Meeting Title: Brainforge Interview w- Sam Date: 2026-04-30 Meeting participants: nolanrobbins, Samuel Roberts
WEBVTT
1 00:04:24.210 ⇒ 00:04:26.120 nolanrobbins: Hey, good afternoon, Sam, how we doing?
2 00:04:26.440 ⇒ 00:04:30.740 Samuel Roberts: Good, good. Sorry, one sec, let me just get everything situated here. Sure.
3 00:04:31.980 ⇒ 00:04:32.990 nolanrobbins: Let me do this.
4 00:04:33.460 ⇒ 00:04:35.260 nolanrobbins: Are you based here in Austin, too?
5 00:04:35.640 ⇒ 00:04:38.299 Samuel Roberts: No, I’m actually in, Cleveland, Ohio.
6 00:04:38.620 ⇒ 00:04:39.340 nolanrobbins: Oh, okay.
7 00:04:39.720 ⇒ 00:04:44.280 nolanrobbins: Well, I was gonna say, it’s, like, raining cats and dogs outside, so if you’re hearing stuff, that’s why.
8 00:04:44.280 ⇒ 00:04:50.290 Samuel Roberts: Oh, no way, yeah, I know, that’s… we’ve had some days like that. We’ve had some huge storms coming through here.
9 00:04:50.290 ⇒ 00:04:50.620 nolanrobbins: It’s gonna…
10 00:04:50.890 ⇒ 00:05:02.470 Samuel Roberts: beautiful, like, 70, I can go outside, work out on the deck sometimes, and then, like, 4 or 5 o’clock hits, and the front of the storm just rolls right through, and it gets terrible, so, you know…
11 00:05:02.470 ⇒ 00:05:06.959 nolanrobbins: Coming off the lake, yeah, I lived in Pittsburgh, that’s where I grew up, so it’s.
12 00:05:06.960 ⇒ 00:05:08.750 Samuel Roberts: Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13 00:05:08.750 ⇒ 00:05:09.130 nolanrobbins: math.
14 00:05:09.130 ⇒ 00:05:09.889 Samuel Roberts: Right, and then the winter.
15 00:05:09.890 ⇒ 00:05:10.270 nolanrobbins: latitude.
16 00:05:10.270 ⇒ 00:05:13.950 Samuel Roberts: the lake effect snow. I’m not from here originally, I’m from Boston originally, and the way.
17 00:05:13.950 ⇒ 00:05:15.260 nolanrobbins: How do you describe it.
18 00:05:15.560 ⇒ 00:05:21.349 Samuel Roberts: that, we would get a ton of snow in Boston, but it would be, like, all at once. Whereas here, it’ll just be, like, days.
19 00:05:21.350 ⇒ 00:05:21.710 nolanrobbins: Okay.
20 00:05:21.710 ⇒ 00:05:22.670 Samuel Roberts: lake effect.
21 00:05:23.030 ⇒ 00:05:24.140 nolanrobbins: Gotcha, gotcha.
22 00:05:24.310 ⇒ 00:05:25.010 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
23 00:05:25.010 ⇒ 00:05:27.210 nolanrobbins: Well, interesting. Oh, well, very nice to meet you.
24 00:05:27.210 ⇒ 00:05:28.789 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, you as well, as well.
25 00:05:29.170 ⇒ 00:05:38.840 Samuel Roberts: Great. So, so the way I usually like to do this is, intro myself, ask you for the intro, I’ve got some questions, I try to leave about…
26 00:05:39.290 ⇒ 00:05:56.940 Samuel Roberts: at, like, the halfway point to switch over and let you ask questions so we don’t get to the end and run out of time or something. And then, kind of just, you know, see where it goes from there. So yeah, I guess to start that, I’m Sam Roberts. I’m AI Tech Lead here at, Brainforge. Been here since July.
27 00:05:57.050 ⇒ 00:06:06.979 Samuel Roberts: My background, career is kind of startups, product stuff, a lot of web, web tech, a lot of AI in the past several years, as you can imagine.
28 00:06:08.860 ⇒ 00:06:16.489 Samuel Roberts: yeah, that’s kind of my, you know, very, like, two-second description. So, yeah, I hope to hear a brief background on you, and then we can get started.
29 00:06:16.490 ⇒ 00:06:32.270 nolanrobbins: Sure. So my name’s Nolan Robbins. I’m a machine learning and AI engineer based here in Austin, Texas. Currently, at the moment, I work for an AI consultancy firm. It’s like a very small startup, and we work with clients to try and, apply AI into, you know, their, businesses and workflows.
30 00:06:32.270 ⇒ 00:06:41.030 nolanrobbins: More about me, I started a perpetual passion for learning all things artificial intelligence with the advent of ChatGPT back in 2022.
31 00:06:41.170 ⇒ 00:06:48.570 nolanrobbins: And really that sparked, how I like to call it, like, a tree, if you will. It started at a branch, and then it’s like, I go down a whole bunch of different…
32 00:06:48.710 ⇒ 00:07:06.410 nolanrobbins: branches, if you will, to try and understand the totality of the artificial intelligence market, and trying to fill any gaps as they kind of come in, in terms of my computer science and software engineering fundamentals and background. So, I’m a continual learner, I love this stuff, I’m passionate about it, and I’m looking forward to talking with you more about it today.
33 00:07:06.790 ⇒ 00:07:10.920 Samuel Roberts: Great, yeah, okay. Let me pull up,
34 00:07:11.320 ⇒ 00:07:14.480 Samuel Roberts: on my notes here… alright, cool, cool. Yeah, so,
35 00:07:15.370 ⇒ 00:07:27.279 Samuel Roberts: Let’s, talk about… where do I want to begin here? Okay. So, obviously, like, since, you know, like you said, ChatGPT’s launch, like, there’s been… it’s been in the news, there’s been a ton of it, everyone is hearing about.
36 00:07:27.980 ⇒ 00:07:34.099 Samuel Roberts: But as we start working with this stuff, there’s lots of limitations that not everyone who’s non-technical might understand.
37 00:07:34.490 ⇒ 00:07:52.690 Samuel Roberts: How do you go about explaining some of the limitations of LLMs to a non-technical stakeholder? So, as you can imagine, we work with clients, I’m sure you do too, who just say, like, you know, throw AI at it kind of stuff, and obviously there’s… it’s… there’s issues, so I just want to make sure we know how to communicate that, yeah.
38 00:07:52.870 ⇒ 00:08:13.929 nolanrobbins: I think there’s two things that immediately come to mind. One with the sort of mindset of how I would talk to these clients, and that’s exhibiting a lot of emotional intelligence when it comes to these things, practicing empathy, active listening to their problem constraints, because as an engineer, if we aren’t actively, you know, know enough to understand their problem, we can’t even begin to talk about how we would solve that solution, step one.
