Meeting Title: Brainforge New Hire Orientation Date: 2026-05-11 Meeting participants: Kaela Gallagher, Nikhil G
WEBVTT
1 00:00:27.520 ⇒ 00:00:28.920 Nikhil G: Hey, Hector.
2 00:00:29.430 ⇒ 00:00:32.360 Kaela Gallagher: Hey, Nikhil, good morning! How’s it going?
3 00:00:33.810 ⇒ 00:00:36.380 Nikhil G: Morning, all good, how about you?
4 00:00:36.380 ⇒ 00:00:37.560 Kaela Gallagher: Good!
5 00:00:37.850 ⇒ 00:00:42.470 Kaela Gallagher: Sorry, I’m just getting everything pulled up here.
6 00:00:42.590 ⇒ 00:00:47.589 Kaela Gallagher: How has your morning been so far? All of your setup is going okay?
7 00:00:57.120 ⇒ 00:00:59.860 Kaela Gallagher: You are frozen for me.
8 00:01:05.740 ⇒ 00:01:10.040 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, now you’re back. Okay, sorry, you were frozen for a second.
9 00:01:10.500 ⇒ 00:01:21.790 Nikhil G: Yeah, yeah, I think there is some network issue, yeah. Going well so far, like, I just realized I missed the invite for a Google account.
10 00:01:21.990 ⇒ 00:01:27.290 Nikhil G: And, it was, weekend, so I didn’t pay attention to my…
11 00:01:27.790 ⇒ 00:01:28.820 Kaela Gallagher: Inbox, looks like.
12 00:01:28.820 ⇒ 00:01:29.850 Nikhil G: They expired now.
13 00:01:30.350 ⇒ 00:01:40.129 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, let me… before we get started, let me, message our ops team and see if they can get you a new invite.
14 00:01:40.760 ⇒ 00:01:42.660 Nikhil G: Okay, yeah, that’s what we meant. Thanks.
15 00:01:43.470 ⇒ 00:01:53.040 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, once you have that, it unlocks, like, a bunch of our other tools for you, so we’ll get you up and running on that, for sure.
16 00:01:53.420 ⇒ 00:02:07.109 Kaela Gallagher: But yeah, I can… I can run through our orientation. If you have any questions during it at all, please stop me, like, I’m here to answer any questions that you might have, especially, like, on the logistics side, so…
17 00:02:07.110 ⇒ 00:02:23.390 Kaela Gallagher: We can go ahead and get started, but what we’ll do is we’ll run through kind of, like, our mission, our values, then we’ll go into the tooling that’s available to you, and then just make sure that you’re set up for success and ready to go.
18 00:02:23.390 ⇒ 00:02:28.800 Kaela Gallagher: So our mission at BringForge is to help businesses turn clarity, er.
19 00:02:28.820 ⇒ 00:02:36.060 Kaela Gallagher: turn chaos into clarity using data and AI, to drive faster, smarter decisions for our clients.
20 00:02:36.120 ⇒ 00:02:42.390 Kaela Gallagher: Our vision for the organization is that everybody eats, so we all share success.
21 00:02:42.390 ⇒ 00:03:00.230 Kaela Gallagher: We operate like giants, so, think big, execute with excellence, deliver at the highest level, and then important to give back and pay forward, so we invest a lot in our team and our internal tooling as well, and expect everybody to share knowledge with each other.
22 00:03:01.520 ⇒ 00:03:19.040 Kaela Gallagher: What we do, we offer kind of these three service lines to our clients. You’ll be falling within this data platform and analytics side of the business. We also offer AI services, automation, co-pilots, and then strategy and analytics.
23 00:03:19.090 ⇒ 00:03:26.360 Kaela Gallagher: So, when you hear us talk about the delivery team, that includes all three of these segments.
24 00:03:26.580 ⇒ 00:03:31.130 Kaela Gallagher: And I’ll show you on our org chart in a second kind of how this breaks down.
