Meeting Title: Zoom Meeting Date: 2025-04-12 Meeting participants: Annie Yu, Aakash Tandel, Hannah Wang
WEBVTT
1 00:00:28.740 ⇒ 00:00:31.220 Hannah Wang: Okay, so we’ll do the breakout.
2 00:00:33.330 ⇒ 00:00:34.120 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
3 00:00:39.100 ⇒ 00:00:39.840 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
4 00:00:40.670 ⇒ 00:00:47.100 Hannah Wang: Okay, we don’t have to. We could just take. We could just go through each one. We’ll just time box each one. Okay, yeah, let’s just we don’t need breakout. It’s fine.
5 00:00:56.510 ⇒ 00:00:57.880 Hannah Wang: We should do like that.
6 00:00:58.510 ⇒ 00:01:00.355 Hannah Wang: That’s why. Oh.
7 00:01:01.100 ⇒ 00:01:09.350 Hannah Wang: cause I feel like they cop on, and they all they talk is it’s all business for them, and I want to do more fun stuff, cause we get all this water cooler stuff.
8 00:01:09.450 ⇒ 00:01:14.769 Hannah Wang: Go ahead. Yeah, I’m down. I’m let’s do something fun. Yeah.
9 00:01:15.010 ⇒ 00:01:29.239 Hannah Wang: all right. All right. Sure, I’ve never seen so excited. All right, I forgot how to play this? Oh, no, no, yeah.
10 00:01:30.870 ⇒ 00:01:48.570 Hannah Wang: Do you know, have you played it so? It’s a game where one person draws, and then the other people have to guess what it is, and the person who guesses it the fastest like gets the highest amount of points so hard the trackpad? Yeah, that’s what makes it fun. It’s always trackpad.
11 00:01:48.860 ⇒ 00:01:52.910 Hannah Wang: That’s the fun of it that it’s so horrible that it
12 00:01:53.330 ⇒ 00:01:58.989 Hannah Wang: yeah, I do always win. Actually. So
13 00:01:59.140 ⇒ 00:02:06.140 Hannah Wang: you like it so much. I haven’t played in years, though. So all right, scribble I/O.
14 00:02:07.040 ⇒ 00:02:11.489 Hannah Wang: I created a room. You just click a button.
15 00:02:12.360 ⇒ 00:02:18.450 Hannah Wang: There needs to be a slack integration forward slash.
16 00:02:18.900 ⇒ 00:02:20.180 Hannah Wang: Hello!
17 00:02:21.690 ⇒ 00:02:30.800 Hannah Wang: Did you create a private room? I did. You just joined that link right? Were you able to join this? Oh, yeah. So you press play.
18 00:02:37.430 ⇒ 00:02:38.440 Hannah Wang: Oh.
19 00:02:49.110 ⇒ 00:02:50.310 Hannah Wang: don’t think of it.
20 00:02:50.980 ⇒ 00:02:54.509 Hannah Wang: Oh, okay, we’re yeah. You’re there. Yeah.
21 00:02:55.140 ⇒ 00:02:58.870 Hannah Wang: So once everyone joins, I’ll press start.
22 00:02:59.530 ⇒ 00:03:00.530 Hannah Wang: They’re going back
23 00:03:01.940 ⇒ 00:03:08.040 Hannah Wang: all right. Akash and Annie, if you join the Scriblio link, we’re gonna play a little game for fun.
24 00:03:10.370 ⇒ 00:03:16.199 Hannah Wang: So click, join, and then create your own avatar and name yourself and then press play.
25 00:03:16.460 ⇒ 00:03:22.890 Hannah Wang: and then you’ll be taken to the room. Gardener. Oh, okay, be honest with my name.
26 00:03:23.580 ⇒ 00:03:25.280 Hannah Wang: It’s okay. Uta is, too.
27 00:03:32.210 ⇒ 00:03:53.649 Hannah Wang: So for those of you who’ve never played this. Basically, each round, like one person is a person who draws something, and then everyone else has to guess what it is, and the person who guesses it the fastest has like gets the highest amount of points, and then so on, and so forth, and each round is time box. So if you don’t guess it within a certain number of seconds, then you get no points.
28 00:03:53.980 ⇒ 00:04:00.669 Hannah Wang: So the challenge is drawing nicely with a trackpad. Since you’re on your laptop or using a mouse. So
29 00:04:01.380 ⇒ 00:04:04.179 Hannah Wang: I think everyone’s on right 2, 4, 6.
30 00:04:04.786 ⇒ 00:04:09.033 Hannah Wang: Okay, so we can start. You’ll get the hang of it.
31 00:04:09.600 ⇒ 00:04:11.940 Annie Yu: I’m actually using my phone for this.
32 00:04:12.200 ⇒ 00:04:16.500 Hannah Wang: Yeah, you have a major advantage.
33 00:04:17.459 ⇒ 00:04:21.880 Hannah Wang: So right now, unibrain is choosing their word indicated.
34 00:04:22.560 ⇒ 00:04:24.559 Hannah Wang: I didn’t see it. Oh, okay, yeah.
35 00:04:25.220 ⇒ 00:04:27.809 Hannah Wang: Why do I think this one’s pretty hard? Okay.
36 00:04:28.790 ⇒ 00:04:33.260 Hannah Wang: does it take similar words? Or just yeah, you can guess as it’s just spam
37 00:04:38.020 ⇒ 00:04:41.720 Hannah Wang: and type. Your guess here. Oh.
38 00:04:46.300 ⇒ 00:04:47.090 Hannah Wang: sick!
39 00:04:52.170 ⇒ 00:04:54.479 Hannah Wang: What is this?
40 00:04:58.390 ⇒ 00:04:59.800 Hannah Wang: Someone got us?
41 00:05:07.413 ⇒ 00:05:09.920 Hannah Wang: I don’t know what else to add there.
42 00:05:13.300 ⇒ 00:05:19.020 Hannah Wang: and that’s with the arrows. So then how do the letters come? Just as the time goes on.
43 00:05:21.610 ⇒ 00:05:22.880 Hannah Wang: Yeah, that’s all I got.
44 00:05:23.670 ⇒ 00:05:25.739 Hannah Wang: Just like, that’s wrong.
45 00:05:29.360 ⇒ 00:05:32.999 Hannah Wang: Okay, okay, I could. I could probably do a little better.
46 00:05:36.730 ⇒ 00:05:39.209 Hannah Wang: What is happening. What is that?
47 00:05:43.009 ⇒ 00:05:50.590 Hannah Wang: What’s a hover? How how would you draw it? I was trying to draw green goblin on a hovercraft.
48 00:05:51.260 ⇒ 00:06:05.000 Hannah Wang: Oh, but I don’t know, I guess Hovercraft design has changed. Yeah. Ufo was kind of what I went for, and I thought it would be like a synonym. But am I choosing a word.
49 00:06:05.320 ⇒ 00:06:08.190 Hannah Wang: Who’s toilet paper? No. Who’s gardener?
50 00:06:08.360 ⇒ 00:06:13.360 Hannah Wang: Oh, Gardner, toilet! Oh, it looks like toilet paper on mine.
51 00:06:16.030 ⇒ 00:06:19.740 Hannah Wang: Oh, Whoa!
52 00:06:21.280 ⇒ 00:06:25.419 Hannah Wang: Next class would be Annie. Oh, yeah, she’s she’s so good, so fast.
53 00:06:27.710 ⇒ 00:06:28.595 Hannah Wang: Huh?
54 00:06:47.898 ⇒ 00:06:50.690 Hannah Wang: I literally like I wanted.
55 00:06:55.030 ⇒ 00:06:58.940 Hannah Wang: Oh, what?
56 00:07:10.280 ⇒ 00:07:12.109 Hannah Wang: Yeah, what is what has?
57 00:07:16.800 ⇒ 00:07:19.130 Hannah Wang: Oh, something.
58 00:07:19.440 ⇒ 00:07:21.888 Hannah Wang: It’s a something odd.
59 00:07:30.160 ⇒ 00:07:31.640 Hannah Wang: You’re welcome.
60 00:07:32.730 ⇒ 00:07:35.035 Hannah Wang: I just type iron, iron, iron.
61 00:07:39.435 ⇒ 00:07:43.000 Hannah Wang: Ryan.
62 00:08:12.910 ⇒ 00:08:13.580 Hannah Wang: Oh.
63 00:08:22.010 ⇒ 00:08:25.469 Hannah Wang: what is this? I love Adele.
64 00:08:26.000 ⇒ 00:08:28.030 Hannah Wang: Who is Gardner?
65 00:08:28.440 ⇒ 00:08:33.559 Hannah Wang: What is that word dude?
66 00:08:34.169 ⇒ 00:08:35.059 Hannah Wang: What?
67 00:08:39.188 ⇒ 00:08:42.579 Hannah Wang: What? What is that?
68 00:08:50.550 ⇒ 00:08:51.839 Hannah Wang: Oh, oh.
69 00:08:56.480 ⇒ 00:08:59.010 Hannah Wang: okay.
70 00:09:02.320 ⇒ 00:09:03.240 Hannah Wang: okay.
71 00:09:03.920 ⇒ 00:09:08.640 Hannah Wang: Allergy, allergy, allergy.
72 00:09:15.000 ⇒ 00:09:18.469 Hannah Wang: all right, Amber. We gotta catch up.
73 00:09:57.940 ⇒ 00:10:08.060 Hannah Wang: Oh, I tried to use. It’s cheating. No, it’s not cheating.
74 00:10:09.570 ⇒ 00:10:12.150 Hannah Wang: Wow! So intricate.
75 00:10:13.720 ⇒ 00:10:14.480 Annie Yu: Okay.
76 00:10:18.300 ⇒ 00:10:31.579 Hannah Wang: Yeah, what is it? Didn’t give me the right word.
77 00:10:37.380 ⇒ 00:10:44.180 Hannah Wang: I clicked on Dove.
78 00:10:49.610 ⇒ 00:10:56.529 Hannah Wang: Oh, oh, let’s go! What? Let’s go.
79 00:10:56.850 ⇒ 00:10:59.259 Hannah Wang: Thank you, Amber. We’re on the same wavelength here.
80 00:11:02.970 ⇒ 00:11:06.620 Hannah Wang: Okay, it’s all about round 2 and round 3 round one doesn’t matter.
81 00:11:10.190 ⇒ 00:11:12.950 Hannah Wang: I was like, what is it?
82 00:11:25.040 ⇒ 00:11:25.860 Hannah Wang: It’s good.
83 00:11:27.930 ⇒ 00:11:31.580 Hannah Wang: Such a good draw. It’s really good. Your lines are very straight.
84 00:11:35.600 ⇒ 00:11:36.460 Hannah Wang: Did.
85 00:11:59.580 ⇒ 00:12:03.350 Hannah Wang: Okay? That was also a very good thank you.
86 00:12:05.300 ⇒ 00:12:07.910 Hannah Wang: You could have color.
87 00:12:08.830 ⇒ 00:12:12.440 Hannah Wang: Well, I don’t know what else to put feet. Okay.
88 00:12:16.240 ⇒ 00:12:17.509 Hannah Wang: draw some hair.
89 00:12:24.220 ⇒ 00:12:28.600 Hannah Wang: Can’t believe you’re doing that with a trackpad. Why, this is pretty good. Thanks.
90 00:12:30.780 ⇒ 00:12:36.980 Hannah Wang: You’re a designer, hey? Yeah, but you gotta win by the guessing. Oh, true.
91 00:12:37.717 ⇒ 00:12:40.700 Hannah Wang: which one has 900 points.
92 00:12:41.180 ⇒ 00:12:42.040 Hannah Wang: Good thing.
93 00:12:42.830 ⇒ 00:12:44.619 Hannah Wang: Oh, he always picks such long words.
94 00:12:45.300 ⇒ 00:12:46.479 Hannah Wang: They’re more interesting.
95 00:12:46.660 ⇒ 00:12:48.369 Hannah Wang: Suggest, like the boring stuff.
96 00:12:53.250 ⇒ 00:12:57.790 Hannah Wang: Let’s go. What? I haven’t even driven drawn the best part yet.
97 00:13:18.980 ⇒ 00:13:20.900 Hannah Wang: Hey? Letters are cheating.
98 00:13:22.700 ⇒ 00:13:28.915 Hannah Wang: This is my data. But once someone got it I could just troll it.
99 00:13:47.930 ⇒ 00:13:50.561 Hannah Wang: Oh, I wrote chicken as well.
100 00:14:00.560 ⇒ 00:14:01.320 Annie Yu: Great.
101 00:14:03.100 ⇒ 00:14:05.480 Annie Yu: She probably didn’t pick up without.
102 00:14:06.660 ⇒ 00:14:08.849 Hannah Wang: Oh! Oh! What! Oh! What!
103 00:14:08.850 ⇒ 00:14:10.279 Aakash Tandel: Oh, no! You were drawing.
104 00:14:10.280 ⇒ 00:14:11.580 Annie Yu: Oh, no. Yeah.
105 00:14:13.450 ⇒ 00:14:14.070 Hannah Wang: Wait!
106 00:14:14.750 ⇒ 00:14:16.510 Aakash Tandel: It’s gonna be hard.
107 00:14:18.730 ⇒ 00:14:19.590 Hannah Wang: Is back.
108 00:14:20.550 ⇒ 00:14:21.758 Aakash Tandel: But as a different person.
109 00:14:22.000 ⇒ 00:14:24.600 Hannah Wang: Yeah, your cookies.
110 00:14:27.000 ⇒ 00:14:28.720 Hannah Wang: Well, this will be. This will be rough.
111 00:14:43.250 ⇒ 00:14:44.520 Hannah Wang: Whoa!
112 00:14:48.700 ⇒ 00:14:50.919 Hannah Wang: Oh, huh! Let’s go
113 00:15:02.250 ⇒ 00:15:04.589 Hannah Wang: all right. Made it made a comeback. Let’s go.
114 00:15:05.640 ⇒ 00:15:07.506 Hannah Wang: It’s all about round 2.
115 00:15:28.570 ⇒ 00:15:29.430 Hannah Wang: What is that?
116 00:15:30.780 ⇒ 00:15:31.319 Hannah Wang: That’s
117 00:15:37.120 ⇒ 00:15:37.910 Hannah Wang: what.
118 00:15:43.650 ⇒ 00:15:45.010 Hannah Wang: What am I missing here?
119 00:15:47.620 ⇒ 00:15:53.490 Hannah Wang: And oh, oh, I didn’t know you could. Do you know?
120 00:15:54.480 ⇒ 00:15:57.190 Hannah Wang: Yeah, proper. Now, yeah. Proper nouns.
121 00:15:57.340 ⇒ 00:15:58.779 Hannah Wang: I didn’t know you could do proper dance.
122 00:16:03.520 ⇒ 00:16:05.720 Hannah Wang: No, she’s behind.
123 00:16:07.320 ⇒ 00:16:13.400 Hannah Wang: It’s okay. It’s your 1st time you’re playing with seasoned veterans. Whoa!
124 00:16:15.450 ⇒ 00:16:16.620 Hannah Wang: Why is it doing that?
125 00:16:17.000 ⇒ 00:16:18.430 Hannah Wang: Can I like turn that on?
126 00:16:23.390 ⇒ 00:16:24.719 Hannah Wang: There it is. Okay.
127 00:16:42.070 ⇒ 00:16:43.960 Hannah Wang: yaha yay
128 00:16:47.180 ⇒ 00:16:47.940 Hannah Wang: phone.
129 00:16:52.790 ⇒ 00:16:53.710 Hannah Wang: Let’s go.
130 00:17:21.800 ⇒ 00:17:29.290 Hannah Wang: I don’t know what else to do. Oh, bias! Hmm!
131 00:17:36.150 ⇒ 00:17:37.320 Hannah Wang: Oh, boy!
132 00:17:43.480 ⇒ 00:17:44.380 Hannah Wang: Oh.
133 00:17:48.730 ⇒ 00:17:49.870 Hannah Wang: that’s good!
134 00:17:52.800 ⇒ 00:17:56.440 Hannah Wang: These lines are very straight, that’s wrong.
135 00:17:58.760 ⇒ 00:18:00.190 Hannah Wang: Oh, boy!
136 00:18:15.320 ⇒ 00:18:17.166 Hannah Wang: Bob Ross!
137 00:18:19.440 ⇒ 00:18:22.460 Hannah Wang: Oh, man! Oh, this is not good!
138 00:18:38.390 ⇒ 00:18:40.369 Hannah Wang: Yes! Oh, nice.
139 00:18:40.810 ⇒ 00:18:43.009 Hannah Wang: Dang it, dude! That’s all I needed.
140 00:18:45.530 ⇒ 00:18:47.846 Hannah Wang: The arrows all I need.
141 00:18:48.760 ⇒ 00:18:50.609 Hannah Wang: Nice, good job.
142 00:19:13.490 ⇒ 00:19:14.440 Hannah Wang: Let’s go.
143 00:19:17.100 ⇒ 00:19:18.440 Hannah Wang: That’s good. That’s pretty good.
144 00:19:33.010 ⇒ 00:19:36.850 Hannah Wang: Her name that’s not the right way.
145 00:19:53.390 ⇒ 00:19:54.640 Hannah Wang: oh, this will be fun.
146 00:20:27.632 ⇒ 00:20:29.277 Hannah Wang: even typing.
147 00:20:30.892 ⇒ 00:20:40.209 Hannah Wang: I was curious how people would. Yeah, clown, sushi. And then it, yeah, it became obvious as soon as we draw the second one.