39 00:08:14.030 ⇒ 00:08:18.239 nolanrobbins: And then step two that immediately comes to mind is the use of analogies.
40 00:08:18.240 ⇒ 00:08:35.850 nolanrobbins: I find for non-technical stakeholders especially, being able to break things down in terms of things that they may understand kind of relates that mental imagery of connecting the dots, if you will. So, like, a prime example, in terms of modularity, let’s say, as an architect, we are, you know, putting a whole bunch of, like, Docker containers together, right?
41 00:08:35.870 ⇒ 00:08:48.969 nolanrobbins: You know, I’ve told clients before that it’s like, imagine it’s like a LEGO piece. If you want to take one LEGO piece off, you’re more than welcome to do that, put another one on, and that way it kind of keeps everything separate. So the use of analogies, I think, is a good one there.
42 00:08:49.560 ⇒ 00:08:57.249 Samuel Roberts: Cool, cool, yeah, that’s great, that’s great. Has there been a time when a user has misunderstood what an AI feature was able to do?
43 00:08:57.370 ⇒ 00:08:58.250 Samuel Roberts: You can talk about?
44 00:08:59.410 ⇒ 00:09:09.829 nolanrobbins: That’s a good point. I’m sure there’s, like, little nitty-gritties of stuff like that, but I think, you know, in my experience with working with startups, obviously the vision can probably
45 00:09:09.830 ⇒ 00:09:19.869 nolanrobbins: get a little over their skis with it. They almost want the AI to do everything. I still hold the position that it’s still important for these startup founders to maintain that vision.
46 00:09:19.870 ⇒ 00:09:35.139 nolanrobbins: So, as an AI engineer and consultant, my job is just more to nudge them along and continue their… not to diminish their vision, if you will, just kind of nudge it more into what’s applicable and kind of talk about the steps or stages in regards to achieving that vision.
47 00:09:35.400 ⇒ 00:09:36.569 Samuel Roberts: Cool, cool, cool.
48 00:09:36.790 ⇒ 00:09:44.189 Samuel Roberts: Sweet. Great. Is there, an LLM-based feature that you’ve shipped to production that you could, talk about in the problem that it solved?
49 00:09:44.490 ⇒ 00:09:49.739 nolanrobbins: Yeah, I mean, this is kind of stuff that I do every day. Yeah, yeah.
50 00:09:49.940 ⇒ 00:09:57.690 nolanrobbins: I guess it’s kind of the main overarching one that you’ll see on my resume, was with a multi-agentic framework that I did for Froster Consulting.
51 00:09:57.760 ⇒ 00:10:15.799 nolanrobbins: I gotta be a little bit careful, because I signed an NDA, but basically what we did is the, the client wanted a very comprehensive onboarding protocol for a wellness schedule protocol routine. So we had to exhibit a lot of pillars of health in regards to making sure this protocol was well-versed with everything.
52 00:10:15.950 ⇒ 00:10:33.130 nolanrobbins: Not to get too deep in the architecture, but just basically, it had to be a multi-agentic system where we had, like, a sleep agent, an exercise agent, a food agent, etc, right? And we set those up in more of a graph-based format, just in case the client wanted to add another, health feature down the line, right? We wouldn’t have to…
53 00:10:33.250 ⇒ 00:10:49.149 nolanrobbins: you know, mess with the whole sequential nature of everything. It was very node-based. And, what was really important at the end there, too, is to have a very, more of a reasoning agent at the bottom, like a SIFT agent, so that agents didn’t contradict each other going through that end protocol.
54 00:10:50.550 ⇒ 00:10:55.740 nolanrobbins: at the end, so, that’s more of the LLM, I guess, based… more agentic, but…
55 00:10:55.740 ⇒ 00:10:58.480 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, very cool, very cool.
56 00:10:59.370 ⇒ 00:11:07.579 Samuel Roberts: Let’s see, let’s see… Okay, so I sort of mentioned, obviously, things move so quickly in this industry right now, lots of trends, lots of…
57 00:11:07.630 ⇒ 00:11:19.590 Samuel Roberts: hype in different ways. Sure. Is there an LLM trend, or, you know, trend can be very broad, you know, product, framework, model, whatever, that you were initially excited about, but decided not to adopt for some reason?
58 00:11:23.100 ⇒ 00:11:27.880 nolanrobbins: what’s a good exa… that’s a really good question, because it comes up rather often.
59 00:11:28.280 ⇒ 00:11:33.649 nolanrobbins: I think it really varies… I want to make sure I answer the question right. Can you repeat it again, just so I can…
60 00:11:33.650 ⇒ 00:11:39.360 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, so, the question is, like, what is an LLM trend that you were excited about, but decided not to adopt?
61 00:11:41.580 ⇒ 00:11:59.460 nolanrobbins: I would say the multi-agent setup within Cursor, being able to run multiple agents as once. I find for my particular workflow that having that level of autonomy can get over your skis in terms of being able to observe what is happening with these agents and ruining token costs.
62 00:11:59.460 ⇒ 00:12:16.389 nolanrobbins: So the way I like to work is very project-based in terms of what I see on screen, and I actively nudge this LLM in the agent, code as it kind of moves through. So, I was like, oh, I can do 4 times the work, and then I realized I’m working on Agent 3, and Agent 1 went off on a tangent, and now I have to circle back. So…
63 00:12:16.390 ⇒ 00:12:23.680 Samuel Roberts: I feel that, yep, definitely, definitely. Yeah, no, I… I can… I can relate to that. I’ve definitely been trying to do that a little bit more, but it’s.
64 00:12:24.300 ⇒ 00:12:30.050 Samuel Roberts: more… the way I work as well is just, like, back and forth with the agent, directing them, nudging them in the right way.
65 00:12:30.050 ⇒ 00:12:30.400 nolanrobbins: door.
66 00:12:30.400 ⇒ 00:12:33.360 Samuel Roberts: Instead of, yeah, more in-loop than anything.
67 00:12:35.260 ⇒ 00:12:39.370 Samuel Roberts: How do you decide when a new model or a framework is production ready?
68 00:12:39.610 ⇒ 00:12:44.519 nolanrobbins: Mmm, that’s a really good point. Obviously, there’s a lot of different ways to go with this.
69 00:12:44.640 ⇒ 00:12:56.379 nolanrobbins: It depends on the task, of course. Obviously, evaluation metrics are very, very important, making sure you have proper testing, and whatever the, the business metric is at that point that they’re trying to optimize.
