Meeting Title: Uttam_Ryan Date: 2025-02-07 Meeting participants: Luke Daque, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:29.700 ⇒ 00:00:30.510 Luke Daque: Hello!
2 00:00:41.980 ⇒ 00:00:43.090 Uttam Kumaran: Hey? Can you hear me?
3 00:00:43.330 ⇒ 00:00:44.560 Luke Daque: Yep, I can hear you.
4 00:00:44.900 ⇒ 00:00:45.600 Uttam Kumaran: Hey?
5 00:00:47.990 ⇒ 00:00:49.099 Uttam Kumaran: How’s it going.
6 00:00:50.250 ⇒ 00:00:56.289 Luke Daque: Yeah, everything’s well so far. How about you? It’s like it’s been getting pretty busy lately.
7 00:00:56.290 ⇒ 00:01:00.520 Uttam Kumaran: It’s been getting busy. Yeah, that’s kind of what I want to talk to you about. Like, how do you feel?
8 00:01:00.914 ⇒ 00:01:07.879 Uttam Kumaran: How do you feel the week went. I mean, I hopefully, we I know I tried to. We’re bringing some more people on, so we’ll be trying to get some stuff off your plate.
9 00:01:08.930 ⇒ 00:01:11.490 Uttam Kumaran: I think, yeah, I think more sustainable.
10 00:01:12.350 ⇒ 00:01:18.279 Luke Daque: I think this week is pretty. It’s it’s much better than like the previous weeks where we have like.
11 00:01:18.450 ⇒ 00:01:22.649 Luke Daque: we were like doing 4 to 5 like 4 clients, I guess, I guess.
12 00:01:23.300 ⇒ 00:01:30.620 Luke Daque: But yeah, it’s pretty cool, especially with like, a wish being like, pretty fast and like
13 00:01:31.150 ⇒ 00:01:34.060 Luke Daque: learning this stuff. So yeah, cool.
14 00:01:35.450 ⇒ 00:01:36.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree, I.
15 00:01:41.260 ⇒ 00:01:41.870 Luke Daque: Hello!
16 00:01:47.790 ⇒ 00:01:48.783 Luke Daque: Looks like
17 00:01:49.890 ⇒ 00:01:50.329 Uttam Kumaran: Have a nap.
18 00:01:50.330 ⇒ 00:01:52.010 Luke Daque: I’ve got muted. Yep.
19 00:01:52.010 ⇒ 00:02:00.320 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Sorry. I just transferred to my phone. I’m just packing. But I’m here. Yeah, I guess I was. Gonna so one, yes, we made some like
20 00:02:00.620 ⇒ 00:02:15.670 Uttam Kumaran: pretty urgent hires. I think Awaii is doing really well. And also now it’s nice because we’re back to 2 Dbt developers, and a wish is going to be full time as well. So it’s not like, you know, when we had Brian, and it was sort of like in and out. I think it’ll actually be
21 00:02:15.820 ⇒ 00:02:27.040 Uttam Kumaran: a little bit more consistent. I’m actually planning on bringing one more person also. So ideally it’ll be between cause I do think Stack Blitz can end up being almost like
22 00:02:27.190 ⇒ 00:02:44.780 Uttam Kumaran: someone can work a fair bit of time just on stacklets. You know. So one thing I’m gonna do today is sort of talk about. I guess. I guess before I go into that, yeah. So ideally, I want to have 3 people that are sort of on all Dbt related work. We are doing dbt, work for most of our clients.
23 00:02:45.150 ⇒ 00:02:58.069 Uttam Kumaran: And so ideally that’s taken care of, and then I can be more on, like the infra managing side instead of sort of like poking and and then the second thing, we’re gonna we’re gonna basically plan on, how do we get
24 00:02:58.710 ⇒ 00:03:05.369 Uttam Kumaran: How do we get help on the project? On the like sort of project management side, the engagement lead side.
25 00:03:05.530 ⇒ 00:03:12.289 Uttam Kumaran: So we’re hiring for that. But you know. Honestly, I think some of these clients it’s pretty self explanatory what they need.
26 00:03:12.400 ⇒ 00:03:20.430 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s what always was. The dream is like, you know, the engineers can sort of work directly with client on stuff. We’ll see how, how, how far we can get on that. But.
27 00:03:21.530 ⇒ 00:03:25.789 Luke Daque: Yeah, we could have, like, maybe stack bits as the experiment.
