Meeting Title: Engagement Planning and Ops Sync Date: 2026-01-09 Meeting participants: Mustafa Raja, Pranav Narahari, Uttam Kumaran, Casie Aviles, Rico Rejoso, Elizah Joy, Amber Lin, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:00:57.140 ⇒ 00:00:58.270 Uttam Kumaran: Blue.
2 00:01:00.380 ⇒ 00:01:01.180 Mustafa Raja: A…
3 00:01:03.150 ⇒ 00:01:03.620 Uttam Kumaran: feeling, dude?
4 00:01:04.810 ⇒ 00:01:06.150 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, better.
5 00:01:07.120 ⇒ 00:01:08.000 Uttam Kumaran: It’d be better.
6 00:01:08.430 ⇒ 00:01:09.060 Mustafa Raja: Yeah.
7 00:01:12.110 ⇒ 00:01:13.960 Pranav Narahari: I think everyone’s getting sick this week.
8 00:01:15.880 ⇒ 00:01:18.619 Uttam Kumaran: I know, I feel okay. Somewhat.
9 00:01:20.820 ⇒ 00:01:26.090 Mustafa Raja: I had a lot of friends, come over to my city from other cities for the…
10 00:01:26.390 ⇒ 00:01:30.080 Mustafa Raja: vacation, and, I’ve been… I’ve been also…
11 00:01:30.450 ⇒ 00:01:34.109 Mustafa Raja: Almost every day, for New Year’s and.
12 00:01:34.110 ⇒ 00:01:35.120 Uttam Kumaran: Aw, damn.
13 00:01:35.500 ⇒ 00:01:38.150 Mustafa Raja: That is why AQI got me there.
14 00:01:38.990 ⇒ 00:01:39.810 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
15 00:01:40.260 ⇒ 00:01:40.850 Mustafa Raja: Yeah.
16 00:01:51.910 ⇒ 00:01:57.419 Uttam Kumaran: Cool, so maybe, I mean, main thing today was just, like, to have, you know, me…
17 00:01:57.630 ⇒ 00:02:00.779 Uttam Kumaran: Like, engagement planning and, like, ops sort of talk.
18 00:02:00.980 ⇒ 00:02:08.429 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s… basically, like, I think this crew is really gonna be thinking about, like, what part of the engagement planning process can we,
19 00:02:09.030 ⇒ 00:02:21.649 Uttam Kumaran: can we get operations help to sort of standardize further? You know, I think this week we… we have a couple of things we sort of learned, right? So we have Gantt charts, we have, like, slides, we also have,
20 00:02:22.730 ⇒ 00:02:36.940 Uttam Kumaran: like, diagrams, and so really, I think this is, like, sort of a meeting where if we want to talk through, like, resources that we need. I also… this call is really going to be for us to talk about, like, even, like, team resources, so…
21 00:02:37.450 ⇒ 00:02:51.960 Uttam Kumaran: I’m interested, and maybe, you know, as we get further on. Right now, a lot of our teams are just 3 people, but, you know, as teams start to grow, and we’ll have, like, 5, 6, 7 people, so I’m sort of looking to this crew to kind of, like, let me know and let ops know if we need to
22 00:02:52.140 ⇒ 00:02:58.729 Uttam Kumaran: Recruit in any areas and bring on more, you know, staff, and so that’s really what we’d be looking from.
23 00:02:59.190 ⇒ 00:03:01.640 Uttam Kumaran: Those are kind of topics on my mind.
24 00:03:01.840 ⇒ 00:03:04.380 Uttam Kumaran: Unless anyone else has anything.
25 00:03:05.900 ⇒ 00:03:12.459 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I would say one thing that would be probably helpful for me to know at the beginning of every week, or every…
26 00:03:12.600 ⇒ 00:03:21.790 Pranav Narahari: few weeks, or just as things change, like, how many hours do we have dedicated for, like, development per week? So then I can just, like.
27 00:03:21.980 ⇒ 00:03:25.859 Pranav Narahari: Allocate the right amount of tasks accordingly and, like, to the right people.
28 00:03:26.100 ⇒ 00:03:29.549 Pranav Narahari: That would… that would be super helpful.