70 00:12:56.380 ⇒ 00:13:14.160 nolanrobbins: Now this can get a little, complicated, I guess, if you will, with the non-deterministic nature of LLMs, having LLMs a judge, possibly. If it’s more rag-based, having, like, faithfulness metrics, cohesive metrics to the database that you’re pulling from, or the knowledge base, if you will, excuse me.
71 00:13:14.350 ⇒ 00:13:23.299 nolanrobbins: And I’ll answer more on, like, a conceptual level with how things work. I think the overarching theme is that the worst model that you will ever use is the one you currently have.
72 00:13:23.430 ⇒ 00:13:35.620 nolanrobbins: Right? So, being able to adapt in the future is important, and I think being hands-on with this technology every day, you can kind of start cutting through the noise and seeing that, hey, this model that just came out.
73 00:13:35.650 ⇒ 00:13:47.009 nolanrobbins: maybe isn’t worth the tokens that it was based on the prior model, and I think that comes a lot with domain expertise and why people hire companies like Brainforge to kind of just break through that noise, if you will.
74 00:13:47.330 ⇒ 00:13:55.160 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, there’s so much out there, it’s hard to… it’s hard for, like… when you’re in it, to keep up with it all, let alone if you’re just, you know, observing. Absolutely.
75 00:13:55.160 ⇒ 00:13:59.000 nolanrobbins: You gotta love it. You have to be passionate about it. It’s something that’s just part of my day now.
76 00:13:59.000 ⇒ 00:13:59.470 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
77 00:13:59.470 ⇒ 00:14:01.879 nolanrobbins: Excites me, and then, you know, move on to the next thing.
78 00:14:02.140 ⇒ 00:14:10.409 Samuel Roberts: Cool, cool. Okay, let’s, jump to this other one here. If you had 6 months with no obligations, what would you work on?
79 00:14:10.860 ⇒ 00:14:22.240 nolanrobbins: Mmm, that’s a really good point. I’m actually gonna list probably a weakness of mine, in regards to answering this question as well. I’m very consumption-based, more of creation-based.
80 00:14:22.240 ⇒ 00:14:33.329 nolanrobbins: I tend to lean that way, I guess, so I think the question says, oh, I would start a company and do all this such and such. But I really do attest that I am a continual learner.
81 00:14:33.330 ⇒ 00:14:47.959 nolanrobbins: So if I did have 6 months of prep time, I would really get well-versed with math, get well-versed with code, experiment with new ideas, be a tinkerer, an experimenter, so that if I were to come back into the workplace after 6 months, I would be much more prepared
82 00:14:48.010 ⇒ 00:14:51.369 nolanrobbins: And… and knowledgeable in being able to.
83 00:14:51.520 ⇒ 00:15:03.419 nolanrobbins: you know, have the client ask for a tool. You know, I’m a builder at heart. I wouldn’t say I’m very entrepreneurial at all, in regards to that, but I would be learning, I’d be reading, I’d be trying, and that’s what I would do.
84 00:15:03.960 ⇒ 00:15:12.370 Samuel Roberts: Sounds good, sounds good. Is there, something that you’ve stuck with outside of work over multiple years?
85 00:15:13.270 ⇒ 00:15:27.060 nolanrobbins: Absolutely. Ever since I was 4 years old, my dad put a golf club in my hand. I’m an avid golfer. I could talk about the strength of how good I did get at golf. That’s something I actively do on the side as well, although I.
86 00:15:27.060 ⇒ 00:15:27.830 Samuel Roberts: Right.
87 00:15:27.830 ⇒ 00:15:30.620 nolanrobbins: Don’t do it as much when I was a kid, but I played in college.
88 00:15:31.310 ⇒ 00:15:48.460 nolanrobbins: it relates a lot to artificial intelligence and coding, because it’s a sport you can never master. It’s the journey of always getting better, always trying to work on new things, and I think that stands, you know, a test to who I am as a person, in terms of a builder, engineer, and then
89 00:15:48.460 ⇒ 00:15:54.339 nolanrobbins: More of my personality traits, so I’m more on the path of trying to get better at a task that I can ever master.
90 00:15:54.830 ⇒ 00:15:55.710 Samuel Roberts: Right, great.
91 00:15:56.060 ⇒ 00:16:06.709 Samuel Roberts: How about a, Contrarian or controversial opinion that you have, You know, just…
92 00:16:07.060 ⇒ 00:16:10.690 Samuel Roberts: Anything like that, I don’t know. It could be related to this, could be not, I’m just… yeah.
93 00:16:11.410 ⇒ 00:16:28.130 nolanrobbins: I’ll just say in terms of where I might see the industry going and kind of what I’m understanding with things, I’m really starting to see that these closed source models are going to be very monopolistic in terms of how tightly integrated they are with the software engineering workforce at this point. I think…
94 00:16:28.130 ⇒ 00:16:39.760 nolanrobbins: I am actively, at this point, looking into ways to be able to locally source these coding models in terms of developing the hardware for it, being able to do this all locally, because, you know, what costs
95 00:16:39.830 ⇒ 00:16:52.969 nolanrobbins: $20 pro plan now is probably very quickly going to be a pay-per-use, and you’re going to see these costs really skyrocket, and everyone’s going to be, like a fish out of water, and not really understand where to go, because they’ve relied on these tools so heavily.
96 00:16:52.970 ⇒ 00:17:03.970 nolanrobbins: I’m understanding that contrary to LLMs are very good for problem solving, but they also can offload a lot of brain thinking and critical thinking power in terms of problem solving as well.
97 00:17:03.970 ⇒ 00:17:15.839 nolanrobbins: So that’s actively something I’m trying to keep in mind as I work with LLMs as well, understanding they’re a tool and not a crux, to… or a crutch, if you will, to hold my whole weight on, if you will, for the analogy.
98 00:17:16.910 ⇒ 00:17:27.569 nolanrobbins: So, as an AI engineer, I have to use these tools, obviously, to keep up with the speed of demand for these software products, but I’m aware that it can come with adverse side effects if not handled correctly.
99 00:17:27.980 ⇒ 00:17:35.869 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, totally, totally. No, I feel bad. I’m definitely… especially as the plans have changed in the last few weeks, even, it’s very.
100 00:17:35.870 ⇒ 00:17:37.029 nolanrobbins: The GitHub co-pilot, right?
101 00:17:37.320 ⇒ 00:17:38.950 Samuel Roberts: Copilot, yeah, I mean, even just the.
102 00:17:38.950 ⇒ 00:17:39.729 nolanrobbins: That’s the first one.
103 00:17:39.730 ⇒ 00:17:41.159 Samuel Roberts: odd in Codex, like, it’s been.
