Meeting Title: Uttam <> Danica Date: 2024-01-22 Meeting participants: Danica Hamor, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:05:33.400 ⇒ 00:05:34.280 Uttam Kumaran: Hello!
2 00:05:35.570 ⇒ 00:05:36.670 Danica Hamor: Hello!
3 00:05:36.830 ⇒ 00:05:40.580 Uttam Kumaran: Hi! How are you?
4 00:05:40.660 ⇒ 00:05:42.279 Danica Hamor: I’m good. Thank you.
5 00:05:42.300 ⇒ 00:05:47.369 Uttam Kumaran: I’m doing well, thank you. How was the how was the weekend?
6 00:05:47.970 ⇒ 00:05:52.350 Danica Hamor: Oh, it was great. I was just a bit sick, but it was great.
7 00:05:52.590 ⇒ 00:06:00.429 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, nice looking. I’m sorry. Will hear that. Yeah, it’s it’s winter here. Everybody just got sick, like everybody knows
8 00:06:00.450 ⇒ 00:06:02.850 Uttam Kumaran: just getting through like cold season. So
9 00:06:02.970 ⇒ 00:06:07.060 Danica Hamor: yeah, same here, almost everyone in my family.
10 00:06:07.970 ⇒ 00:06:15.260 Danica Hamor: Oh, wow, yeah, that’s brutal. Everybody’s just coughing and like feels bad.
11 00:06:15.980 ⇒ 00:06:19.739 Great! Where are you? Where are you located?
12 00:06:20.230 ⇒ 00:06:23.240 Danica Hamor: I’m kated in Manila. Philippines currently
13 00:06:23.390 ⇒ 00:06:29.799 Uttam Kumaran: cool. II work with one person that works at the company is in Sebu.
14 00:06:30.140 ⇒ 00:06:33.230 Danica Hamor: Hmm! Alright! You have a lot of Philippine employees.
15 00:06:33.670 ⇒ 00:06:39.430 Uttam Kumaran: No, I just have one. Everybody else is located here in the Us.
16 00:06:39.520 ⇒ 00:06:41.590 Danica Hamor: but
17 00:06:41.720 ⇒ 00:07:00.130 Uttam Kumaran: I you know my, I don’t know. I’d love to tell you a little bit about the company, but you know, the company is really primarily focused on engineering. So I’m also an engineer. And everybody. I I’m pretty much only hiring like engineers wherever the talent is so don’t really
18 00:07:00.310 ⇒ 00:07:06.989 Uttam Kumaran: have too much of a concern over remote or not just looking for really great data people. So.
19 00:07:07.260 ⇒ 00:07:11.300 Danica Hamor: But we have a couple of people here in the Us in New York.
20 00:07:11.450 ⇒ 00:07:14.450 Uttam Kumaran: And then I’m here in Texas and then
21 00:07:14.740 ⇒ 00:07:18.009 Uttam Kumaran: yeah with one person who is in tibu
22 00:07:18.220 ⇒ 00:07:19.809 Danica Hamor: alright
23 00:07:20.760 ⇒ 00:07:36.030 Uttam Kumaran: great. Well, I appreciate it. And yeah, I’m happy. That you know, I’ve gotten contact with you and would love to tell you a little just a bit about the company. So I started brain forge last April.
24 00:07:36.330 ⇒ 00:07:38.680 Uttam Kumaran: my background is in
25 00:07:38.700 ⇒ 00:07:55.089 Uttam Kumaran: data, engineering and computer engineering. I previously worked as a data engineer at around 4 or 5 other companies, primarily focused on building analytics, pipelines, doing Etl
26 00:07:55.150 ⇒ 00:07:57.649 Uttam Kumaran: building data models as well as
27 00:07:58.440 ⇒ 00:08:06.690 Uttam Kumaran: building dashboards. And you know I did that at a few companies. I also led some data teams. And you know, I
28 00:08:07.090 ⇒ 00:08:13.939 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. II really was able to move quickly and work for a whole.