25 00:03:32.410 ⇒ 00:03:47.479 Kaela Gallagher: And then who we serve, so most of the people that we are working with are going to have titles like Director or Head of Data or Analytics. Maybe there’s, like, a head of marketing or a Head of Growth that we’re partnering with.
26 00:03:47.480 ⇒ 00:03:53.059 Kaela Gallagher: So most of the time, these are our clients and the individuals that we work with.
27 00:03:53.230 ⇒ 00:04:02.739 Kaela Gallagher: In terms of our target industries, so we work a lot with, like, e-commerce and CPG brands. So, for example.
28 00:04:03.040 ⇒ 00:04:15.189 Kaela Gallagher: Element and Magic Spoon are popular brands in the United States that you can find in, like, a Walmart, for example. We also work with, like, SaaS and B2B clients.
29 00:04:15.190 ⇒ 00:04:25.050 Kaela Gallagher: We have a healthcare client, so you’ll have an opportunity to kind of work across the board, in various industries, which is exciting.
30 00:04:27.370 ⇒ 00:04:47.079 Kaela Gallagher: And then, the Brainforge team, I know you’ve met Utam, our CEO. He has a background as, a data engineer, very technical, so you’ll work a ton with him. He kind of leads our delivery efforts. Our other founding, founder is Robert.
31 00:04:47.230 ⇒ 00:04:52.899 Kaela Gallagher: He’s our president. He works heavily on, like, the sales side of the business.
32 00:04:52.950 ⇒ 00:04:58.330 Kaela Gallagher: And also works a lot with our strategy team, because that’s kind of his background.
33 00:04:58.330 ⇒ 00:05:20.500 Kaela Gallagher: So you can see on our org chart here, we have advisors on the right, then we have a good-sized, marketing and go-to-market team as well. And then here, these three buckets are our delivery team. So, orange over here, we have our strategy and analytics side.
34 00:05:20.500 ⇒ 00:05:33.560 Kaela Gallagher: Blue here is data engineering, and purple is AI. And then we have some people internal as well, like myself on the people side, and then our operations team, too.
35 00:05:33.790 ⇒ 00:05:52.330 Kaela Gallagher: This org chart, I know it’s probably really small for you right now, but, you can find it on our People and Culture page within Notion, and you can click into it and zoom in, and, your name is actually already on the updated one. So, that’s where you can locate that.
36 00:05:53.360 ⇒ 00:05:53.970 Nikhil G: Awesome.
37 00:05:54.540 ⇒ 00:05:56.400 Kaela Gallagher: And then in terms of…
38 00:05:56.400 ⇒ 00:06:01.040 Nikhil G: on that chart, so I will be reporting to Avesh, right?
39 00:06:01.240 ⇒ 00:06:07.449 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, yep, you’ll be working really closely with Awish, and you’ll probably work with Utam quite a bit as well.
40 00:06:08.320 ⇒ 00:06:09.720 Nikhil G: Yep, sounds good.
41 00:06:10.440 ⇒ 00:06:18.349 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. And then in terms of some, like, acronyms that you might hear us say, OKRs is something that we use quite a bit,
42 00:06:18.480 ⇒ 00:06:37.449 Kaela Gallagher: Those are objectives and key results, and that’s how we kind of measure our goals weekly, quarterly, annually. And we also use the term AORs quite a bit, which is Area of Responsibility, so that helps us understand who owns what.
43 00:06:37.480 ⇒ 00:06:56.550 Kaela Gallagher: And then just some kind of, like, more cultural notes. Because we’re fully remote, super important to have your camera on when you’re joining meetings. We typically avoid meetings. We like to work async and respect everybody’s time. We’re all across the globe in different time zones.
44 00:06:56.550 ⇒ 00:07:13.309 Kaela Gallagher: But when we do have meetings, it’s important to come with an agenda, maybe have a few key points ready to make. And then just overall, like, fail fast, we move really quickly, so we want to learn from our mistakes really quickly.