104 00:17:41.160 ⇒ 00:17:41.560 nolanrobbins: and then…
105 00:17:41.560 ⇒ 00:17:43.299 Samuel Roberts: Even inching it.
106 00:17:43.630 ⇒ 00:17:47.719 Samuel Roberts: It’s literally gonna happen. We’ve been playing with some new models, like, some more open source ones as well, just trying to see.
107 00:17:48.530 ⇒ 00:18:05.340 Samuel Roberts: works, what doesn’t, what you can lean on for certain things and not others, so I really appreciate hearing that, because I definitely feel that too, and I, you know, the bubble’s gonna burst, the VC money’s gonna dry up, and everything’s gonna skyrocket, and we’re not ready for it as an industry. Cool, cool. All right, so we’re getting close to halfway, so this is where I’m gonna kind of
108 00:18:05.340 ⇒ 00:18:10.340 Samuel Roberts: Switch it up, and whatever questions you have for me about the role, the company, whatever.
109 00:18:10.340 ⇒ 00:18:15.310 nolanrobbins: Yeah, sure. So I guess I can kind of brainstorm a lot of these questions, too, with you as well.
110 00:18:15.310 ⇒ 00:18:15.820 Samuel Roberts: Totally, dude.
111 00:18:15.820 ⇒ 00:18:26.210 nolanrobbins: have a chance to speak with, Kayla, and we set up a coffee chat with Udom tomorrow as well. Yeah, I saw that. So I’ll be able to talk with him and converse a lot of the stuff that we can talk about here today as well.
112 00:18:26.350 ⇒ 00:18:33.570 nolanrobbins: So obviously did a little bit of research into the company, Kayla had reached out to me about it, and if I’m understanding you guys correctly,
113 00:18:33.570 ⇒ 00:18:46.360 nolanrobbins: the reason why you’re trying to hire at this point, this growth is kind of getting a little over your skis in terms of the engineers you have on deck, or just trying to scale the team out underneath. Can you maybe talk about that growth mindset and how Brainforge is really trying to move forward within that?
114 00:18:46.930 ⇒ 00:19:00.419 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, so, a little bit of background, you know, we, Brainforce Archive is kind of a data consultancy, that’s, like, where Uptum’s background comes from. We have a pretty strong, like, data side, the engineers are kind of split that way, like, data and AI, automation stuff.
115 00:19:00.420 ⇒ 00:19:12.110 Samuel Roberts: And so, when I joined in July, there were a couple other engineers. Uten was kind of managing that team, I kind of came in to let him… free him up to do that stuff. And, it was kind of a combination of internal tools that had been…
116 00:19:12.110 ⇒ 00:19:25.419 Samuel Roberts: you know, helping Brainforge move faster and do things, and then starting to kind of sell services to clients. And so, that team is still kind of in place and kind of roughly the same size, but we’re getting more,
117 00:19:25.420 ⇒ 00:19:36.379 Samuel Roberts: interest in the AI, we’re pitching a lot more of the data… some of the data clients are interested in things beyond just their pipelines and things like that, and so we’re, you know, moving
118 00:19:36.670 ⇒ 00:19:42.649 Samuel Roberts: fairly quickly for the size of team we are, and I think a lot of these tools help that. You know, how much they help is kind of the question, and where some of that.
119 00:19:42.650 ⇒ 00:19:43.000 nolanrobbins: Sure.
120 00:19:43.000 ⇒ 00:19:53.849 Samuel Roberts: sticks. Sure. But I think either way, like, more bodies are needed, more brains are needed, you know, there’s only so much you can kick off to an AI agent and be confident when it comes back, kind of thing, if you’re doing
121 00:19:54.520 ⇒ 00:20:01.409 Samuel Roberts: real production stuff for clients. You know, I think there’s some stuff where we get… one of the nice things about Brainforge is, like, we are doing internal stuff too, so there is some…
122 00:20:02.270 ⇒ 00:20:06.139 Samuel Roberts: with some cool things that are not as production critical. Sure.
123 00:20:06.250 ⇒ 00:20:15.890 Samuel Roberts: But when it comes to, you know, clients, we’re just kind of starting to hit a limit on what… the throughput that we can really do, even with the tools we have. You know, I’m amazed at how quick we’re moving.
124 00:20:15.890 ⇒ 00:20:33.210 Samuel Roberts: In a lot of ways, but, you know, now the expectations are just higher as well for that. So, yeah, I mean, the sales team is pushing more, trying to sell more AI services. We’re trying to kind of standardize a little bit more of what we’re doing, because so far it’s been a number of different projects from, like, different interested parties, some of the data people, some of the
125 00:20:33.210 ⇒ 00:20:37.330 Samuel Roberts: Or the data clients, some of the non-data clients that just have come for that way.
126 00:20:38.050 ⇒ 00:20:41.110 Samuel Roberts: So there’s… it’s kind of starting to get to a point where not…
127 00:20:41.450 ⇒ 00:20:53.720 Samuel Roberts: quite breaking yet, if that makes sense, but, like, it’s getting there, and it probably is holding us back a little bit, just not having more resources that way, so I think that’s sort of why we’re looking to expand the AI team, especially, so…
128 00:20:54.890 ⇒ 00:20:58.190 nolanrobbins: I have two questions based off that initial, initial thought process.
129 00:20:58.190 ⇒ 00:20:58.730 Samuel Roberts: Totally, yeah.
130 00:20:58.730 ⇒ 00:21:07.769 nolanrobbins: This one’s more applicable. You know, I mentioned earlier that I’m a continual learner, because simply in this field, there’s always something new to come out. Can you kind of maybe talk about
131 00:21:07.880 ⇒ 00:21:20.849 nolanrobbins: Maybe, like, a cultural thing within Brainforce, or, like, a theme that goes top-down in terms of, understanding new AI technologies as they come out and being able to iterate and, experiment with within the team.
132 00:21:20.970 ⇒ 00:21:21.570 nolanrobbins: To be able to…
133 00:21:21.570 ⇒ 00:21:22.240 Samuel Roberts: to apply it to class.
134 00:21:23.010 ⇒ 00:21:37.839 Samuel Roberts: Definitely. So, like, top-down, I mean, Utam drives a lot of that. He is similar in that way. There’s always new things, we’re always posting on Slack, there’s a few different channels, you know, sometimes something will end up in engineering if it’s cool, but then there’s also just, like, a fun random one, that it’s, like, you know, maybe not…
135 00:21:38.390 ⇒ 00:21:45.850 Samuel Roberts: engineering interesting, but, like, AI interesting for everyone in the company kind of thing. And there’s always something going through there, you know, there’s tons of…
136 00:21:45.950 ⇒ 00:21:50.590 Samuel Roberts: content out there with… there’s too much content out there in general for that, but it is a little bit, like… Sure, sure.