148 00:20:40.390 ⇒ 00:20:41.900 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I love it.
149 00:20:44.990 ⇒ 00:20:45.720 Hannah Wang: Wow!
150 00:21:06.900 ⇒ 00:21:09.820 Hannah Wang: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! That’s not where I thought this was going.
151 00:21:36.500 ⇒ 00:21:41.160 Hannah Wang: Oh, I’m pretty sure that’s not what it looks like.
152 00:21:45.030 ⇒ 00:21:46.550 Hannah Wang: Actually, I’m not sure.
153 00:21:48.880 ⇒ 00:21:52.170 Hannah Wang: Oh, oh, it is. It is okay. You’re right. You’re right here.
154 00:21:52.340 ⇒ 00:21:53.150 Hannah Wang: Not bad.
155 00:21:56.420 ⇒ 00:21:57.895 Hannah Wang: No.
156 00:22:03.930 ⇒ 00:22:07.798 Hannah Wang: that’s yeah. That’s that’s not fair for the for the bobs.
157 00:22:29.310 ⇒ 00:22:30.050 Hannah Wang: What?
158 00:22:36.410 ⇒ 00:22:37.220 Hannah Wang: Hello?
159 00:22:44.900 ⇒ 00:22:47.359 Hannah Wang: Oh, I’m so close. I’m so
160 00:22:48.328 ⇒ 00:22:52.660 Hannah Wang: that’s pretty good. Yeah, that’s pretty good.
161 00:22:54.340 ⇒ 00:22:55.106 Hannah Wang: Thank you.
162 00:22:58.716 ⇒ 00:22:59.930 Hannah Wang: It back.
163 00:23:02.770 ⇒ 00:23:10.699 Hannah Wang: They have beats. Yeah, they do. Yeah, that was good, good job, Calamari.
164 00:24:21.040 ⇒ 00:24:25.920 Hannah Wang: But I couldn’t have guessed that word for you.
165 00:24:29.290 ⇒ 00:24:33.289 Hannah Wang: Hmm! What what is this?
166 00:24:36.230 ⇒ 00:24:40.110 Hannah Wang: So? Dude! What?
167 00:24:42.310 ⇒ 00:24:47.070 Hannah Wang: Oh, it’s coming down to the wire, no swag, and I actually got no swag, and we didn’t get it.
168 00:25:25.390 ⇒ 00:25:26.400 Hannah Wang: Oh, no!
169 00:25:43.230 ⇒ 00:25:46.949 Hannah Wang: What so close! What is this?
170 00:25:47.760 ⇒ 00:25:49.192 Hannah Wang: I got it.
171 00:25:55.160 ⇒ 00:25:56.270 Hannah Wang: Oh.
172 00:26:09.780 ⇒ 00:26:36.379 Hannah Wang: wait! What? Oh, it’s the wrong word. I did the same thing. I clicked something. I clicked bald, so I was right. I was like, bald, bald. Well, half of you guessed it right? So I guess it works somehow. Yeah, okay, I guess it worked out. Yeah.
173 00:26:36.670 ⇒ 00:26:41.100 Hannah Wang: Okay. Well, thanks. Who won. Oh, you won unibrain Unibrain.
174 00:26:42.090 ⇒ 00:26:51.057 Hannah Wang: Nice rainforest colors of the unibrow. Nice? Alright! Y’all! Yay, thanks for playing
175 00:26:58.170 ⇒ 00:27:04.270 Hannah Wang: alright. Well, got to see a different side of everyone and their creativity.
176 00:27:07.540 ⇒ 00:27:10.249 Hannah Wang: I guess. The next
177 00:27:10.370 ⇒ 00:27:23.209 Hannah Wang: thing. Yeah, we’re not gonna do breakouts. I think the next 2 topics is probably just better to discuss as a whole, but we’ll time box it. I know we only have less than a couple of hours now, so hopefully, we’ll do like 2, 30 to 40 min sessions or something.
178 00:27:23.997 ⇒ 00:27:29.210 Hannah Wang: Yeah, let’s spend some time talking, since we already kind of we’re already talking about.
179 00:27:31.440 ⇒ 00:27:36.769 Hannah Wang: I think, Hr. And role progression. Individual kind of stuff. Seems seems to be the next
180 00:27:37.410 ⇒ 00:27:44.719 Hannah Wang: relevant thing to talk through, so I’ll tee it up, and then every time you can kinda just kind of you can drive a conversation. But
181 00:27:45.503 ⇒ 00:27:49.900 Hannah Wang: yeah, we were talking about wanting to.
182 00:27:50.660 ⇒ 00:27:54.300 Hannah Wang: Oh, yeah, we kind of concluded the last session, talking about how we wanted.
183 00:27:57.880 ⇒ 00:28:14.039 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I mean the t the tea exercise that Akash mentioned just figuring out basically people’s preferences. And like, you know, how do we align the work that they do here at Brainforce to their you know how you, how you, how they view their careers, and how do we like help you help you along there.
184 00:28:14.466 ⇒ 00:28:18.580 Hannah Wang: Obviously, we’re, you know. Maybe for the past quarter we were may maybe
185 00:28:18.850 ⇒ 00:28:24.390 Hannah Wang: just trying to find everyone where where everyone fit in, and I think people are pretty settled into
186 00:28:24.860 ⇒ 00:28:38.139 Hannah Wang: their roles. But it’s just a starting point, right? And so wanting to make sure that there’s enough mobility and things for you to look forward to. So that’s like on the making sure that we’re we’re kind of
187 00:28:38.730 ⇒ 00:28:40.840 Hannah Wang: creating the pathway for you to
188 00:28:41.460 ⇒ 00:28:49.010 Hannah Wang: kind of get, get the to build the role that you want to have and then on the Hr side of things, making sure that we
189 00:28:49.495 ⇒ 00:29:11.960 Hannah Wang: kind of keep you in the loop on our timeline for the the things that we’re gonna continue, that we’re pushing on to make sure that everybody is, feels comfortable like round rounding out the rest of like the their experience here. So I think we talk will probably share more about that. Our progress there, and any kind of get any feedback for other things that we want to make sure we have.
190 00:29:12.260 ⇒ 00:29:13.980 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think the
191 00:29:14.730 ⇒ 00:29:36.180 Hannah Wang: the big idea. I think the first.st So there’s kind of 2, 2 pieces, one of which we’re talking a little bit about. How do we know? How do we go individually and ask everyone like what their goals are at Brainforge personally, how do we get? How do we ladder that up to the goals for each department. And then how do we ladder that up to the eventual like company goals?
192 00:29:36.791 ⇒ 00:29:42.450 Hannah Wang: I think part of this is understanding how people are motivated. So
193 00:29:42.620 ⇒ 00:29:55.580 Hannah Wang: what are people motive about? Motivated by intrinsically? What are people motivated by extrinsically and then how can the company sort of be a vehicle for you for individuals to sort of achieve
194 00:29:55.690 ⇒ 00:30:09.169 Hannah Wang: their goals. To give you a sense of like how we do this. Now, one of the ways I’m thinking about, you know, doing this at the most basic level is just having structured conversations with people about feedback on themselves.
195 00:30:09.857 ⇒ 00:30:26.129 Hannah Wang: Us as leadership as well as their individual team, and the company as a whole, on like a 2 or 3 week cadence. So that’s what I’ve been starting to do with some folks, and I’m starting to do with building like one on one templates and things like that.
196 00:30:27.800 ⇒ 00:30:32.509 Hannah Wang: but I guess I’d be interested to see if anyone else had an experience in a past company where
197 00:30:32.640 ⇒ 00:30:49.259 Hannah Wang: you felt like, okay, like the company did understand my my personal wants and needs in terms of my career, or if you didn’t know what you wanted to do, they sort of help guide that like, did any. Does anyone have a good experience?
198 00:30:49.380 ⇒ 00:30:53.300 Hannah Wang: Could either be a past boss. It could be a company where you’ve had some sort of
199 00:30:53.960 ⇒ 00:30:56.659 Hannah Wang: process that like nurture, that
200 00:30:57.970 ⇒ 00:31:02.339 Hannah Wang: well for my past roles, I figure out. What I want to do is just, I kind of
201 00:31:02.620 ⇒ 00:31:19.840 Hannah Wang: did the work, and I always took on more. And eventually I just settled at something that I’m comfortable with, and I think when we talk to Christian. And also she mentioned, just let people do it, and then they will find some things they like, and they’ll settle in eventually. Okay?
202 00:31:21.010 ⇒ 00:31:21.740 Hannah Wang: Hmm.
203 00:31:22.500 ⇒ 00:31:31.979 Hannah Wang: I mean, do people feel like empowered to go and explore? I mean, I feel like we’re still in like a we’re assigning things to people and kind of like pushing people to do from more from the
204 00:31:32.380 ⇒ 00:31:34.940 Hannah Wang: from our account executive. I don’t.
205 00:31:34.990 ⇒ 00:31:50.350 Hannah Wang: I mean, there are a couple of people that like volunteer that proactively are like. And when I don’t want to use the word proactive, it’s not about practices. It’s just like they feel like they can ask about, like, I want to go and do this, that I’m interested in that part, and like we’ve
206 00:31:50.380 ⇒ 00:32:06.060 Hannah Wang: been able to invite them into something that we didn’t originally intend to to start them or to place them in. But because they asked, like we totally made a way for it to work. It’s just that I would say most people don’t really come to us with that kind of feedback.
207 00:32:12.440 ⇒ 00:32:19.486 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, I was wondering how we handle this differently, since we have a lot of folks who are like contractors and part time folks
208 00:32:19.950 ⇒ 00:32:25.679 Aakash Tandel: like, I feel like, that’s a different scenario, just because they’re kind of
209 00:32:26.633 ⇒ 00:32:31.490 Aakash Tandel: like slotted in to fill a very specific role. And yeah.
210 00:32:34.320 ⇒ 00:32:42.840 Hannah Wang: Yeah, for me, I think about like again, we were sort of a team of like mercenary people before. Now. I’m thinking about
211 00:32:43.420 ⇒ 00:32:54.360 Hannah Wang: like I’ve always thought about what? Why, how can we eventually have enough momentum to convince people to join the company? And always, I think, about that
212 00:32:54.730 ⇒ 00:33:12.929 Hannah Wang: the table should be sacked towards the brain forge engineers, meaning, we will have somewhat external contractors who are doing partly, but I always want, like us, to focus on our core employees 1st and like, that’s not something I’m like afraid to say, because
213 00:33:13.100 ⇒ 00:33:22.359 Hannah Wang: if you’re not focusing on first, st then what are you doing? Right? So it’s like for me. I’m I’m comfortable saying that out loud, which is.
214 00:33:22.460 ⇒ 00:33:28.190 Hannah Wang: we’re gonna have the value, the time, the growth.
215 00:33:28.340 ⇒ 00:33:44.309 Hannah Wang: you know, focus on the folks that are joining us and deciding to like. Come work every day for the folks that are external. It’s a tougher problem, like there are things where we can’t. We may not be able to offer a lot of that growth, not only just because
216 00:33:44.540 ⇒ 00:33:53.630 Hannah Wang: you don’t have enough time, but it’s a risk for the company. And so for me, I think I think purely about how does how does as much of the
217 00:33:54.247 ⇒ 00:33:56.610 Hannah Wang: value go to the people that are
218 00:33:56.790 ⇒ 00:33:59.229 Hannah Wang: core employees, and who want to join
219 00:33:59.340 ⇒ 00:34:03.569 Hannah Wang: us, you know, and and full time, and as much capacity as they can.
220 00:34:06.090 ⇒ 00:34:10.890 Hannah Wang: I think for me, and you know my background. I only probably have, like one
221 00:34:11.060 ⇒ 00:34:14.090 Hannah Wang: boss, my 1st boss that ever
222 00:34:14.370 ⇒ 00:34:24.440 Hannah Wang: asked me like what I wanted to do, and actually like, enable that I don’t. I think everybody since that has been like a complete letdown like not only have people like never asked.
223 00:34:24.600 ⇒ 00:34:25.469 Hannah Wang: but
224 00:34:25.909 ⇒ 00:34:50.729 Hannah Wang: they sort of do the thing where they’re like, oh, so you tell me like where you want to go, and they’re like, Oh, so you should go do that like there’s no support structure. There’s no like, or they sort of come to me, and they’re like, Oh, I need to ask about your goals, and they’re trying to check a box. For me like this is a tough exercise, because I think it takes a lot of reflection on folks who have worked in this industry because you may not have been asked
225 00:34:51.040 ⇒ 00:34:57.069 Hannah Wang: what your career you you may have only discussed your career goals, either in the mirror or with like someone really close to you
226 00:34:57.665 ⇒ 00:35:07.459 Hannah Wang: and career goals, talking to talking to career goals, talking about career goals to your manager out loud like may seem daunting
227 00:35:07.913 ⇒ 00:35:24.610 Hannah Wang: for me like, I only look at, how do we make people more effective? And I assume that making people more effective will result in the company being effective. I can’t control whether people come this year and leave next year and take those skills and go somewhere like I don’t. I don’t fear that.
228 00:35:24.710 ⇒ 00:35:52.759 Hannah Wang: like I fear that people aren’t able to accomplish their goals or don’t feel like they have been accomplishing their goals. And then they leave based on like that. I also think a lot of times. And this is more like I’ve done a lot of. I’ve helped a lot of people sort of land jobs and data and like, figure out their careers and data a lot of times. People don’t take the time to even do this, especially for the folks earlier in your career. What will happen is you will sort of
229 00:35:52.920 ⇒ 00:36:00.759 Hannah Wang: if you don’t set that. If you don’t spend time to think about where you’re going to go, the businesses will just push you in the direction they need you to go
230 00:36:00.980 ⇒ 00:36:15.670 Hannah Wang: right, and I don’t want to say that Brainforge won’t do that. But if you are, if you are more fluid in that nature, you will flow towards where the business needs you. That may not be where you want to go as an individual. And so part of this, I think, is us
231 00:36:16.240 ⇒ 00:36:19.080 Hannah Wang: going to each person and asking.
232 00:36:19.310 ⇒ 00:36:24.120 Hannah Wang: Have you thought about like where your career is now, and like where you’d want it to be
233 00:36:24.590 ⇒ 00:36:29.729 Hannah Wang: just getting that, and then understanding what’s possible for the company to do to support that
234 00:36:31.160 ⇒ 00:36:33.009 Hannah Wang: right? Yeah. I don’t know if that like.
235 00:36:33.580 ⇒ 00:36:37.369 Hannah Wang: if you know, if that’s like aligned with what everyone else thinks.
236 00:36:37.760 ⇒ 00:36:39.240 Hannah Wang: Hmm, thank you
237 00:36:44.110 ⇒ 00:36:51.889 Hannah Wang: like I feel like not. Everybody is so like 5 Year Plan, 10 Year Plan, like nowhere. I want to be in a career kind of oriented necessarily.
238 00:36:52.409 ⇒ 00:37:00.880 Hannah Wang: And I think maybe a more like, yeah, we can start with that for people who have like an end or target in mind, like, I think that’s great to have that clarity.
239 00:37:01.050 ⇒ 00:37:03.459 Hannah Wang: But for others that are just kind of like
240 00:37:04.280 ⇒ 00:37:15.910 Hannah Wang: on this journey, and like, want to like they they want. Yeah, like, they don’t really have an answer, or like, they feel like the answer is like, not really something they hold too tightly to and like.
241 00:37:16.200 ⇒ 00:37:24.529 Hannah Wang: I think. PI think I mean, I personally just reflecting on my experience appreciated when people gave me opportunities like
242 00:37:24.690 ⇒ 00:37:26.870 Hannah Wang: just cause they knew me from like
243 00:37:27.240 ⇒ 00:37:34.819 Hannah Wang: from working together with me. It’s like, Hey, like I don’t know if you’ve thought about this before, I think this would be a cool project for you to take on. It’s kind of a stretch.
244 00:37:35.240 ⇒ 00:37:48.220 Hannah Wang: Like. Yeah, it’s a bit out of the like kind of core set of things that you do but like, why, why don’t you consider trying it? And like I can have the freedom to take it or leave it, and like there isn’t pressure that it’s like.
245 00:37:48.340 ⇒ 00:37:56.039 Hannah Wang: Oh, there’s something that’s handed to me that I absolutely have to do, cause it’s different to like, put that opportunity in front of someone and tell them like.
246 00:37:56.430 ⇒ 00:38:11.929 Hannah Wang: Yeah, go take that risk. Like, if you want to like this is a stretch. And like, I wanna give you that opportunity versus like, Oh, I really need you like we. I need you to stretch to do to do this? That something that you’ve never done before, and it’s like gonna overwhelm you or whatever like. So
247 00:38:12.305 ⇒ 00:38:17.570 Hannah Wang: at least I feel like. I try to do that now as I like have gone to know some of the people that I work with like
248 00:38:17.670 ⇒ 00:38:45.070 Hannah Wang: I’ll have like an idea or project, and I’ll meet with them one on one. Be like, Hey, I think you like you do well on these things like, I think this is a good like this could be a good stretch project for you. Do you want to try it? And I’m happy to like kind of support you through that. So? I kind of. That’s how I’ve been trying to like nudge, nudge the team a bit here. But yeah, I think kind of both having the structure where we’re having those conversations regularly. But then also, like.