29 00:03:31.030 ⇒ 00:03:37.099 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, maybe Rico, like, I can let you answer that, like, what do you think? Like, how’s… how do we, like, answer that for folks?
30 00:03:41.770 ⇒ 00:03:46.139 Rico Rejoso: Sorry, what was that again? I’m sorry, I just forgot.
31 00:03:46.140 ⇒ 00:03:56.809 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, so basically at the beginning of every week, if I could know, like, how many engineering development hours that we have for, like, on the team, and, like.
32 00:03:56.820 ⇒ 00:04:07.970 Pranav Narahari: per… per person on… on a client, that would be helpful. That way, I can assign the… the right amount of tasks per person, and then also, like, set client expectations, right, properly.
33 00:04:08.630 ⇒ 00:04:13.449 Rico Rejoso: Oh, so basically allocation of hours for, for every team member, right?
34 00:04:13.800 ⇒ 00:04:16.209 Rico Rejoso: I think we… yeah.
35 00:04:17.589 ⇒ 00:04:25.479 Rico Rejoso: I think that goes on first for a client that we’re working on, how many hours are we gonna spend for that, depending on the contract that they have.
36 00:04:25.660 ⇒ 00:04:34.610 Rico Rejoso: So… Then, assigning it to each team member that are involved, per project or per client.
37 00:04:34.940 ⇒ 00:04:40.089 Rico Rejoso: I think that’s how it goes. We basically use operating to allocate those hours.
38 00:04:40.350 ⇒ 00:04:44.730 Rico Rejoso: Right now, I guess we haven’t gone yet for this month.
39 00:04:48.840 ⇒ 00:04:57.530 Uttam Kumaran: Do you want to even, flash up, like, operating RICO, if you have it? Like, but I do think that, yeah, they’re right, actually, good point is that maybe this crew
40 00:04:57.660 ⇒ 00:05:01.829 Uttam Kumaran: You know, should be in operating, managing, like, the resourcing for their clients.
41 00:05:02.650 ⇒ 00:05:04.780 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, I’m just pulling it out real quick.
42 00:05:05.700 ⇒ 00:05:19.789 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so for context, operating is a tool that we have historically used to basically do this, like, understand for a given deal, for a given client, like, what hours are there, who’s in what spot. I believe Ops Team is sort of, like, aligning it
43 00:05:20.180 ⇒ 00:05:24.740 Uttam Kumaran: To, like, our new role structure, but this is where all those are…
44 00:05:25.230 ⇒ 00:05:28.579 Uttam Kumaran: This is, like, our resource allocation software, basically.
45 00:05:29.470 ⇒ 00:05:30.500 Pranav Narahari: Gotcha, okay.
46 00:05:30.940 ⇒ 00:05:33.620 Uttam Kumaran: So we’ll give… we’ll give all of y’all access to…
47 00:05:33.760 ⇒ 00:05:37.030 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, the clients that you own to be able to own this and manage that.
48 00:05:39.820 ⇒ 00:05:47.760 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, so I think, it’s the engagement planner that we’ll be assigning hours moving forward to, the team members involved for the project, right?
49 00:05:49.880 ⇒ 00:05:50.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.
50 00:05:50.990 ⇒ 00:05:58.950 Rico Rejoso: Gotcha. So, probably handle, hand over the task of allocating hours, every week or month,
51 00:05:59.240 ⇒ 00:06:06.759 Rico Rejoso: an operating… I know, Bernab, I already gave access for operating. Were you able to open this one?
52 00:06:07.910 ⇒ 00:06:12.470 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, I did see this view before. Yeah.
53 00:06:14.980 ⇒ 00:06:28.529 Rico Rejoso: Yeah, so you can just basically go to the project or client that you’re working on, open that one, and assign hours per week or for the whole month for the engineers or people involved for that project, and allocate it by then.
54 00:06:29.450 ⇒ 00:06:37.100 Rico Rejoso: In regards to resources, I know we’re putting in a new setup, or… I mean…
55 00:06:37.680 ⇒ 00:06:47.390 Rico Rejoso: for project management and for handling clients. I just don’t know how… I mean, we haven’t… I haven’t really got in how we can finalize that one. So maybe, guys…
56 00:06:48.000 ⇒ 00:06:50.510 Rico Rejoso: An oath, and how should we handle those?