137 00:21:51.000 ⇒ 00:22:02.500 Samuel Roberts: it down, like, if, you know, Food Tom’s posting it, I’ve already seen that somewhere else, I’m gonna take a look at it. I’m posting it there, I’m trying to keep things, you know, especially with the team, keep people in the loop for where things are going and what I see happening.
138 00:22:02.640 ⇒ 00:22:17.170 Samuel Roberts: So there’s definitely, like, a cultural, top-down, like you said, kind of approach there. I’ve tried to keep that up as well, because I’m doing something very similar. I’m following this constantly. You know, before I was looking forward, I was constantly on top of the stuff, even freelancing.
139 00:22:17.170 ⇒ 00:22:26.740 Samuel Roberts: And so, I would say there’s… there’s a… that… definitely that feeling. You know, some people are more and less technical, so there’s kind of different levels of it, but I think when it comes to…
140 00:22:26.740 ⇒ 00:22:37.310 Samuel Roberts: the AI space, there’s, there’s a lot of interest in… in keeping that up. We did, we have experimented with some things. We had, like, a book club for a little bit. Cool, yeah.
141 00:22:37.310 ⇒ 00:22:42.270 Samuel Roberts: fell apart a little bit as things kind of grew a little bit, and I’m hoping we’re gonna get back into that.
142 00:22:42.610 ⇒ 00:22:45.379 Samuel Roberts: There’s also been doing some, like, you know, like,
143 00:22:45.770 ⇒ 00:22:48.389 Samuel Roberts: Like, lunch and learn, like, brown bag kind of, like, you know…
144 00:22:48.390 ⇒ 00:22:48.850 nolanrobbins: And huh?
145 00:22:48.850 ⇒ 00:23:06.179 Samuel Roberts: for an hour, synchronously, and chat about something, or have someone give a presentation. We do, lab shares during our, like, Friday meetings, or every other Friday meetings, so, like, there’s a bit of that, but it’s also, as a growing company, it’s hard to sustain that, especially fully remote, which, I have plenty of thoughts on, because one of my companies was…
146 00:23:06.180 ⇒ 00:23:10.249 Samuel Roberts: Trying to build tools for fully remote teams to kind of capture some of that.
147 00:23:10.250 ⇒ 00:23:10.730 nolanrobbins: Very cool.
148 00:23:10.730 ⇒ 00:23:22.650 Samuel Roberts: you know, yeah, the stuff from… that you really get, that, like, happenstance stuff that you get with just being in an office. So, I think we… Sure. There’s definitely focus on that, which I appreciate, coming from a background of working very remote. I appreciate that too, so, yeah.
149 00:23:22.650 ⇒ 00:23:28.730 nolanrobbins: Yeah, I mean, you kind of touched on a lot of those points, but that was going to be my next question. I had heard that this is an all-remote kind of…
150 00:23:28.730 ⇒ 00:23:29.120 Samuel Roberts: jazz.
151 00:23:29.120 ⇒ 00:23:44.209 nolanrobbins: format within Brains Force, so kind of how you guys all collaborate. I mean, you had mentioned, like, the lab shares and having an active Slack channel, although it gets a little, what’d you say, lax, if you will, in terms of people keeping up with it or not, but…
152 00:23:44.550 ⇒ 00:23:52.029 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, there’s, you know, people… Slack is definitely the main mode of communication, which is good, you know, most of the day, like, people are working.
153 00:23:52.030 ⇒ 00:24:05.199 Samuel Roberts: roughly very consistent hours, you know, I’m on the East Coast, people are on the West Coast, Central, we have people, internationally that tend to keep U.S. time, so it’s not like you’re waiting for someone overnight, necessarily, to do something.
154 00:24:05.250 ⇒ 00:24:06.080 Samuel Roberts: Boom.
155 00:24:06.220 ⇒ 00:24:25.760 Samuel Roberts: And so, you know, this… we have Slack and we have Zoom, and so, Zoom meetings are all also recorded and ingested into the platform, so you can search transcripts and catch up on things you might have missed, or meetings you just gotta go over, or extract some information from a client meeting, things like that. But there’s a lot of, like, async and sync kind of.
156 00:24:26.120 ⇒ 00:24:37.340 Samuel Roberts: to it. So, you know, different people log off at different times, but, you know, there’s also a little bit of flexibility there, too, because, you know, we’re all in our houses working, so it’s not like we’re just sat at night.
157 00:24:37.340 ⇒ 00:24:37.670 nolanrobbins: Absolutely.
158 00:24:37.670 ⇒ 00:24:41.600 Samuel Roberts: Clocking in at a certain time, but overall, like, it is a pretty good…
159 00:24:41.940 ⇒ 00:24:47.809 Samuel Roberts: And I think it’s getting better, probably, too, communication culture, because that’s one of the things that I’ve experienced in my own startups in the past.
160 00:24:48.660 ⇒ 00:24:52.229 Samuel Roberts: You hit a certain point, and it’s, you know, communication scales exponentially.
161 00:24:52.630 ⇒ 00:25:04.080 Samuel Roberts: communication needs, and so, I think we’re… we’re thinking about that, which is good, because not everyone does when you get to a certain point, and you get kind of past that point and realize, oh, crap.
162 00:25:04.080 ⇒ 00:25:13.639 Samuel Roberts: But there’s definitely, like, thought going into that, and I think it’s pretty good. Within the AI team, we pretty much chat every day asynchronously.
163 00:25:13.640 ⇒ 00:25:31.040 Samuel Roberts: we have experimented with it a few different ways. We had, like, morning stand-ups for a while, we had, bigger stand-ups that were kind of client-focused. We’ve tried a few different things. Now it’s kind of just, like, a check-in, you know, we use linear, and so, like, a lot of stuff happens there. That’s all integrated with Slack, it’s all… you know, everything’s kind of integrated with each other, so there’s a lot.
164 00:25:31.040 ⇒ 00:25:31.400 nolanrobbins: Dude, yeah.
165 00:25:31.440 ⇒ 00:25:40.000 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, lots of places, things are happening, but it’s good to just have a check-in and be like, oh, I didn’t see you posted that yet. Oh, okay, great, great. Oh, okay, what about this kind of… you know, there’s still time for that.
166 00:25:40.390 ⇒ 00:25:49.670 Samuel Roberts: is invaluable. But there’s also good time for deep work, because you can just kind of block out your calendar and make sure no one schedules anything then.
167 00:25:50.000 ⇒ 00:25:57.159 Samuel Roberts: And, you know, that push and pull is a balancing act, but I think we manage it relatively well, and there’s also…
168 00:25:57.470 ⇒ 00:26:00.280 Samuel Roberts: focus on it, so I think going forward.