249 00:38:45.580 ⇒ 00:38:53.220 Hannah Wang: yeah, I think for people who I mean, maybe maybe this is more from like people who are managing people like
250 00:38:53.450 ⇒ 00:38:59.889 Hannah Wang: looking out for opportunities for for others. If they don’t, if they’re not necessarily proactively bringing it up.
251 00:39:01.100 ⇒ 00:39:21.370 Hannah Wang: yeah, it’s really, people will only become something or do something if they already have a want to do that. Yeah. And so what you’re saying is essentially amplifying that want. But I think you’re addressing. How do we even know that it exists in people where they don’t know that exists?
252 00:39:21.580 ⇒ 00:39:32.289 Hannah Wang: And yeah, I guess to that it’s like exposing all these different projects just like AI. They have to see it’s happening. And they’re like, Oh.
253 00:39:32.630 ⇒ 00:39:43.159 Hannah Wang: sounds interesting. I really think the Demos would help with like, Oh, there’s this new opportunity! There’s this cool client or this cool AI project. And then people are like, Oh, that sounds interesting.
254 00:39:43.340 ⇒ 00:39:48.669 Hannah Wang: And then we go up to them like, I think you’re really good at this. Oh, I didn’t know I could have done that.
255 00:39:49.110 ⇒ 00:39:50.260 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
256 00:39:50.880 ⇒ 00:39:58.420 Hannah Wang: yeah, I mean, and they even stepping back from that a bit with something else I want to say is like, I I feel like people should.
257 00:39:59.140 ⇒ 00:40:01.143 Hannah Wang: What’s the best way to put this
258 00:40:05.810 ⇒ 00:40:29.789 Hannah Wang: actually, just kidding. Come back to me in a bit. Give me like a minute to mull on what I say before I just like babble. Yeah, I think part of it. Also, you know, you mentioned it’s like 5, 10 Year plan, like, I even think about just in the next, like 6 months. If there’s something where I we can help put you in a position to try something new to go deeper somewhere. What could that be? Sure, right? I think definitely, some people are like, I want to do this step, this step, this step, this step.
259 00:40:29.910 ⇒ 00:40:51.919 Hannah Wang: Some people are like, I just got here like I I don’t even I didn’t even know planning like that was possible. No one’s ever asked me, and I’ve been in both situations where, like there were times where I just became what the company needed. But naturally I I know for a fact that if you don’t decide for yourself, you will become what the company needs you to be that could be aligned with what you want.
260 00:40:52.050 ⇒ 00:41:07.759 Hannah Wang: that could also not be aligned with what you want. And so this is what happens in companies where the resentment builds because you were never asked. It’s not often that you were asked, and then it just doesn’t happen. At least you were asked, and they give it a shot. Commonly no one ever asks.
261 00:41:07.860 ⇒ 00:41:26.830 Hannah Wang: and because we’re fast moving, we’re like, we’ll get to the growth. We’ll get to this. But you’re one or few your few conversations away just from knowing that. Hey? I want to try to do this that way when I find an opportunity to put people into that position, we’ll 100 do that right. So for me, I think a lot about
262 00:41:27.270 ⇒ 00:41:34.740 Hannah Wang: one for the folks that know their goals really well, how we can articulate, how we can segment them into short and long term.
263 00:41:34.980 ⇒ 00:41:43.850 Hannah Wang: and then in a second category for folks that may be new in their career or new in this field, or have never sort of
264 00:41:43.890 ⇒ 00:42:08.330 Hannah Wang: thought through that. What is a good exercise that managers can go through with them. And part of this is not just. The fact that I have a lot of these conversations with people is that everybody in our company. I expect to lead themselves or to lead a team in some manner, and so everybody has the opportunity to go to. Someone is like, what are your goals for our relationship. What are your goals for this team?
265 00:42:08.810 ⇒ 00:42:13.110 Hannah Wang: And so this sort of goal setting exercise? You know, one of the
266 00:42:14.480 ⇒ 00:42:24.199 Hannah Wang: I was in a I was in a car with a friend of mine who’s studying a master’s in organizational design, very like nerdy business topic.
267 00:42:24.370 ⇒ 00:42:29.209 Hannah Wang: and I’m like, Oh, I have a bunch of organizational design questions. I need to like pepper you with
268 00:42:29.617 ⇒ 00:42:41.239 Hannah Wang: and I was asking her. I said, like, Well, tell me about goal setting. We’re going to be at this offset next week. We’re gonna talk about goal setting. And she’s like, you know, you’d be surprised because I was like, we’re thinking about incentives or thinking
269 00:42:41.520 ⇒ 00:42:57.139 Hannah Wang: money. We’re thinking about roles, titles like what isn’t. She’s like, you know, all of that is great. But the number one factor that drives goal achievement is the fact that people were involved in creating those goals for themselves.
270 00:42:57.570 ⇒ 00:43:10.029 Hannah Wang: Right? And so this is where that’s typically not the way it works. We come to the table with the goals for the people. They adhere to the goals, and then there’s the results. Speak for themselves.
271 00:43:10.210 ⇒ 00:43:13.380 Hannah Wang: This is why I want to start with the questions first, st because
272 00:43:13.560 ⇒ 00:43:29.700 Hannah Wang: ultimately, just like anything I want to get by. And I want people to really think about. What do I want to achieve in my time here at Brainforge, and and then set those set those goals. We help shape them into things that can actually happen in the timeframes they need to.
273 00:43:29.830 ⇒ 00:43:33.659 Hannah Wang: But like that’s hearing that really pushed me to to like
274 00:43:33.900 ⇒ 00:43:41.499 Hannah Wang: pull back on setting goals for people, and instead, like, have a dial. Of course
275 00:43:42.110 ⇒ 00:43:57.410 Hannah Wang: there’s like some stuff may not be possible, and that’s for us to flag, but doing it in that way, I feel like makes a lot more sense. Yeah, yeah, no. I think that helped me to clarify my thoughts. I think something I was I, while I was trying to like communicate earlier was.
276 00:43:57.800 ⇒ 00:44:12.760 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think we need people’s buy in for like what they want to do. But in order to get that, we need to earn their trust as well. And so, at least for me, like when I think about in organizations I’ve been in where I didn’t really feel like
277 00:44:12.850 ⇒ 00:44:33.510 Hannah Wang: one. Maybe the organ. I didn’t trust the organization to like really help support me to those goals. So I just never really shared that with them. Yeah. So it’s like, yeah, maybe there’s fear it’s like, I’m working at a company. And I’m like, Look, I want, I want to tell you is that my goal is to start my own company, but I know that you just want me to just
278 00:44:33.510 ⇒ 00:44:43.429 Hannah Wang: be your account manager for your book of business as you ascend to direct your Vp. Or whatever. And so I just like at my 1st industry job. I just never told
279 00:44:43.740 ⇒ 00:44:49.240 Hannah Wang: My! That that that that that manager what? What my goal was.
280 00:44:49.557 ⇒ 00:45:05.829 Hannah Wang: Maybe I told other peers other people who weren’t managing me and didn’t really have like a really ability to influence me like my role in that in that organization. And and I felt like that was a more authentic kind of work relationship that I had with other peers of that company.
281 00:45:06.188 ⇒ 00:45:29.209 Hannah Wang: But yeah, so I I feel like I think maybe a question would be, I mean, we don’t have to answer in this now. But also, if you want, have anything, feel free to share, it’s like what would make it so that you feel like you can trust like this group, this team with like the goals and like, really feel like we’re we’re really able to support you towards that like, I don’t think
282 00:45:29.620 ⇒ 00:45:32.060 Hannah Wang: like everybody needs to end up
283 00:45:32.350 ⇒ 00:45:56.830 Hannah Wang: like like we don’t have like a canned answer we’re looking for like we are kind of like who Tom said. We started off as a bunch of mercenaries like people. It’s a very unlikely group of people that came together. We happen to be on the same playing on the same team right now and trying to move in a direction. But yeah, like the future is whatever it holds and like, who knows what? Whatever will be. Yeah. But the the
284 00:45:56.830 ⇒ 00:46:17.330 Hannah Wang: the privilege of being at this stage is that people do care a lot about each other more invested in one another. Because, yeah, everyone is a key piece, like, I think anyone feeling distance or not really wanting to be like, not able to bring their authentic self, to the, to, the to the team. Yeah. Like
285 00:46:17.360 ⇒ 00:46:27.850 Hannah Wang: everyone else, kind of feels the impact more than in a bigger organization. You feel more like a cog in a machine. And you know everything that you put. You know that you’re just gonna be replaceable, whatever like
286 00:46:27.920 ⇒ 00:46:46.280 Hannah Wang: skills. And like the the tasks like the hum of the business will will keep going like if you leave. And your specialty is in doing a specific type of analysis. Yeah, we’re gonna have to go find someone else to replace that skill. But then you not being there, like, I think, yeah, I guess you is to everybody
287 00:46:46.280 ⇒ 00:47:00.509 Hannah Wang: are much more to the team than just like that. That skill right now in this in this stage. And I think that’s kind of a time of the moment thing that you should really consider that like, yeah, you are at a really early stage company. There is.
288 00:47:00.570 ⇒ 00:47:24.589 Hannah Wang: There is momentum. You have people who are really wanting to really invest in each other. And and yeah, like, it’s an all. All ships rise with the tide kind of moment right now. So like, I want to have that candid conversation. Maybe it’s better in in like one on ones, or but maybe in a group of people feel comfortable sharing like what would, what would help them to feel like? They can trust the organization.
289 00:47:24.950 ⇒ 00:47:35.710 Hannah Wang: not just the organization, but trust us with with with your with your goals and like making sure that, and yeah, and trusting us to support you towards them. You know. Yeah.
290 00:47:36.240 ⇒ 00:47:49.990 Hannah Wang: I’ve had. I wrote this down as we were talking mainly trust is one for your peers, which is a lot easier. And for your management I feel like there’s things that usually you won’t tell your management.
291 00:47:50.460 ⇒ 00:47:51.170 Hannah Wang: Okay.
292 00:47:51.340 ⇒ 00:48:10.579 Hannah Wang: like, but the important part of a king, the management bring up and break the ice of this topic. But okay, I know you’re probably not gonna stay here forever. Yeah. And having that conversation, I wrote it down when we’re talking about planning. Okay, what’s your plan while you’re here? What do you wanna
293 00:48:10.880 ⇒ 00:48:27.529 Hannah Wang: take away? How do you? How do you bring value to the company? How do we? How does a company bring value to you? And it’s about the Linkedin stuff you talk about a lot. How do you build your own personal presence? And what do you plan to do next
294 00:48:27.840 ⇒ 00:48:30.760 Hannah Wang: of having that assumption that okay.
295 00:48:31.150 ⇒ 00:48:43.079 Hannah Wang: maybe in a year, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 10 years, whatever timeframe you probably would be at another company, or have your own company of having that.
296 00:48:43.250 ⇒ 00:48:49.680 Hannah Wang: Even that just basic assumption allows people to talk about that, because usually
297 00:48:50.146 ⇒ 00:49:05.400 Hannah Wang: we assume that the managers just want you to stay here forever, and that then you can’t talk about okay. Next step, I kind of want to raise it. I want to. I want to earn more and have being honest about finances is
298 00:49:05.530 ⇒ 00:49:21.090 Hannah Wang: quite hard. I’m pretty transparent with people about my wage, or what do I want my ambitions for these things? Because I think me talking about it openly lets other people, at least feel more comfortable to talk about it.
299 00:49:23.120 ⇒ 00:49:32.279 Hannah Wang: So I think, opening that conversation and talking about mutual benefit instead of a like a employer. Employee. Relationship
300 00:49:32.490 ⇒ 00:49:49.389 Hannah Wang: is really helpful, because I know what I bring, and I know what this can bring me of my skill, set opportunity to do different avenues of things, and I know that I want to come away with it as a strong candidate in the market, and I know I want to
301 00:49:50.183 ⇒ 00:49:54.820 Hannah Wang: build my professional presence like all these things I know
302 00:49:55.120 ⇒ 00:50:09.720 Hannah Wang: I want to take away with, and I know will benefit the company at the same time. So I’m very comfortable, just saying out loud my ambitions or my greed, or whatever, because I know it will sit well
303 00:50:10.000 ⇒ 00:50:17.910 Hannah Wang: with you guys in that. In that way we’re aligned. I guess the whole point of this is finding employees and finding people that align because
304 00:50:18.110 ⇒ 00:50:23.390 Hannah Wang: people will always have ambitions, but some of them just click better.
305 00:50:23.650 ⇒ 00:50:26.220 Hannah Wang: So that’s more recruiting.
306 00:50:26.660 ⇒ 00:50:29.339 Hannah Wang: Yeah, yeah, that was quite a bit.
307 00:50:29.620 ⇒ 00:50:34.790 Hannah Wang: No, yeah. Thanks. Thanks for thanks for sharing that. Yeah, like, I, yeah, I mean, I would
308 00:50:34.950 ⇒ 00:50:42.449 Hannah Wang: being if that that I I appreciate that level of transparency. And yeah, I think I would echo that like.
309 00:50:42.940 ⇒ 00:50:48.220 Hannah Wang: Yeah, we don’t. We don’t take for granted that. You know you’re here on on this team with us, like
310 00:50:49.720 ⇒ 00:51:09.239 Hannah Wang: we don’t plan to run brain force for the rest of our lives, you know, like we are working towards an exit, there is there is an end date, we are we? We? And we’re trying to work backwards from there. And that’s kind of how we think about engineering like our our success, that like there, we we keep trying to, you know. I guess I are
311 00:51:10.510 ⇒ 00:51:23.819 Hannah Wang: from the from the high, from the highest level, like trying to show you what the path to exit. Looks like. So you know, the journey that you’re on with Brainforge, I mean, obviously, there’s a lot of twists and turns along the way. But like. We’re very transparent about that.
312 00:51:24.090 ⇒ 00:51:33.920 Hannah Wang: Also, along the way, like there, there are things come up, and maybe, like you, you’ll want something more at some at certain seasons of your life, when
313 00:51:34.373 ⇒ 00:51:50.470 Hannah Wang: like there’s there just feels a little bit more urgency that, like something that you’re pursuing in your in your life like just you need a little, some more support there. And like, I think those are the things that we have to stretch ourselves to really accommodate. So we can all still
314 00:51:50.470 ⇒ 00:52:06.310 Hannah Wang: play on the same team, you know, and if it ends up being that like, you’re in a situation where what? The support that we are able to provide is like, now, no longer kind of able to like doesn’t meet your need in that in that moment. Then, yeah, I think that’s it’s acceptable, like.
315 00:52:06.310 ⇒ 00:52:29.120 Hannah Wang: you know. Obviously, we don’t know hard feelings like you’ve been. You’ve all been here long enough to see that we’ve tried to work with many different kinds of people. People have come in and out, and hopefully. Things are more stable now. And like we’ve we’ve kind of settled with like a more consistent group of people. But that’s gonna keep going as we continue to to grow and and and to pursue that exit.
316 00:52:29.120 ⇒ 00:52:56.889 Hannah Wang: This isn’t the only group of people that’s gonna get us there. It’s maybe the best. But we could do for at this point, and we want to kind of look to the next to the next phase as well. But at least our commitment to the group that we have is that no one feels like they get left behind, or like left out of, like the success or kind of the goals that we’re that we’re chasing. So I think it’s absolutely important, you know. Take some time to think about it like what is that?
317 00:52:56.980 ⇒ 00:53:08.199 Hannah Wang: What would it help for you to be able to be off? Be true to yourself and to be transparent about kind of what you’re hoping to achieve through the rainforge. And yeah, I think
318 00:53:08.380 ⇒ 00:53:13.229 Hannah Wang: that’s yeah. That that’s that’s really kind of, I think, something that we we would.
319 00:53:13.830 ⇒ 00:53:20.750 Hannah Wang: We can’t. We can’t demand it of people, but we we hope for that from from the people. That we that we’re working with so.
320 00:53:22.480 ⇒ 00:53:29.935 Annie Yu: Well, I do want to share something. I think this is more so about the 1st question that Utah ask
321 00:53:30.450 ⇒ 00:53:51.950 Annie Yu: And I’m just gonna share something like that’s a thing at Nike. But I’m not saying that that will work here. So back in Nike there’s a stretch program. So when a manager who doesn’t have enough like manpower, he can like post a stretch role, and then, if I’m interested, I can go apply to it. And if that goes through
322 00:53:51.950 ⇒ 00:54:07.379 Annie Yu: we will have both managers expectation saying that I’m gonna dedicate 10 h of my time each week on this project. But I think that’s also like one thing that will work more in like a bigger organization, or like a cost set, I think, to the point where we have
323 00:54:07.550 ⇒ 00:54:14.899 Annie Yu: contractors, and hourly, I feel like that’s not the the best way. But I think my point here is that
324 00:54:15.220 ⇒ 00:54:20.739 Annie Yu: both managers have that expectation, because this person’s interested in this. So we
325 00:54:20.870 ⇒ 00:54:35.540 Annie Yu: we make sure they have that time for that. Yeah, I think at Brainforge, I feel like for me. And again, not gonna talk about like 5 years. I just want to be retired in 5 years, you know. So I’m not gonna like.
326 00:54:35.710 ⇒ 00:55:03.509 Annie Yu: put too much weight in the conversation to share like my 5 year plan or so. But for me, it’s straightforward, I would tell you, like, I’m interested in using this tools, this bi tools, or I’m interested in more like predictive modeling. So exposure to more data science. So I feel like, that’s something that people will be like happy to share with like, not only like peers, but bosses, or
327 00:55:03.550 ⇒ 00:55:05.790 Annie Yu: whoever they come across.