28 00:03:25.790 ⇒ 00:03:27.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I agree, too.
29 00:03:27.580 ⇒ 00:03:29.070 Luke Daque: Yeah, yeah.
30 00:03:31.145 ⇒ 00:03:35.874 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I mean, I think things are getting a little bit better, I think.
31 00:03:36.460 ⇒ 00:03:37.907 Uttam Kumaran: one thing that
32 00:03:38.600 ⇒ 00:03:47.890 Uttam Kumaran: I think we want to do some more consistent things on like we just need to get our tickets and stuff better. I mean, I can go work on that if if like, we’re getting work out reliably.
33 00:03:48.090 ⇒ 00:03:53.470 Uttam Kumaran: But of course, like it sort of builds on itself there. So that’s what I’m really like
34 00:03:54.080 ⇒ 00:03:59.559 Uttam Kumaran: trying to work on more, and then I guess my question for you is like, how much time are you spending on Stack Blitz
35 00:04:00.180 ⇒ 00:04:08.720 Uttam Kumaran: these days, and like how how much work do you think it is? Because right now we’re quoted to just do like 10 to 20 h of stuff for them? Of course there’s there’s more.
36 00:04:09.100 ⇒ 00:04:13.950 Uttam Kumaran: There’s more work than that. So I’m trying to get a gate like where we are.
37 00:04:13.950 ⇒ 00:04:18.330 Luke Daque: Currently, currently, I think we’re yeah. We’re just within that 10 h.
38 00:04:19.089 ⇒ 00:04:30.959 Luke Daque: yeah, 10 h per week for stack. But at least for the analytics engineering side like, especially since, like, we’re not getting any response from Mitch at the moment. So like, there’s nothing really much we can.
39 00:04:31.100 ⇒ 00:04:32.890 Luke Daque: It will basically like block.
40 00:04:35.460 ⇒ 00:04:36.899 Luke Daque: Yes, right? So, yeah.
41 00:04:37.090 ⇒ 00:04:52.600 Luke Daque: But I guess once, like Mitch has all the requirements and and stuff. Then I guess then we can like ramp up the the hours that we’re working on, because there’s still a lot like even just looking at the both metrics school sheet. There’s there’s a lot here to
42 00:04:53.240 ⇒ 00:04:54.530 Luke Daque: to like work on.
43 00:04:56.180 ⇒ 00:04:56.950 Luke Daque: Yeah.
44 00:04:58.070 ⇒ 00:05:06.779 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m sort of. I sort of want to see whether they can give us more time, because ideally, I would like you to be spending a lot of your time just on
45 00:05:07.510 ⇒ 00:05:10.069 Uttam Kumaran: like Bolt related stuff.
46 00:05:10.806 ⇒ 00:05:26.199 Uttam Kumaran: And sort of not have you so handicap there, I mean, do you think it’s worth me trying to ask him about that today, or like. Do you think we should try to do a bit more? I don’t know.
47 00:05:28.940 ⇒ 00:05:35.900 Luke Daque: Yeah, let’s let’s see what we get from the meeting or later. This, like, yeah, like, if.
48 00:05:36.250 ⇒ 00:05:42.740 Luke Daque: like, Mitch can provide us with more details on like what he really needs, like the requirements, like, what data models
49 00:05:43.214 ⇒ 00:05:50.569 Luke Daque: we need to do. And then we can go from there. Because, yeah, I don’t think we can just ask for more hours and then
50 00:05:50.740 ⇒ 00:05:53.140 Luke Daque: not have any work to do. So yeah.
51 00:05:53.140 ⇒ 00:05:54.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.
52 00:05:54.860 ⇒ 00:06:05.561 Uttam Kumaran: okay, cool. So today, I think we’ll just share what we’ve done. So far, I’ll kind of give an update on like, hey, we’re. We’re basically staying within range of of 10 to 20 HA week. And you know, it’s
53 00:06:05.950 ⇒ 00:06:12.003 Uttam Kumaran: I think I’m I’m helping like occasionally. But it’s it’s mostly you. I think the other thing is.
54 00:06:12.550 ⇒ 00:06:38.090 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I know I wanna make I wanna really this, I wanna make sure that a lot of the work that you’re doing is for Stack Blitz, and then for pool parts. But I know pool parts is a lot less. However, I’m sort of deciding like what to do with that client, because they still have some work on the skews and stuff. But it’s sort of more analyst work. Right? So trying to figure out like what the best move is. There.