29 00:08:14.220 ⇒ 00:08:21.059 Uttam Kumaran: a variety of folks. And it did just additionally, I worked on a contract basis for a couple of different companies. And
30 00:08:21.080 ⇒ 00:08:30.340 Uttam Kumaran: after I left my last role, I decided I wanted to start a company working directly for clients doing data work and then building a small team
31 00:08:30.620 ⇒ 00:08:48.779 Uttam Kumaran: and really executing. So that that’s where we’re at. So we’ve been in business since last April. It’s been primarily me. And then in the last 4, 5 months I’ve been slowly bringing on people as we’ve been able to secure some really great work. So really for me. I’m always just meeting
32 00:08:48.850 ⇒ 00:08:53.319 Uttam Kumaran: great people and data who can do anything around the whole stack, whether it’s
33 00:08:53.380 ⇒ 00:09:02.359 Uttam Kumaran: dashboarding analysis all the way down to pipelines. And so just interested in hearing a bit about your background. And
34 00:09:02.610 ⇒ 00:09:14.019 Uttam Kumaran: would love to see if what your availability is like. And if there’s any match up with any work that we have. But of course, very interested to hear about your background and data and the projects that you’ve done.
35 00:09:14.350 ⇒ 00:09:19.610 Danica Hamor: Yeah. So I am. Currently
36 00:09:20.410 ⇒ 00:09:29.340 Danica Hamor: I’m a car shifter. Actually. So currently, I’m a data scientist for a global distributor of luxury cars.
37 00:09:29.380 ⇒ 00:09:40.739 Danica Hamor: And I have long experience more than 9 years in the in various industries. So I have a solid background in this.
38 00:09:40.820 ⇒ 00:09:51.360 Danica Hamor: And then I transferred to strategic marketing, where I mainly I did overviews for the same events and promotions. This is where
39 00:09:51.390 ⇒ 00:10:03.119 Danica Hamor: my interest in data started. And then I landed as a job as a data analyst for a software development company.
40 00:10:03.390 ⇒ 00:10:08.290 Danica Hamor: so there, I lead a team of registered additionists and
41 00:10:09.550 ⇒ 00:10:21.020 Danica Hamor: I started using power bi and improve my coding skills. In that in that in the company. And then.
42 00:10:21.760 ⇒ 00:10:28.130 Danica Hamor: mainly our our product back. Our main product back then was a
43 00:10:29.130 ⇒ 00:10:31.890 Danica Hamor: an application that
44 00:10:32.000 ⇒ 00:10:41.120 Danica Hamor: calculate nutrient information for merchandise, recipes, or menus, anything that related to quick to cooking.
45 00:10:41.160 ⇒ 00:10:50.250 Danica Hamor: And then after a few years. Here I am. Now at the data scientist under predictive analytics.
46 00:10:51.760 ⇒ 00:10:58.630 Danica Hamor: Okay, great. And so, yeah, you mentioned power bi. So what are the other like primary tools that you’re working on.
47 00:10:58.790 ⇒ 00:11:08.409 Uttam Kumaran: And then also II if you could just describe, you know, you know, we’ve we’re we primarily do a lot of projects that involve a ton of SQL data modeling
48 00:11:08.560 ⇒ 00:11:18.099 Uttam Kumaran: and then we also, of course, are are helping some customers doing dashboarding. So we’d love to hear about. You know any background there that you might have?
49 00:11:18.600 ⇒ 00:11:33.109 Danica Hamor: Yeah. So I was using power bi back in 2,018. So but right now, the main focus at work is to develop predictive models.
50 00:11:33.160 ⇒ 00:11:37.359 Danica Hamor: That the businesses can use. So our
51 00:11:38.220 ⇒ 00:11:49.279 Danica Hamor: so our products are or use cases are mostly lead scoring term prediction. Pricing optimizations
52 00:11:50.200 ⇒ 00:12:00.450 Danica Hamor: is that all running it just in python? Or where where do those workloads actually run
53 00:12:00.500 ⇒ 00:12:06.559 Danica Hamor: recording. And we, we write the codes and vice part.
54 00:12:08.040 ⇒ 00:12:10.170 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, great. So
55 00:12:10.310 ⇒ 00:12:13.329 Uttam Kumaran: okay, cool. So you’re doing a lot of
56 00:12:13.480 ⇒ 00:12:17.690 Uttam Kumaran: like data, science modeling. And then everything isn’t spark or
57 00:12:17.790 ⇒ 00:12:20.030 Uttam Kumaran: and it’s running in data breaks notebooks.
58 00:12:20.290 ⇒ 00:12:26.419 Danica Hamor: Yes, so we we use Park. But I am also
59 00:12:27.190 ⇒ 00:12:35.299 Danica Hamor: II also use Tcp, when I was for my first representative analyst. But I’m still using it currently. Now.
