Meeting Title: Eden Project Weekly Planning Date: 2025-08-18 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Henry Zhao, Awaish Kumar, Amber Lin, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:07.590 ⇒ 00:00:09.030 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
2 00:00:11.810 ⇒ 00:00:12.840 Henry Zhao: Hey, how’s it going?
3 00:00:12.840 ⇒ 00:00:14.080 Uttam Kumaran: Hey, good.
4 00:00:18.390 ⇒ 00:00:19.269 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything?
5 00:00:20.860 ⇒ 00:00:21.970 Henry Zhao: All good, thanks.
6 00:00:22.530 ⇒ 00:00:23.300 Awaish Kumar: Hello.
7 00:00:23.640 ⇒ 00:00:24.640 Uttam Kumaran: Aye.
8 00:00:26.200 ⇒ 00:00:27.339 Awaish Kumar: All you’re doing?
9 00:00:27.870 ⇒ 00:00:28.740 Uttam Kumaran: Dead?
10 00:00:30.270 ⇒ 00:00:31.350 Amber Lin: Hello.
11 00:00:35.690 ⇒ 00:00:36.130 Uttam Kumaran: Excellent.
12 00:00:36.150 ⇒ 00:00:39.530 Amber Lin: Do we know if Robert’s gonna join this meeting?
13 00:00:40.720 ⇒ 00:00:44.169 Uttam Kumaran: … You could ping him.
14 00:00:47.540 ⇒ 00:00:48.859 Amber Lin: Oh, there we are.
15 00:00:52.700 ⇒ 00:00:53.580 Robert Tseng: Hello?
16 00:00:57.220 ⇒ 00:01:00.690 Amber Lin: I booked an hour, just in case.
17 00:01:01.330 ⇒ 00:01:02.850 Amber Lin: This goes over.
18 00:01:03.320 ⇒ 00:01:11.630 Amber Lin: But probably… Aiming towards… 30 to 45 minutes.
19 00:01:11.630 ⇒ 00:01:12.230 Robert Tseng: Okay.
20 00:01:12.390 ⇒ 00:01:16.110 Amber Lin: Yeah. I shared a doc that had
21 00:01:16.340 ⇒ 00:01:26.240 Amber Lin: progress by project and by person. We can start there, or if there’s any topics we have in mind, we can start there as well.
22 00:01:27.220 ⇒ 00:01:27.850 Robert Tseng: Okay.
23 00:01:49.780 ⇒ 00:01:50.490 Amber Lin: Yeah.
24 00:01:50.930 ⇒ 00:01:54.640 Robert Tseng: I have your doc pulled up, so what, you want me to just walk through it, or what?
25 00:01:55.050 ⇒ 00:02:03.510 Amber Lin: Do we want to spend a little bit of time to read through it? I know we already read through it, just want to make sure that
26 00:02:03.660 ⇒ 00:02:06.600 Amber Lin: Utah, Harry, and Robert, you had a chance to….
27 00:02:06.600 ⇒ 00:02:08.400 Henry Zhao: I read it, I thread through it already as well.
28 00:02:08.400 ⇒ 00:02:17.120 Uttam Kumaran: Go ahead, I’m, like, the least involved in this project, so I’m sort of here to help with decision making, but if everyone’s read it, go ahead.
29 00:02:17.340 ⇒ 00:02:18.020 Amber Lin: Okay.
30 00:02:18.340 ⇒ 00:02:22.889 Amber Lin: So I won’t spend too much time going through each one of them.
31 00:02:23.710 ⇒ 00:02:33.760 Amber Lin: And… So, currently we have… … this many… People on this project.
32 00:02:35.130 ⇒ 00:02:52.200 Amber Lin: And… I put this as the progress for… The projects so far… And… Progress by team member.
33 00:02:54.300 ⇒ 00:03:00.859 Amber Lin: We can start by talking about what do we think are the biggest issues.
34 00:03:01.080 ⇒ 00:03:03.130 Amber Lin: And then we can talk about…
35 00:03:03.410 ⇒ 00:03:05.650 Amber Lin: What are we gonna do to resolve them?
36 00:03:10.000 ⇒ 00:03:23.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay, I think, like, I don’t want to make this a conversation about people specifically. I feel like that will not go well. I think, you know, who Tom and I can kind of make people decisions, kind of without having to…
37 00:03:24.340 ⇒ 00:03:38.989 Robert Tseng: Yeah, anyway, so I think we should just talk about projects, like, I understand that this… this client, the needs have changed, and so what we had set up before was, like, we had two AEs, analytics engineers.
38 00:03:39.400 ⇒ 00:03:48.040 Robert Tseng: And… and just… and just me, like, as the kind of the analyst for… for some time. That was back when we started…
39 00:03:48.220 ⇒ 00:03:58.310 Robert Tseng: we did all this initial data modeling and kind of, like, got really nitty-gritty into, like, logic. We were refactoring a bunch of stuff from Rob previously.
40 00:03:58.580 ⇒ 00:04:10.409 Robert Tseng: well, now, I think, like, the work that we’re doing, it’s all net new, and, I think it’s… we… there’s a strategic component to every piece of it.
41 00:04:10.410 ⇒ 00:04:28.249 Robert Tseng: And so when I think about the projects, like, on the marketing side, the tagging tracking and CDP stuff, I mean, we brought Henry in to specifically… I mean, he was helping just with the CDP work, but then, yeah, seems like he had a, you know, bigger skill set or whatever, so we, …
42 00:04:29.260 ⇒ 00:04:35.600 Robert Tseng: I mean, the goal is to kind of grow his role into just pretty much leading marketing analytics.
43 00:04:35.890 ⇒ 00:04:36.959 Robert Tseng: And so…
44 00:04:39.640 ⇒ 00:04:55.430 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I understand that there are a lot of stakeholders with marketing, and… but yeah, I think just, like, the tagging and tracking stuff, like, I feel like it’s just been going way slower than we expected it to. I mean, it’s been, what, like, 4 weeks since the start of July?
45 00:04:55.560 ⇒ 00:05:01.389 Robert Tseng: … And we’ve only really kind of had confidence on one
46 00:05:01.500 ⇒ 00:05:14.009 Robert Tseng: on improving tracking for one source, which was Meta. So, I think there’s… obviously, there’s other work that’s in progress, but the point is that I feel like velocity has dropped there.
47 00:05:14.290 ⇒ 00:05:15.110 Robert Tseng: …
48 00:05:15.410 ⇒ 00:05:27.100 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and if that’s where I need to kind of step back into and kind of put more gas, like, that’s fine, like, I can do that. If that’s where the skill set… if that’s where the skill gap is, like, I can do that.
49 00:05:30.060 ⇒ 00:05:37.870 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I think part of it is a skill gap, which I’ve been trying to fill by, you know, doing research, using ChatGBT, and, like, trying to learn these things on my own.
50 00:05:38.170 ⇒ 00:05:41.449 Henry Zhao: But yeah, I think, Robert, you kind of nailed it there, which was…
51 00:05:42.250 ⇒ 00:05:55.299 Henry Zhao: We are expanding my skill set, and I’m trying to take a more leadership role, but the velocity might be slowing down because I need some time to… to level up on some things, and to kind of understand from the stakeholders what their expectations are, and what they’re looking for.