55 00:06:39.050 ⇒ 00:06:39.870 Luke Daque: Right?
56 00:06:40.540 ⇒ 00:06:49.400 Luke Daque: Okay, yeah, there’s not much like analytics engineering going on for parts like, not even like real dashboards and stuff like that. So
57 00:06:50.590 ⇒ 00:06:51.300 Luke Daque: yeah.
58 00:06:52.210 ⇒ 00:06:53.290 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
59 00:06:53.650 ⇒ 00:07:02.660 Uttam Kumaran: So then, yeah, I think I think what one I would like if you can just continue to focus as much as you can on, on stack Blitz and getting things out to them every day.
60 00:07:03.223 ⇒ 00:07:06.769 Uttam Kumaran: I think ideally the next thing that will.
61 00:07:06.980 ⇒ 00:07:16.839 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll we’ll try to get some feedback today and hopefully can keep moving that along. And then, yeah, basically a way, she’s gonna support Eden as much as possible.
62 00:07:17.050 ⇒ 00:07:20.570 Uttam Kumaran: And then also, Javi.
63 00:07:21.260 ⇒ 00:07:21.799 Uttam Kumaran: Right?
64 00:07:22.080 ⇒ 00:07:31.870 Uttam Kumaran: So ideally like. That’s sort of how it works out. And you can spend a lot of your time on one client. I do think that more than 2 clients is tough, and both of those clients are like very, very active.
65 00:07:32.110 ⇒ 00:07:37.380 Uttam Kumaran: So I sort of want to give that to Aish and sort of have him have him handle
66 00:07:37.789 ⇒ 00:07:40.299 Uttam Kumaran: like. I’m pretty comfortable if if that works out.
67 00:07:40.900 ⇒ 00:07:42.720 Luke Daque: Yeah, sounds good.
68 00:07:43.130 ⇒ 00:07:44.060 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, cool.
69 00:07:44.300 ⇒ 00:07:48.140 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, I think I may be bringing on one more dbt, person.
70 00:07:48.948 ⇒ 00:07:56.770 Uttam Kumaran: That way, we have urban stem starting, and it also helps us build some redundancy everywhere.
71 00:07:56.850 ⇒ 00:07:57.360 Luke Daque: Yeah.
72 00:07:59.750 ⇒ 00:08:02.780 Uttam Kumaran: So I’m gonna see sort of how I can get that done.
73 00:08:03.820 ⇒ 00:08:05.780 Luke Daque: Cool sounds, good.
74 00:08:06.730 ⇒ 00:08:11.949 Uttam Kumaran: Any other questions, or anything that I can answer.
75 00:08:14.401 ⇒ 00:08:18.840 Luke Daque: Yeah, I think I’m good so far, like, everything’s going well, so far.
76 00:08:20.500 ⇒ 00:08:22.439 Luke Daque: Okay, yeah. I like, I like, like.
77 00:08:23.190 ⇒ 00:08:26.880 Luke Daque: like, I, I like how our company is like growing
78 00:08:27.060 ⇒ 00:08:30.089 Luke Daque: like we already have, like the Okrs, and like, it’s becoming.
79 00:08:30.090 ⇒ 00:08:30.780 Uttam Kumaran: I know it is.
80 00:08:30.780 ⇒ 00:08:32.240 Luke Daque: Good real company.
81 00:08:32.240 ⇒ 00:08:32.919 Uttam Kumaran: Real deal.
82 00:08:32.929 ⇒ 00:08:34.679 Luke Daque: Start. Yeah, the real deal.
83 00:08:34.879 ⇒ 00:08:43.469 Luke Daque: And like as a team, yeah, there’s a lot of departments already. And yeah, it’s pretty awesome, like, like I mentioned like.
84 00:08:44.779 ⇒ 00:08:55.049 Luke Daque: it’s very nostalgic when looking at the zoom and then the the the videos, the cameras of the people are getting smaller and smaller.