57 00:06:52.720 ⇒ 00:06:59.770 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, ideally, Rico, like, each of the EPs can… should get, basically, access to the deals that they are…
58 00:06:59.950 ⇒ 00:07:05.589 Uttam Kumaran: EP on, and ideally, they should be the ones who are kind of, like, looking at, okay, what hours are
59 00:07:06.020 ⇒ 00:07:09.680 Uttam Kumaran: on each of their clients, right? In order to hit their goals.
60 00:07:09.680 ⇒ 00:07:10.340 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
61 00:07:10.590 ⇒ 00:07:14.860 Uttam Kumaran: So we can put them as managers on the clients that they are…
62 00:07:15.640 ⇒ 00:07:16.260 Rico Rejoso: Okay.
63 00:07:20.920 ⇒ 00:07:28.890 Rico Rejoso: I can come up with the documentation, how would that work if, after this meeting, would that be fine for everyone? I can have it done by end of day and present it by Monday.
64 00:07:29.060 ⇒ 00:07:29.940 Rico Rejoso: Would that work?
65 00:07:31.180 ⇒ 00:07:38.969 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think Monday is… dude, Monday, Tuesday’s fine, like, yeah, no, we need to rush it, and then we can get everybody, all the EPs, onboarded onto operating, and, like.
66 00:07:39.160 ⇒ 00:07:41.059 Uttam Kumaran: Trained on how to use it.
67 00:07:41.570 ⇒ 00:07:42.670 Rico Rejoso: Gotcha. Yep.
68 00:07:42.850 ⇒ 00:07:51.609 Rico Rejoso: Create a documentation for that one first, so we can discuss, the steps as we, implement, this new structure.
69 00:07:54.870 ⇒ 00:07:55.590 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
70 00:07:55.590 ⇒ 00:07:57.119 Rico Rejoso: Okay. Can I answer your question?
71 00:07:57.370 ⇒ 00:07:58.080 Uttam Kumaran: Turn on?
72 00:07:58.840 ⇒ 00:08:00.000 Pranav Narahari: Yeah, yeah.
73 00:08:02.030 ⇒ 00:08:13.279 Rico Rejoso: Another thing would be, since, this is basically, involving operations and stuff, for any fields, I guess resourcing would be coming, or those requests would also be coming from the…
74 00:08:13.310 ⇒ 00:08:33.199 Rico Rejoso: engagement planner. For any tools as well, we’re also, Eliza and I, we’re also setting up a process on, I mean, a more convenient process on how you guys will be requesting. I know, some engineers are also asking, new access for tools, so probably you will send over, documentation for that along with the,
75 00:08:33.559 ⇒ 00:08:38.949 Rico Rejoso: allocation process that we’re, that we’ll be setting out next week, okay? Just a heads up for everyone.
76 00:08:54.080 ⇒ 00:08:54.610 Rico Rejoso: Broke.
77 00:08:54.610 ⇒ 00:09:03.620 Pranav Narahari: Rico, I think for operating, I need a new invite. I guess I might have not accepted the invite before, because I’m not able to… to actually get in.
78 00:09:03.940 ⇒ 00:09:06.800 Rico Rejoso: Sure, let me send, let me send you an updated invite.
79 00:09:07.470 ⇒ 00:09:08.460 Pranav Narahari: Perfect, thank you.
80 00:09:20.770 ⇒ 00:09:29.010 Uttam Kumaran: How did, yeah, how did everyone else’s week, you know, go so far in terms of planning and things like that? Like, what was good, what was typical?
81 00:09:35.230 ⇒ 00:09:39.579 Amber Lin: I think mine went pretty smoothly, because it’s not too different from
82 00:09:39.690 ⇒ 00:09:47.780 Amber Lin: what I was doing before. I pro… Utam, I probably should sync with you, since you are the CSO, to define, like.
83 00:09:47.780 ⇒ 00:09:59.840 Amber Lin: when you need things by, because I feel like by the time I send the updates to you, perhaps it’s too late in your time, and perhaps in the client time, so maybe we can work on that to…
84 00:10:00.240 ⇒ 00:10:02.749 Amber Lin: Make guidelines to make it even better.