52 00:05:55.930 ⇒ 00:05:58.530 Henry Zhao: And I feel like all these things take time.
53 00:05:58.700 ⇒ 00:05:59.860 Henry Zhao: And so…
54 00:06:00.710 ⇒ 00:06:06.119 Henry Zhao: I am working towards what the end goal is, but … I just think there needs to be some…
55 00:06:06.320 ⇒ 00:06:08.460 Henry Zhao: Some patience or additional resources.
56 00:06:09.660 ⇒ 00:06:13.979 Robert Tseng: Okay. I mean, like, for additional resources, what, what would you… what would you say you need?
57 00:06:14.860 ⇒ 00:06:19.459 Henry Zhao: Andrew was… Andrew’s good enough, like, today I need to meet with him to talk about the Northbeam stuff, but…
58 00:06:19.750 ⇒ 00:06:25.370 Henry Zhao: But yeah, maybe Awaish, we need to just communicate more when, there’s things like the North Beam stuff stalls.
59 00:06:25.690 ⇒ 00:06:34.959 Henry Zhao: So I know how to also communicate that to stakeholders. And then additionally, I dropped the ball last week in terms of not communicating as much as I needed to, regarding the Bobby stuff.
60 00:06:35.120 ⇒ 00:06:42.710 Henry Zhao: I think I just wrongfully assumed that I didn’t need to update Bobby because he’s offboarding, but I think I still needed to update in that group what I discussed with Judge.
61 00:06:44.080 ⇒ 00:06:45.990 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think…
62 00:06:45.990 ⇒ 00:07:04.610 Robert Tseng: That’s… again, I think that’s… that feedback is fair. And my… the velocity is not all on our fault. Obviously, like, requirements shifted. Like, even the meta thing, we went and we built it one way, and then immediately had to build it another way, like, the week after. So, I think that’s just… that’s just the nature of marketing analytics work. People always kind of just…
63 00:07:04.650 ⇒ 00:07:06.880 Robert Tseng: It’s… I don’t think there is…
64 00:07:06.940 ⇒ 00:07:12.259 Robert Tseng: a, like, surefire way of doing any of this stuff, like, it kind of just seems like it’s very…
65 00:07:12.360 ⇒ 00:07:27.610 Robert Tseng: hacky and subjective, like, people are kind of just tossing a bunch of ideas into… into a hat, and … just kind of asking us to just do whatever. So, I mean, if we need to… sometimes slowing down helps us to kind of, like, move more efficiently as well, so…
66 00:07:27.610 ⇒ 00:07:33.319 Robert Tseng: I think that’s why I was hoping that, we would have a regular kind of check-in between
67 00:07:33.800 ⇒ 00:07:51.030 Robert Tseng: what, you know, maybe just having Henry, Mitesh, and Tutter is not enough. Like, maybe there needs to be an engineering person in there as well. Maybe Away should be on that call, so… but just having that regular checkpoint with them, telling them, kind of like… like, updating them on what’s… what’s going on, like.
68 00:07:51.030 ⇒ 00:07:59.190 Robert Tseng: They, … like, yeah, the day-to-day comms will… it’ll be like the rest of the flock that…
69 00:07:59.190 ⇒ 00:08:10.480 Robert Tseng: you have… that people will just, like, ping you and respond with messages or whatever. But yeah, I think, like, the escalation process goes, if those guys don’t feel like they’re being responded to.
70 00:08:10.480 ⇒ 00:08:26.080 Robert Tseng: then they’re gonna tell Mitesh and Cutter. And then Mitesh and Cutter are gonna tell Josh and Adam, and they’re gonna call me immediately. Like, that’s… that’s the feedback loop that happens. And then once they call me, then, like, I have to do something. Like, and… and so, I’m trying to make it so…
71 00:08:26.190 ⇒ 00:08:35.789 Robert Tseng: The lower-level guys, like, they… we don’t have to respond, we don’t have to give them everything they want, but, like, at least we have to wrangle them a bit, and…
72 00:08:35.940 ⇒ 00:08:38.090 Robert Tseng: Regular, kind of.
73 00:08:38.320 ⇒ 00:08:48.490 Robert Tseng: communication with… with Mitesh and Cutter. I don’t think Pamber can manage every level of communication there. With Adam and Josh, it’s fine, they can go directly to me, I don’t have a problem with that.
74 00:08:48.860 ⇒ 00:09:01.720 Robert Tseng: with Mitesh and Cutter, anything that they have to say, like, I would expect, kind of, Henry Awash to be, kind of, first line, to kind of, … and it shouldn’t be a surprise. You guys should know, like, what’s on their mind.
75 00:09:01.950 ⇒ 00:09:14.820 Robert Tseng: And then, like, yeah, I think, like, the rest of the day-to-day comms, as far as, like, getting updates on tickets and stuff, like, that should come through, that should come through Amber. At least that’s where… that’s one way that I feel like we can patch
76 00:09:14.910 ⇒ 00:09:16.699 Robert Tseng: Like, the communication side.
77 00:09:16.770 ⇒ 00:09:31.290 Robert Tseng: That doesn’t… that doesn’t really, … I mean, maybe that does indirectly impact our speed of delivery, too, because obviously it slows everyone down when we just have to sit there and, like, trace slack through the resin and figure out how we respond to people, so…
78 00:09:31.300 ⇒ 00:09:41.419 Robert Tseng: Like, I… I think there… that’s… that’s something that we need to… that we need to patch moving forward, because these… this… this group of marketers is not changing. Like, that…
79 00:09:41.420 ⇒ 00:09:53.149 Robert Tseng: even if we moved on from this project, it’ll be the same working dynamic in a different project. So, I do think, like, systemically, we need to figure out how to… how to manage that, manage that group.
80 00:09:53.440 ⇒ 00:09:55.470 Robert Tseng: better. …
81 00:09:55.630 ⇒ 00:10:03.230 Robert Tseng: So yeah, anyway, I’m not gonna… I don’t want to only be the… I kind of throw ideas for how we do that better, but I want to hear from… from this team, like.
82 00:10:04.170 ⇒ 00:10:24.059 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, if you were to just kind of break up, like, who… who’s giving you the most pressure, where you’re spending most of your time, I would… I would guess that it’s 50%, 50-plus percent from just the marketing group, right? Or, like, I mean, like, where… where… what would be… like, how would you guys kind of frame, like, what’s… like, frame the situation?
83 00:10:28.550 ⇒ 00:10:40.530 Henry Zhao: I would say last week was really just this Bobby thing. I think, everything else went well, like, Customer I.O. was… was delivered, I gave an update to Stuart, and he was okay with what we discussed with Mitesh and Cutter.
84 00:10:40.690 ⇒ 00:10:45.179 Henry Zhao: I feel like all that stuff that happened on Friday was strictly just the Bobby stuff.
85 00:10:45.580 ⇒ 00:10:55.009 Henry Zhao: And I felt a little bit thrown under the bus in the sense that I tried very hard to meet with Bobby, and it just… his response was kind of like, I’m off-boarding, like.
86 00:10:55.100 ⇒ 00:11:07.750 Henry Zhao: what do you need from me? Like, kind of very, like, sending me off, and then I feel like it was only after he said the crickets thing, and other people started putting pressure, he was like, okay, wow, like, let’s meet with Henry, like, I can meet now.