328 00:55:05.920 ⇒ 00:55:13.900 Annie Yu: And one other thing is about Tom’s question about how we can kind of get people
329 00:55:14.820 ⇒ 00:55:22.999 Annie Yu: to want to be in like the full time crew, I and feel free to object me, but I feel like I
330 00:55:23.570 ⇒ 00:55:26.849 Annie Yu: really think we could think of consider like
331 00:55:29.560 ⇒ 00:55:32.420 Annie Yu: I know that Utam always said like, Oh, we can.
332 00:55:32.840 ⇒ 00:55:34.660 Annie Yu: We are happy to invest
333 00:55:35.588 ⇒ 00:55:49.509 Annie Yu: and getting you certified. I feel like that. If that’s something that’s like for full time benefit. I feel like for me that’s like super tempting. And also I feel like that way. You can attract people who are motivated.
334 00:55:49.510 ⇒ 00:55:50.550 Hannah Wang: Yeah, it’s cool.
335 00:55:50.550 ⇒ 00:56:00.549 Annie Yu: Who aren’t won’t be interested. And I also like, maybe we can promote on this as well. So also, like back in Nike, I could ask.
336 00:56:00.750 ⇒ 00:56:12.639 Annie Yu: I I could ask for budget for certification, maybe in tableau. But if I wanna get certified in Dbt, I will get denied, because that’s not something directly relevant to my.
337 00:56:13.540 ⇒ 00:56:15.510 Annie Yu: So I feel like, here, we
338 00:56:15.730 ⇒ 00:56:23.880 Annie Yu: if Utop says, Okay, I I wanna get started buying. Dbt, so I feel like, that’s something we can like, really advertise as well.
339 00:56:24.294 ⇒ 00:56:30.099 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I I mean, I’ve thought about this since I started the company because
340 00:56:30.220 ⇒ 00:56:37.159 Hannah Wang: I had to work when I started the company I was calling like friends. I would get 5 h to like help me with something in Dvc. This week.
341 00:56:37.440 ⇒ 00:56:42.300 Hannah Wang: and when I asked them like, Would you consider working for us. They’re like, well.
342 00:56:42.440 ⇒ 00:56:47.020 Hannah Wang: I’m sitting at spotify. I make 2 50 like
343 00:56:47.620 ⇒ 00:56:52.459 Hannah Wang: like what like, there’s no like I don’t like. I don’t think I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
344 00:56:52.770 ⇒ 00:57:19.419 Hannah Wang: And now it’s like very frustrating. Because I’m like dude. How am I going to be able to get people at that caliber? But then, what did I realize that? And if you’re an engineer, you know, like, eventually, you realize that. Yeah, I think there is a ladder to keep making more money. But also you want your work to be beneficial. You want to feel motivated. You want to feel like you’re being stressed. You want to feel like you’re constantly learning new skills. And for us, like, I think there is.
345 00:57:19.460 ⇒ 00:57:25.340 Hannah Wang: it’s sort of I I read this thing from Vixel, which is like. It’s sort of like, not just like
346 00:57:25.830 ⇒ 00:57:36.680 Hannah Wang: cash benefit. But there’s like a package of benefits right? So there are benefits that are monetary. There are benefits that are like career relationships.
347 00:57:36.760 ⇒ 00:57:57.999 Hannah Wang: skill set right. And we think about like a holistic benefit package. That is everything that’s not just what you typically see in like a benefits, package, part of which is like opportunity for certifications working in like on like a platform team, like getting opportunity to work cross disciplinary right getting access to executive leadership.
348 00:57:58.090 ⇒ 00:58:06.310 Hannah Wang: speaking engagement, like those are like lists of things that are valuable. And so for me, I you know for us.
349 00:58:06.850 ⇒ 00:58:16.989 Hannah Wang: I always describe brain Forge at the at the asymptote of brain Forge. It’s just a broker of like great people to great problems, right? But the sales process on both sides.
350 00:58:17.080 ⇒ 00:58:27.010 Hannah Wang: Right? So I think about, how do I sell engineers? I feel like we’ve gotten very lucky in that. Our sales process has worked really well.
351 00:58:27.273 ⇒ 00:58:54.390 Hannah Wang: even though we we don’t always have the most money, or the situation isn’t always like the easiest to work in. We’ve still been able to get like, really, really amazing people. Part of that is because I pitch a lot of things that other companies, you know, they’re going to drop the ball on. No one’s ever gonna ask you like, what do you want to do in your career? No one’s ever gonna say? Oh, you’re doing it like, Go learn Dvt. If you want or go learn Snowflake if you want, or here I can, you know, like those are all these things that
352 00:58:54.570 ⇒ 00:59:15.180 Hannah Wang: I know Mo would have motivated me. I heard about that. And so for me, I want to think about what that holistic package of benefits are. And yeah, I want, I want people to be like banging down the door to join our company. We will continuously have contractors come in. But ultimately, like.
353 00:59:15.520 ⇒ 00:59:35.379 Hannah Wang: well, I’m trying to convince them to join us right, and to spend time working on us in a in a larger way. And I want the the argument to really, really be there like I want it to be a sincere conversation, and I had this conversation with many of our contractors. Every one of our contractors have always asked, what would it take for us to bring you full time?
354 00:59:37.160 ⇒ 00:59:44.680 Hannah Wang: our pitch and our ability to do that has gone better over time. But like I want it to be extremely compelling.
355 00:59:46.110 ⇒ 00:59:53.289 Hannah Wang: you know, part of part of these things that are more like esoteric or or less of monetary really, really matter.
356 00:59:53.510 ⇒ 01:00:08.439 Hannah Wang: Cause like, that’s the day to day. That’s the 8 to 10 HA day like it’s it’s stuff like this. You want to know whether you know. To give you a personal example. When I was in companies I always took it as like, I want to take more out than I’m giving the company
357 01:00:08.660 ⇒ 01:00:10.690 Hannah Wang: meaning like.
358 01:00:11.569 ⇒ 01:00:17.509 Hannah Wang: Whether. Okay? Let’s say, let’s say I’m just getting like, get paid 100 grand. I wanna get like
359 01:00:18.090 ⇒ 01:00:47.910 Hannah Wang: I’m not only want to get that money, but then maybe they’re getting 500 k. Out of me. I want to get a million dollars of value out of it. So what am I gonna do? I’m gonna like work on every project I can. I’m gonna meet as many people as possible. I’m gonna like, find a way to like grow my career strategically within the company titles whatever, so that when I leave it’s like I got the better out of, I got the better out of that exchange. Of course, I work for companies where I have to think kind of like more competitive, because they would never have helped me do any of that stuff.
360 01:00:47.990 ⇒ 01:00:53.689 Hannah Wang: So here I want it to be like you mentioned. Mutual benefit like this is why even the goal setting
361 01:00:54.020 ⇒ 01:01:23.479 Hannah Wang: I’m not afraid to tell. If you were to say, Hey, I actually want to go start a data agency that may or may not compete with Brainforge. I’ll be like, yeah, this is like a great place to learn how to do that like you should just help us do that. And then if 5 years you can go do that, and we’ll help you start it because there’s totally room for more. And so those are the conversations I’m not afraid to have, and I don’t. I think there are a lot of people in our positions that are very afraid to have a conversation, because they they just have fear over these things
362 01:01:23.660 ⇒ 01:01:29.189 Hannah Wang: I don’t have any fear. This is hard for a number of reasons. If if this is what you want to go do in 5 years.
363 01:01:29.300 ⇒ 01:01:55.869 Hannah Wang: like, I want to support you right. And and the last piece I’ll mention is, and this is a lot of stuff about career that people are afraid to talk about money, and I think a lot of that disproportionately affects women a lot, especially where it’s like money or title or things like that. And for me. It’s it’s purely about just hearing, like what you want, and then how we can, how we can enable I think commonly you may. You may feel like.
364 01:01:56.110 ⇒ 01:02:08.970 Hannah Wang: oh, I can’t ask my manager for this, because they’re gonna think it’s out of scope, or they’re gonna think I’m not committed but for me. I know that if we benefit you to achieve your goals and your tools ladder to the companies, then it’s gonna it’ll be a win-win
365 01:02:10.580 ⇒ 01:02:14.950 Hannah Wang: So I don’t. I’ve never had much fear. But, as as y’all have said, I think
366 01:02:15.410 ⇒ 01:02:27.900 Hannah Wang: some things that I’ve talked to some friends about is, there’s always going to be a dynamic like, no matter how candid or radically candid, or whatever we try to make it, there’s always going to be a dynamic with your manager.
367 01:02:28.000 ⇒ 01:02:45.430 Hannah Wang: and so I want to create different avenues as well. So one of the things is peers right like I relied on peers. My whole career for advice on like leaving companies and things like that. I’ve also left companies where it’s like it was like people were not happy about that which I never understood. I was like.
368 01:02:45.900 ⇒ 01:02:57.440 Hannah Wang: you know, that’s like business is very long, and life is very long to for people to leave, and everybody, if you ask anyone that’s left the company. We’ve been nothing but supportive of help. People land other stuff
369 01:02:57.986 ⇒ 01:03:08.770 Hannah Wang: people have come back and asked for career advice and stuff. So that’s 1 thing. I think the second piece is just constantly, you know, just trying to feel like people can feel
370 01:03:08.840 ⇒ 01:03:30.019 Hannah Wang: supported. And they have multiple avenues for that with peers, whether it’s management, but also like coaching. And one of the things that I’m starting to think more about is again those people that are very senior in our lives. How can we get them involved in more of like a 3rd Avenue for people to talk about like Brainforge or their goals and giving people those multiple channels do that.
371 01:03:35.390 ⇒ 01:03:38.262 Aakash Tandel: I think 2 things that I was thinking about is
372 01:03:38.790 ⇒ 01:03:50.480 Aakash Tandel: I think you join this size of a company because you’re interested in the growth prospects like you’re interested in growing your career as a part of growing a company. So I think that’s something I’m kind of
373 01:03:50.570 ⇒ 01:04:19.829 Aakash Tandel: thinking about in terms like everyone’s role, I’m thinking. Hey? You know, theoretically, everyone on this call. If they progress in their career brain forge, you’ll probably be managing a team within, like, you know, if that’s your goal, like, if if it’s your goal to manage people that’s like an option, or it’s your goal to be kind of like the Sme, or like the the staff level individual contributor on, like, you know, on analysis or on design, or on Dbt, modeling like something like that, like that type of career growth
374 01:04:19.830 ⇒ 01:04:32.915 Aakash Tandel: is what’s I think, enticing for a company like this, especially like with them. You’re talking about a friend at like spotify like that person like might not have like the entrepreneurial, like kind of like, hey, it’s fun to build something
375 01:04:33.220 ⇒ 01:04:34.640 Hannah Wang: He’s not. He does not at all.
376 01:04:34.840 ⇒ 01:04:39.880 Aakash Tandel: Yeah, which is fair, like, it’s totally fine, with different personality and different, like kind of
377 01:04:40.090 ⇒ 01:05:04.809 Aakash Tandel: thing in your career aspirations. Right? I think that’s that’s 1 thing that’s like appealing for this size company. I think that’s what we kind of, I think, looking for. That’s also always going to be helpful. And I think as we get bigger, I think one of the things I’ve seen a lot of companies do poorly is thinking about the person’s career, growth and career trajectory like, you know, if you are not, I see this at my current company, like.
378 01:05:04.810 ⇒ 01:05:16.048 Aakash Tandel: if no one is even talking to you about a promotion. You’ve been there for 4 or 5 years like that company is doing a crap job at like managing. You’re gonna leave. That’s just like a high attribution or attribution, high
379 01:05:16.480 ⇒ 01:05:17.250 Aakash Tandel: attrition.
380 01:05:17.250 ⇒ 01:05:21.279 Hannah Wang: A long time. Yeah. High attrition. Yeah, yeah.
381 01:05:21.280 ⇒ 01:05:32.590 Aakash Tandel: So like, I think, as we, you know, it might not be a huge thing right now, but like as we get like to like the 1015, 20 full time people. That’s when we got to start, I think, thinking about making sure everyone’s like
382 01:05:32.590 ⇒ 01:05:53.999 Aakash Tandel: got a some sort of path in their career that they can get to. So it’s like, Hey, I can get to like, you know. I’ll be promoted to like a senior level role in like, you know, one to 2 years doing this job, or like my goal, is to manage people. So in, you know, 2 years of like every summer I took an internship on like an intern on as like my mentee.
383 01:05:54.000 ⇒ 01:06:15.809 Aakash Tandel: We did that for 2 years. Now I’m going to start managing a team next next year. Type of thing. I think that’s going to be important because I’ve just seen a lot of people at various companies like give up. If there’s too many blockers in in front of their career saying, Hey! Like, there’s just no nothing I can do. The easier option is always to leave and go to another company to get that career promotion. So that’s something I think about, too.
384 01:06:16.200 ⇒ 01:06:27.970 Hannah Wang: Yeah, yeah, that’s such a good point. Don’t make people have to leave to get that growth. Yeah, yeah. I also think that like, look, it’s it’s always gonna be a fight
385 01:06:28.100 ⇒ 01:06:48.479 Hannah Wang: for us to retain people. There will come an opportunity where everyone you have enough value to walk away and get something better. And it’s always up to us to think about, what do we have to offer? Right? And so that’s how I think about structuring incentives, especially over time on how do we make this a compelling place to work
386 01:06:48.730 ⇒ 01:07:01.039 Hannah Wang: like after one month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months like. And this is this half this is gonna be. This is like company has to sell you on working there like
387 01:07:01.180 ⇒ 01:07:08.539 Hannah Wang: I don’t fear saying that out loud. I think that is a job for us to do is to is to compel people to want to come to work.
388 01:07:09.080 ⇒ 01:07:12.489 Hannah Wang: Similarly, like again, we have several ways of doing that.
389 01:07:14.190 ⇒ 01:07:31.429 Hannah Wang: But it’s I think it’s a worthwhile. I don’t fear that challenge at all. I’m like cool. We have like a hundred 1 million problems. We’re doing AI and data peak stuff like, I feel good about the type of work. I think we’re gonna we have a path towards paying people a lot more, and like figuring out ways
390 01:07:31.540 ⇒ 01:07:36.060 Hannah Wang: to keep people motivated, to stay with the business and grow the business.
391 01:07:36.250 ⇒ 01:07:44.960 Hannah Wang: And then, like, we talk about exit, we talk about other opportunities. Take that one step further. So like. But again, that’s that’s up to the
392 01:07:45.150 ⇒ 01:07:49.080 Hannah Wang: you know everybody in the company to push us to, to, to keep doing that.
393 01:07:52.100 ⇒ 01:07:54.730 Hannah Wang: Okay, cool.
394 01:07:54.860 ⇒ 01:08:00.860 Hannah Wang: Well, I mean, I think that was a good. I think that’s a good stopping point for that discussion. I feel like.
395 01:08:05.610 ⇒ 01:08:14.539 Hannah Wang: yeah, I mean, kind of are other. What? What are like? How do we summarize some of the takeaways for what what we need to kind of do coming out of this section.
396 01:08:14.930 ⇒ 01:08:19.130 Hannah Wang: I think a good action item rather than a takeaway would be
397 01:08:19.910 ⇒ 01:08:26.519 Hannah Wang: having talking points and questions like a template for a 1-on-one workshop.
398 01:08:26.729 ⇒ 01:08:32.760 Hannah Wang: Of what type of questions can you ask? What kind of questions and increase trust?
399 01:08:33.040 ⇒ 01:08:39.230 Hannah Wang: And what type of questions? Lets you know what motivates this person and kind of helps
400 01:08:39.580 ⇒ 01:08:43.859 Hannah Wang: uncover their motivations if they don’t know yet.
401 01:08:44.000 ⇒ 01:08:57.440 Hannah Wang: So that would be a good document to create and then trying to schedule that individually, and logging that per person would be helpful. And then it’ll come together to see. Okay, does this help?
402 01:08:57.689 ⇒ 01:09:03.590 Hannah Wang: Yeah. I mean, that sounds good. I think we’re no, we’re no rush to put out like a company wide like
403 01:09:03.729 ⇒ 01:09:17.620 Hannah Wang: these are all the things we’re gonna promise or whatever I think the most important thing is to make sure we’re prepared to have these conversations with you all and the rest of the team the next couple of weeks. But yeah, I think it’s definitely an important
404 01:09:17.910 ⇒ 01:09:18.630 Hannah Wang: like
405 01:09:18.700 ⇒ 01:09:48.109 Hannah Wang: practice that we need to have regularly. So I’m excited to to really how many certifications I won’t have a backlog of ones I want to get like so many that I want to try to go for, too. But it’s also takes time. But it’s like for me. I never had a company. I want to sponsor that. So I’m like, oh, now I have a company that could sponsor that we can go get that. So I know that’s interest. Like, I’ve spoken to a bunch of people on the data team that have interest in that same with the AI side.
406 01:09:48.140 ⇒ 01:09:55.020 Hannah Wang: There’s there’s certifications and trainings and things like that across every team. Yeah, so
407 01:09:55.610 ⇒ 01:10:12.959 Hannah Wang: certainly. Okay, so I think I think, having basically one, I want everybody to sort of have a 1 on one conversation like that with maybe either of us sometime in the next month, maybe, and we’ll just make sure that happens. From that point I think we can start to
408 01:10:13.350 ⇒ 01:10:21.030 Hannah Wang: see how everybody fits like, what motivations they have, what their goals are. We can maybe meet, and then
409 01:10:21.170 ⇒ 01:10:24.594 Hannah Wang: see how that ladders into what we’re trying to accomplish this year.