85 00:10:03.970 ⇒ 00:10:06.309 Uttam Kumaran: Definitely, yeah, I think this week,
86 00:10:06.640 ⇒ 00:10:21.480 Uttam Kumaran: this week, because it was sort of just, like, everything happened this week, I really did not do my job in terms of booking, like, specific working sessions for ABC, but we still made a lot of progress. I think going forward, yeah, me and you will sort of be attached to the hip.
87 00:10:21.680 ⇒ 00:10:24.320 Uttam Kumaran: In terms of, like, making sure that
88 00:10:24.480 ⇒ 00:10:37.049 Uttam Kumaran: stuff is up to date, and that we’re driving towards, like, the good weekly call, but yeah, now that stand-ups are also just gonna run much quicker, we’ll end up meeting once or twice a week just on the ABC project, maybe for, like, an hour or two each.
89 00:10:37.180 ⇒ 00:10:40.110 Uttam Kumaran: And so, yeah, we’ll spend time there.
90 00:10:47.060 ⇒ 00:10:48.179 Uttam Kumaran: How about everyone else?
91 00:10:50.140 ⇒ 00:10:58.150 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, I think my, mine went pretty, pretty good. The minute I got to meet, with, stakeholders, and…
92 00:10:58.270 ⇒ 00:11:10.489 Mustafa Raja: That gave us a lot more context on what we need to… what we needed to plan. He met with Stan today, so maybe on Monday we’ll plan, whatever Stan has on his list.
93 00:11:10.890 ⇒ 00:11:13.390 Mustafa Raja: Yeah, that’s… that’s pretty good.
94 00:11:23.220 ⇒ 00:11:27.229 Casie Aviles: I think it was positive overall, but yeah, there’s still… I’m still…
95 00:11:28.920 ⇒ 00:11:35.469 Casie Aviles: learning stuff as I go, yeah, definitely one thing I wasn’t able to get into much was the…
96 00:11:35.940 ⇒ 00:11:37.329 Casie Aviles: Resourcing part.
97 00:11:37.720 ⇒ 00:11:43.370 Casie Aviles: But I think that what was being discussed earlier with operating, that should be
98 00:11:43.730 ⇒ 00:11:47.330 Casie Aviles: helpful as well, so I can get… gain some visibility on.
99 00:11:47.880 ⇒ 00:11:48.680 Casie Aviles: I’m dead.
100 00:11:48.840 ⇒ 00:11:51.009 Casie Aviles: aspect of the task, yeah.
101 00:11:53.550 ⇒ 00:11:55.380 Casie Aviles: I was able to also, like.
102 00:11:55.820 ⇒ 00:11:58.409 Casie Aviles: have a call with Zora Anford.
103 00:12:00.690 ⇒ 00:12:03.469 Casie Aviles: Martech, so I think that that was positive.
104 00:12:03.800 ⇒ 00:12:05.230 Casie Aviles: Huh? Yeah.
105 00:12:11.260 ⇒ 00:12:11.800 Uttam Kumaran: Right.
106 00:12:17.440 ⇒ 00:12:31.090 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think, you know, as you guys are developing, you know, plans and, you know, Gantt charts and things like that, like, I really encourage you to try to use time from Clarence, just to learn, like, the best practices.
107 00:12:31.200 ⇒ 00:12:46.150 Uttam Kumaran: But again, ideally, you and whoever the CSO is on the… on your project are sort of both in a good place. I’m gonna be pressing the CSOs to continue to expand their clients and give them more clarity on the 3-month roadmap.
108 00:12:46.340 ⇒ 00:12:47.559 Uttam Kumaran: You know, and so…
109 00:12:47.730 ⇒ 00:13:01.609 Uttam Kumaran: one thing that I’m expecting them to do is to… is to take the resources that you guys are putting together and get that to the client effectively, and then start to expand. And so, as long as you guys do your job, like, that’s where the… kind of the pressure is gonna go to next.