87 00:11:07.860 ⇒ 00:11:08.930 Henry Zhao: …
88 00:11:10.040 ⇒ 00:11:15.679 Henry Zhao: Like, it felt like I was annoying him, and I didn’t want to put too much pressure on somebody that was off-boarding.
89 00:11:15.900 ⇒ 00:11:19.250 Henry Zhao: But in hindsight, maybe I should have been more… pressuring a little bit more.
90 00:11:19.990 ⇒ 00:11:24.849 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I think, it’s what… yeah, go ahead.
91 00:11:25.560 ⇒ 00:11:31.089 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, so from… for the marketing work, like, on the analytics side, also, like.
92 00:11:31.120 ⇒ 00:11:48.779 Awaish Kumar: We delivered them some things, like, for example, the offer, which was the most critical source for them, it was implemented, and we did communicate with the team, like, let them know in Slack, also, along with all the, details.
93 00:11:48.870 ⇒ 00:11:54.810 Awaish Kumar: But one thing to consider here is that, like, the kind of…
94 00:11:54.990 ⇒ 00:12:03.390 Awaish Kumar: like, we want every AE to, like, work, for example, 10 hours per week, and at most, he can
95 00:12:03.720 ⇒ 00:12:14.499 Awaish Kumar: What he can do is, like, for example, if there is some big, complex analytical model that has to be built, like, if he estimated, 3 to 5 hours, then that’s…
96 00:12:14.660 ⇒ 00:12:25.130 Awaish Kumar: there’s some, like, 50% of his time is going to build that model, and then some meetings, management, us and communication, a lot of these things, and then, like.
97 00:12:25.400 ⇒ 00:12:28.960 Awaish Kumar: And then, like, it’s also… we have to…
98 00:12:29.370 ⇒ 00:12:32.180 Awaish Kumar: Organize, like, our sprint planning, like.
99 00:12:32.390 ⇒ 00:12:35.140 Awaish Kumar: Not everything can be urgent, like, …
100 00:12:35.290 ⇒ 00:12:46.630 Awaish Kumar: to build these two models, and also work on, different sources on marketing, and also that, and then do that in 10 hours. Like, we need to, like.
101 00:12:47.410 ⇒ 00:12:58.999 Awaish Kumar: Estimate the story points correctly, and then assign the tickets based on our expectation of, like, how much hours this person should work on this plan.
102 00:13:00.770 ⇒ 00:13:08.769 Robert Tseng: Yeah. So, I mean, on that note, Wage, like, I think, I mean, every start of the week, I feel good. We go in, we have our planning, we have
103 00:13:08.920 ⇒ 00:13:28.739 Robert Tseng: you know, we… the priorities are clearly listed out, the ticket load seems fine. Obviously, throughout the week, random ad hoc stuff comes, and then Amber is kind of just, like, stuck in this, like, triage loop, where she has to follow up on stuff. Like, I… like, I… I don’t really know what hap… like, I feel like we just… and then by the end of the week, I look back at the projects, and it just looks like…
104 00:13:29.000 ⇒ 00:13:34.959 Robert Tseng: you know, the tickets, I mean, these are all… I mean, I think it’s exaggerating just to illustrate my point, but, like.
105 00:13:34.960 ⇒ 00:13:49.489 Robert Tseng: you know, the tickets look like they’ve doubled, and a lot of the stuff doesn’t look like it’s moved. Everything I’m looking at is, like, due from two weeks ago. Like, I… I don’t know how to… that, to me, like, I don’t… I don’t really know what happened, especially since I’m not in the daily stand-ups anymore, on, like, why that’s happening.
106 00:13:53.230 ⇒ 00:13:55.419 Robert Tseng: So, are we just not estimating? Like, who’s…
107 00:13:55.520 ⇒ 00:14:11.120 Robert Tseng: like, when we’re saying, oh, we’re not estimating correctly, well, I would expect that, like, you know, Henry and Wish are the ones that are helping Amber estimate. Like, Amber does have, like, a 360 view of, like, she knows every project that’s going on. She may not know how
108 00:14:11.380 ⇒ 00:14:28.889 Robert Tseng: long it will take, and, you know, Wish, if you are giving this feedback that, like, hey, the engineers, like, they can’t do all this stuff in that many times, like, I think you need to represent them, kind of. And, I… you have to… you have to push back and… and… and push things into the next cycle, and …
109 00:14:28.890 ⇒ 00:14:32.190 Robert Tseng: Or whatever it is. Like, I… I think that, like.
110 00:14:32.510 ⇒ 00:14:36.139 Awaish Kumar: You know… Like, I think you’re missing, missing the…
111 00:14:36.320 ⇒ 00:14:40.360 Awaish Kumar: We are missing, like, grooming, and planning meeting,
112 00:14:41.800 ⇒ 00:14:44.949 Awaish Kumar: That’s… maybe we can add that, and a few things can be patterned.
113 00:14:46.030 ⇒ 00:14:48.279 Amber Lin: We do have planning and grooming.
114 00:14:48.280 ⇒ 00:15:00.259 Robert Tseng: We do have planning, and we have midweek grooming. Midweek grooming, to me, like, I kind of go in there with Amber, and I just knock out, or like, we basically reconcile
115 00:15:00.260 ⇒ 00:15:09.909 Robert Tseng: duplicate tickets, like, we’re canceling things that don’t matter, I’m pushing things out of cycle. So I’m never going to those grooming meetings, adding new things, I’m always removing things, and…
116 00:15:09.910 ⇒ 00:15:15.679 Robert Tseng: I feel like we’re still behind. Like, that’s… I don’t know, so that… I don’t know what you’re necessarily asking for, which….
117 00:15:16.150 ⇒ 00:15:20.409 Awaish Kumar: I mean, like, we have this bi-weekly grooming meeting, but I think we should…
118 00:15:20.570 ⇒ 00:15:26.969 Awaish Kumar: Like, if we are concerned about weekly updates, then we should have, like, every start of the week, we should plan our week.
119 00:15:27.250 ⇒ 00:15:31.040 Awaish Kumar: And at the end, we know what… what happened.
120 00:15:31.560 ⇒ 00:15:35.070 Amber Lin: Okay, I hear you. … Okay.
121 00:15:35.380 ⇒ 00:15:47.819 Amber Lin: weekly planning, we can add… we can turn grooming into weekly. It’s just the team will have to meet more. I’m very open to that, but… Okay, everybody else on the team needs to meet.
122 00:15:48.160 ⇒ 00:15:49.019 Henry Zhao: And I think on my end.
123 00:15:49.020 ⇒ 00:15:57.060 Awaish Kumar: It can be questioned. I have a, like, recommendation on communication, improvement on communication as well.
124 00:15:57.260 ⇒ 00:16:04.649 Awaish Kumar: At the bottom of it, I added our own kind of… we may call it engagement lead, or a customer success engineer, or something.
125 00:16:04.900 ⇒ 00:16:10.320 Awaish Kumar: Which can basically work on multiple kinds, and this job would be…
126 00:16:10.630 ⇒ 00:16:14.930 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, only to, like, …
127 00:16:16.140 ⇒ 00:16:19.709 Awaish Kumar: handle the comms with the client, for example?
128 00:16:21.720 ⇒ 00:16:25.130 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, either it can be an engineer.