169 00:26:00.730 ⇒ 00:26:03.769 Samuel Roberts: We’re gonna get lost in the shuffle the way it does sometimes in companies.
170 00:26:03.990 ⇒ 00:26:08.189 nolanrobbins: Sure, absolutely. It’s cool that you come from that background of, like, already understanding that…
171 00:26:08.300 ⇒ 00:26:15.270 nolanrobbins: Maybe it’s not a problem, per se, but it’s, like, a potential cultural thing to just maintain that remote cohesiveness that, you know, we’re all.
172 00:26:15.270 ⇒ 00:26:15.799 Samuel Roberts: We’re on the screen.
173 00:26:15.800 ⇒ 00:26:16.850 nolanrobbins: Greens kind of thing.
174 00:26:17.280 ⇒ 00:26:21.730 Samuel Roberts: Definitely, definitely. And if you don’t think of it soon enough, it’s too late, kind of thing. Right, right.
175 00:26:21.730 ⇒ 00:26:22.350 nolanrobbins: We’re still people.
176 00:26:22.350 ⇒ 00:26:24.270 Samuel Roberts: it. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
177 00:26:24.270 ⇒ 00:26:29.470 nolanrobbins: Yeah, I think that’s what, Udom really wants to meet me, in town, right? Because Austin is coming up for this, and…
178 00:26:29.470 ⇒ 00:26:29.880 Samuel Roberts: Yeah.
179 00:26:29.880 ⇒ 00:26:46.310 nolanrobbins: a lot of good engineers that I’ve met in, like, little meetups and cloud code things, and there’s a building here called Capital Factory, which I’m sure Udom is probably aware of. It’s like a startup hub, and that’s kind of where all the workshops are held, and everyone in town looking for work, or doing side projects, got a little startup.
180 00:26:46.310 ⇒ 00:26:46.820 Samuel Roberts: Gotcha.
181 00:26:46.820 ⇒ 00:26:50.980 nolanrobbins: Right? So that’s how I’ve been able to converse with a lot of them.
182 00:26:51.130 ⇒ 00:27:01.979 nolanrobbins: Yeah, so I’ll kind of go… questions more into, like, the work, because I’m kind of curious with things. Totally, yeah. Caleb mentioned that this is more of a consultancy sort of framework, and that’s how the,
183 00:27:02.010 ⇒ 00:27:13.030 nolanrobbins: for lack of a better word, like, salary or hourly rate is going to be. So, she kind of mentioned, and this is maybe a little bit different than what I’m accustomed to in startups, but, like, that 40-hour week is pretty set.
184 00:27:13.100 ⇒ 00:27:26.540 nolanrobbins: In terms of that, and like, you could have to ask your manager for more hours. Maybe can you kind of talk about, like, what a normal week would look like if I’m expected to work longer hours, but that’s kind of how the payment works? You guys are looking into W-2s, apparently.
185 00:27:26.540 ⇒ 00:27:27.140 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
186 00:27:27.140 ⇒ 00:27:28.349 nolanrobbins: Do you have any knowledge with that?
187 00:27:28.740 ⇒ 00:27:47.490 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Probably not quite as much as Kayla, because she’s kind of the people ops side, so she buys a little bit more there, so, you know, take whatever I say with a grain of salt kind of thing, because I, you know, don’t 100% have all the info, but yeah, I mean, you can imagine, and I’m sure you’re, you know, we’re working for clients, there’s, you know, hourly
188 00:27:47.760 ⇒ 00:28:00.390 Samuel Roberts: hourly, contracts, there’s fixed contracts, there’s all different things, so another whole part of this that is new to me, not coming from a consultant background, is managing those resources in a slightly different way than you might for, like, a property company.
189 00:28:00.390 ⇒ 00:28:14.700 Samuel Roberts: And so, you know, tracking time by, you know, not just what you’re working on, but which client it goes to, if it’s internal, if it’s external, like, you know, all that sort of stuff is… was a little new to me. Okay. Not that I was, you know… I’ve been freelancing, so it’s not quite…
190 00:28:15.080 ⇒ 00:28:16.109 Samuel Roberts: boring, but it’s.
191 00:28:16.110 ⇒ 00:28:16.500 nolanrobbins: Cornel.
192 00:28:16.500 ⇒ 00:28:24.660 Samuel Roberts: you know, it’s still more, like, I wasn’t used to tracking my hours, so I’m pretty good about, like, okay, I’m clocking to this project, a lot of context switching sometimes, especially.
193 00:28:24.660 ⇒ 00:28:25.120 nolanrobbins: Yeah, absolutely.
194 00:28:25.120 ⇒ 00:28:37.159 Samuel Roberts: what projects are coming through. So, yeah, there’s that side of it. You know, I think the allocations that kind of come out, we do that, like, monthly, based on, like, client needs and resources.
195 00:28:37.160 ⇒ 00:28:50.039 Samuel Roberts: So, I imagine that’s where something like that would be, like, okay, we’re gonna need more hours on this project kind of thing. Who’s got the time? Who’s free, who’s, you know, that sort of stuff happens, at a certain level.
196 00:28:50.190 ⇒ 00:29:03.270 Samuel Roberts: But, yeah, I don’t necessarily know exactly where it would be, like, if you wanted to work more hours, if you wanted to, you know, how that all plays out exactly in terms of negotiation that way. Sure, sure. But I’m sure there’s some flexibility there to make that work.
197 00:29:05.260 ⇒ 00:29:12.210 Samuel Roberts: But, yeah, I think that’s kind of what I… my take, what I’ve got, but yeah, I would honestly go with what Kayla says as the, like, probably…
198 00:29:12.210 ⇒ 00:29:13.490 nolanrobbins: Touch base with Udom tomorrow, maybe.
199 00:29:13.490 ⇒ 00:29:14.350 Samuel Roberts: We don’t want that from the PS.
200 00:29:14.350 ⇒ 00:29:15.110 nolanrobbins: expected.
201 00:29:15.110 ⇒ 00:29:15.959 Samuel Roberts: Have to, yeah.
202 00:29:15.960 ⇒ 00:29:16.540 nolanrobbins: Sure.
203 00:29:16.650 ⇒ 00:29:35.210 nolanrobbins: I guess I have two, thematic questions left to kind of… to wrap us up here. I guess one right now is… you kind of touched on maybe the reason why you’re going for growth, but maybe can you talk about more what the current bottleneck is within the team, things you guys are struggling with in terms of, trying to work through problems in regards to that?
204 00:29:35.690 ⇒ 00:29:41.299 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, so I mean, I think the… The main bottleneck is…
205 00:29:41.760 ⇒ 00:29:49.970 Samuel Roberts: just time that we have, and time as, like, a function, like, man hours, if you will. You know, like, the AI, like I said, has let us go faster.