110 00:13:03.450 ⇒ 00:13:16.819 Uttam Kumaran: And I think also the operations team is sort of working on this big, bigger, like, Notion cleanup, so y’all are a big, you know, stakeholder of that, to just keeping, like, Notion and the Google Drive and these docs, like, sort of in a good place.
111 00:13:26.470 ⇒ 00:13:28.159 Uttam Kumaran: Cool. What else?
112 00:13:36.720 ⇒ 00:13:41.880 Uttam Kumaran: Anything, like, from operations team that you guys want to chat about or ask, like…
113 00:13:42.720 ⇒ 00:13:45.229 Uttam Kumaran: Of the, like, engagement planners.
114 00:13:56.090 ⇒ 00:14:00.799 Rico Rejoso: From the operations, aside from the documentation that was requested, I guess it’s very good.
115 00:14:03.240 ⇒ 00:14:11.299 Rico Rejoso: We’ll further discuss or, confirm anything once we go through it. Eliza and I are still working on the process. Eliza, anything on your end?
116 00:14:13.140 ⇒ 00:14:26.159 Elizah Joy: just to add on the notion of reorganization, so yeah, we’ll set it up in a way that’s also easy for you guys, and also, the visibility will be better for
117 00:14:26.400 ⇒ 00:14:27.530 Elizah Joy: Everyone.
118 00:14:27.650 ⇒ 00:14:31.069 Elizah Joy: Especially, for you and for clients.
119 00:14:42.810 ⇒ 00:14:49.539 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. I mean, yeah, so I think probably by next week, we should have a little bit more understanding on resourcing. I mean.
120 00:14:49.650 ⇒ 00:15:09.140 Uttam Kumaran: So I was to give you, like, my gut instinct, we definitely need, another, analytics engineer, and so, like, that’s kind of top of mind. I think, Mustafa, you’re gonna… Mustafa and Ashmini in particular, are… you’re gonna see that on your clients. That’s probably what’s gonna emerge.
121 00:15:09.450 ⇒ 00:15:17.469 Uttam Kumaran: you know, and I’m also gonna continue to see if we can bring in another, you know, full-stack or AI engineer. That way.
122 00:15:17.630 ⇒ 00:15:23.399 Uttam Kumaran: You know, can continue to have you guys in this sort of more… more leadership position, and…
123 00:15:23.550 ⇒ 00:15:37.530 Uttam Kumaran: have people take on a lot of the work. I think the biggest thing for next week is Pranav, just to make sure that Casey starts to get involved in Lilo, and then similarly, Casey, if you can make sure Pranav gets up-to-date, with stuff in Andy.
124 00:15:37.680 ⇒ 00:15:40.749 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think that’s probably the big…
125 00:15:41.120 ⇒ 00:15:46.310 Uttam Kumaran: things for me. I don’t know, if anyone else or…
126 00:15:46.530 ⇒ 00:15:50.669 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, Robert, if you have anything that you want to share, otherwise we can adjourn.
127 00:15:52.740 ⇒ 00:16:00.670 Robert Tseng: No, I mean, I… honestly, I don’t know why I’m on this call, but it’s, nice seeing everybody here.
128 00:16:00.670 ⇒ 00:16:02.279 Uttam Kumaran: One thing is, like, we’re gonna talk about…
129 00:16:02.500 ⇒ 00:16:05.179 Uttam Kumaran: We’re gonna talk about resourcing most weeks.
130 00:16:05.360 ⇒ 00:16:06.580 Robert Tseng: I see.
131 00:16:06.700 ⇒ 00:16:10.239 Uttam Kumaran: Like, resourcing, and then any other, like, reusable planning
132 00:16:10.420 ⇒ 00:16:16.079 Uttam Kumaran: related assets that operations needs to sort of create. So those are, like, the two big topics on a weekly basis.
133 00:16:16.290 ⇒ 00:16:21.009 Uttam Kumaran: And then, yeah, if this kind of gets… if this is something we could do async, then we’ll end them, and we can figure it out.
134 00:16:22.120 ⇒ 00:16:34.580 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I mean, I know we’re still trying to bring in the… that, like, head of ops person, so, like, I think this is interesting. I wanted to see, like, what was the full range of things that we were talking about as we’re trying to…
135 00:16:34.580 ⇒ 00:16:42.540 Robert Tseng: I mean, the scope is already pretty fixed, but, like, I just want to be able to describe to the person… to the candidates more, like, what… what they’ll… what they’ll be, leading.