129 00:16:26.380 ⇒ 00:16:32.259 Awaish Kumar: like, the AEs, like, directly connected with the client, like, in the client meetings, and they…
130 00:16:32.450 ⇒ 00:16:37.750 Awaish Kumar: That’s how they can build the relationship directly with those stakeholders.
131 00:16:37.850 ⇒ 00:16:45.590 Awaish Kumar: Our other way is that most of the client communication should be go from one single person.
132 00:16:45.710 ⇒ 00:16:49.800 Awaish Kumar: But yeah, engineers can come in, like, if needed.
133 00:16:50.030 ⇒ 00:16:55.230 Awaish Kumar: Like, if you want to give some more technical …
134 00:16:55.430 ⇒ 00:17:03.910 Awaish Kumar: details or need him to answer some of the things, then yeah, you can bring him in the meeting. Otherwise, one customer success engineer
135 00:17:04.170 ⇒ 00:17:16.040 Awaish Kumar: Can give, like, weekly updates on what is planned for this week to the client, and then at the end, what is done, and if something is delayed, why it’s still… why it is delayed, and…
136 00:17:16.280 ⇒ 00:17:20.610 Awaish Kumar: Help with the roadmap planning, for that client, things like that.
137 00:17:21.740 ⇒ 00:17:27.829 Awaish Kumar: And yeah, like, if any more further, like, technical… Details are required, then yeah.
138 00:17:27.930 ⇒ 00:17:31.419 Awaish Kumar: Engineers can be brought in into that discussion.
139 00:17:32.010 ⇒ 00:17:41.319 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’ll respond to that quickly, and then… actually, or Henry, I know that you were trying to say something. You want me to respond to this first? Yeah, you first. You want to say something?
140 00:17:41.320 ⇒ 00:17:41.770 Henry Zhao: Trust.
141 00:17:41.770 ⇒ 00:18:00.679 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, on the CS engineer engagement, I don’t think it should be an engineer. Like, I think this is my role. Like, this is what I should be doing. I wouldn’t say I would edit a few things. I don’t think I should be responsible for all client comms, but I think my job is to make sure that you guys are kind of, you know, communicating
142 00:18:00.700 ⇒ 00:18:12.759 Robert Tseng: like, at all levels of the work that we’re doing. At the leadership level, that’s what my decks are for. Like, I will… I will do that. I will manage… I’m managing up, trying to keep… give them visibility.
143 00:18:12.860 ⇒ 00:18:32.310 Robert Tseng: deciding on the roadmap, like, yeah, we do that in our planning is already. And then the updates at the start, end of each week, Amber does that. I think she’s able to field, like, why something is delayed and everything now. And so I think that’s… that’s been covered. But yeah, like, the thing is that it’s… I think that the bottleneck is that…
144 00:18:32.690 ⇒ 00:18:44.210 Robert Tseng: she only knows what she hears from the sprints, and for whatever reason, like, I think the engineers are just depending on her to come up with reasons… to come up with excuses, pretty much.
145 00:18:44.210 ⇒ 00:18:56.279 Robert Tseng: instead of giving her, like, the reasons why things are being blocked. I think there are… I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna name people or whatever, but, like, I think there are… there… not everyone is doing that. I think some people are giving really good updates all the time.
146 00:18:56.280 ⇒ 00:19:02.270 Robert Tseng: And … that helps, that helps Amber, but, you know, if…
147 00:19:02.600 ⇒ 00:19:08.019 Robert Tseng: if Amber doesn’t… if Amber has to come up with the reason, then I… I don’t think it… I don’t think it really works, so…
148 00:19:08.410 ⇒ 00:19:15.469 Robert Tseng: I also… but then it’s… that… that to me is also, like, we’re spending all this time, like, deflecting things, and, like, the…
149 00:19:16.200 ⇒ 00:19:19.929 Robert Tseng: Yes, it looks like last week we did a few, …
150 00:19:20.190 ⇒ 00:19:25.289 Robert Tseng: Of these, like, back-end things that we, you know, plugged in data sources or whatever.
151 00:19:25.300 ⇒ 00:19:40.419 Robert Tseng: I’m just saying, I looked in the client-facing analytics channel and saw nothing from our team, in terms of, like… and I understand not everything has to be a visual, but we had our start of the week, kind of like, these are the tickets we’re working on, and at the end of the week, on Friday, when I checked.
152 00:19:40.420 ⇒ 00:19:53.689 Robert Tseng: there was nothing. And, that’s… that, to me is the problem. That, like, it… we can’t just depend on this structure in order to, like, say that that’s… we checked the box on communication.
153 00:19:56.410 ⇒ 00:19:57.100 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
154 00:19:57.770 ⇒ 00:20:04.789 Awaish Kumar: So, like… What? What should be the… for engineers, like.
155 00:20:04.990 ⇒ 00:20:06.619 Awaish Kumar: There are a lot of…
156 00:20:07.700 ⇒ 00:20:10.050 Awaish Kumar: Tickets would sit in the back end, like.
157 00:20:10.140 ⇒ 00:20:29.480 Awaish Kumar: mostly… most of AE’s work is just on the backend side, except it’s something, like, on marketing, I’m building a sheet that can be… that’s something I can directly communicate with the marketing team, right? But otherwise, it goes from, like, AE builds a model, then AE builds a dashboard. That’s basically a deliverable to the client.
158 00:20:30.120 ⇒ 00:20:36.259 Awaish Kumar: So how, like, fees can… give an update into the client’s channel, like.
159 00:20:38.160 ⇒ 00:20:40.070 Awaish Kumar: Like, how should that be, right?
160 00:20:44.120 ⇒ 00:20:55.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I… I hear… I hear you on, like, how do the engineers actually give updates on things if, like, the… if the thing that they’re actually interacting with, that the client’s interacting with, is a visual that Annie built.
161 00:20:55.960 ⇒ 00:21:06.879 Robert Tseng: I don’t actually think that’s our workflow most of the time. That, to me, is, like, just a section of the request. Some people go to AEs directly, like, you know, Damelata gets tagged directly to just…
162 00:21:06.880 ⇒ 00:21:18.159 Robert Tseng: and I think we have… we’re getting less visual… fewer… fewer visualization requests. I think, to me, Annie’s role is kind of in flux, like, whether or not she needs to be in this next phase, like.
163 00:21:18.160 ⇒ 00:21:29.919 Robert Tseng: I… I’m, like, 50% confident that she can actually, like, do what the analyst role needs at this point, because she’s good at doing the BI stuff and, like, putting out Tableau updates.
164 00:21:29.920 ⇒ 00:21:45.810 Robert Tseng: But, like, open-ended investigations and stuff, like, I don’t really feel like she’s owning… owning it. It’s… it’s very much just, like, this nebulous, like, analyst AE handoff that’s going off in the back end that, like, we’re… we’re not able to really, interject with. So…
165 00:21:45.880 ⇒ 00:21:59.530 Robert Tseng: I’m not… I don’t have the answer for that right now, but I think that’s why I… I’m just… I’m calling that out, that that is one of the problems that I see, that there isn’t… aside from
166 00:21:59.880 ⇒ 00:22:09.089 Robert Tseng: Amber, like, I mean, and then I guess Henry is, you know, starting to build that relationship with the clients, like, we don’t have very many people that are
167 00:22:09.300 ⇒ 00:22:11.109 Robert Tseng: Able to give
168 00:22:11.230 ⇒ 00:22:20.130 Robert Tseng: that kind of, update to a client, which I’m not saying everyone should, but, like, I don’t know, I feel like it’s…
169 00:22:21.110 ⇒ 00:22:38.559 Robert Tseng: I’m just trying to work backwards here, like, I’m just saying, analytics channel, there was nothing there other than the first Monday message. I don’t know who should be, kind of, giving that message or not, but, like, it… it just… it just looks like we’re not doing… we’re not proactively communicating.