206 00:29:49.970 ⇒ 00:30:01.769 Samuel Roberts: That being said, like, we’re already always, always pushing that… that kind of line, and, you know, faster while still having the right quality is a, you know, a balancing act there, too. But I think it really is just there’s, you know, basically.
207 00:30:02.230 ⇒ 00:30:19.300 Samuel Roberts: three of us, kind of technically in it. We have another, who you’ll meet through this process. He’s shifted a little more towards, like, the client-facing side a little bit. Like, he could jump in, but that’s not really his role right now. So we’re a little, you know, we just need more engineers solving problems.
208 00:30:19.300 ⇒ 00:30:19.630 nolanrobbins: That’s…
209 00:30:19.630 ⇒ 00:30:25.279 Samuel Roberts: you know, talking through problems, you know, I think we’re definitely looking for someone that can hit the ground running that way.
210 00:30:25.280 ⇒ 00:30:25.860 nolanrobbins: Sure.
211 00:30:26.260 ⇒ 00:30:36.289 Samuel Roberts: we have kind of a few different levels, maybe, of, like, where people are at, like, junior, mid-senior. We don’t necessarily use those terms as… as formally, maybe, as some other
212 00:30:36.290 ⇒ 00:30:47.859 Samuel Roberts: you know, bigger companies might, but there’s definitely a, okay, so-and-so could handle this, so-and-so can handle that, kind of, you know, especially at the tech thinking that way. So I think, you know, we want someone, as we’re growing, who can jump right in.
213 00:30:47.860 ⇒ 00:30:50.050 Samuel Roberts: Hit the ground running, doesn’t, you know, not like a…
214 00:30:50.810 ⇒ 00:30:51.700 nolanrobbins: Give someone the reins.
215 00:30:51.790 ⇒ 00:31:00.430 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, you know what I mean? You want someone that’s, like, because I think that’s one of the factors, is that from a, like, architectural, like, systems thinking process.
216 00:31:00.800 ⇒ 00:31:07.150 Samuel Roberts: There’s only a… A couple of us that can really do that, in a, in a…
217 00:31:08.140 ⇒ 00:31:13.239 Samuel Roberts: In a way that, like, I feel comfortable being like, okay, I’ve thought this through, how do you feel about it, kind of thing.
218 00:31:13.240 ⇒ 00:31:13.570 nolanrobbins: Mmm.
219 00:31:13.700 ⇒ 00:31:19.480 Samuel Roberts: I think some of the engineers we have are great engineers, but they’re just a little newer, and, like, some of that just comes with experience, you know?
220 00:31:20.270 ⇒ 00:31:28.649 Samuel Roberts: It’s not anything about anyone particularly, but it’s just I’ve been around, I’ve seen stuff, I’ve tried stuff, I’ve read the horror stories, I’ve experienced the horror stories, that kind of stuff.
221 00:31:28.650 ⇒ 00:31:31.030 nolanrobbins: Yeah, cloud code wiping your whole database type thing?
222 00:31:31.030 ⇒ 00:31:33.910 Samuel Roberts: Oh my god, that is, that is, like…
223 00:31:33.910 ⇒ 00:31:35.399 nolanrobbins: I, I, I’ve definitely…
224 00:31:35.400 ⇒ 00:31:39.140 Samuel Roberts: I’ve definitely gotten a little more lenient with letting the AI do things.
225 00:31:39.140 ⇒ 00:31:39.790 nolanrobbins: Sorry.
226 00:31:39.790 ⇒ 00:31:41.269 Samuel Roberts: I’ve gotten to that point. It’s so…
227 00:31:41.610 ⇒ 00:31:50.229 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. But, I mean, I’m… I still get butterflies, like, pushing anything to prod or dealing with a production database in any way, because I’m just, like, I…
228 00:31:50.910 ⇒ 00:31:56.579 Samuel Roberts: And that, you know, I’ve been in this situation where, like, someone did something, and it was like, oh, thank God that wasn’t me, but I don’t want it to be me, you know?
229 00:31:56.580 ⇒ 00:31:57.190 nolanrobbins: Right, right, right.
230 00:31:57.190 ⇒ 00:32:01.299 Samuel Roberts: Alright. That feeling, I think, is a healthy one, so… Sure.
231 00:32:01.400 ⇒ 00:32:08.969 Samuel Roberts: But yeah, I think it’s just, you know, the man hours, the brainpower, if you will, the…
232 00:32:09.470 ⇒ 00:32:14.129 Samuel Roberts: The type of thinking, the type of back and forth we can have with different people.
233 00:32:14.130 ⇒ 00:32:15.449 nolanrobbins: Communications.
234 00:32:15.450 ⇒ 00:32:19.610 Samuel Roberts: It’s like, we just… we just need a little bit more on the team to be able to go
235 00:32:20.480 ⇒ 00:32:23.089 Samuel Roberts: further on more projects, you know? Sure. Sure, absolutely.
236 00:32:23.510 ⇒ 00:32:28.400 Samuel Roberts: We’re scaling this way, and, you know, it’s like, more clients means more work, and more work means a lot more.
237 00:32:28.400 ⇒ 00:32:31.719 nolanrobbins: Got it. More horizontal scaling in terms of that, yeah, just having more people.
238 00:32:31.920 ⇒ 00:32:37.620 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, I mean, definitely bigger projects as well, but it’s the same… because it becomes the same kind of resourcing issue either way, you know.
239 00:32:38.450 ⇒ 00:32:39.180 nolanrobbins: this way.
240 00:32:39.180 ⇒ 00:32:41.650 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, you know what I mean? More, bigger clients means you just.
241 00:32:41.650 ⇒ 00:32:42.010 nolanrobbins: Okay.
242 00:32:42.010 ⇒ 00:32:43.500 Samuel Roberts: More resources, you know, so…
243 00:32:43.500 ⇒ 00:32:44.600 nolanrobbins: Sure, sure.
244 00:32:44.770 ⇒ 00:32:59.559 nolanrobbins: I want to be respectful of your time, I don’t know if I can ask this last question here real quickly, but, I mean, you touched on a lot of those parts. Let’s say, you know, best case scenario, I come in and I work for Brainforge. What’s the standard that would be expected of me within 6 months, and how do you envision me exceeding that standard?
245 00:32:59.850 ⇒ 00:33:07.890 Samuel Roberts: Mmm. Mmm, interesting. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say, I’m not even sure where I’m at in terms of my… I’ve definitely passed 6 months at this point, but it’s an interesting thing, because we’ve been…
246 00:33:07.890 ⇒ 00:33:09.280 nolanrobbins: July, yeah, sure.
