expecting you guys to sort of impart your will on how this stuff works.
339 00:32:57.650 ⇒ 00:33:05.169 Uttam Kumaran: If you have opinions on the way things work, it’s up to you to kind of decide it, because ultimately, you’ll be accountable for the metrics.
340 00:33:06.060 ⇒ 00:33:09.620 Uttam Kumaran: Right. And for me, it’s like, I try to set the metric in a way where
341 00:33:09.950 ⇒ 00:33:12.580 Uttam Kumaran: At this point, I don’t really care how you get there.
342 00:33:13.300 ⇒ 00:33:22.129 Uttam Kumaran: But other people depend on y’all to run a great stand-up in order to do their job. Yeah. Right? And so, like, there’s these, like, cross-dependencies that I feel like
343 00:33:22.390 ⇒ 00:33:24.859 Uttam Kumaran: Exist, you know, are existing for a reason.
344 00:33:26.130 ⇒ 00:33:31.260 Awaish Kumar: Okay, and then I have a question for ticket estimations as well.
345 00:33:31.570 ⇒ 00:33:39.120 Awaish Kumar: So, like, normally we… right now, what we are doing is asking the developer Like, how…
346 00:33:39.690 ⇒ 00:33:41.980 Awaish Kumar: Much it’s going to take, or something like that.
347 00:33:42.340 ⇒ 00:33:45.600 Awaish Kumar: Well, if… I don’t agree with that, so how…
348 00:33:46.260 ⇒ 00:33:48.460 Awaish Kumar: Are you going to say it? In the stand-up, or…
349 00:33:49.380 ⇒ 00:33:50.960 Awaish Kumar: Take it separately, or…
350 00:33:52.150 ⇒ 00:34:04.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I don’t know, Clarence, maybe that’s… Yeah, so, so specifically, Awish, are you saying that, like, you got a plan from the engagement planner, and in linear, the ticket sizing seemed off?
351 00:34:05.720 ⇒ 00:34:10.060 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, my brother… Estimation, like, of the story points.
352 00:34:10.060 ⇒ 00:34:10.650 Uttam Kumaran: -
353 00:34:10.659 ⇒ 00:34:11.199 Awaish Kumar: overnight.
354 00:34:12.009 ⇒ 00:34:16.479 Awaish Kumar: So, for example, if I… I got a…
355 00:34:16.650 ⇒ 00:34:19.639 Awaish Kumar: bunch of linear tickets, and it says,
356 00:34:19.820 ⇒ 00:34:29.819 Awaish Kumar: it is going to take, like, maybe sometimes it will say it is going to take 2 days, but I don’t agree with that. I say maybe it will take a few hours, or it can be vice versa.
357 00:34:30.159 ⇒ 00:34:31.250 Awaish Kumar: Oh, yeah.
358 00:34:31.250 ⇒ 00:34:43.629 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so by the way, if I was the engagement planner in a way she told me that, I would be so happy. Because, remember, my metric is to make sure that reality meets my plan. So I would instantly want to hear from you.
359 00:34:43.630 ⇒ 00:34:55.570 Uttam Kumaran: hey, I missized these. Okay, like, I need to fix that, right? So, what I would actually ask you back is, hey, Oish, I actually don’t have, like, the technical expertise to perfectly size, like, these 7.
360 00:34:55.570 ⇒ 00:35:06.490 Uttam Kumaran: can you just, like, take a look at these 7 tickets and help me with that, right? Or you can be the enforcer, too. You can say, hey, everything looks good except for these seven, and I would recommend you change it to this.
361 00:35:07.520 ⇒ 00:35:13.469 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, but, like, the only thing, if I do that, only person who is going to be affected is the developer.
362 00:35:13.920 ⇒ 00:35:15.449 Awaish Kumar: Maybe that he’s a…
363 00:35:15.450 ⇒ 00:35:30.750 Uttam Kumaran: No, so in this situation, the developer picking up the ticket gets impacted, right? The engagement planner is impacted because the ticket sizing and the timelines are off. The CSO is impacted now because the client delivery’s gonna be off timeline.
364 00:35:31.200 ⇒ 00:35:40.409 Uttam Kumaran: All of you guys suffer from the same issues, so I hope that it doesn’t create conflict, it causes you to come together and say, how do we solve this together?
365 00:35:41.910 ⇒ 00:35:42.750 Uttam Kumaran: Right?
366 00:35:42.810 ⇒ 00:35:52.149 Uttam Kumaran: So, if you see bad ticket sizing, just ping that EP and say, hey, these are the issues that I see, this is why, make sure the CSO is on that chat.
367 00:35:52.150 ⇒ 00:36:03.580 Uttam Kumaran: and say, you know, this is how it would impact your timelines, right? If, you know, we can still do this if we got another person with 8 hours. Well, that’s what you can bring to Utah.