60 00:12:35.610 ⇒ 00:12:45.950 Uttam Kumaran: okay? And so what what is your current interest? Now that you’ve worked in like a kind of a bunch of different areas, like, what are you interested in in spending more time doing
61 00:12:46.550 ⇒ 00:12:52.769 Danica Hamor: when you sent me the email opportunity. I was
62 00:12:52.840 ⇒ 00:12:55.340 Danica Hamor: I was thinking of a
63 00:12:56.130 ⇒ 00:13:10.409 Danica Hamor: a, a, a bi developer work or a data analyst work instead of a data scientist work, because that’s I’m I’m looking for a a a part time work. So
64 00:13:13.000 ⇒ 00:13:22.179 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, yeah, I mean your your spot on. So I would say a lot of our work is on the Bi side. However, it’s really nice to know that you have like technical
65 00:13:22.310 ⇒ 00:13:32.249 Uttam Kumaran: data science work, because, you know, we also do a lot of things around data pipelines. And then a lot of automations. As well as you know, we
66 00:13:32.380 ⇒ 00:13:41.879 Uttam Kumaran: we’re we’re running a lot of github workflows like python scripts. And then again, it’s it’s really across the company. So to give you a couple of examples.
67 00:13:41.990 ⇒ 00:13:53.030 Uttam Kumaran: We have 2 clients right now, one is a really early startup here. And so we’re just not building their snowflake data warehouse using 5 train before
68 00:13:53.380 ⇒ 00:14:08.950 Uttam Kumaran: 5 trend is like a Etl, it’s just quickly put in your clients Api keys for whatever product. And you’re able to move data into your snowflake warehouse. So things like redshift
69 00:14:09.530 ⇒ 00:14:18.130 Uttam Kumaran: somewhere somewhere, red shift or somewhere to I don’t know what the what the Microsoft version is, but it’s just a data warehouse
70 00:14:19.040 ⇒ 00:14:29.600 Uttam Kumaran: and so the one thing that we’ve we do for a lot of people is one, we move data into data, or else we organize it. So we create schemas, databases create tables.
71 00:14:29.690 ⇒ 00:14:33.709 Uttam Kumaran: do a lot of SQL data modeling all that is version control and github
72 00:14:34.020 ⇒ 00:14:44.839 Uttam Kumaran: and we have a sequel executor that’s called Dbt, it’s just a really easy way to write sequel and have references between tables. And then
73 00:14:45.250 ⇒ 00:14:59.029 Uttam Kumaran: we use light dash, which is a lightweight bi tool similar to looker for power, bi or tableau, same concepts, metrics and dimensions. It’s just a little bit lighter weight. So for clients,
74 00:14:59.040 ⇒ 00:15:11.369 Uttam Kumaran: and then, additionally, we’re we actually have a couple of like internal projects we’re working on. So we’re we have a project we’re working on. That is writing python workflows for a data marketplace.
75 00:15:11.900 ⇒ 00:15:29.540 Uttam Kumaran: So give you context, snowflake has a data marketplace where you can publish data sets and those data sets can get used by other people. And and you can get paid for it. To use those. For example, government data set that instead of people writing their own data pipelines, we will just.
76 00:15:29.750 ⇒ 00:15:43.069 Uttam Kumaran: we will just allow access, and we will host the pipeline. We can actually. you know, get collect revenue on that pipeline. And so there’s another internal project we’re working on that. So that’s where you know, it’s it’s just nice to hear that you have background
77 00:15:43.090 ⇒ 00:15:54.640 Uttam Kumaran: building stuff on spark and and leveraging notebooks. And doing a lot of python, because, you know, we could definitely use some help there. But primarily the initial use case will be
78 00:15:54.970 ⇒ 00:15:59.589 Uttam Kumaran: heavy on heavy on the dashboarding side and then on the SQL data modeling side.
79 00:15:59.920 ⇒ 00:16:02.510 Danica Hamor: Yes, okay. Understood.
80 00:16:03.210 ⇒ 00:16:09.069 Uttam Kumaran: And then tell me a little bit about like your availability moving forward.
81 00:16:09.670 ⇒ 00:16:15.580 Hmm, so my availability. Do you mean work? Hours per week?
82 00:16:15.790 ⇒ 00:16:24.269 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, II don’t mind. You know, we we have people working everywhere, and we pretty much are doing mostly Async.
83 00:16:24.430 ⇒ 00:16:46.980 Uttam Kumaran: We have github projects for tracking. We do everything on slack. So yeah, more more talking about. Yeah. What is your like hourly availability? Per week. So so my daily routine and work I work till 5 and the
84 00:16:47.410 ⇒ 00:17:05.209 Danica Hamor: 5 in the sorry I’m talking about Philippine times 5 in the afternoon, and then I’m mainly free till the evening, because I sleep late. So Mondays to Fridays that’s man. I have the same routine with those days.