45 00:07:13.520 ⇒ 00:07:30.789 Kaela Gallagher: And we have a blameless culture, like, nobody’s throwing blame on anybody. Usually, Utam and Robert are just like, we’ll take the blame, let’s move forward. So that’s a fun culture to be a part of. I think everybody, is really collaborative.
46 00:07:33.310 ⇒ 00:07:50.870 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, in terms of some communication standards, so if you’re making an announcement in any sort of channel on Slack, it’s important to say not only, like, what the announcement is, but why it matters, and then any action items that you expect people to take from it.
47 00:07:50.870 ⇒ 00:08:02.129 Kaela Gallagher: And then we put questions in the threads. So on Slack, there’s an option to reply within the thread. That’s how we manage communications on Slack.
48 00:08:02.600 ⇒ 00:08:08.930 Kaela Gallagher: We also have a function within Slack called Linear Asks.
49 00:08:09.310 ⇒ 00:08:23.360 Kaela Gallagher: So you can type in any public channel slash asks, and this will help you, get any sort of ops request at all. So I’ll show you the options here, with…
50 00:08:23.520 ⇒ 00:08:24.960 Kaela Gallagher: My Slack.
51 00:08:26.350 ⇒ 00:08:28.930 Kaela Gallagher: Let me just share my screen. Okay.
52 00:08:29.180 ⇒ 00:08:30.370 Kaela Gallagher: So…
53 00:08:30.610 ⇒ 00:08:42.909 Kaela Gallagher: because I’ve already used this feature in a public channel, I’ve already typed in slash asks and used it, I now have the app here at the bottom of my,
54 00:08:43.080 ⇒ 00:08:49.089 Kaela Gallagher: Slack page, So I can just click Create Private Ask, and it’ll pull the menu up for me.
55 00:08:49.490 ⇒ 00:09:04.499 Kaela Gallagher: So the things that you can ask for here would be if you have an expense request, you need access to tooling, or you just have a general operations question, you can put those there. If you need any time off.
56 00:09:04.620 ⇒ 00:09:10.829 Kaela Gallagher: Or you’re sick, or a holiday request, anything like that, you can submit a request.
57 00:09:10.830 ⇒ 00:09:30.889 Kaela Gallagher: If you need certain tooling or features within our platform, you can create a ticket there, and that’ll get sent straight to the platform team. Legal will not be applicable to you, but then if you want to do more than 40 hours a week, this is where you would put your extra time request as well. So, a ton of features within
58 00:09:30.890 ⇒ 00:09:33.480 Kaela Gallagher: this asks function on Slack.
59 00:09:34.200 ⇒ 00:09:39.100 Kaela Gallagher: Any questions about this… this, feature or process?
60 00:09:40.640 ⇒ 00:09:42.379 Nikhil G: I think I’m good, yep.
61 00:09:42.380 ⇒ 00:09:44.260 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. Okay, cool.
62 00:09:45.060 ⇒ 00:09:47.470 Kaela Gallagher: Perfect.
63 00:09:48.280 ⇒ 00:10:06.230 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, moving on, we like to have a culture of recognition, so, if you see somebody doing something amazing, please shout them out in a public channel. We love to give people kudos, and on our Friday meetings, you saw us give kudos as well.
64 00:10:06.240 ⇒ 00:10:15.840 Kaela Gallagher: Client interaction, so if you’re working with clients, we have a playbook, which you can find in our repo. You can ask cursor,
65 00:10:15.840 ⇒ 00:10:33.079 Kaela Gallagher: for this playbook, but, basically there’s a certain cadence when we’re working with clients. We have a Monday kickoff, a Friday wrap-up. Important to have a very warm tone in your communication with them, and don’t use any, like, acronyms or shorthand that might cause confusion.
66 00:10:33.280 ⇒ 00:10:41.520 Kaela Gallagher: And then… Also, for client privacy, very important that we’re not sharing client names,
67 00:10:41.550 ⇒ 00:10:56.509 Kaela Gallagher: or other client names to different clients. We do have some client names posted on our website. For the most part, those are former clients, so now we’re kind of able to talk about it, but current clients are kept, pretty private.