410 01:10:26.560 ⇒ 01:10:49.419 Hannah Wang: and then I think we, I think we basically can go from there, whether it is certifications, whether it’s more leadership, whether it’s stretching to different things technologies, we’ll we’ll just basically align that. The other thing is, I consider those all like working docs, meaning like we have a cadence of meeting with folks. So every time we meet we can sort of say like they said this last time do we act on it? How are we progressing?
411 01:10:50.206 ⇒ 01:11:00.079 Hannah Wang: So I think that would work. And then the last piece. And again I know I glaze over this a little bit, but I’m going to do more to give us access to external folks that can be like coaches.
412 01:11:01.560 ⇒ 01:11:04.360 Hannah Wang: I think we have peers. We have us.
413 01:11:04.510 ⇒ 01:11:07.859 Hannah Wang: but there may be someone that’s like 3 or 4 steps ahead.
414 01:11:09.190 ⇒ 01:11:31.230 Hannah Wang: That like, I think, could be a good resource for like an hour a month to just pick their brain. This is something that you would probably have to facilitate. Where, like you, DM, someone you’re like, Hey, I’m this like, can I get some advice on this? That’s what I used to do. Like? I’m down to facilitate that like I we have friends that do everything everywhere that we can just make available, they would totally be down to do that.
415 01:11:32.900 ⇒ 01:11:57.289 Hannah Wang: So I think that’s also what I think a lot about. So yeah. And I know in slack, there’s random. There’s like random friends here and there like in channels. So I’ll make a we’ll make a list of like like, who’s available, what they do, what you could go ask them about. And like, these are people that just want us to succeed. So yeah.
416 01:11:57.592 ⇒ 01:12:08.479 Annie Yu: And one note on that. I think it would also be a good idea if you can give people a heads up before having that conversation, so people can really have time to think through it.
417 01:12:08.480 ⇒ 01:12:09.480 Hannah Wang: Yeah, yeah.
418 01:12:10.720 ⇒ 01:12:12.130 Hannah Wang: Yeah. Good question.
419 01:12:12.800 ⇒ 01:12:14.689 Hannah Wang: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.
420 01:12:17.340 ⇒ 01:12:23.779 Hannah Wang: I literally had this conversation with my dad the other day. I was like, dude. What do you cause? He’s like 55, or older.
421 01:12:24.120 ⇒ 01:12:33.259 Hannah Wang: and he’s added, he’s out into it working on like, what do you want to do? He’s like, I just like he’s working like 12 h days, like a pretty senior. Pm, there, I’m like.
422 01:12:33.370 ⇒ 01:12:57.979 Hannah Wang: what do you want in your like careers? You can’t be working like 12 h, like, Okay, is it money? Is it? Then, rules like, I want to work in payments, or I’m like, we broke it down. But I was like, that’s what we should be doing with folks is like, Okay, well, ultimately, like you don’t. You’re not able to. You’re not able to articulate where you want to go. You’ll never get there, you know, so I think it’s helpful, for we can facilitate
423 01:12:58.440 ⇒ 01:13:04.130 Hannah Wang: people’s 1st ability to set goals and achieve them. And then we sort of celebrate them. I think it’d be really, really good. Yeah.
424 01:13:05.980 ⇒ 01:13:07.119 Hannah Wang: cool. Okay.
425 01:13:07.890 ⇒ 01:13:12.609 Hannah Wang: Alright. Good timing. We got one more hour
426 01:13:13.060 ⇒ 01:13:19.000 Hannah Wang: and I don’t know. Do we need a do we need a short like bathroom, break, water, break, or something?
427 01:13:19.150 ⇒ 01:13:20.376 Hannah Wang: Alright? That’s
428 01:13:21.230 ⇒ 01:13:27.190 Hannah Wang: 1, 2 min, 3 min break. So yeah, we’ll we’ll Brb in a few minutes.
429 01:13:28.100 ⇒ 01:13:28.840 Aakash Tandel: Sounds good.
430 01:13:38.920 ⇒ 01:13:40.440 Hannah Wang: Oh, I should have muted.
431 01:18:36.920 ⇒ 01:18:43.700 Hannah Wang: Okay, we’re back. And I’ve got one more topic on the agenda. So
432 01:18:44.520 ⇒ 01:18:52.919 Hannah Wang: well, this really even need to be done in a group person. We can decide what we want. So I was like, it was, gonna be like event planning whatever. But
433 01:18:53.770 ⇒ 01:19:02.619 Hannah Wang: I just wanted to fit in like a short segment on like remote.
434 01:19:02.720 ⇒ 01:19:05.339 Hannah Wang: yeah, no. Let’s talk about that.
435 01:19:05.830 ⇒ 01:19:17.180 Hannah Wang: Yeah. Maybe we’ll do. We’ll do that one for a short like we’ll do. We’ll do 2 shorter segments. So we could do that in like 25 min something. And then we’ll do one more 25 min. Yeah.
436 01:19:18.700 ⇒ 01:19:26.000 Hannah Wang: okay, cool. So I guess we’re going to talk about remote
437 01:19:26.150 ⇒ 01:19:31.069 Hannah Wang: like, how do we basically run a good remote organization, can I?
438 01:19:31.350 ⇒ 01:19:39.319 Hannah Wang: Maybe even starting about? I guess we’ll we’ll we’ll start from.
439 01:19:42.690 ⇒ 01:19:46.660 Hannah Wang: Yeah. Well, well, yeah, what do you think has has been going well in your remote
440 01:19:47.860 ⇒ 01:20:02.810 Hannah Wang: like, what do you enjoy about remote work. That’s been going well, hopefully, you can make it more contextually relevant to kind of your experience at Brainforge and then also like, what do you like? What’s what’s been challenging about the the remote
441 01:20:02.950 ⇒ 01:20:20.670 Hannah Wang: work specific to to brain force like, yeah. So we will just start there and then I’ll ask a couple other questions. I hate commuting meetings.
442 01:20:20.770 ⇒ 01:20:29.429 Hannah Wang: And so 2 things, one I don’t have to commute, and 2, because my teams are remote, and they’re in a different time zone.
443 01:20:29.670 ⇒ 01:20:40.930 Hannah Wang: I get work in non, like active hours. So I work. I start work really, really early. But then I get a reasonable amount of time. We’re still
444 01:20:40.930 ⇒ 01:21:08.020 Hannah Wang: light outside that I can go outside, and for my 8 h of work, while 3 or 4, and like between 3 or 4 to 8 is still a reasonable hour to silver line and be outside and have some sunlight. Yeah. And so that’s a great benefit for me, and also not having to be stuck in standstill. Traffic is really really good for my mental health. Yeah, and for time and energy, because that really trains you.
445 01:21:08.210 ⇒ 01:21:19.429 Hannah Wang: So that’s what I like about remote work. What was the other question? Or just like, yeah, I mean, yeah, good and bad. Yeah, specific to right, you know. Remote work here. Yeah. So
446 01:21:20.490 ⇒ 01:21:21.590 Hannah Wang: I didn’t.
447 01:21:21.710 ⇒ 01:21:27.359 Hannah Wang: So we never had in person. So there was another realization of what we’re missing out.
448 01:21:27.530 ⇒ 01:21:30.689 Hannah Wang: Right? So once I had this, I was like, oh.
449 01:21:30.920 ⇒ 01:21:40.989 Hannah Wang: how bouncing ideas in person is so much easier, you know, if you’re talking over someone versus Zoom is like, Oh, wait! You go first, st and then you forget about
450 01:21:41.180 ⇒ 01:21:42.859 Hannah Wang: so. And I’ve
451 01:21:43.100 ⇒ 01:21:50.540 Hannah Wang: I talk like back and forth. So I’m like that. That. Yeah. So being in person yesterday and today it was really fun. Yeah.
452 01:21:55.120 ⇒ 01:21:59.800 Hannah Wang: okay, maybe we’ll just go around and have everybody share which of them and I will share last.
453 01:22:02.740 ⇒ 01:22:11.033 Hannah Wang: Oh, you don’t have to go next. You’re eating, you can. Well, we’ll just Akash. Akash went off mute, so he’s good.
454 01:22:11.410 ⇒ 01:22:22.710 Aakash Tandel: I can give a quick the I think the hardest thing right now is the time zone difference? Because I think, like Demo Lade and Kayo start their days like. I guess they end their days with us. So.
455 01:22:22.710 ⇒ 01:22:23.160 Hannah Wang: Right.
456 01:22:23.160 ⇒ 01:22:28.870 Aakash Tandel: I feel like that’s just always like Oh, dang! I wish I could have like instead of had you work on that thing like
457 01:22:28.960 ⇒ 01:22:54.730 Aakash Tandel: the client asked for this thing differently now. So like, that’s obviously the, I think, the hardest part. And I also know, like we have folks on the other side of time zones for like obviously pacific standard time, and then also all the way in the Philippines. So the time zones is easily the hardest thing, I think and the thing I think, that helped the most. I’ve never worked at a fully remote company. Every company I’ve had is like had both remote and
458 01:22:55.096 ⇒ 01:23:10.499 Aakash Tandel: like offices. But the the thing I noticed, especially during the pandemic, and coming out of that was some sort of like quarterly quarterly is probably too quickly like every 6 months meet up like some sort of like, hey
459 01:23:10.829 ⇒ 01:23:24.279 Aakash Tandel: in like a centralized city. That’s easy to get to, or used to fly to, or whatever that’s been good, because then it kind of pulls people out of like the oh, these is the thing, the people that I see on screens all day long, and then humanity.
460 01:23:25.980 ⇒ 01:23:26.660 Hannah Wang: Okay.
461 01:23:30.253 ⇒ 01:23:31.499 Annie Yu: I think.
462 01:23:31.550 ⇒ 01:23:38.540 Annie Yu: currently like so far, I really, I really like, even though we are in different time zone. I really like how
463 01:23:38.550 ⇒ 01:24:06.360 Annie Yu: I I know I typically don’t have meetings in the afternoon, so I like to know that I will have time to power through things there. And I think that’s something. I I think Uta mentioned this when we were talking about like when I 1st joined, but I think letting people know that our expected kind of meeting times fall under this timeframe is really helpful. And I think I also like how we don’t have those like
464 01:24:07.040 ⇒ 01:24:18.527 Annie Yu: unproductive or dreadful, like long meetings. I think that’s something. We do a pretty good job, but people are still happy to hop on like a huddle when needed.
465 01:24:19.150 ⇒ 01:24:21.309 Annie Yu: And another thing is that
466 01:24:21.760 ⇒ 01:24:40.050 Annie Yu: I’m gonna I’m gonna take Casey, for example. He’s like, extremely responsible. So I feel like whenever I send him a chat he would still respond me as soon as possible, even outside of his like normal work hours. So I think, having, like the knowledge of
467 01:24:40.150 ⇒ 01:25:00.919 Annie Yu: people’s working, our will also like make sense to me, if cause I know, like always work from, I think, 9 to 11 et so if this is this thing is like not in a huge rush. I can just slack him tomorrow morning. Or I would know. Okay, I have to get back to him by this time.
468 01:25:02.270 ⇒ 01:25:05.839 Annie Yu: So yeah, that’s just some some notes from me.
469 01:25:06.050 ⇒ 01:25:12.548 Hannah Wang: Yeah, there’s a plug over there, I think.
470 01:25:15.770 ⇒ 01:25:21.289 Hannah Wang: yeah, I kind of like working. Or cause I think the Pacific people are on the tail end of the whole
471 01:25:21.865 ⇒ 01:25:41.130 Hannah Wang: spectrum of time. So I personally well, it’s good and bad. I like to have like my mornings, but then sometimes I just have to hop on. I do like having more of like that afternoon evening to go outside and get some vitamin d. So that’s nice. I guess that’s more specific to pacific time. But yeah, I like having meetings
472 01:25:41.320 ⇒ 01:25:49.245 Hannah Wang: in a cluster and then having the rest of the time to be just like heads down, at least, for like engineers or designers or analysts.
473 01:25:49.920 ⇒ 01:25:51.010 Hannah Wang: and
474 01:25:52.780 ⇒ 01:26:01.859 Hannah Wang: yeah. But the challenging part, I think particularly for design is cause Anna and I co-design kind of. So it’s not like one of us takes
475 01:26:02.010 ⇒ 01:26:21.179 Hannah Wang: a a project completely by ourselves, like, there needs to be feedback and iteration and stuff. So it’s nice that yeah, I can work during the daytime, and then she works during my nighttime, so there’s no like overlap. And we’re not like Pixel pushing over each other. But there, the challenging part of that is sometimes like there’s a lot of conversation back and forth during
476 01:26:21.450 ⇒ 01:26:37.200 Hannah Wang: my working hours that Ann is not online because she’s sleeping, and then it’s hard for me to like. Translate all of that over to her, or I always have to constantly tag her in meetings, or like summarize things, or just remembered like, Oh, remember this. Remember that. And just like.
477 01:26:37.320 ⇒ 01:26:54.450 Hannah Wang: yeah, relaying that to the people who work. Maybe more internationally, I think that’s like challenging. Especially, yeah, in a Co working type of environment. So there’s like pros and cons to that as well. Also, the challenging. Yeah, I think
478 01:26:54.670 ⇒ 01:27:02.420 Hannah Wang: remote is challenging because it dehumanizes everyone. Everyone’s just a bust. So yeah, seeing everyone in person. I was like, Wow.
479 01:27:02.850 ⇒ 01:27:15.899 Hannah Wang: this is weird. And but it’s it’s a good type of weird, just like seeing people outside of the context of works. I kinda like the idea of having like an off site type of thing in a centralized location. Maybe for us
480 01:27:16.360 ⇒ 01:27:25.359 Hannah Wang: every quarter is a bit ambitious because we have a lot of international people. But somehow just making that happen. I think it would help boost like
481 01:27:26.180 ⇒ 01:27:30.570 Hannah Wang: team morale, cause I think that’s ultimately kind of what drives like
482 01:27:30.860 ⇒ 01:27:38.379 Hannah Wang: productivity and teamwork. Because if you’re all just like siloed in your own homes, it’s hard to want to work with people.
483 01:27:38.680 ⇒ 01:27:51.869 Hannah Wang: although I feel like we do a very good job of that already. But I feel like it could be even more amplified if we all like got together. And yeah, like, we don’t talk over each other, and I think it’s a lot more productive versus.
484 01:27:52.260 ⇒ 01:28:05.151 Hannah Wang: You have to like, mute yourself. And then sometimes you’re unmute, not mute, not unmuted. And then you’re talking. And someone’s like you’re muted. And then you’re like, unmute yourself and all the woes of Zoom calls.
485 01:28:06.070 ⇒ 01:28:07.000 Hannah Wang: So
486 01:28:07.190 ⇒ 01:28:23.413 Hannah Wang: yeah, so yeah, time zone, I think, is the most challenging part. And to reflect on, I remember what I’m telling you, I said, like the key to solving problems, the relationship with your engineers as an advisor. Pm, so for me,
487 01:28:24.030 ⇒ 01:28:46.019 Hannah Wang: to be able to have a relationship with Annie just outside of regular work. Discussion was really helpful trying to have that more with Casey and Miguel, but because it’s international, because there’s a cultural difference and that they’re more shy. So achieving that remotely. It’s a lot harder than in person, because there’s your physical presence.
488 01:28:46.730 ⇒ 01:28:49.139 Hannah Wang: Just says a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
489 01:28:50.530 ⇒ 01:28:55.157 Hannah Wang: Okay. Well, yeah. I mean, I thank you for all the kind of things that you mentioned.
490 01:28:55.640 ⇒ 01:29:24.510 Hannah Wang: yeah, I mean, we’ll we’ll take the good and we appreciate it for that. I think definitely. I think we’ve done a lot to just kind of be meeting light. We keep adjusting it. Nothing’s fixed. So we any feedback that we have, we’re always trying to. That’s just how meetings go like they kind of creep back in and like Delete and I. You can see if I’m in meetings. The time starts to go down because I and also I will say a lot of the the legacy time for our meetings are just because that’s going to work for us. Yeah.
491 01:29:24.590 ⇒ 01:29:39.849 Hannah Wang: So I I explained that teams can have autonomy. You guys, people folks can meet whenever they need sort of the only requirement that I feel like we put on the Pm. That there just needs to be a planning and like a retro.
492 01:29:40.130 ⇒ 01:29:47.819 Hannah Wang: and the linear needs to be set up, I don’t. If if we can. If we can get it all done in sync, go ahead like. So if there’s no like
493 01:29:47.970 ⇒ 01:29:58.249 Hannah Wang: dumb company requirement that, like it has to be stand ups. Yeah. But I it’s actually up to the team to say, like, Hey, these have been unproductive like, can we? Can we ditch them? Or can we like move them?
494 01:29:58.941 ⇒ 01:30:01.989 Hannah Wang: So I think that’s totally one thing. Yeah.
495 01:30:02.120 ⇒ 01:30:08.810 Hannah Wang: I also like, think, like work. Life balance is a good point, like, I don’t think I’m a good example of that.