136 00:16:43.510 ⇒ 00:17:03.140 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I see, like, you know, the ops role is to also help, like, guide everything across delivery, and sort of be the glue to whatever tools needed, our standards, and then also just, like, how we start new clients, how we start new projects, and so ops is sort of the next layer of, like.
137 00:17:03.290 ⇒ 00:17:05.279 Uttam Kumaran: Building playbooks for everything.
138 00:17:05.410 ⇒ 00:17:06.769 Uttam Kumaran: Really, like.
139 00:17:06.770 ⇒ 00:17:07.270 Robert Tseng: Yes.
140 00:17:07.920 ⇒ 00:17:15.350 Robert Tseng: Tooling seems like the AI team… I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but, like, I’m just thinking about.
141 00:17:15.359 ⇒ 00:17:16.639 Uttam Kumaran: like, platform.
142 00:17:17.130 ⇒ 00:17:25.809 Robert Tseng: platform, or, like, the whole, like, throw all the docs in Git, and, like, the cursor workflow, like, the AI team’s been pushing that forward, like, so I, I mean.
143 00:17:25.810 ⇒ 00:17:30.719 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say, like, that’s mainly been, like, me and… that’s mainly been, like, me and Gabe.
144 00:17:31.240 ⇒ 00:17:38.569 Uttam Kumaran: So, like, our platform team is pretty thin. Okay, but, like, would that kind of come under ops?
145 00:17:39.900 ⇒ 00:17:47.889 Uttam Kumaran: I… yeah, I mean, it’s a good question, because, for example, I… I feel like Ops owns Notion, Slack.
146 00:17:48.340 ⇒ 00:17:48.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah.
147 00:17:48.700 ⇒ 00:17:57.369 Uttam Kumaran: Drive, right? Platform team, I think it’s a good question to, like, do they own… are they more, like.
148 00:17:57.800 ⇒ 00:18:00.920 Uttam Kumaran: ops for delivery. I mean, part of it is just we don’t have
149 00:18:01.110 ⇒ 00:18:05.800 Uttam Kumaran: really tons of dedicated resourcing for platform right now.
150 00:18:05.800 ⇒ 00:18:06.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
151 00:18:06.170 ⇒ 00:18:24.000 Uttam Kumaran: And the cursor stuff is pretty, like, technical also, so, like, it would be tough to ask that of Eliza and Rico. But that’s where I think if we get the head of ops, then I would have that person basically understand, are they, like, over the platform team? Is, like, platform part of them?
152 00:18:24.360 ⇒ 00:18:25.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
153 00:18:25.200 ⇒ 00:18:25.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
154 00:18:27.010 ⇒ 00:18:31.990 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, I would com… I don’t see any reason to have those Separate.
155 00:18:32.230 ⇒ 00:18:37.440 Uttam Kumaran: But before, we never… we didn’t really think of ops as supporting delivery as much as we have, like, recently.
156 00:18:38.130 ⇒ 00:18:43.380 Uttam Kumaran: I think there’s a case to be made to just collapse all of that, because ultimately.
157 00:18:43.530 ⇒ 00:18:47.219 Uttam Kumaran: The platform team is helping delivery and the rest of the company.
158 00:18:47.350 ⇒ 00:18:49.040 Uttam Kumaran: Just speed things up.
159 00:18:49.320 ⇒ 00:18:56.320 Uttam Kumaran: So, maybe ops is, like, kind of, like, the more of the manual effort, and they pass it to, like, platform to figure out how to, like.
160 00:18:56.870 ⇒ 00:19:00.049 Uttam Kumaran: do the more technical pieces, I don’t know. But…
161 00:19:00.050 ⇒ 00:19:00.670 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
162 00:19:01.770 ⇒ 00:19:20.880 Robert Tseng: There’s also the HR piece, because, like, the head of ops role we define has ops, HR, and, like, sometimes… so, I guess, would that be a separate… do you think that would be a separate group from this, or do you also… would you… would we also want to be talking about, like, recruiting pipeline, kind of like some of the stuff that we’re offering through the team stuff here, like that?