68 00:10:57.220 ⇒ 00:10:57.760 Nikhil G: Yep.
69 00:10:57.950 ⇒ 00:11:15.350 Kaela Gallagher: And then for internal communication, we like to use what we call Level 5 communication, which is, basically you’re not just presenting a problem, you’re presenting a problem, you’re saying what you’ve already done about it, and you’re saying when you’re gonna have the next update on that issue.
70 00:11:15.690 ⇒ 00:11:29.100 Kaela Gallagher: And then, always, always better to default to transparency rather than less communication. Just always be on Slack, always be, like, messaging in the relevant channels.
71 00:11:29.100 ⇒ 00:11:36.109 Kaela Gallagher: Especially in a remote environment, a remote culture, it’s super important to,
72 00:11:36.480 ⇒ 00:11:39.709 Kaela Gallagher: Just make sure your knowledge is shared.
73 00:11:40.630 ⇒ 00:11:41.300 Nikhil G: Yep.
74 00:11:43.620 ⇒ 00:11:54.770 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. I know that this was in your agreement, but, all of our payments are done on a net 30 schedule, which means
75 00:11:54.770 ⇒ 00:12:06.089 Kaela Gallagher: They are paid on a monthly basis within 30 days of the end of the month. So, for example, your May payment will come to you towards the end of June.
76 00:12:06.470 ⇒ 00:12:10.500 Kaela Gallagher: And then your payment for June will come toward… to you towards the end of July.
77 00:12:10.630 ⇒ 00:12:18.140 Kaela Gallagher: So that’s how that’s set up. Have you received an email to set up RAMP yet?
78 00:12:19.190 ⇒ 00:12:24.740 Nikhil G: I don’t think so. Is it in my personal Gmail account, or.
79 00:12:24.950 ⇒ 00:12:37.740 Kaela Gallagher: So, you may… you may not have received one. This comes from our finance team, and it usually comes within a couple days of your start date. So if you don’t see it by, like, Wednesday this week, let me know.
80 00:12:37.740 ⇒ 00:12:46.300 Kaela Gallagher: But basically, this is a platform where you register as a vendor, you put in your payment information, and
81 00:12:46.790 ⇒ 00:13:03.190 Kaela Gallagher: all of your payments are handled through there. So, right now, we have you contracting, like, as yourself, so you’ll have to register as yourself right now in this platform. Then when we switch over to your company, you might need to create a new… a new entity for your payments.
82 00:13:03.260 ⇒ 00:13:17.099 Kaela Gallagher: And that’ll all be done in RAMP, and in RAMP, you can also see, like, your invoices, you can see when the payment’s initiated, when it’s expected to arrive. Anything payments-related is handled in this platform.
83 00:13:17.520 ⇒ 00:13:31.380 Kaela Gallagher: And if you have any questions, there’s a feature on RAMP where you can go and, leave comments on your invoice, so you can get help that way, or you can reach out to our finance email that’s listed here.
84 00:13:31.740 ⇒ 00:13:34.260 Kaela Gallagher: Either or, we can help you out.
85 00:13:35.300 ⇒ 00:13:36.480 Nikhil G: Sounds good, sounds good.
86 00:13:36.680 ⇒ 00:13:38.280 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, perfect.
87 00:13:38.280 ⇒ 00:13:47.600 Nikhil G: Did you send that, message to OPS team? Because I haven’t received the… For Google?
88 00:13:48.650 ⇒ 00:13:52.529 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, I did. Let me see if…
89 00:13:52.640 ⇒ 00:13:54.720 Kaela Gallagher: They responded, give me one second.
90 00:14:02.010 ⇒ 00:14:11.929 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, they said the link shouldn’t be expired yet, but that’s the message that you’re getting, right?
91 00:14:12.560 ⇒ 00:14:15.839 Nikhil G: Yeah, it’s expired now, because if you look…
92 00:14:16.360 ⇒ 00:14:20.120 Nikhil G: I got it on 9th May.