170 00:22:41.680 ⇒ 00:22:42.659 Amber Lin: I think….
171 00:22:42.660 ⇒ 00:22:58.049 Henry Zhao: I don’t mind owning, like, in the future, giving a Monday update, and then a Friday update. So Monday, say this is what we’re going to be doing this week, this is our focus, and then on Friday, this is what we ended up doing, and this is what maybe needs to get pushed to next week, or what, still needs a little bit more work to get done.
172 00:22:59.200 ⇒ 00:23:17.850 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think it should be on, like, on a workstream basis, but also, this is just something that I think we’re just gonna have to be careful to expect from junior folks. Like, out of this crew, I think it’s a good expectation that if you finish a chunk of work, or there’s a key, sort of, discovery from a client.
173 00:23:17.920 ⇒ 00:23:33.450 Uttam Kumaran: it’s… in any sense, it’s worth just sending a note, right? This is something that Amber is totally on the hook for and does, but in between Amber and everyone else, I think us as leads, like, you got… you have to be doing that, where you have a meeting with a client, and you’re… you’ll…
174 00:23:33.560 ⇒ 00:23:45.729 Uttam Kumaran: like, Henry, you’ll start to see me do this on default. Everybody kind of sees me do this in other clients, where it’s just sending anything. Like, we went to… I went to a meeting, the meeting was great, thanks for the meeting. Like…
175 00:23:45.850 ⇒ 00:23:51.579 Uttam Kumaran: Or, hey, we discovered this, this is the next steps, great. Like, those are just habitual things that I think
176 00:23:51.680 ⇒ 00:24:05.070 Uttam Kumaran: you know, when you work internally in a company, it’s not as necessary, but because we’re consultants, we have to do that. So Amber is always on the hook for this. I think the leads have to be sort of on the hook for this type of periodic update.
177 00:24:05.180 ⇒ 00:24:07.910 Uttam Kumaran: But it… it can… it doesn’t have to be so, like…
178 00:24:08.250 ⇒ 00:24:16.129 Uttam Kumaran: It can be both, like, every Monday and Friday I’m gonna give an update, but it just has to be, like, building a little bit of rapport with the client, right? Absolutely.
179 00:24:16.740 ⇒ 00:24:17.350 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
180 00:24:17.480 ⇒ 00:24:26.170 Henry Zhao: I completely agree, and I think this is maybe some growing pains of, like, not having worked in this business model before, I kind of need to get used to it and just keep reminding myself to do that.
181 00:24:26.170 ⇒ 00:24:27.120 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.
182 00:24:27.420 ⇒ 00:24:28.820 Henry Zhao: Yeah, same thing I said to Amber, I said.
183 00:24:28.820 ⇒ 00:24:29.300 Awaish Kumar: Never.
184 00:24:29.300 ⇒ 00:24:30.939 Henry Zhao: In the beginning, I kind of…
185 00:24:31.110 ⇒ 00:24:41.720 Henry Zhao: wrongfully thought that, like, when I update a linear ticket, the client would see that, but they don’t. So, it’s, like, reminding myself also of that, that just because I updated a ticket doesn’t mean that Eden knows what’s going on. So, definitely hear you and, agree.
186 00:24:41.720 ⇒ 00:24:43.030 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Noted.
187 00:24:43.210 ⇒ 00:24:44.090 Henry Zhao: Sorry, go ahead, Awish.
188 00:24:44.880 ⇒ 00:24:49.310 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I just have a few recommendations, like, I agree on…
189 00:24:49.610 ⇒ 00:24:52.099 Awaish Kumar: What you said with them, like, like, for example.
190 00:24:52.290 ⇒ 00:24:53.880 Awaish Kumar: If we are working on a…
191 00:24:54.690 ⇒ 00:25:00.939 Awaish Kumar: On something, like, which is a significant thing, and we should communicate with that with client, or…
192 00:25:01.230 ⇒ 00:25:05.679 Awaish Kumar: With these people, but apart from that, if, like, …
193 00:25:06.390 ⇒ 00:25:11.259 Awaish Kumar: for the, like, Amber’s, anxiety, like, like, if, like, she…
194 00:25:11.640 ⇒ 00:25:15.759 Awaish Kumar: She gets questions in the client meeting, or in the Slack, which…
195 00:25:15.990 ⇒ 00:25:18.730 Awaish Kumar: She needs to give some answer, like.
196 00:25:18.940 ⇒ 00:25:28.959 Awaish Kumar: I think for these things, like, maybe she can bring in some engineer, right? Like, if, you know, she expects if some questions are going to come up.
197 00:25:29.200 ⇒ 00:25:40.309 Awaish Kumar: like, she can tell, like, me or Demolade to come in that meeting and, be prepared for giving some answers, or even if in the Slack trail, like.
198 00:25:41.170 ⇒ 00:25:44.560 Awaish Kumar: Like, tag us if needed, apart, like.
199 00:25:44.720 ⇒ 00:25:49.199 Awaish Kumar: Apart from where we are directly communicating, but if something just comes up.
200 00:25:49.350 ⇒ 00:25:51.850 Awaish Kumar: Which is more technical, like, just…
201 00:25:52.130 ⇒ 00:25:54.789 Awaish Kumar: Just bring… bring us in as well.
202 00:25:54.790 ⇒ 00:26:01.989 Amber Lin: I hear you. I do, for whatever I cannot respond, I tag people. I think the problem is not that
203 00:26:02.260 ⇒ 00:26:20.869 Amber Lin: first of all, going back to Robert’s point of the analytics channel, there’s a lot going on in the other channels. I think we neglect that that was… the main one is the analytics channels. We don’t really send updates there. We can always, send updates in both the separate channels the client messages us in, and the main channel.
204 00:26:20.880 ⇒ 00:26:22.659 Amber Lin: I think second point.
205 00:26:22.920 ⇒ 00:26:34.299 Amber Lin: I… when I get attacked in different channels, I do respond to them, and I attack the engineer. However, I think the task that was assigned for that thread takes a while.
206 00:26:34.480 ⇒ 00:26:49.559 Amber Lin: Like, we’re… we usually… I usually am able to say, hey, I’m gonna… I’m asking an engineer, hey, engineer, can you do this? Can you do a spike? And then that’s what takes a long time. It’s not the initial response, but then we don’t get a… we don’t give an answer to them on time.
207 00:26:51.370 ⇒ 00:26:57.050 Awaish Kumar: Okay, so, yeah, I see, I hear you, like, the expectation is, for example.
208 00:26:57.440 ⇒ 00:27:00.379 Awaish Kumar: what is missing? What I think is missing is…
209 00:27:01.240 ⇒ 00:27:08.690 Awaish Kumar: The engineers get assigned some tickets, they work on some in a week, based on their availability.