496 01:30:08.920 ⇒ 01:30:11.170 Hannah Wang: So, and but it’s tough because
497 01:30:12.170 ⇒ 01:30:23.960 Hannah Wang: it’s like you always like Comp, a common, you know. Piece of advice is like come in earlier than your boss and leave later. But like I don’t know, I don’t want people to be thinking of things like that. So
498 01:30:24.373 ⇒ 01:30:28.589 Hannah Wang: I don’t know. I don’t know what, whether we have to just reinforce that more, but
499 01:30:28.710 ⇒ 01:30:44.159 Hannah Wang: there are some people that again are always in the clock, but I even tell them I’m like you will. It’ll this will burn. We love your job. It will burn you out because I have a lot of mechanisms that I’ve developed over the years of like burning out every like year to like prevent that.
500 01:30:44.430 ⇒ 01:30:55.230 Hannah Wang: But like, I don’t want people in our company to burn out and then learn those things the hard way. And it could happen in a company like this, where you feel you’re needed everywhere, and there’s no end.
501 01:30:56.330 ⇒ 01:31:00.589 Hannah Wang: you know, and it it will hurt. It really hurts. It’s like it’s tough. So
502 01:31:00.890 ⇒ 01:31:13.779 Hannah Wang: I don’t know. Think about. Or maybe we sort of monitor like if we think some people, and this if those you may not, you may not see that as a bad thing, but I know how it creeps up, and it affects your personal life, and then it’s tough. So
503 01:31:14.870 ⇒ 01:31:19.559 Hannah Wang: I think the only other thing you know I mentioned is one I think we’ve always been
504 01:31:19.770 ⇒ 01:31:24.439 Hannah Wang: tried to be a writing, heavy culture. I certainly love.
505 01:31:24.560 ⇒ 01:31:38.119 Hannah Wang: I try to write as much as I can, and I do really enjoy it. I think, leaning more onto. That is something that I think we can benefit from. I think a lot of our team also like would would really enjoy that.
506 01:31:38.320 ⇒ 01:31:41.200 Hannah Wang: So spending more time writing or using
507 01:31:41.740 ⇒ 01:31:44.910 Hannah Wang: speech to text or or whatever
508 01:31:45.730 ⇒ 01:31:50.060 Hannah Wang: could be really great. So having more tools around writing and documentation.
509 01:31:50.250 ⇒ 01:31:56.959 Hannah Wang: the other thing last piece I’ll mention is like, maybe we should do like virtual coffees or something, and like I can have
510 01:31:57.080 ⇒ 01:32:18.279 Hannah Wang: Marianne arrange them between everybody, so that gives people like a facilitated like 30 min like you could. You can talk about work if you want to, but you don’t have to. And then every week you sort of meet someone new in the company, and then you can sort of take those over because I end up talking to everybody one way or another. And then, just naturally, because I
511 01:32:18.570 ⇒ 01:32:40.850 Hannah Wang: I don’t like, we’ll totally get to the work stuff. But I always. I just have to ask how people’s lives are going. And so I force it like I just have. I spend the 1st 5, 10 min. It’s a coffee chat, anyways, because I’m like we’ll get to. We’ll get to whatever you need to. But I want to facilitate that with everybody. So we give more opportunity for like spontaneous stuff, that what if we’re all here in the room.
512 01:32:41.340 ⇒ 01:32:50.130 Hannah Wang: you know. Spontaneous stuff will happen, maybe. How do we facilitate that remotely? So maybe it is like everybody is in a you have one copy chat
513 01:32:50.240 ⇒ 01:32:51.210 Hannah Wang: a week.
514 01:32:51.420 ⇒ 01:32:56.229 Hannah Wang: or like someone new. You’re paired with someone new. We sort of do that pairing for a few months.
515 01:32:59.160 ⇒ 01:33:12.020 Hannah Wang: I know. Yeah, I I just know that I just know for sure that some people who hold me are meeting with other people in a work context and in a work meeting where there’s an agenda to get to. You. Come to a meeting like thinking about that right?
516 01:33:12.430 ⇒ 01:33:13.940 Hannah Wang: I don’t know something like that.
517 01:33:17.460 ⇒ 01:33:23.199 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I mean, I think, regarding like the challenges. And like, I mean, people share the kind of
518 01:33:23.950 ⇒ 01:33:50.980 Hannah Wang: the benefit by kind of missing out on not being in person. Yeah, I mean, realistically like, I don’t know how feasible it is to bring the whole team together. I think we’re just not in a place to do that yet, but at least, you know, you’ll have the privilege of being in the United States of America. Pronounce. We can definitely we can do this and this part of like one of you know this, probably the next session on, like just kind of penciling in some stuff to look forward to like. We want to be more intentional about
519 01:33:51.310 ⇒ 01:34:19.339 Hannah Wang: event planning and kind of making sure that, you know we’re we’re able to get both of you in on the on the next one that we do. But yeah, no, I think having, even if it’s just a few days like of time in person, is is totally worth it. So I think at least for the Us. Team, we can definitely aim to do that like more regularly. And I mean, even before I merged with brain force like I was doing this quarterly, I would come back to La and do it with my team, whatever. So
520 01:34:19.930 ⇒ 01:34:21.350 Hannah Wang: I’ve always
521 01:34:21.520 ⇒ 01:34:40.710 Hannah Wang: found that to be the highlight great way to recap the quarter and to kick off the next one gives me a lot of energy. So. And I’m an introvert. So you know, just being able to still benefit from that like amount of a short amount of time with people is is wonderful. You can’t replace it. So definitely noted.
522 01:34:41.173 ⇒ 01:34:42.790 Hannah Wang: Yeah. I mean, I think
523 01:34:43.000 ⇒ 01:34:45.319 Hannah Wang: other things that were mentioned of.
524 01:34:45.994 ⇒ 01:35:12.419 Hannah Wang: Yeah, like, I think the challenge of working across so many time zones. So things that we do kind of need it. Yeah, keep dialing in on, like, I mean, this is my 1st week like working this past quarter like Pacific time. Man. It was rough. I don’t know how you Pacific people do it so definitely, being on the Eastern Eastern time is much better for me personally. But yeah, I recognize that it’s
525 01:35:13.060 ⇒ 01:35:33.690 Hannah Wang: yeah kind of take the liberty that you need to to kind of block off the the amount of time. I think realistically, because of all the differences we do need to have, like a 3 to 4 h, like chunk of overlap. And because, like who Tom’s in Central, and I’m in Eastern like, it’s gonna buy a sport towards like being in the morning there, because
526 01:35:34.387 ⇒ 01:35:53.160 Hannah Wang: that’s just how it is. So I think that’s that’s like the only restriction. But out outside of that, like 3, 3 h, 3 to 4 h window like, I think it’s kind of up to you. You can kind of construct the the schedule that you want, and we wanna we want that to. I mean, I think all the international
527 01:35:53.280 ⇒ 01:35:57.760 Hannah Wang: folks are a lot more, but maybe a lot a lot more
528 01:35:58.780 ⇒ 01:36:10.320 Hannah Wang: constrained by that already. So it’s it’s been. The lines have been drawn very clear for them. So but definitely want, you know, the the Us. Based teams to really feel like they can. They can also set it for themselves.
529 01:36:10.810 ⇒ 01:36:11.520 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
530 01:36:11.540 ⇒ 01:36:32.140 Hannah Wang: Oh, another point. And since you mentioned Introvert, I’ve just realized this after a company happy hour, I was like, I think, sometimes just having an Async is nice because my energy, where else, if I’m forced to be in person all the time, I like to have good interactions and having that standard for myself. Just.
531 01:36:32.140 ⇒ 01:36:54.290 Hannah Wang: But people should have the liberty to say, Hey, what should we? Can we run the same, especially with the folks running meetings which is like mine most of my life. Until recently I have to be the one coming to meetings with, like Max, energy after being in like 8, like the 8th hour meeting. I still have to come with the same energy as I did the 1st one. It’s incredibly hard.
532 01:36:54.984 ⇒ 01:37:02.919 Hannah Wang: And so I think teams should feel at liberty. And again, we can have a poll. We have a policy document or something where, like you can propose, hey? Like.
533 01:37:03.770 ⇒ 01:37:09.590 Hannah Wang: maybe I it does. It is a task to go on to zoom to come on video. Say something like, maybe it’s like, Hey.
534 01:37:09.790 ⇒ 01:37:27.480 Hannah Wang: this, can we do this Async today. And people are okay with them to do that. Or it’s like cool instead of so in the meeting today, just drop your Updates in slack or make sure your tickets are up to date, and then 2 people can come and do what they would have done offline in the meeting, or we can use it just as like free time to co pair and stuff or
535 01:37:27.670 ⇒ 01:37:31.810 Hannah Wang: things like that. Like, Yeah, I’m I’m certainly like
536 01:37:32.380 ⇒ 01:37:40.939 Hannah Wang: very much observant of how much time everybody’s spending in meetings, and from the beginning, like, I don’t want to be in a company where it’s meeting heavy. It’s like
537 01:37:41.180 ⇒ 01:37:55.780 Hannah Wang: super tax on life and productivity is meetings that being said like we don’t, I don’t. I also feel like we fairly have pretty good meetings. I’ve been in some companies where it’s like been on average, the meeting is kind of horrible.
538 01:37:56.000 ⇒ 01:38:04.249 Hannah Wang: So, but this will become tougher as we grow, because the 1st instinct for remote companies is to get a meeting on the books to talk about it.
539 01:38:04.350 ⇒ 01:38:10.839 Hannah Wang: So partly it’ll be measuring. So we’ll we’ll we’ll load in the the Google Calendar
540 01:38:11.310 ⇒ 01:38:15.120 Hannah Wang: logs and and look at how many meetings we’re having as a company.
541 01:38:15.330 ⇒ 01:38:19.670 Hannah Wang: The other piece will just be. People have to feel a little bit of liberty to ask.
542 01:38:19.840 ⇒ 01:38:27.769 Hannah Wang: That can just be a slack message, right? And I do that often, because sometimes I can meet or I’ve been in 6 h of meetings.
543 01:38:27.930 ⇒ 01:38:39.050 Hannah Wang: I need to eat something I’m like, should I eat or go to another meeting? And I’m like, Can can we just do this over slack? And I would say, 80% time. Yes, people are like, sure I’m down totally down to do this over slack.
544 01:38:39.450 ⇒ 01:38:46.389 Hannah Wang: And you may not see other people’s perspectives on their schedules and things like that. So lean on that more. And then
545 01:38:46.690 ⇒ 01:38:47.560 Hannah Wang: I think.
546 01:38:47.940 ⇒ 01:39:09.359 Hannah Wang: Hannah, you mentioned that, like most of the time you spend with people is like in a meeting, and you never get like this casual chit chat. So we should totally facilitate. I mean, like that’s why I hope the Friday meetings are talking a lot of those, and I know it’s a big. It’s like a big crew. So a lot of people may not feel comfortable talking when there’s like 100
547 01:39:09.640 ⇒ 01:39:16.220 Hannah Wang: like faces up so facilitating, either like small talk, like one on one coffee chats or
548 01:39:16.410 ⇒ 01:39:20.540 Hannah Wang: small group coffee chats based on like interest or something.
549 01:39:20.820 ⇒ 01:39:48.359 Hannah Wang: That sort of stuff is great, like. I met some of my best friends from work, you know, in New York, and like a lot of it was from stuff like that where we went to dinners, or we spent some time going to concerts. And with that, so we had mutual interest like, how do we facilitate that? You know? I remember we tried it once before the demo started, and then Nico, like, Oh, yeah, it’s the 1st time talking to Jana. 1st name. Yeah, I was like.
550 01:39:48.480 ⇒ 01:40:05.899 Hannah Wang: cool. I don’t. I never talked to you but cool. Nice to meet you. Yeah, okay, maybe I’ll put a spreadsheet. We’ll do a matching. We’ll just try to put up schedules for people to meet once a week with someone new.
551 01:40:06.610 ⇒ 01:40:22.208 Hannah Wang: It’s awkward saying, I mean, whatever. Hopefully, you meet someone new. Yeah. Okay, cool, alright, great. I want to go 1, 1 more layer, deeper into this. So I think we kind of talk generally about remote culture, I think
552 01:40:22.710 ⇒ 01:40:30.239 Hannah Wang: be great to anything specific from work. Streams that you feel like are challenging in remote
553 01:40:30.360 ⇒ 01:40:33.119 Hannah Wang: setting, like at least the way that we’ve been running it.
554 01:40:33.636 ⇒ 01:40:41.289 Hannah Wang: I think like I’ll just kind of anchor back to something I’ve said before that maybe ties into like another way, I can support one of the challenges someone brought up.
555 01:40:41.859 ⇒ 01:41:05.570 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think, like, obviously, if we’re gonna rely on both meetings, it’s all it’s either meetings or messages like those are the only ways that we can really do conversations right? And so meetings. Obviously, we could talk about inefficient. They’re taxing on on all that. And so writing a really good message and making sure that handoffs on on specific tasks. There, I I wanna I want to be more.
556 01:41:06.400 ⇒ 01:41:12.489 Hannah Wang: yeah, I I want, I want to share more kind of best practices and to give more coaching on that front.
557 01:41:13.460 ⇒ 01:41:29.409 Hannah Wang: yeah. So I think that’s that’s something I’m passionate about, because I do think writing a good message goes a long way. But yeah, I guess. Are there any like specific work streams that ever anyone here has faced. Where you feel like, yeah, the way that we do have been doing it remotely has just been pretty tough.
558 01:41:29.804 ⇒ 01:41:32.160 Hannah Wang: And like, we need to like, really like.
559 01:41:32.260 ⇒ 01:41:34.579 Hannah Wang: focus on on fixing something there.
560 01:41:45.890 ⇒ 01:41:52.259 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I don’t know if there’s been anything particularly that’s been hard. I mean for me. I’m just tired. So it’s hard to do like
561 01:41:52.440 ⇒ 01:41:56.860 Hannah Wang: longer sessions. Sometimes a lot of context of shame.
562 01:41:57.270 ⇒ 01:42:07.340 Hannah Wang: So for me, buying like 3, 4 h of really have down time can move the needle on our company. So I recommend everybody. Try to do do something like that where you block off time.
563 01:42:08.240 ⇒ 01:42:10.899 Hannah Wang: you know, just a half 3, 4 h really like.
564 01:42:11.030 ⇒ 01:42:17.580 Hannah Wang: maybe you turn on notifications on slack, or something like that could be really, really tremendous.
565 01:42:17.760 ⇒ 01:42:23.379 Hannah Wang: You’ll find that like, unfortunately, there’s not a better tool that that exists than slack.
566 01:42:24.280 ⇒ 01:42:30.089 Hannah Wang: but for all its benefits, like the Downside is, there’s no understanding of prioritization commonly.
567 01:42:30.400 ⇒ 01:42:44.270 Hannah Wang: or like no understanding of a queue or what to go. You just see the red dots, or whatever, especially if you happen to be in every like I’m in every channel. So it’s like, it’s like that. It’s like crazy. So I’m I’m new. Very frequently.
568 01:42:44.590 ⇒ 01:42:50.450 Hannah Wang: I like have my notifications off often. I don’t have any slack notification on my phone.
569 01:42:51.030 ⇒ 01:42:59.520 Hannah Wang: I don’t have it come off my computer. Those are things that maybe we can have recommendations 4, because
570 01:43:00.050 ⇒ 01:43:08.249 Hannah Wang: those are the that’s the product forcing its will on you. Not like you working with the product.
571 01:43:08.360 ⇒ 01:43:13.750 Hannah Wang: So I have recommendations after being well. I’ve been working on within slack for like 7 years. So
572 01:43:14.000 ⇒ 01:43:15.660 Hannah Wang: I can share what?
573 01:43:15.880 ⇒ 01:43:38.810 Hannah Wang: What has worked for me. And I’m I’m fairly observant about that, and I still happen to message, everybody, you know, so so it could be a part of onboarding, because I know, as a part of onboarding we had to configure our snack notifications as such, but it was just mostly of like, oh, where does it notify me? How does it work without more detailed guidance would be great.
574 01:43:38.860 ⇒ 01:44:06.229 Hannah Wang: and I think the challenge for me on my work stream. Is that because I’m in different teams and say I’m doing a task, and I go into slack to check a requirement. Or I go into email to check a requirement. And then I see something else. I guess sidetracked, because that’s something is important. And then and then I do half of that and go back to the original one. I do some of it. And I after point where did the time go? Because I track my timers
575 01:44:06.360 ⇒ 01:44:14.659 Hannah Wang: granularly. I was like, what happened in the last 40 min. I was like, what did I do? Yeah, I was like, Oh, huh? Why did it take so long?
576 01:44:15.030 ⇒ 01:44:17.689 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I think kind of going off of that.
577 01:44:18.090 ⇒ 01:44:39.799 Hannah Wang: like, I’m not in that many channels, but even the channels I’m in sometimes there’s like so many messages. But yeah, it’s like I need to scroll up to find the one that’s relevant to what I’m working on right now, but then I get distracted by, like the rest of the messages that are more recent, so I don’t know if there’s a way I don’t know like a queue system or something
578 01:44:40.300 ⇒ 01:44:59.569 Hannah Wang: I don’t know something in linear of. If you link the slack message in linear. Only look at that thread of having a cleaner practice of everything should just be in one thread instead of comments outside of that thread. So you can just click on the thread link, not look at anything else.
579 01:45:00.260 ⇒ 01:45:18.039 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I so I appreciate it when things are in threads rather than like continuing the conversation as a new message like each time I’m pretty like I try to do that like I just reply in the thread instead of sending a new message. Unless it’s a totally new topic. Then I’ll send a new message. But
580 01:45:18.410 ⇒ 01:45:27.499 Hannah Wang: yeah, I don’t know. There’s like, not really much you can do about that, because you do need to communicate. So like you do have to send messages, so I don’t know. It’s just maybe
581 01:45:27.820 ⇒ 01:45:38.419 Hannah Wang: just have to ignore everything that’s more recent and like scroll. But then you also can’t like unread channels. Can you cause some? Yeah or oh, you can, or like unread messages.