85 00:08:55.250 ⇒ 00:08:58.639 Uttam Kumaran: No 100%. Yeah. And the other thing is, look, I think,
86 00:08:59.070 ⇒ 00:09:02.799 Uttam Kumaran: you know, I think even as we grow with people, we haven’t really hit like
87 00:09:02.910 ⇒ 00:09:28.220 Uttam Kumaran: a huge success yet in terms of like money or anything like all the money we’ve made, we’re basically committed to. And I haven’t been taking any money off for a while, so a lot of it has gone right back into the company. And so I’m really proud of that. But also I want to make it so that you know, folks can make more money here. So that’s gonna be something I’m I’m gonna as we stabilize, and we get better at being like new client gets executed. We’re not having like fire drills
88 00:09:28.730 ⇒ 00:09:54.910 Uttam Kumaran: and as long as my time gets less focused on client work and more on like the team. I’m really, really excited to see how we can get people more money and based on, like us, hitting client success and okrs, right? Like, if a team hits say, Okay, I shouldn’t just be like a pat on the back like there should be something positive. And also I also want the engineers to benefit from success. And so I’m gonna all sort of figure out some way we can.
89 00:09:55.120 ⇒ 00:09:56.820 Uttam Kumaran: We can make that possible.
90 00:09:58.180 ⇒ 00:10:01.050 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll try. We’ll experiment and see. You know what works.
91 00:10:01.380 ⇒ 00:10:02.840 Luke Daque: Yeah, cool.
92 00:10:04.980 ⇒ 00:10:05.600 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
93 00:10:05.820 ⇒ 00:10:11.900 Luke Daque: Cool. Well, yeah, I’ll be calling in next week. I’ll be in Argentina hopefully when you go call in. So that’ll be really fun. Yeah.
94 00:10:11.900 ⇒ 00:10:13.300 Luke Daque: that’s great. That’s great.
95 00:10:13.670 ⇒ 00:10:18.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I think that’ll be really nice. And then, yeah, I think today for the
96 00:10:19.000 ⇒ 00:10:22.895 Uttam Kumaran: that’s it for the meeting. If there’s anything else I can
97 00:10:23.580 ⇒ 00:10:34.630 Uttam Kumaran: help with. Let me know. Maybe if you want to send some notes in the client channel about like what we’re gonna go through. I can just poke around and and sort of be aware of like what we’re gonna present. And then.
98 00:10:34.980 ⇒ 00:10:37.520 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I think I think we’re ready to go.
99 00:10:38.390 ⇒ 00:10:39.330 Luke Daque: Sounds good to me.
100 00:10:39.950 ⇒ 00:10:40.460 Uttam Kumaran: Okay?
101 00:10:40.460 ⇒ 00:10:45.629 Uttam Kumaran: And then what happened with the did you take a look at those 2 rows? By the way, in messages.
102 00:10:46.380 ⇒ 00:10:52.150 Luke Daque: Yeah, they’re just so huge. I mean, there’s there’s a lot of nuances in the messages like.
103 00:10:52.150 ⇒ 00:10:56.719 Uttam Kumaran: Messages are literally like the messages to the to the bolt. Chatbot, right.
104 00:10:57.540 ⇒ 00:11:04.360 Luke Daque: Yeah, it’s something like that. And then there’s like, page breaks and stuff. And it’s like Snowflake can’t even
105 00:11:04.660 ⇒ 00:11:10.840 Luke Daque: like I’m trying to parse the Json, and I can’t even parse it because of the the page breaks and stuff like that like
106 00:11:11.220 ⇒ 00:11:15.849 Luke Daque: weird stuff going on. So it’s pretty annoying, actually.
107 00:11:15.850 ⇒ 00:11:16.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
108 00:11:16.360 ⇒ 00:11:18.919 Luke Daque: Idea. I can show you real quick.
109 00:11:20.310 ⇒ 00:11:21.110 Luke Daque: Oh.
110 00:11:24.270 ⇒ 00:11:25.800 Luke Daque: yeah. Can you see my screen.
111 00:11:26.510 ⇒ 00:11:27.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
112 00:11:27.860 ⇒ 00:11:28.992 Luke Daque: So yeah, like,
113 00:11:29.680 ⇒ 00:11:35.319 Luke Daque: I’m I’m opening it in. Excel, for example, like this one, like, has all of these.
114 00:11:39.160 ⇒ 00:11:43.750 Luke Daque: Yeah, like, we, we can’t parse this in Json. Json with page breaks and stuff.
115 00:11:44.260 ⇒ 00:11:54.680 Luke Daque: And there’s like, yeah, this one has like so much data in it that
116 00:11:55.410 ⇒ 00:11:58.600 Luke Daque: yeah, it’s exceeding the limit basically to
117 00:12:01.350 ⇒ 00:12:04.280 Luke Daque: do like loading it in snowflake and stuff.