85 00:17:05.490 ⇒ 00:17:10.539 Uttam Kumaran: Okay? And then maybe it’d be maybe one thing that we can try to do
86 00:17:10.690 ⇒ 00:17:20.160 Uttam Kumaran: is. And the one thing that, especially with engineers, I just love to like, even. Just try working on one project or take on one task and see
87 00:17:20.250 ⇒ 00:17:38.239 Uttam Kumaran: how you’re able to work from how we’re able to work with each other. But that’s just really helpful to know that you have time during the week. And again, as we work together, we can see whether there’s opportunities to ramp up or you know anything else. So maybe if I’m
88 00:17:38.660 ⇒ 00:17:46.719 Uttam Kumaran: if I’m able to get back to you this week with some more information about what an initial project to get and I’m ha! I’d be happy to pay for that.
89 00:17:46.730 ⇒ 00:17:50.110 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe we could work for a week or 2 and
90 00:17:50.150 ⇒ 00:17:53.730 Uttam Kumaran: kind of just see how things go.
91 00:17:53.920 ⇒ 00:17:56.889 Danica Hamor: Okay, okay, that would be great.
92 00:17:57.020 ⇒ 00:18:12.080 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Then again I’ll I’ll just scope out maybe. Some work that will take, you know, couple of hours a day, and we can work for 2 weeks, and then kind of give each other some feedback, and then we can understand if we want to continue.
93 00:18:12.080 ⇒ 00:18:37.950 Uttam Kumaran: If if you’re okay with that, that’d be perfect. II do a lot of hiring here in the Us. And I love I it’s always better if you’re able to just work with people. I’m not that good at interviewing. So I love to just work with people. And again, we’re doing engineering work. So it’s it. It’d be awesome to kind of see stuff in action. And then also, it’s gonna it’ll take a little bit of time to to just get a hand of
94 00:18:37.960 ⇒ 00:18:43.610 Danica Hamor: our stack and everything. So I appreciate that
95 00:18:43.720 ⇒ 00:18:45.440 Danica Hamor: and and pay for it.
96 00:18:46.170 ⇒ 00:18:52.070 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool. So let me get back to you as soon as I can with some more information about that
97 00:18:52.280 ⇒ 00:19:07.249 Uttam Kumaran: but otherwise it was really nice to meet you and thank you again for taking the time. Yeah. Any other questions you have for me.
98 00:19:07.630 ⇒ 00:19:11.180 Danica Hamor: Right now?
99 00:19:11.240 ⇒ 00:19:18.879 Danica Hamor: just just one interesting thought. Is that? How is the
100 00:19:20.590 ⇒ 00:19:24.539 Danica Hamor: how do I phrase this? How is the
101 00:19:25.640 ⇒ 00:19:27.230 Danica Hamor: like
102 00:19:28.110 ⇒ 00:19:35.799 Danica Hamor: of personal development of of your employees, the strategy for personal development of your employees being
103 00:19:35.990 ⇒ 00:19:37.580 Danica Hamor: implemented
104 00:19:37.610 ⇒ 00:19:39.620 Danica Hamor: like.
105 00:19:39.920 ⇒ 00:19:40.610 Danica Hamor: Yep.
106 00:19:41.290 ⇒ 00:19:42.470 Uttam Kumaran: So
107 00:19:43.010 ⇒ 00:19:55.669 Uttam Kumaran: I would say at the moment, it’s it’s really just been me, and what other person? That’s full time we’ve had. Some people come in and out as the team grows. I’m planning on implementing more meetings where we can all collaborate.
108 00:19:55.830 ⇒ 00:20:01.099 Uttam Kumaran: So per project. We have weekly meetings where we meet and discuss the project.
109 00:20:01.120 ⇒ 00:20:07.020 Uttam Kumaran: We also have a slack channel where we we all share updates.
110 00:20:07.360 ⇒ 00:20:26.149 Uttam Kumaran: since we’re working on the engineering side and opportunities to learn, I think it’s a great question. I would love to kind of even talk to you about like, what are some cool opportunities to help people improve? I mean again, the thing I love is like, I’m I’m an engineer, and I still do spend most of my day doing engineering work. So I’m always
111 00:20:26.240 ⇒ 00:20:32.079 Uttam Kumaran: learning more and sharing with everybody, and I think it would be great to formalize that a bit more.
112 00:20:32.160 ⇒ 00:20:49.200 Uttam Kumaran: But certainly, you know, we’re a pretty lean team, so we meet. We meet at least twice a week. And I’ll kind of discuss but I think you know, I would love to think about more opportunities to kind of improve that. That’s a really great question.