582 01:45:38.870 ⇒ 01:46:04.030 Hannah Wang: So like you go on my slack. I have like so many because I read them. And I’m like you have to unread it. Yet you can mark as unread, I think, on the computer. You can do like a safer later or do a to do list. I haven’t tried it out, so maybe we just need to do like once a quarter how to like, make slack work for you. Basically.
583 01:46:04.490 ⇒ 01:46:17.609 Hannah Wang: Yeah, this is just such a problem. Like, I, I’ve thought about every alternative to slack. And there’s not a great one. There’s this AI version of slack that’s trying. They’re trying to be good, but they don’t have slack connect. So I was like.
584 01:46:18.400 ⇒ 01:46:21.410 Hannah Wang: I tweeted the CEO being like I would love to try your product.
585 01:46:21.950 ⇒ 01:46:29.326 Hannah Wang: And I was like, Oh, well, you guys don’t have slack, and it’s coming. I’m like, Oh, that’s a deal breaker can’t do anything with that.
586 01:46:30.625 ⇒ 01:46:31.530 Hannah Wang: So
587 01:46:33.250 ⇒ 01:46:43.809 Hannah Wang: okay? Oh, I I’m a big proponent of looms. Yeah, like, I love looms. You can watch it on 2 X. Yeah, it’s like
588 01:46:43.810 ⇒ 01:47:06.110 Hannah Wang: it, you know. It’s it may take you 2 min to record, but you people can watch it on their own time. It gives you the nuance of, like your voice, your tone pointing, this stuff you communicating. I think it’s a great in between between meetings and messages. If there’s 1 thing I would suggest everyone here to do is just try to use loom heavily.
589 01:47:07.150 ⇒ 01:47:15.240 Hannah Wang: really is quite effective, and we pay for it and pay for AI stuff, too. So it’s it’s like, it’s good.
590 01:47:15.420 ⇒ 01:47:26.949 Hannah Wang: Okay? Sounds like we need to create like a communication guide kind of coming out of this for slack, I mean, don’t have to be, too. It’s just like here are the available options. It’s kind of like we need to kind of categorize it a bit clear for folks like
591 01:47:27.140 ⇒ 01:47:46.409 Hannah Wang: quick responses. Obviously over slack. Maybe there are some templates that we have for messages. How do we share updates? For things? When we’re we also have that for handoffs already. But yeah, I think it’s general, just like a remote Comms workshop. Maybe that’s kind of like the output of that. We can that we should probably run, run with the team this quarter.
592 01:47:48.050 ⇒ 01:48:12.059 Hannah Wang: okay, cool. I want to move on because I want to wrap up. Now we’re getting to the end. People’s people’s yawns, and like kind of like spacing out. I mean, I I’m I’m I’m spacing out. You’re spacing out. I’m locked in on a remote policy. I could talk about remote policy and slack etiquette. You see how we’re named. Our channels have great naming conventions and channels. That’s all, you know.
593 01:48:16.660 ⇒ 01:48:22.855 Hannah Wang: Okay, cool fun stuff. Yeah, I think just like a kind of event planning for the next quarter. I think
594 01:48:23.310 ⇒ 01:48:30.406 Hannah Wang: we’re not gonna like, pull out a calendar and do stuff right now. But I think just generally kind of the point. Here is,
595 01:48:31.430 ⇒ 01:48:33.660 Hannah Wang: yeah, I mean, I think
596 01:48:33.830 ⇒ 01:48:48.729 Hannah Wang: we’re the we should leverage. My my point of this topic is like we need to leverage the fact that we are in some of like we’re like, all in like the best cities in America, pretty much like to be able to go and connect with people. So
597 01:48:49.343 ⇒ 01:49:02.729 Hannah Wang: like one part of it is like, yeah, as you’re pursuing your own goals like trainings and there’s like, I don’t know if you if you all go to meet up groups and stuff. But like, yeah, I totally would encourage that. And yeah, I think
598 01:49:02.730 ⇒ 01:49:32.490 Hannah Wang: you know, Tim and I are going to a bunch of events every week now, pretty much. And it’s it’s been a great way to meet people. It’s not just for like sales, but also just like, yeah, we connect with cool vendors and whatnot. And we we have networks in your various cities, too. And so I mean, I think I shouted out Annie, like a couple of days ago, or something where I was like. Do, Annie, I have a couple of people in Portland I totally want you to meet like I mean, obviously, I’m not forcing you to meet them. Maybe you’ll hate them. Who knows? But I think they’re really great, and I would love for you to to meet them. And
599 01:49:32.985 ⇒ 01:49:43.059 Hannah Wang: yeah, like that, anyway. So stuff like that where I want to encourage that. And I don’t really know, like, I don’t want to make it mandatory, but I also like
600 01:49:43.360 ⇒ 01:50:05.189 Hannah Wang: I think it’s important for us to like as a as part of Rainforge, as an extension to like, go into our local communities. And in the data and AI spaces like, or I mean, regardless of what role you’re in like, there’s probably like a group there, that you can really participate in, like, I think.
601 01:50:05.610 ⇒ 01:50:14.149 Hannah Wang: a especially being a small company. We don’t have 600 people in our company for you to go and meet and like all these people to lean on. And so, yeah, I think really
602 01:50:14.410 ⇒ 01:50:29.679 Hannah Wang: what I I think we we should all leverage like going going to these types of events. And I think, as we’re like ramping up our event strategy. And obviously, we host events, we host webinar stuff and stuff. Now, but being able to like
603 01:50:30.020 ⇒ 01:50:37.240 Hannah Wang: help, you all talk about like what you do here like kind of and bring and and yeah, just like kind of
604 01:50:37.600 ⇒ 01:51:01.791 Hannah Wang: no, no. Feel comfortable going to these events and and not dreading it because of of whatever I got. I really don’t believe it’s just a personality type thing. I think sometimes people just feel like they don’t have much to contribute, or they don’t really know if they’re gonna if it’s valuable meeting, like whoever they’re, they’re who’s at at the event and whatnot. And I think that’s it’s just, you know, that’s my just my personal bent that, like
605 01:51:02.200 ⇒ 01:51:08.402 Hannah Wang: services, businesses like need in person, events to like really like thrive. And
606 01:51:09.000 ⇒ 01:51:16.530 Hannah Wang: yeah, so I think, rather than us, flying ourselves to all of your cities like, you know as much as like you’re willing to go. And, like.
607 01:51:17.290 ⇒ 01:51:26.280 Hannah Wang: yeah, kind of represent, bring forward. Represent yourself at at these at these events. I think that’s that’s I think that would be super cool. I would love to see that happen.
608 01:51:26.737 ⇒ 01:51:41.400 Hannah Wang: So that’s 1 part of it. And then, obviously, there’s like internal events that we I think we want to like schedule in. So to me, the the top things are for the Us. Team, making sure that we have, like a quarter like our next quarter, kind of like meet up kind of penciled in
609 01:51:42.348 ⇒ 01:51:45.930 Hannah Wang: and then, obviously, like making sure that we have
610 01:51:46.040 ⇒ 01:52:08.449 Hannah Wang: like these, yeah, we we talked a lot about scheduling things various things these past couple of days that yeah, I don’t want it to just be like ideas and empty promises that we made from this from this offsite, but that we actually go and and and set the time out in the calendar. I’m totally guilty of only really planning out like the next week, really, and
611 01:52:08.470 ⇒ 01:52:18.779 Hannah Wang: I wake up every day, and I’m just like, All right. Well, we’ll just kind of see what the what the day brings, and I may have to move things around, but I understand. That’s like, not really how you can.
612 01:52:19.092 ⇒ 01:52:37.750 Hannah Wang: Like people don’t. Most people don’t really live that way. So we definitely should like, kind of put put some of those things out so I’ll I’m happy to take that like on myself to make sure that gets done like I think that’s important to me that people have things to look forward to that are kind of outside of the the hum of the the day to day.
613 01:52:38.680 ⇒ 01:52:40.680 Hannah Wang: But yeah, any thoughts on, kind of like
614 01:52:40.990 ⇒ 01:53:06.209 Hannah Wang: either of those points, or kind of, are there? Yeah, your personal experiences with the events. And yeah, just like what what functions you think are actually worth scheduling like for for our team? Yeah, I just wanna kind of any any other thoughts that I didn’t kind of cover in that overview
615 01:53:06.210 ⇒ 01:53:14.590 Hannah Wang: like, I need more time to wrap my head around that. So let’s do the easy 1 first.st Yeah. So what type of events, do we want to schedule like quarterly
616 01:53:14.590 ⇒ 01:53:36.939 Hannah Wang: planning and retros? That’s 1. Yeah, that date is essentially set of every quarter for other events. Yeah, well, I mean. Honestly, we we have our weekly demos and things, and I think that’s still morphing like in its form. I think there were some chatter about. We want it to be more Demos. We want people to feel ready to come and talk about their work more. I do think that we like
617 01:53:37.520 ⇒ 01:53:40.539 Hannah Wang: Utam, and I should not be talking so much like.
618 01:53:41.460 ⇒ 01:54:09.500 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I mean, I don’t even think I talk very much. Tom talks a lot so like I think we should do Tom’s airtime down and have other people to talk more. I think that’s really what I want to see from the weekly Demos. Maybe on a monthly cadence like it’s like once a month like it’s what we we should do the check in and where it is mostly we talking about. I talking like we definitely should should be giving updates from kind of a different point. So I I think that’s something that we should be. We should adjust for
619 01:54:10.090 ⇒ 01:54:16.720 Hannah Wang: But yeah, I think so that there we have the weekly. We have the monthly. We have the Quarterly. So those are kind of the 3 things that we should cover
620 01:54:17.390 ⇒ 01:54:22.379 Hannah Wang: in person or online events, right? As long as it’s about the whole company.
621 01:54:22.810 ⇒ 01:54:31.280 Hannah Wang: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be the whole. Sometimes there’s like specific groups to maybe it’s like the Pm’s need to. I mean, you guys already do a Pm reviews or whatnot.
622 01:54:31.530 ⇒ 01:54:40.510 Hannah Wang: Well, yeah, just like, I I think anything that you think needs to be regularly scheduled in that isn’t like a spontaneous thing, that kind of firing. Yeah.
623 01:54:40.950 ⇒ 01:54:51.300 Hannah Wang: Oh, sorry. Yeah, not not just in person. Obviously, the in person thing will realistically only happen once a quarter. Yeah.
624 01:54:52.020 ⇒ 01:54:58.570 Hannah Wang: Quarterly. I think that my quarterly retros monthly retros help.
625 01:54:59.340 ⇒ 01:55:01.609 Hannah Wang: I mean, we have weekly retros.
626 01:55:02.370 ⇒ 01:55:11.469 Hannah Wang: This is kind of how I run my own personal like schedule, and like reflections, as well as like quarterly, monthly weekly
627 01:55:12.520 ⇒ 01:55:18.940 Hannah Wang: kind of do it daily, or just get to have notes every day, and then I pull it in at the end of each week.
628 01:55:19.350 ⇒ 01:55:22.599 Hannah Wang: And we I mean we have the client team meetings
629 01:55:22.770 ⇒ 01:55:30.650 Hannah Wang: kind of day to day, but mostly for sure. Every week we have per team meetings.
630 01:55:31.431 ⇒ 01:55:36.619 Hannah Wang: Like each function kind of has like a workshop. Some sort
631 01:55:37.218 ⇒ 01:55:41.699 Hannah Wang: like AI team’s gonna have AI workshop like. Maybe
632 01:55:41.830 ⇒ 01:55:52.959 Hannah Wang: their team could have their own like office hours and workshops and design teams could have. This is something that we can enable you to do marketing. We can have that office hours.
633 01:55:53.470 ⇒ 01:55:56.610 Hannah Wang: both of you have office hours as well.
634 01:55:56.720 ⇒ 01:56:20.440 Hannah Wang: Yeah, so yeah, so per function, we have, yeah, definitely per client, like, we, the client teams have to be regulated to do that. Sometimes it’s like by client demand as well. But I’m talking about like internal. I I want to just kind of not to hijack it, but like the what you were saying on the internal side. I think every function already does some sort of like weekly demo open our open office hours. Kind of thing.
635 01:56:20.867 ⇒ 01:56:31.020 Hannah Wang: I just, you know. But I feel like outside of the weekly Friday. Demos, like people don’t really like join. Obviously. So maybe we need to also tell like folks like.
636 01:56:32.230 ⇒ 01:56:39.150 Hannah Wang: hey, you can spend like, maybe you should figure out on a weekly basis like which office hours you want to attend.
637 01:56:39.150 ⇒ 01:57:04.099 Hannah Wang: you know, just like, make that open. Not just yeah. Maybe it’s not even just make that open. But make it suggested that like, Hey, if you’re in design, I recommend that you go attend someone’s office hours every every week at different functions. Just so you get like some cross functional kind of exposure. You’re probably just a fly on the wall there. But I’m sure whoever is leading that office hour session would love to just be able to talk through their process, because it’s always good to
638 01:57:04.100 ⇒ 01:57:04.890 Hannah Wang: have a
639 01:57:04.950 ⇒ 01:57:12.049 Hannah Wang: like naive perspective there, and like that forces you to know how to talk about what you’re doing. Better. Otherwise, like.
640 01:57:12.060 ⇒ 01:57:27.110 Hannah Wang: yeah. Like the sales office hours like. It’s only Tom and Amber that come. They come to those things right now. For for what I what I host and I feel like, you know, when they when they come they ask great questions like, Get the demo process and stuff. And
641 01:57:27.110 ⇒ 01:57:48.999 Hannah Wang: you know, once in a while they’d be like, Wow, this is really cool. Then I’ll be like, Okay, then I’ll share that with a broader audience, you know. So we don’t have to like test things only on the weekly Demos kind of section. But it’s like through, just like some curiosity and just more participation from people internally to go and like, go. And yeah, like, regularly, go and investigate like what
642 01:57:49.010 ⇒ 01:57:59.180 Hannah Wang: other teams are doing, I think, is a is something that I want to in encourage from from this as well. So I don’t know. I guess Akash, or any any thoughts on that.
643 01:58:04.170 ⇒ 01:58:14.240 Aakash Tandel: I think. Yeah, I think a more regular demo cadence would be good. I also think. I like kind of framing the Friday meeting as like an all hands like, just like
644 01:58:14.860 ⇒ 01:58:39.530 Aakash Tandel: if you can join, it’s really great for us all to kind of sync up once a week to kind of talk of like at a higher level on like company, wide announcements. And then one thing that my 1st company, Bigot, did, that I thought was really fun was, we did these like really quick things called lab shares. And basically it was just like randomly assigned. And we go through everybody in the company, and every week one new person would do a 5 min talk on
645 01:58:39.530 ⇒ 01:58:57.870 Aakash Tandel: anything they wanted to give a talk on. So it gives you space to talk about like it. Well, first, st it like gives you like an opportunity to speak to the whole company, which is kind of, you know, daunting for a lot of people who aren’t used to public speaking. It’s good for that type of thing. You can. I guess you could opt out. They were like, no, you really have to.
646 01:58:58.200 ⇒ 01:59:04.770 Hannah Wang: Yeah, no, no opting out. We gotta get everyone on there. I have some crazy things I would love to present on there. So.
647 01:59:05.220 ⇒ 01:59:22.430 Aakash Tandel: Like someone did snarkily, and like how to make a Pb. And J. Sandwich like they’re just like kind of like trolling. And then a lot of people did like a like a like a tech thing that they worked on that they liked like I did one on like powerlifting, because that’s what I was doing at the time, like it was completely random, like, whatever you want to talk about 5 min.
648 01:59:23.000 ⇒ 01:59:30.989 Hannah Wang: Now we’re gonna have you give a 5 min presentation to close this out.
649 01:59:33.300 ⇒ 01:59:43.143 Aakash Tandel: So yeah, I thought that was fun, too. And also it kind of brought it like, you know, that aspect of like getting to know each other beyond, just like you’re the person that like reviews my Prs.
650 01:59:43.390 ⇒ 01:59:52.379 Hannah Wang: Yeah, nice. Yeah. I mean, I think we should definitely act. Yeah, take that.
651 01:59:56.270 ⇒ 01:59:57.880 Hannah Wang: Any thoughts on Annie.
652 01:59:59.084 ⇒ 02:00:05.900 Annie Yu: I just have one question is that is that 1 h billable for hourly folks.
653 02:00:08.250 ⇒ 02:00:09.060 Annie Yu: Okay. Cool.
654 02:00:09.060 ⇒ 02:00:10.609 Hannah Wang: It’s a very expensive meeting.
655 02:00:11.810 ⇒ 02:00:16.279 Hannah Wang: That sounds very expensive. That’s why, when I when I just talk
656 02:00:16.470 ⇒ 02:00:26.060 Hannah Wang: for an hour, I sort of I’m like was this just for me, and that’s where I I try to. You know, I try to understand, like I don’t like thinking about. I don’t think about meetings like
657 02:00:26.780 ⇒ 02:00:37.870 Hannah Wang: in a dollar amount value. But it hurts to to like to just be in a meeting and talking to a camera. It’s not really what I what I need to do. And so I wanted to make it more
658 02:00:38.350 ⇒ 02:00:39.690 Hannah Wang: engaging.