247 00:33:09.280 ⇒ 00:33:11.860 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s come around, finally.
248 00:33:11.860 ⇒ 00:33:12.620 nolanrobbins: Yeah.
249 00:33:12.620 ⇒ 00:33:17.200 Samuel Roberts: But, yeah, I think the… the biggest thing is that…
250 00:33:17.970 ⇒ 00:33:27.310 Samuel Roberts: initial velocity, if that makes sense? Like, by 6 months, you know, some people would be, like, still ramping up, potentially, in some situations. Sure. Like, it’s still a…
251 00:33:27.410 ⇒ 00:33:28.379 Samuel Roberts: a kind of…
252 00:33:28.660 ⇒ 00:33:40.329 Samuel Roberts: you know, it’s not 3 months, I guess, so it’s not, like, totally, like, a probationary period kind of… kind of thought, but it’s definitely, like, you know, I would imagine someone who’s hired into this role would be, you know.
253 00:33:41.080 ⇒ 00:33:50.979 Samuel Roberts: leading on certain projects, like, it has the context that, you know, is like, oh, okay, that client, like, I know who to talk to for that. Like, not the single point of failure, that’s what we’re trying to avoid, but at least
254 00:33:51.300 ⇒ 00:34:06.450 Samuel Roberts: Like, you know, you know, we have different projects, and some people know more or less, and have been in on them more. So I imagine by 6 months in, there would be a client that you are most familiar with, that, you know, you’re the kind of point person on. You’re probably dealing with that client on a daily basis. You know, we like to be…
255 00:34:06.570 ⇒ 00:34:09.630 Samuel Roberts: Getting things in front of clients quickly, getting feedback.
256 00:34:10.000 ⇒ 00:34:29.500 Samuel Roberts: and someone that means engineers are talking to clients, we’re not necessarily gatekeeping all that all the time. You know, there’s definitely, like, client presentations, and some people put those together, and some people don’t, kind of thing, but we’re also trying to make it a way where anyone can do that, and we want to hire people that are capable of communicating and building, kind of thing.
257 00:34:29.500 ⇒ 00:34:30.250 nolanrobbins: Sure, sure.
258 00:34:30.710 ⇒ 00:34:31.080 nolanrobbins: I’m seeing.
259 00:34:31.080 ⇒ 00:34:31.610 Samuel Roberts: So I…
260 00:34:31.610 ⇒ 00:34:32.480 nolanrobbins: markup.
261 00:34:32.489 ⇒ 00:34:33.899 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s, you know, it’s.
262 00:34:33.900 ⇒ 00:34:34.539 nolanrobbins: Half and half.
263 00:34:34.810 ⇒ 00:34:37.299 Samuel Roberts: Yeah. Yeah, so I think,
264 00:34:37.630 ⇒ 00:34:52.169 Samuel Roberts: I think by 6 months, like, you’d be certainly doing that sort of stuff. You’d be, you know, dealing with clients, dealing with projects, dealing with other engineers, you know, working together, or maybe managing a little bit of, like, the linear board for certain projects, things like that, depending on…
265 00:34:52.170 ⇒ 00:34:52.750 nolanrobbins: Hmm…
266 00:34:52.750 ⇒ 00:35:01.029 Samuel Roberts: how much the growth happens, you know what I mean? Like, by 6 months, it’s also, like, if it’s just, like, we hire someone, and 6 months later, versus hire someone, and they need someone else, and 3 months, you know, like…
267 00:35:01.460 ⇒ 00:35:01.870 nolanrobbins: Fair.
268 00:35:01.870 ⇒ 00:35:04.700 Samuel Roberts: The growth trajectory is, you know…
269 00:35:04.840 ⇒ 00:35:17.599 Samuel Roberts: I don’t have great clarity on, because it’s… I don’t like… from my experience, trying to predict 6 months out in that form is a fool’s errand in general, but, you know, you can make predictions and try to stick to them, but… Sure. Yeah, I would say, like, you know, a good…
270 00:35:17.950 ⇒ 00:35:24.699 Samuel Roberts: Engineer dropping into this role by 6 months would be, like, fully rolling, the… beyond that, I think.
271 00:35:24.700 ⇒ 00:35:25.940 nolanrobbins: Hit the ground running, yeah.
272 00:35:25.940 ⇒ 00:35:33.729 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, I mean, hit the ground running from the start, but by 6 months, it’s like, you know, it’s… it would feel like you’ve been there a lot longer, I think, at that point. Okay. I would also say there’s,
273 00:35:34.290 ⇒ 00:35:46.750 Samuel Roberts: like, beyond that, there’s, you know, other things we’re doing, this internal tooling we’re playing with, like, it just kind of, like, people, some people get on a… I’m not able to at this point, because I have a 10-month-old baby, but, like, thank you, thank you.
274 00:35:47.210 ⇒ 00:35:53.710 Samuel Roberts: And they just kind of, like, hack on some stuff at night and things like that. So there’s, like, other ways to, like, really get into it that way. Okay.
275 00:35:53.710 ⇒ 00:36:03.209 nolanrobbins: go above and beyond. Okay, great. Yeah, I have a lot of notes written down about this. Like I said, I wanted to be respectful of your time, so just, you know, quickly wrap things up. You know, I want to thank you for your time today, Sam.
276 00:36:03.210 ⇒ 00:36:03.820 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, beautiful.
277 00:36:03.820 ⇒ 00:36:13.809 nolanrobbins: eloquently about the position, and kind of the culture fit of how Brainforge is moving forward. So, I’m looking forward to talking with Udom tomorrow, continuing any next steps.
278 00:36:13.810 ⇒ 00:36:31.840 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, that’s what I would… I would just… the next steps would be, like, a slightly more technical role-based interview. Obviously, like, the chat with Udam is also there, but the formal next round would be that, and then there’d be a, like, tech take-home assessment, and then, like, kind of a presentation panel interview on that. That would be the third round. Sure. So, that’s how we… Okay.
279 00:36:32.330 ⇒ 00:36:35.529 nolanrobbins: Yeah, that all works for me, so thanks for your time, but I enjoyed Cleveland, okay?
280 00:36:35.530 ⇒ 00:36:37.569 Samuel Roberts: Yeah, yeah, enjoy the rain.
281 00:36:37.570 ⇒ 00:36:39.270 nolanrobbins: Well, it just ended, but we’re good.
282 00:36:39.270 ⇒ 00:36:41.640 Samuel Roberts: Oh, perfect, there you go, alright. Have a good one.
283 00:36:41.640 ⇒ 00:36:43.240 nolanrobbins: I appreciate your time, thanks.