163 00:19:21.080 ⇒ 00:19:23.170 Robert Tseng: Like, in general. Yeah, I think…
164 00:19:23.740 ⇒ 00:19:29.650 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s really just as a function of our size that ops owns that. I think, like.
165 00:19:29.650 ⇒ 00:19:30.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
166 00:19:30.480 ⇒ 00:19:35.249 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe at, like, 40 or 50 people, it has to start to get split up.
167 00:19:35.620 ⇒ 00:19:49.759 Uttam Kumaran: But at this moment, I sort of want ops to think about new team onboarding, and then, like, basically, like, how people are working day-to-day, and, like, retention. I don’t source… I don’t know if we’re big enough to kind of, like.
168 00:19:50.620 ⇒ 00:19:54.089 Uttam Kumaran: move that out, because it would still be, like, one person. Sure. And so…
169 00:19:54.090 ⇒ 00:19:54.710 Robert Tseng: Okay.
170 00:19:54.710 ⇒ 00:20:05.330 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s… I kind of put it under this team for responsibility, and then ultimately, like, ops… there’s… I think ops covers so much that as we grow, we’ll find the pieces that need to kind of, like.
171 00:20:05.540 ⇒ 00:20:11.279 Uttam Kumaran: get shipped out. Like, I will have a head of… we’ll have people and recruiting and things like that, but for now.
172 00:20:11.780 ⇒ 00:20:17.649 Uttam Kumaran: sort of putting it all underneath here. If there’s a case to be made, like, if there’s enough work going that way, and there’s enough…
173 00:20:17.820 ⇒ 00:20:20.490 Uttam Kumaran: I’d like us to… to build, like.
174 00:20:20.940 ⇒ 00:20:26.689 Uttam Kumaran: a pot of three around another sort of part of the company, then I would totally jettison it out.
175 00:20:26.890 ⇒ 00:20:27.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
176 00:20:27.340 ⇒ 00:20:43.810 Uttam Kumaran: Like, I don’t think ops should own people. I don’t think… like, yeah, I think there’s… there’s certain things that I think from ops right now that will go under, like, someone who’s ahead of delivery. I also think someone who’s… there’ll be recruiting that sits under ops right now, so all these things, I think, will end up moving out, but…
177 00:20:44.090 ⇒ 00:20:45.180 Uttam Kumaran: again, like.
178 00:20:45.710 ⇒ 00:20:55.939 Uttam Kumaran: I think sometimes people move it out, just because that’s what other… that’s what most companies do. So for me, I’d rather it get moved out, because we hit a scale, and it’s, like, getting so complex.
179 00:20:56.580 ⇒ 00:20:57.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think it makes sense.
180 00:20:57.980 ⇒ 00:21:06.749 Robert Tseng: starts in ops, and then as we scale it, those things, those special projects end up kind of becoming functions that are kind of their own standalone.
181 00:21:07.040 ⇒ 00:21:08.699 Robert Tseng: Okay, cool.
182 00:21:08.700 ⇒ 00:21:11.689 Uttam Kumaran: It’s gonna be, like, one person on the edge, you know, versus just, like.
183 00:21:11.690 ⇒ 00:21:12.150 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
184 00:21:12.150 ⇒ 00:21:13.680 Uttam Kumaran: And a team that handles it all.
185 00:21:14.520 ⇒ 00:21:15.090 Robert Tseng: Okay.
186 00:21:15.770 ⇒ 00:21:27.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I’m gonna just take the transcript from this call, and I’m gonna kind of feed it back into… just, like, to add more detail to the head of ops kind of JD that we’re shopping around, just as, like, a sample of, like.
187 00:21:27.460 ⇒ 00:21:35.789 Robert Tseng: here’s, like, a sample meeting, kind of, with all the stuff that would… you could kind of… you would cover. I think it would just make… yeah, I think it would make that clear.
188 00:21:35.790 ⇒ 00:21:40.139 Robert Tseng: We can talk more about it. I think HR decisions are all pretty much you and me at this point, so…
189 00:21:40.350 ⇒ 00:21:53.940 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and I think this call mainly is, like, I want to give the engagement planners more ownership over the resourcing for their individual clients, and then this meeting, it’s sort of like, is everybody comfortable hitting their targets with the resource they have?