118 00:12:05.823 ⇒ 00:12:08.530 Uttam Kumaran: Damn okay, cool. Let’s just
119 00:12:08.920 ⇒ 00:12:19.520 Uttam Kumaran: let’s just keep. Let’s just keep this for the meeting, and and or you can send a question being like cause. I, the only thing I want to know is like, does he want? Is anything there valuable like, for example, they want metrics on like?
120 00:12:20.234 ⇒ 00:12:22.600 Uttam Kumaran: If they want metrics on like.
121 00:12:22.770 ⇒ 00:12:25.869 Uttam Kumaran: what the mess? What was in the message, or the amount of messages like?
122 00:12:26.180 ⇒ 00:12:28.240 Uttam Kumaran: That’s the that’s a big thing like, I’m like.
123 00:12:28.470 ⇒ 00:12:30.320 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, I don’t know exactly what they need.
124 00:12:30.600 ⇒ 00:12:40.169 Luke Daque: Like, maybe if we don’t really need the content of the message, then we can be. It would be fine. We’ll be just be able to count the number of messages based on the Id right and the.
125 00:12:40.170 ⇒ 00:12:47.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly. Oh, okay, yeah. I guess. Like in in the message itself, are there any metrics is kinda like, what.
126 00:12:47.300 ⇒ 00:12:55.959 Luke Daque: Yeah, basically, yeah, like the content, actually, the content of the message. If we don’t, there’s no metrics for that, then we don’t need to load this.
127 00:12:56.300 ⇒ 00:12:58.410 Luke Daque: But this specific field. Yeah.
128 00:12:59.220 ⇒ 00:13:04.420 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, okay, awesome.
129 00:13:05.270 ⇒ 00:13:32.579 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So I feel pretty good. I mean, I want to cruise on stack Blitz. I think we’ll I have a couple more interviews today for some more dbt people, you know, I wanted to bring on I was thinking about bringing on Raymond, but he’s he’s currently like on visa for his other gig. So I was like, Okay, maybe down the line. If we need part time work, I’ll call him back. But yeah, I have a couple more people. I reached out to a few more people out of Bt slack, which I feel like is the best place to find like actual dbt, people, you know.
130 00:13:32.580 ⇒ 00:13:33.000 Luke Daque: Hmm.
131 00:13:33.000 ⇒ 00:13:33.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so.
132 00:13:33.670 ⇒ 00:13:36.040 Luke Daque: Have experience already with Dbt.
133 00:13:36.040 ⇒ 00:13:36.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so.
134 00:13:36.940 ⇒ 00:13:37.820 Luke Daque: Like that.
135 00:13:37.820 ⇒ 00:13:40.520 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, we’re gonna see how some of those people end up.
136 00:13:41.450 ⇒ 00:13:45.859 Luke Daque: Cool, sure sounds good. I can definitely help with
137 00:13:46.080 ⇒ 00:13:47.540 Luke Daque: the interviews. If you want me.
138 00:13:47.540 ⇒ 00:13:57.769 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna everybody like, I wish we just needed someone super quick. But this, the next people I’m gonna have I’m gonna have talk to you.
139 00:13:58.750 ⇒ 00:14:18.602 Uttam Kumaran: because and then because every and everyone, also, we start small like that way, we don’t need to really do technical interviews and all the Dbt people dude. I basically just like, I’m like, okay, what sort of setup have you worked on? What’s your opinion on like naming conventions like what environments? Basically you, you quickly find out like, do people actually like know what they’re talking about?
140 00:14:18.890 ⇒ 00:14:19.550 Luke Daque: That’s cool.
141 00:14:19.550 ⇒ 00:14:29.360 Uttam Kumaran: So, and we’ll we can do a little bit better on creating some like standard questions we ask, but I try to keep it really casual, you know, and just sort of like, figure out. People know what they’re doing.
142 00:14:30.250 ⇒ 00:14:30.850 Luke Daque: Right.
143 00:14:31.090 ⇒ 00:14:31.635 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
144 00:14:34.130 ⇒ 00:14:35.550 Luke Daque: Okay. Awesome.
145 00:14:35.760 ⇒ 00:14:38.649 Uttam Kumaran: Alright. Well, let’s chat on slack, and I’ll talk to you on the stack. Let’s meeting.
146 00:14:38.770 ⇒ 00:14:39.950 Luke Daque: Sounds good to you.
147 00:14:39.950 ⇒ 00:14:41.609 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, thanks, sir. Bye.
148 00:14:41.610 ⇒ 00:14:42.200 Luke Daque: Bye-bye.