210 00:27:08.810 ⇒ 00:27:09.990 Awaish Kumar: to give…
211 00:27:10.370 ⇒ 00:27:18.799 Awaish Kumar: Like, probably they give updates, on those, but there are some other tickets which are assigned, but they can’t finish in that week.
212 00:27:19.200 ⇒ 00:27:22.269 Awaish Kumar: And they end up not making, …
213 00:27:22.810 ⇒ 00:27:25.999 Awaish Kumar: Not signing any update to the client for that ticket.
214 00:27:26.140 ⇒ 00:27:29.910 Awaish Kumar: So… Is that the real… issued.
215 00:27:32.470 ⇒ 00:27:43.419 Robert Tseng: So what I’m hearing is, okay, there’s, like, an escalation… I mean, this should be just, like, an documented escalation process here, right? Like, we have… we’ve already cut it, I’m just talking about a specific, …
216 00:27:45.270 ⇒ 00:27:58.319 Robert Tseng: we… an incoming message… so, for the tickets that we plan, and everything that we expect to do, I’m not worried about that. It’s just the interruptions that we get from the client. When people are coming back to us on something we worked on last week, and they’re like.
217 00:27:58.320 ⇒ 00:28:09.329 Robert Tseng: hey, this data is wrong. Like, what’s going on? That’s an immediate spike. We have to drop, that’s urgent, right? It’s a… it’s a dashboard, it’s related to our QA, we just left something through, whatever, like…
218 00:28:09.330 ⇒ 00:28:16.349 Robert Tseng: Josh’s dashboard is down. Like, that has to… that has to happen that same day. Has to… it has to be a drop everything and figure out… figure that out.
219 00:28:16.390 ⇒ 00:28:21.010 Robert Tseng: We try to mitigate it with all of our checks or whatever, but stuff like that still comes through.
220 00:28:21.260 ⇒ 00:28:26.440 Robert Tseng: So that one needs, needs a… like, like Amber sent.
221 00:28:26.560 ⇒ 00:28:33.439 Robert Tseng: like, like, like Amber’s saying, I don’t think the first metric is slow. Like, I think she’s able to cover everything. And then…
222 00:28:33.440 ⇒ 00:28:46.670 Robert Tseng: But then the follow-up on, like, okay, this was called out, like, this urgent thing, like, we’re looking at it, like, we need to give that response. And if we don’t, then that’s what gets followed up on over and over again by the client.
223 00:28:46.670 ⇒ 00:28:54.360 Robert Tseng: And it’s frustrating because it has nothing to do with the roadmap that we had already planned for the week. It’s not part of our sprint planning.
224 00:28:54.540 ⇒ 00:29:08.549 Robert Tseng: they don’t look at any of that stuff, they’re just looking at, like, the thread at which they added us in, and that we didn’t respond in. So, I think that’s where the disconnect is. If we can just triage that better, then maybe, like, we’ll just, you know, they…
225 00:29:08.770 ⇒ 00:29:18.510 Robert Tseng: they’ll… we’ll have more, … like, we’ll be back in the driver’s seat and not having to react to… react to things. …
226 00:29:18.680 ⇒ 00:29:34.259 Robert Tseng: So, I’m just… I’m just kind of saying that out loud as, like, I think that’s… that, to me sounds like where… where… where things there have been maybe… maybe broke down. But yeah, I can… I can name a few situations where I feel like things just kind of fall, like…
227 00:29:34.480 ⇒ 00:29:35.760 Robert Tseng: …
228 00:29:36.330 ⇒ 00:29:44.390 Robert Tseng: Jonah’s… Jonah had 3 requests. He comes in, he goes directly to me, I kind of take the first pass, I answer all of them.
229 00:29:44.790 ⇒ 00:29:48.960 Robert Tseng: He has a follow-up. Two of the requests require additional engineering help.
230 00:29:49.130 ⇒ 00:29:58.240 Robert Tseng: I hand it off to the engineers, I take myself out of that, because I’m only giving myself direct access to the owner for one week, just to see what his requests are.
231 00:29:58.350 ⇒ 00:30:14.709 Robert Tseng: After that, there was no communication from the team, so I understand the handoff was a bit rough, and I think that’s kind of my frustration with, like, the… we have too many people, and that we spend so much time doing handoffs, that every time you tell someone to do something, something gets lost in translation.
232 00:30:15.150 ⇒ 00:30:29.469 Robert Tseng: and it has to pass through, like, 4 hands before it gets back to the client. Whereas, like, I feel like we were a lot faster at doing this before when it was just, like, two people, 2 or 3 people, right? So, I’m just… I…
233 00:30:30.150 ⇒ 00:30:33.160 Robert Tseng: I don’t… I don’t know how we’re going to get around that, yeah.
234 00:30:33.160 ⇒ 00:30:37.790 Amber Lin: I agree. Same thing between analysts and AE handoff, there’s usually…
235 00:30:38.250 ⇒ 00:30:53.469 Amber Lin: something wrong with the dashboard, and he looks at it, says, okay, this second fix, that needs engine, modeling help, and then, need to translate that ticket to engineer, engineer needs to complete it, give it back to Annie, and he completes the dashboard, and that process takes a lot of time.
236 00:30:54.860 ⇒ 00:31:06.909 Robert Tseng: So, like, why do you need to be involved in that, Amber? If it’s, like, Andy’s QAing the work of the model, like, she needs to own the outcome of delivering that thing, you know? Like, I think once we’ve kind of set people off to go do the work.
237 00:31:06.910 ⇒ 00:31:14.990 Robert Tseng: you don’t need to middleman, like, AE and analyst communication, or communication between Henry and an engineer.
238 00:31:14.990 ⇒ 00:31:16.049 Robert Tseng: Between me and.
239 00:31:16.050 ⇒ 00:31:16.830 Uttam Kumaran: kind of thing.
240 00:31:16.830 ⇒ 00:31:19.580 Awaish Kumar: You should… you should come in when it slips.
241 00:31:19.580 ⇒ 00:31:27.340 Uttam Kumaran: Right? Like, that’s when you should be there. Otherwise, they’re gonna lean on you for that, and then you’re gonna be the bottleneck across the board.
242 00:31:27.720 ⇒ 00:31:29.810 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s always gonna be….
243 00:31:29.810 ⇒ 00:31:30.410 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I ain’.
244 00:31:30.410 ⇒ 00:31:39.949 Uttam Kumaran: There’s always gonna be things slipping, and so focus your time on that, but having these two… having two people on the team talk to each other is an ex… just an expectation.
245 00:31:40.340 ⇒ 00:31:41.000 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
246 00:31:41.000 ⇒ 00:31:41.760 Amber Lin: Yeah.
247 00:31:41.940 ⇒ 00:31:46.559 Awaish Kumar: Yeah, I already tried to communicate with, like, for example, Was Steve and Amy.
248 00:31:46.680 ⇒ 00:31:47.880 Awaish Kumar: to…
249 00:31:48.160 ⇒ 00:32:00.699 Awaish Kumar: just, like, to encourage them to pair together on one of the models they’re working and building a dashboard on, so I… they should be able to communicate with themselves.
250 00:32:01.110 ⇒ 00:32:03.790 Awaish Kumar: Without involving any of us.