368 00:36:03.590 ⇒ 00:36:12.579 Uttam Kumaran: And, like, you just ping me, Tom, and say, hey, this is where we’re at, this is what happened with the ticket sizing, we just need, like, 8 extra hours next week and the week after.
369 00:36:13.170 ⇒ 00:36:29.749 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And this person would be perfect for it, do they have time? Can we use them? Right? And now, here’s what happened, essentially, Wish. Like, everybody has a shared struggle, y’all came up with a plan together, and then, like, that plan came into reality because you actually, you know, knew exactly what to do next, right?
370 00:36:31.740 ⇒ 00:36:37.000 Uttam Kumaran: So, so, like, I, I want to triple reinforce that. You are not alone anymore.
371 00:36:37.150 ⇒ 00:36:43.650 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Everything that happens, success or failure, is shared between the three of you on that project.
372 00:36:52.090 ⇒ 00:36:56.720 Uttam Kumaran: Right, and so if they’re not taking it the right way, just remind them, hey, you know.
373 00:36:56.840 ⇒ 00:37:05.479 Uttam Kumaran: like, plan to reality is what, you know, we’re chasing on plan, so maybe we can think about, you know, sitting down and discussing these tickets.
374 00:37:07.320 ⇒ 00:37:07.860 Awaish Kumar: Yep.
375 00:37:08.060 ⇒ 00:37:08.860 Uttam Kumaran: Does that help?
376 00:37:09.570 ⇒ 00:37:10.320 Awaish Kumar: Yes.
377 00:37:10.850 ⇒ 00:37:11.750 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
378 00:37:11.750 ⇒ 00:37:12.300 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
379 00:37:23.910 ⇒ 00:37:24.910 Samuel Roberts: Anything else?
380 00:37:34.260 ⇒ 00:37:36.690 Samuel Roberts: Are you guys hearing this? I don’t know what…
381 00:37:36.690 ⇒ 00:37:37.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
382 00:37:37.420 ⇒ 00:37:39.120 Samuel Roberts: I saw my thing with the highlighted.
383 00:37:39.930 ⇒ 00:37:43.979 Samuel Roberts: The noise cancellation is pretty good normally. He was screaming a minute ago, but…
384 00:37:43.980 ⇒ 00:37:45.330 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I didn’t hear that.
385 00:37:45.330 ⇒ 00:37:48.659 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, exactly. I saw that that was not picking it up, but… yeah.
386 00:37:49.970 ⇒ 00:37:58.179 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, guys. Okay, so yeah, I mean, I think part of this is, like, you guys are the backstop for quality. I think, like, as my time frees up, like.
387 00:37:58.350 ⇒ 00:38:03.659 Uttam Kumaran: I want to spend time with y’all, and I want to spend time on sales, like, so…
388 00:38:03.660 ⇒ 00:38:04.140 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
389 00:38:04.140 ⇒ 00:38:06.790 Uttam Kumaran: all I think about is helping people speed up their work.
390 00:38:06.950 ⇒ 00:38:08.179 Uttam Kumaran: And so…
391 00:38:08.390 ⇒ 00:38:20.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m excited. I think everybody’s… everybody really looks up to y’all, and is, like, learning a lot from you guys. So, continue to do what you’re doing, and I’ll continue to get you guys really great engineers, you know, to kind of do your work.
392 00:38:21.000 ⇒ 00:38:27.809 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, ping me this week if you have anything. We’ll talk again every week on Monday, but if we want to talk
393 00:38:28.020 ⇒ 00:38:30.150 Uttam Kumaran: We want to talk again on,
394 00:38:30.700 ⇒ 00:38:36.499 Uttam Kumaran: on Friday we can, or, you know, anytime you guys feel. This is a smaller crew than the others.
395 00:38:36.950 ⇒ 00:38:38.809 Uttam Kumaran: But hopefully not for long.
396 00:38:41.280 ⇒ 00:38:41.990 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
397 00:38:41.990 ⇒ 00:38:45.370 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, phone your friends, refer them. What are y’all doing?
398 00:38:47.100 ⇒ 00:38:55.089 Uttam Kumaran: Always refer to some friends, but they’re not… they’re not… they’re not as smart as he is, so… He sets a high bar.
399 00:38:58.880 ⇒ 00:39:00.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
400 00:39:00.930 ⇒ 00:39:02.430 Uttam Kumaran: Alright, thanks everyone.
401 00:39:02.770 ⇒ 00:39:04.120 Awaish Kumar: Alright.
402 00:39:04.440 ⇒ 00:39:05.410 Samuel Roberts: See you later.
403 00:39:05.730 ⇒ 00:39:06.660 Samuel Roberts: Bye.