659 02:00:39.960 ⇒ 02:00:44.300 Hannah Wang: I want it to be something that benefits the company, and ideally.
660 02:00:44.430 ⇒ 02:01:09.299 Hannah Wang: that meeting, we get as much value or more out of it. Right? Yeah. You know, I almost want to take our like, the our talking head part of it, and we should be pre-recording this and just setting as a loom. And that is just like we take that out of the picture. I want every yeah, we’re paying for people to sit on that meeting for an hour. I want people to be taught. I want people participating. Like, I, yeah, like, I absolutely want to get more value out of that. So
661 02:01:09.720 ⇒ 02:01:14.239 Hannah Wang: yeah, no totally valid question, Danny. Like, I mean, I I
662 02:01:14.870 ⇒ 02:01:23.199 Hannah Wang: I yeah, yes. Good question. I mean, I think about like, that’s why some of that the external folks I don’t include there because I’m like
663 02:01:23.670 ⇒ 02:01:42.220 Hannah Wang: they’re not gonna care about what we’re doing for our sales. Okay, like, right? But then I’m like they kind of work without. I don’t know it’s it was tough. I didn’t know what to do. So. But this is where I’m like. I’m sort of cry for help like would love for us to think about something, how to make that something fun, or a good use of our time.
664 02:01:43.501 ⇒ 02:01:47.859 Hannah Wang: It’s a good weekly check in to have good conversations.
665 02:01:48.640 ⇒ 02:02:07.499 Hannah Wang: Do something fun, you know. I don’t know. Yeah, 5 people rooms. Let’s set like a couple like pillars for, like what that meeting needs to be. And then we’ll just like, kind of we’ll we’ll build it out. So
666 02:02:07.820 ⇒ 02:02:15.719 Hannah Wang: yeah, just like, maybe like 3 things or something that we wanna like uphold in that meeting the one like this like kind of the
667 02:02:16.150 ⇒ 02:02:40.699 Hannah Wang: the sentiment like it’s gotta. It’s gotta be fun right like, maybe that’s like what I mean. I don’t know if that’s the one we’ll keep. I’ll just throw that one out. It’s like people gotta feel great coming out of that meeting, you know. It’s like we’re gonna be paying like. It’s not exactly. It’s not therapy. It’s not counseling whatever, but like, we want to lift people up like after that, they gotta feel like they had a great time, like, I think that’s that. That could be one. Maybe it’s like educational where, like
668 02:02:40.870 ⇒ 02:03:10.639 Hannah Wang: everybody like that is, maybe we don’t need a separate like office hours of thing, or whatever it has become, like a more intentional curated like people give like a proper demo like every. It’s not just one like it’s kind of sad if teams only do 1 1 demo like we should. I don’t know if it makes sense to mandate every team to do it, but like, yeah, make it so that it’s a jam packed hour of like live education, you know, and like. I think so. I don’t know. I don’t know what the 3rd one would be. I’m just like kind of throwing that out there.
669 02:03:10.840 ⇒ 02:03:29.080 Hannah Wang: It’s news on the market like. And you said, Oh, this new thing! Just show it to get people to have more exposure because they might not read slack messages, but they will probably see it on the screen. Yeah, to make them feel good. Yeah, and participate.
670 02:03:31.340 ⇒ 02:03:42.240 Hannah Wang: yeah, the you know the other piece, that last company, our CEO, is like, very well connected. So we had speakers come in on Monday. We speakers or customers come in every Monday.
671 02:03:42.550 ⇒ 02:03:47.660 Hannah Wang: so it’d be like when we were in a QR. Code business. It’d be a restaurant owner
672 02:03:47.970 ⇒ 02:03:56.300 Hannah Wang: and be like. Just talk to this restaurant, or whatever you can bring in clients like once a week.
673 02:03:56.480 ⇒ 02:04:01.319 Hannah Wang: We can bring in like speakers from our network to talk about a subject.
674 02:04:01.510 ⇒ 02:04:05.560 Hannah Wang: and like, Come pre prepared. Maybe that’s like once every month or so.
675 02:04:05.670 ⇒ 02:04:13.569 Hannah Wang: I think. Certainly you’re right in that. People should feel better coming out of it. I I feel pretty good about like
676 02:04:14.010 ⇒ 02:04:23.269 Hannah Wang: I don’t. I don’t know about. I don’t know. Maybe we should have every client, pod or team. Just do a quick lightning demo or something. One slide.
677 02:04:23.380 ⇒ 02:04:27.689 Hannah Wang: Yeah, that’s it, right, and just quickly quickly present it.
678 02:04:29.290 ⇒ 02:04:34.269 Hannah Wang: I would love that, you know. See to see what people are proud of that they did that weekend.
679 02:04:36.620 ⇒ 02:04:38.539 Hannah Wang: That also helps you.
680 02:04:38.840 ⇒ 02:04:51.530 Hannah Wang: That helps me of knowing. I have a weekly demo on Friday to work backwards. Right? I know this is what I want to present. So I I’m last 2 weeks. I started to make the slides on Monday.
681 02:04:51.880 ⇒ 02:04:53.479 Hannah Wang: And then I kind of
682 02:04:53.740 ⇒ 02:05:00.159 Hannah Wang: check. Okay, have we done this? Have we done that? So could be also just helpful for the business? Yeah.
683 02:05:01.810 ⇒ 02:05:24.199 Hannah Wang: yeah. I mean. Maybe, instead of doing it by department, it’s like, really every every P. Any person who’s doing Pm, as assigning somebody on their team to do do a demo for for that week. Like. And that’s just like something that they’re gonna have to be ready to show, I think. Breakout room on a topic like, if we were to say, this week, we’re gonna do a 10 min break everyone remote policy.
684 02:05:24.330 ⇒ 02:05:27.969 Hannah Wang: You’re gonna get put in a room with 3 other people. And then when you come back.
685 02:05:28.320 ⇒ 02:05:40.100 Hannah Wang: you could just say one thing that you wanted to share. We’ve talked in this like 2 day session. We’ve talked about so many topics, and like my notebook is filled with things that we’re going to do next week.
686 02:05:40.130 ⇒ 02:06:01.360 Hannah Wang: it’ll be great. I for me. I was the whole time like, I wish that we could get everybody involved in this conversation. So maybe it’s a burning question. There’s like a burning question or something, and, like everybody, just gets put in the room. We come back, and then we resolve it, and then we’re good that way. It’s not me asking the room. Because what I usually do, you know is I asked the room.
687 02:06:01.360 ⇒ 02:06:20.850 Hannah Wang: Yeah. And then I know what cause. I used to be part of the room, and I’m like, dude. I’m like we’ll go on a walk, you know, so I get it. I get it. I call people so because I it’s no shame, but I think maybe breakout rooms about like a burning question
688 02:06:21.280 ⇒ 02:06:42.880 Hannah Wang: that could be nice. I like the concept of the breakout rooms a lot, and people are more willing to talk in smaller groups. So yeah, it’s like less daunting. For as if, yeah, the the Friday Demos is like 30 people. And it’s like, I don’t want to talk in front of 30 people. No, I know. So I think I also think the slides the 5.
689 02:06:43.190 ⇒ 02:06:44.869 Hannah Wang: Gosh! You don’t think the slides
690 02:06:44.990 ⇒ 02:06:57.479 Hannah Wang: thing is kind of fun could be personal or professional, just like one person sort of gets to go. People get to work on their presentation skills. We have beautiful decks they can use. They don’t have to really put, not really focus on that.
691 02:06:57.910 ⇒ 02:07:13.720 Hannah Wang: They just like talk about anything they want to hobby their life, or whatever. At my last company. When you join the company you have to do, you have to do 5 slides about, and so you put together by family your life, whatever traveling. And then you present
692 02:07:13.990 ⇒ 02:07:16.050 Hannah Wang: that maybe, is like a lot. But
693 02:07:16.180 ⇒ 02:07:20.120 Hannah Wang: we’d have to have a big backlog of that, this one. But maybe it is just like.
694 02:07:20.490 ⇒ 02:07:26.850 Hannah Wang: And again, we have an hour. So we can kind of cut these up. And it becomes like, wow, that was like an incredibly productive hour. Yeah.
695 02:07:29.090 ⇒ 02:07:32.865 Hannah Wang: okay, cool. I mean, seems like we got some things to adjust.
696 02:07:33.660 ⇒ 02:07:44.669 Hannah Wang: yeah, I guess any any last thoughts before we kind of close this out. Would they have a yeah, we would talk about internal meetings.
697 02:07:45.970 ⇒ 02:07:54.049 Hannah Wang: Well, I mean, yeah, sure, if if what I mean. I just kind of teed up the events thing. But did you have anything you wanted to say about events?
698 02:07:54.440 ⇒ 02:08:03.860 Hannah Wang: That is, yes, I think everybody would like to do that. It’s a great concept. But getting to that endpoint, it’s a little bit daunting of okay? Then.
699 02:08:04.120 ⇒ 02:08:09.140 Hannah Wang: 1st of all, we’re representing Brainforge. How do you even talk about Brainforge
700 02:08:09.320 ⇒ 02:08:22.489 Hannah Wang: yesterday? Yeah. But how do I even know the pitch? How do I introduce myself? Like, yeah, I can talk about what I learned, and all these engineers can talk about their expertise. But
701 02:08:22.670 ⇒ 02:08:24.240 Hannah Wang: how do I
702 02:08:24.720 ⇒ 02:08:32.149 Hannah Wang: get training on talk, talking about the company, Youtube, talk about it all the time. It’s natural for you, but for people that never talked about
703 02:08:32.300 ⇒ 02:08:35.060 Hannah Wang: as a representative of the company.
704 02:08:35.500 ⇒ 02:08:41.340 Hannah Wang: it’s very daunting, because you don’t know what to say. You don’t know if you’re saying it right.
705 02:08:41.480 ⇒ 02:08:44.450 Hannah Wang: There’s no really a standard.
706 02:08:44.900 ⇒ 02:08:53.959 Hannah Wang: and also like to find talking points to feel that you’re good enough to talk at those events.
707 02:08:54.628 ⇒ 02:09:18.989 Hannah Wang: Which is, I guess, even know what happens at an event, because most of the people I have not attended or spoken at a professional event. Like what types of events are there? Are there smaller gatherings, I envision, like a massive conference room. Is it that, or is it just a random meetup of a coffee shop? Yeah, I think there’s 2 pieces there. So one like
708 02:09:19.520 ⇒ 02:09:28.680 Hannah Wang: I try to think about for me. I’ve been going to meet up since, like, when I was at my 1st job, and I was just going to like data meetups where it’d be like people talking about data stuff.
709 02:09:28.900 ⇒ 02:09:31.099 Hannah Wang: Now we go to stuff where we’re presenting
710 02:09:31.280 ⇒ 02:09:37.620 Hannah Wang: for me. It was just purely reps like, you go to enough of them. But I think, how do we manufacture? Maybe it is like
711 02:09:38.050 ⇒ 02:09:41.649 Hannah Wang: people can just do coaching or whatever we can add, we can say
712 02:09:41.850 ⇒ 02:10:00.689 Hannah Wang: common one on one was role play going to an event like that? What do you do like? Tell me about work like we just. We can sort of have those conversations like what it would be like to go to like one of those networking events where you sort of have to cause. There also is. There are really a lot of positive outcomes. If you do, those well.
713 02:10:00.730 ⇒ 02:10:17.409 Hannah Wang: like become prepared. Yeah, you can get a lot of connections, a lot of experience, and, like, you know, be able to speak about those things. So maybe that’s that workshop alone helps you talk about your job. Yeah, that workshop alone, not even if that will be really helpful. Yeah.
714 02:10:17.640 ⇒ 02:10:33.479 Hannah Wang: I mean, we’re doing all this work to like, read kind of get our positioning, messaging in a place. And we’re gonna teach to the team. I mean, I want to see people use it in some, even if it’s just like, Oh, yeah, I went to like, I went to a family dinner, and I like talked to my cousin about Brainforge, and like.
715 02:10:34.740 ⇒ 02:10:45.210 Hannah Wang: sick like, yeah, I think that that clock counts as an event for me, like I don’t care if you go to a big conference room with thousands of people like I mean, you can’t.
716 02:10:45.620 ⇒ 02:10:55.869 Hannah Wang: Yeah. And obviously there are incentives. If obviously a lead that you bring in from from one of these things like, yeah, people should know that as well. So I think definitely, I feel like, it’s just.
717 02:10:56.460 ⇒ 02:11:00.398 Hannah Wang: it’s just yeah. It’s more for you personally to learn how to talk about what you do.
718 02:11:00.942 ⇒ 02:11:11.410 Hannah Wang: and then, being able to go to a stranger or like, it’s not, or yeah, just different people from all walks of life, and being able to feel comfortable talking about what you do with them, and
719 02:11:11.410 ⇒ 02:11:34.330 Hannah Wang: being having the curiosity to engage and learn, build connection, and be able to tie that to your work in some way. That’s lifelong skill, like, I think that’s really kind of the takeaway from like, why, I think that’s that’s important. But yeah, the second piece we can just do event matching like we can get everybody their location, and on a weekly or monthly basis, say, Hey, there are these events
720 02:11:34.350 ⇒ 02:11:39.860 Hannah Wang: in your town that are around data AI or your whatever discipline you’re in or your interests
721 02:11:40.420 ⇒ 02:12:07.239 Hannah Wang: let like. Please go feel free to go flag, which ones you want to go to, and then, if you want to talk to either of us about, like what to say, those or like how to approach those, or how to get the best out of them, and that’s how we do things. So we could totally have like, I could totally have the AI team go straight up, put together a matching list easier because I personally, I search manually, and I have to remind myself to do it. But if it’s an automated process.
722 02:12:07.460 ⇒ 02:12:30.059 Hannah Wang: it makes the barrier of entry a lot lower. It makes it a lot easier for folks, and even reaching out to the people at the hosting. The meetup could also be automated like for you. Robert gets all the leads, talks to them, and then hands it on to you talking. So you have more energy left to actually talk to them
723 02:12:30.472 ⇒ 02:12:42.789 Hannah Wang: getting all these rejections. And then finally getting to one. Yeah. So maybe what? Maybe that’s what we’ll do. We’ll just find we’ll find events in everybody’s area. We’ll we’ll say these are stuff that’s going on
724 02:12:43.120 ⇒ 02:12:49.049 Hannah Wang: events, channel. And then, with all that, a spreadsheet that matches people that says like
725 02:12:49.210 ⇒ 02:12:57.240 Hannah Wang: there’ll be a spreadsheet for your city, basically. And here are the events that are in data AI pm, like in our world.
726 02:12:57.320 ⇒ 02:13:06.919 Hannah Wang: And then I’ll we’ll basically remind people to go check that, or we’ll ping in the events channel that there’s an event. And then, if you need help, I’m like, how do I approach this
727 02:13:06.930 ⇒ 02:13:31.939 Hannah Wang: or like, or if you want to, if you want our help to get you in as a speaker like that’s easy, like whatever you know. And so that’s that’s something that again takes takes care of like the front half. Yeah. And then it’s sort of okay, maybe just to the show, you feel equipped. Yeah. And yeah, I think that’d be really good. I mean, I want to do that. I would build this automation. Just I want to go to like, yeah, it’s a fun project, little hackathon thing to do. Yeah.
728 02:13:32.000 ⇒ 02:13:40.529 Hannah Wang: And really, I think the hard part of it is because we have so many people of doing the preparation versus the actual talking
729 02:13:40.630 ⇒ 02:13:44.790 Hannah Wang: people will start. They can talk. That’s my perspective.
730 02:13:45.580 ⇒ 02:13:51.019 Hannah Wang: Yeah, I mean, this is the season to do it spring and spring and summer. Everybody’s
731 02:13:51.150 ⇒ 02:13:54.009 Hannah Wang: everybody’s out. And about yeah networking. So
732 02:13:54.475 ⇒ 02:14:00.270 Hannah Wang: okay, cool. I mean, I I do want to wrap this up by 3. So I think we’re
733 02:14:00.690 ⇒ 02:14:03.039 Hannah Wang: we are. We’re good.
734 02:14:04.002 ⇒ 02:14:08.020 Hannah Wang: Thank you so much. Akash and Annie, for
735 02:14:08.290 ⇒ 02:14:23.859 Hannah Wang: setting aside, like, yeah, like 8 h really like yesterday and today, we should totally take a photo before we hang up. Otherwise this never happened. No, no, you got your own. You got your own screen. Yeah. You take a screenshot.
736 02:14:25.200 ⇒ 02:14:32.680 Hannah Wang: make a smile. Jeez, okay, got it. Okay? Okay.
737 02:14:32.790 ⇒ 02:14:47.770 Hannah Wang: yeah. Thanks again. And yeah, we’ll we’re gonna we’ll we talk. And I are gonna comb through all these notes. And we’re gonna try to put a lot of this into action. We’re gonna be signing executive orders like crazy. Yeah.
738 02:14:48.320 ⇒ 02:14:49.439 Hannah Wang: alright, okay.
739 02:14:49.440 ⇒ 02:14:50.640 Aakash Tandel: Awesome guys. Alright, thanks.
740 02:14:50.979 ⇒ 02:14:54.710 Annie Yu: I’m like running out of my energy. So this is a.
741 02:14:54.710 ⇒ 02:15:00.169 Aakash Tandel: No, no, yeah, yeah, thank you. Bye.