190 00:21:54.250 ⇒ 00:21:58.859 Uttam Kumaran: But do we need tooling resources, or do we need people resources, and, like, how does OPS support that?
191 00:21:59.540 ⇒ 00:22:00.199 Robert Tseng: I see.
192 00:22:01.060 ⇒ 00:22:01.840 Robert Tseng: Okay.
193 00:22:02.210 ⇒ 00:22:02.840 Robert Tseng: Like, I…
194 00:22:02.840 ⇒ 00:22:06.019 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want… I don’t want… because right now, it’s sort of, like, my…
195 00:22:06.410 ⇒ 00:22:13.920 Uttam Kumaran: rough, spidey sense for, like, where we’re lacking people, and I want those requests to come from the EPs, basically.
196 00:22:14.520 ⇒ 00:22:16.069 Robert Tseng: That moves me out of that.
197 00:22:17.250 ⇒ 00:22:24.979 Uttam Kumaran: For example, if a CSO is like, hey, our client’s about to expand, then they should work with the EPs to basically build out the chart, and then…
198 00:22:25.140 ⇒ 00:22:29.609 Uttam Kumaran: VPs just say, hey, we don’t have… we don’t have the support on this, I need to go to ops to figure out.
199 00:22:30.270 ⇒ 00:22:31.759 Uttam Kumaran: Like, resourcing.
200 00:22:33.820 ⇒ 00:22:41.970 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then the option, though, like, okay, here are allocations, who’s, who’s… who has more, room that we can utilize here and there.
201 00:22:42.580 ⇒ 00:22:44.000 Robert Tseng: Yeah, either, like, there’s…
202 00:22:44.000 ⇒ 00:22:44.489 Uttam Kumaran: It’s being…
203 00:22:44.490 ⇒ 00:22:47.360 Robert Tseng: Like, hey, try this person here, try this person there, so…
204 00:22:47.520 ⇒ 00:23:07.439 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, ops just say, cool, we have… we have someone so-and-so is… is… has, like, an extra 20 hours, we can consider moving them here, or, okay, we need to kick off a new search, or we already have this person in the pipeline. So that’s all things that, like, I’ve been… I’m… I was sort of playing both those sides, and now it’s sort of, like, getting me out of that.
205 00:23:08.330 ⇒ 00:23:08.870 Robert Tseng: Okay.
206 00:23:10.080 ⇒ 00:23:14.629 Uttam Kumaran: Just because Eliza and Rico have full understanding of everybody that’s in pipeline.
207 00:23:14.860 ⇒ 00:23:22.069 Uttam Kumaran: And they’ll have an understanding of, like, sort of everybody’s existing contract, and so they’ll be able to put that side of, like, what resources are available.
208 00:23:22.990 ⇒ 00:23:23.530 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
209 00:23:25.110 ⇒ 00:23:25.890 Robert Tseng: Okay.
210 00:23:27.430 ⇒ 00:23:27.970 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
211 00:23:28.250 ⇒ 00:23:34.040 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Well, appreciate your time, everyone. Yeah, and great week. Just Slack me if you still need anything rest of the day today.
212 00:23:34.480 ⇒ 00:23:51.310 Uttam Kumaran: And yeah, we’ll kind of hop back on a Monday, we can start… we can talk, you know, as a… I think we have an EP meeting on Tuesday. I may let Clarence run that, but again, like, we’re sort of hopeful that next week is, again, we got a lot of the Gantz and sort of things. I think next week will be more, like, focused on linear.
213 00:23:51.880 ⇒ 00:23:55.959 Uttam Kumaran: And seeing, like, how we best use that for, sort of, just daily execution.
214 00:23:59.350 ⇒ 00:24:01.060 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect. Okay.
215 00:24:01.310 ⇒ 00:24:02.219 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you.
216 00:24:03.610 ⇒ 00:24:04.480 Rico Rejoso: This place.
217 00:24:05.180 ⇒ 00:24:05.850 Uttam Kumaran: Thanks.