251 00:32:05.650 ⇒ 00:32:14.899 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so maybe something that would be helpful to add to stand-ups isn’t just, like, the tickets that are ongoing work. We understand that tickets are not gonna move every day, like, that’s just unrealistic. But…
252 00:32:14.910 ⇒ 00:32:28.760 Robert Tseng: maybe Amber, like, or at least for this group, like, we should be more aware of, like, hey, like, Bobby sent us this message on Monday, like, we’ve foreseen something, like, kind of blowing up there. Kind of like what I was pointing out, like, literally on Friday, I slacked the team, I was like.
253 00:32:29.010 ⇒ 00:32:45.059 Robert Tseng: I haven’t seen anything in this channel, like, this person’s upset, like, I’m gonna hear from Adam and Josh, like, on Monday. Like, I just, like, intuitively knew that, and then actually, they just called me, like, 2 hours later. So, like, I don’t know, like, being able to, like, anticipate, like, where the…
254 00:32:45.130 ⇒ 00:32:52.659 Robert Tseng: were those interruptions or escalations from the client, like, we’re… that are… we’re gonna get jammed in? Like, I think…
255 00:32:52.690 ⇒ 00:33:09.059 Robert Tseng: we need to be able to just say that out loud. It may not impact the roadmap. Maybe we say, okay, there’s actually something urgent that we need to just finish up the Joshua’s dashboard thing. I know these are revisions from last week or two weeks ago, but everything else needs to be delayed until we get those done. Like, I think that’s…
256 00:33:09.060 ⇒ 00:33:13.130 Robert Tseng: Those are the types of adjustments that we need to be able to make in response to
257 00:33:13.130 ⇒ 00:33:27.399 Robert Tseng: to client feedback. And we don’t have to do this every day, that would be whiplash. But I think, like, something in the middle of the week, like on Wednesday, so that people can, like, adjust, like, I think we just need to be… we need to be able to have, like, a line of sight.
258 00:33:27.420 ⇒ 00:33:39.979 Robert Tseng: Towards, like, the end of the week, that, like, okay, we heard some chatter come in that, like, kind of went against what we had planned, and this is, like, a course correction that we’re making in the middle of the week to be able to handle those things.
259 00:33:41.860 ⇒ 00:33:42.520 Awaish Kumar: Maybe.
260 00:33:43.300 ⇒ 00:33:46.689 Awaish Kumar: Okay, so one of the decisions from this meeting, I…
261 00:33:46.820 ⇒ 00:33:48.639 Awaish Kumar: I see we can make is…
262 00:33:48.930 ⇒ 00:33:52.560 Awaish Kumar: That after any engineer is assigned,
263 00:33:52.970 ⇒ 00:33:54.889 Awaish Kumar: like, a tag or a thread.
264 00:33:55.270 ⇒ 00:33:59.380 Awaish Kumar: He should create a ticket, try the task.
265 00:33:59.580 ⇒ 00:34:03.489 Awaish Kumar: And, estimate and come up with some deadline.
266 00:34:03.670 ⇒ 00:34:05.910 Awaish Kumar: And, and share it with clients.
267 00:34:06.040 ⇒ 00:34:10.050 Awaish Kumar: When he can expect the… Yeah.
268 00:34:10.050 ⇒ 00:34:11.980 Robert Tseng: Just a message would be fine, yeah.
269 00:34:13.900 ⇒ 00:34:14.620 Awaish Kumar: Okay.
270 00:34:18.230 ⇒ 00:34:28.910 Robert Tseng: We don’t have to aggressively estimate it. It doesn’t mean that we automatically say, oh, we’ll get to it and we’ll do it today. Like, that’s just the wrong expectation. That just means that people can just tag us whenever and then circumvent our process.
271 00:34:29.090 ⇒ 00:34:44.510 Robert Tseng: But let the clients push back on that. It’s like, okay, the engineer goes and creates the ticket, says, okay, I can do it next Monday. Like, they should know what they can accomplish on their own plate. And then if the client’s like, no, we need it sooner, then Amber can triage it again. Like, I feel like that could just…
272 00:34:44.670 ⇒ 00:34:49.590 Robert Tseng: I feel like that’s, like, a good step. Like, people should know what’s on their plate, rather than, like.
273 00:34:49.889 ⇒ 00:35:05.169 Robert Tseng: client says something, then Amber has to jump in, look at what the engineer has to do, and then tell them, hey, push XYZ away. Just like the engineer should just, if they get tagged, they should just respond immediately and say that they can take it on 2 days or 3 days from now, or whatever.
274 00:35:11.570 ⇒ 00:35:12.290 Amber Lin: Okay.
275 00:35:13.130 ⇒ 00:35:14.130 Amber Lin: Yeah.
276 00:35:15.610 ⇒ 00:35:27.799 Robert Tseng: But yeah, I mean, I would just… sorry, one more sentence is this. But yeah, I would say nothing should come as a surprise to this group. Like, you guys are… I mean, yeah, like, you guys are… have the relationship with the stakeholders.
277 00:35:27.800 ⇒ 00:35:44.840 Robert Tseng: you’re… you’re proactively in things. Amber’s in the leads, like, in literally the Eden leadership meeting on Mondays, listening to what their priorities are for the week. That gives her some sense of what’s coming. Henry and Awash are talking… well, maybe not Awish, but, like, ideally, both of you will now be talking to Mitesh directly.
278 00:35:44.870 ⇒ 00:35:47.199 Robert Tseng: Regular… on some regular cadence.
279 00:35:47.590 ⇒ 00:35:57.609 Robert Tseng: you’re gonna know what’s… what he’s thinking about. And so… and then anything else that kind of comes up, it’s… it’s, like, gonna have to… yeah, I mean, like, I… I think you just…
280 00:35:58.180 ⇒ 00:36:14.629 Robert Tseng: will be a derivative of, like, what you heard from the top dogs there. So, like… and then if somebody does give you a random request, then it’s just like, well, that’s not connected to any of the priorities you know of, and so you feel empowered to be like, that’s not a priority, we’re not gonna deal with that.
281 00:36:19.370 ⇒ 00:36:21.400 Amber Lin: Okay …
282 00:36:22.110 ⇒ 00:36:31.660 Amber Lin: heard on that, and I’ve already changed our grooming meetings to weekly, so we’ll have an extra meeting on Wednesday.
283 00:36:31.790 ⇒ 00:36:38.179 Amber Lin: … I think that… It’s also after the meeting with Mitesh.
284 00:36:38.370 ⇒ 00:36:41.750 Amber Lin: And Qatar, so…
285 00:36:41.890 ⇒ 00:36:48.980 Amber Lin: I think we can still… Robert, you can still stay out of stand-ups and come in Monday, Wednesday to those meetings.
286 00:36:53.420 ⇒ 00:36:56.200 Robert Tseng: I… see….
287 00:36:56.200 ⇒ 00:36:58.179 Amber Lin: Let me check if you’re free.
288 00:37:00.040 ⇒ 00:37:00.570 Amber Lin: Rosie?
289 00:37:00.570 ⇒ 00:37:06.080 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, the Monday kickoffs, I’ll be there, and then, like, the weekly grooming, so I can show up to that, I think that’s fine.
290 00:37:06.750 ⇒ 00:37:07.310 Amber Lin: Yeah.