113 00:20:49.660 ⇒ 00:20:53.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think the one thing that you can guarantee working with me and the team is that
114 00:20:53.970 ⇒ 00:21:00.320 Uttam Kumaran: we work on the best technology. We’re we work really, really fast? And
115 00:21:00.340 ⇒ 00:21:02.719 Uttam Kumaran: where it’s a it’s like a no.
116 00:21:02.810 ⇒ 00:21:07.239 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like a blameless culture, meaning things break. That’s okay.
117 00:21:07.470 ⇒ 00:21:15.559 Danica Hamor: But the thing II want people to do is to learn and to to be able to upgrade their skill set. And so we work on the most modern tools.
118 00:21:15.790 ⇒ 00:21:18.780 Uttam Kumaran: We work with some really really great clients.
119 00:21:18.880 ⇒ 00:21:24.730 Uttam Kumaran: And the business is expanding. So you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity moving forward, and
120 00:21:24.820 ⇒ 00:21:41.070 Uttam Kumaran: at least on the technical side. There’s a ton of things that we’re doing that are really, really cutting edge and then I rely on everybody else to kind of help push it forward, find things that I don’t really see, or ways for us to improve the results that our clients get
121 00:21:41.220 ⇒ 00:21:45.180 Uttam Kumaran: and so my business again is. I would say.
122 00:21:45.190 ⇒ 00:21:53.569 Uttam Kumaran: the product isn’t data. The product is the team right? So it’s folks like you, the other folks on my team. It’s me that’s the product.
123 00:21:53.750 ⇒ 00:21:57.810 Danica Hamor: And so for me, the number one thing that I focus on is hiring the
124 00:21:57.870 ⇒ 00:22:01.280 Uttam Kumaran: the nicest, coolest, smartest people that’s that’s
125 00:22:01.440 ⇒ 00:22:05.580 Uttam Kumaran: That makes everything very easy. I think a lot of places
126 00:22:06.000 ⇒ 00:22:10.020 Uttam Kumaran: make the mistake of trying to optimize for price or
127 00:22:10.190 ⇒ 00:22:36.560 Uttam Kumaran: take shortcuts, and for me, II don’t mind having a small team if we can all deliver a ton of work, and everybody, you know, gets paid and we all learn in the process is what I’m focused on. And I wanted to. I wanna over exceed expectations for my clients. And then, of course, like, I want us to grow as a business, and so a lot of it is also allow bringing on. People allows me to take some time and help us go get more projects, and.
128 00:22:36.670 ⇒ 00:22:38.810 Uttam Kumaran: you know, grow the scope of the business. So
129 00:22:39.110 ⇒ 00:22:45.799 Danica Hamor: yeah, so III really like, but I really like when you said,
130 00:22:45.950 ⇒ 00:22:57.319 Danica Hamor: you know. When things break, it’s it’s if we don’t put blame on one another, it’s I think, that we have a really cool culture within the company.
131 00:22:57.700 ⇒ 00:22:59.050 Danica Hamor: And like that.
132 00:22:59.940 ⇒ 00:23:09.640 Uttam Kumaran: yeah. And I appreciate, I’ve I’ve just worked at a lot of places where it’s really intense. And I didn’t like it. And I realized that that’s not how engineering should be done.
133 00:23:09.890 ⇒ 00:23:24.130 Uttam Kumaran: Mistakes are gonna happen. It’s I want us to be able to identify and then improve. You know, there’s a process by which we all talk about what happened. And then we say, Okay, what process can we put in place? What automations, alerts testing.
134 00:23:24.210 ⇒ 00:23:38.339 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and we get better. And so a lot of this is like information that compounds. And as we do once, we do twice. And yeah, I think we have a lot of really interesting problems to work on. So yeah, I’m just excited for the future and for the year. So.
135 00:23:40.250 ⇒ 00:23:57.719 Uttam Kumaran: okay, well, I appreciate it, Danica, I will send you an email with some more information, either today or early tomorrow. So tomorrow your time and I will hopefully get everything set up and get you access to some stuff, and then
136 00:23:57.730 ⇒ 00:24:02.179 Uttam Kumaran: we can hopefully take on something for just a few weeks and see how it goes.
137 00:24:02.460 ⇒ 00:24:04.929 Danica Hamor: Okay, I look forward to that.
138 00:24:04.980 ⇒ 00:24:06.089 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
139 00:24:06.180 ⇒ 00:24:11.630 Danica Hamor: thank you. Have a good day. Thank you so much. Have a good one bye.