291 00:37:08.030 ⇒ 00:37:19.839 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, also for, you know, for Henry, for Wish, for Amber, if you guys are in a scenario and you need help, just, like, ping me or whatever, like, I’ve seen it all when it comes to dealing with
292 00:37:20.280 ⇒ 00:37:33.349 Uttam Kumaran: clients and executives, like, I can help you through what the right path is, so don’t… don’t mull over too much, or if you were like, hey, I’m not sure what to do, just raise your hand. That’s the easiest path, you know, …
293 00:37:33.990 ⇒ 00:37:37.100 Uttam Kumaran: But it’s like, hey, I got this message, or I’m dealing with these two people, like.
294 00:37:37.290 ⇒ 00:37:41.740 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of feel like I should do this, what do you think? That’s perfect. I can help you.
295 00:37:42.090 ⇒ 00:37:44.069 Henry Zhao: Yeah, we’ll be definitely taking advantage of that.
296 00:37:44.070 ⇒ 00:37:54.029 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, just ask me. I’ve dealt with so many types of people in doing this type of work. I’ll help you get through it, and we’ll make you guys a rock star, so that’s it.
297 00:37:54.240 ⇒ 00:37:56.990 Uttam Kumaran: … But in….
298 00:37:56.990 ⇒ 00:37:57.569 Awaish Kumar: Thank you for me.
299 00:37:57.570 ⇒ 00:38:02.739 Uttam Kumaran: In any situation, communicating fast and early is usually the way to go.
300 00:38:11.340 ⇒ 00:38:12.230 Amber Lin: Alright.
301 00:38:12.750 ⇒ 00:38:16.950 Amber Lin: … Thanks.
302 00:38:17.780 ⇒ 00:38:25.670 Amber Lin: I think what I can also do is to fully line out the escalation process that we just talked about of
303 00:38:25.860 ⇒ 00:38:32.100 Amber Lin: How communication should be owned, and then make sure that everybody on the team
304 00:38:32.210 ⇒ 00:38:44.640 Amber Lin: knows it and follows it. I’ll send a quick initial draft after this meeting in the channel for people to review, and then after that, I think we should all adhere to how that should be handled.
305 00:38:45.620 ⇒ 00:38:47.040 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, got great.
306 00:38:47.040 ⇒ 00:38:48.009 Robert Tseng: That sounds good.
307 00:38:48.010 ⇒ 00:38:56.779 Uttam Kumaran: I know we… are we gonna meet with this crew weekly, or, like, I think one thing, Amber, we can talk about for, like, bigger clients, maybe we should do some type of monthly…
308 00:38:57.000 ⇒ 00:38:59.360 Uttam Kumaran: Review or audit,
309 00:39:00.050 ⇒ 00:39:04.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah, with people who are leads on clients. I think that that’d be good.
310 00:39:04.390 ⇒ 00:39:07.500 Amber Lin: Okay. … Which probably….
311 00:39:07.500 ⇒ 00:39:09.279 Robert Tseng: It will end up just being this group.
312 00:39:10.850 ⇒ 00:39:16.059 Amber Lin: Yeah. I’m looking at this, I think maybe weekly we can turn our…
313 00:39:16.170 ⇒ 00:39:22.860 Amber Lin: Usual pre-meetings to an hour, or find a different time to do an hour, and then we can talk about it.
314 00:39:25.530 ⇒ 00:39:27.290 Robert Tseng: And…
315 00:39:29.610 ⇒ 00:39:37.739 Robert Tseng: I’m honestly okay with doing, like… because we have, like, what, like, 2 or 3 manager meetings right now? If we could just do…
316 00:39:38.110 ⇒ 00:39:44.560 Robert Tseng: Can we do, like, one manager meeting, and then turn one of them into, like, a leads meeting? Like, I don’t know.
317 00:39:44.560 ⇒ 00:39:44.910 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
318 00:39:44.910 ⇒ 00:39:45.600 Robert Tseng: like that.
319 00:39:45.780 ⇒ 00:39:47.140 Amber Lin: Okay, yeah.
320 00:39:47.300 ⇒ 00:39:53.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, we don’t have to do it today, because we already had this one today, but, like, starting next week, or something like that.
321 00:39:54.290 ⇒ 00:39:55.340 Amber Lin: And then we can rotate.
322 00:39:55.340 ⇒ 00:39:57.309 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll do that later, and then, yeah, we can make a decision.
323 00:39:57.310 ⇒ 00:39:58.030 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
324 00:39:58.030 ⇒ 00:39:58.390 Amber Lin: Okay.
325 00:39:58.390 ⇒ 00:39:59.010 Robert Tseng: Okay.
326 00:39:59.690 ⇒ 00:40:00.060 Awaish Kumar: Goodness.
327 00:40:04.010 ⇒ 00:40:04.970 Amber Lin: Okay.
328 00:40:05.590 ⇒ 00:40:14.330 Robert Tseng: Yeah, this will be more focused on, like, kind of, like, client situations, whereas the manager’s meeting is more focused on, like, internal situations or whatever, so….
329 00:40:14.330 ⇒ 00:40:15.639 Amber Lin: Yeah. Okay.
330 00:40:16.140 ⇒ 00:40:16.780 Robert Tseng: Okay.
331 00:40:17.060 ⇒ 00:40:25.629 Robert Tseng: Cool. Alright, well, I think, obviously, thank you for everyone for reflecting and kind of coming to the table with ideas, like.
332 00:40:26.160 ⇒ 00:40:35.899 Robert Tseng: I know it’s not very straightforward, and there’s… there are a lot of moving… moving parts, so I appreciate the feedback, and I think we have a… we have some things that we’re gonna try to make it better.
333 00:40:37.300 ⇒ 00:40:38.279 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I appreciate it.
334 00:40:38.750 ⇒ 00:40:39.600 Awaish Kumar: Prepare.
335 00:40:39.600 ⇒ 00:40:40.399 Henry Zhao: Yeah, do we want to do….
336 00:40:40.400 ⇒ 00:40:40.750 Robert Tseng: Exactly.
337 00:40:40.750 ⇒ 00:40:45.089 Henry Zhao: Do you need to communicate this to Eden, just to kind of, like, show that we’re proactively fixing the problem, or….
338 00:40:46.090 ⇒ 00:40:51.170 Robert Tseng: … I will… Yeah, I can… I can do that.
339 00:40:52.010 ⇒ 00:40:53.059 Henry Zhao: Okay. Sure.
340 00:40:53.250 ⇒ 00:40:59.849 Henry Zhao: Yeah, if you send in a channel that I can see, that would be great. I’d love to just see, kind of, how you deal with the client in this type of situation.
341 00:41:00.190 ⇒ 00:41:04.819 Robert Tseng: Okay, sure. Yeah, I’m gonna send it out in the broader analytics channel, I’ll write something up.
342 00:41:05.720 ⇒ 00:41:06.470 Henry Zhao: Thanks, Robert.
343 00:41:06.820 ⇒ 00:41:07.420 Robert Tseng: Okay.
344 00:41:07.580 ⇒ 00:41:08.210 Amber Lin: Okay.
345 00:41:08.800 ⇒ 00:41:12.050 Amber Lin: See you all at the later kickoff, kickoff.
346 00:41:12.070 ⇒ 00:41:14.239 Henry Zhao: Yep. Thanks, everyone. See you guys soon. Bye.
347 00:41:14.240 ⇒ 00:41:14.810 Amber Lin: Right?
348 00:41:14.810 ⇒ 00:41:15.380 Awaish Kumar: birth.