93 00:14:22.170 ⇒ 00:14:24.890 Kaela Gallagher: So, 2 days… okay, 2 days ago.
94 00:14:25.500 ⇒ 00:14:29.000 Nikhil G: No, it shouldn’t be expired, so I’m not sure…
95 00:14:29.870 ⇒ 00:14:33.059 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, cause I think it lasts a couple days.
96 00:14:37.120 ⇒ 00:14:44.449 Nikhil G: No, if I click on the sign-in, it says URL you tried to use, either incorrect or no longer valid, so…
97 00:14:47.410 ⇒ 00:14:48.250 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
98 00:14:53.000 ⇒ 00:14:57.819 Kaela Gallagher: I just let him know that that’s the error message you’re getting.
99 00:14:59.150 ⇒ 00:15:03.479 Nikhil G: I think we are still within 2 days period, but yeah.
100 00:15:04.150 ⇒ 00:15:05.890 Kaela Gallagher: Okay,
101 00:15:06.340 ⇒ 00:15:17.209 Kaela Gallagher: He says he can’t resend the invite because it’s not showing that it’s expired on his end, so he’ll need to change your password.
102 00:15:18.200 ⇒ 00:15:19.140 Kaela Gallagher: And then…
103 00:15:19.620 ⇒ 00:15:22.710 Nikhil G: address, so I will try to reset it.
104 00:15:23.420 ⇒ 00:15:31.950 Kaela Gallagher: Your email address is nikhil. Your last name, that starts with a B, at brainforge.ai.
105 00:15:36.300 ⇒ 00:15:40.240 Nikhil G: nichil.balasahib at printfourse.ai, right?
106 00:15:40.240 ⇒ 00:15:41.110 Kaela Gallagher: Yes.
107 00:15:43.190 ⇒ 00:15:44.679 Nikhil G: forward, whatever.
108 00:15:45.020 ⇒ 00:15:47.280 Nikhil G: It’s saying, contact your admin.
109 00:15:48.040 ⇒ 00:15:49.989 Nikhil G: For resetting the password.
110 00:15:50.230 ⇒ 00:15:58.349 Kaela Gallagher: Can you send a screenshot of that error message to operations at brainforge.ai?
111 00:15:59.400 ⇒ 00:16:00.350 Nikhil G: Excellent.
112 00:16:00.350 ⇒ 00:16:01.030 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
113 00:16:02.840 ⇒ 00:16:05.810 Nikhil G: patients… And I know where I need to know.
114 00:16:05.810 ⇒ 00:16:12.399 Kaela Gallagher: And then if you want to CC me on that email, I can… I can just follow up and make sure that it’s done quickly.
115 00:16:59.870 ⇒ 00:17:02.029 Nikhil G: I just sent you, can you see my…
116 00:17:20.550 ⇒ 00:17:23.900 Kaela Gallagher: Were you able to send it over to him?
117 00:17:25.060 ⇒ 00:17:29.479 Nikhil G: Yeah, I just sent you in the email, can you check your inbox?
118 00:17:29.830 ⇒ 00:17:32.259 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, I don’t see it yet.
119 00:17:35.380 ⇒ 00:17:41.029 Nikhil G: Maybe there I forgot to add subject, so… So, with no subject.
120 00:17:41.980 ⇒ 00:17:42.680 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
121 00:17:43.590 ⇒ 00:17:45.860 Kaela Gallagher: Perfect, I just got it. Okay.
122 00:17:46.100 ⇒ 00:17:52.420 Kaela Gallagher: Rico will… take over now. I just let him know that the email’s coming.
123 00:17:55.010 ⇒ 00:18:01.659 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, we can keep moving through this, and then, let me know when you get his response.
124 00:18:03.030 ⇒ 00:18:13.480 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. So for LinkedIn, we try to have a pretty big presence there. It helps us with our clients, it helps us with recruiting new candidates.
125 00:18:13.480 ⇒ 00:18:37.840 Kaela Gallagher: And it just helps us build our brand. So, if you’re going to be updating your LinkedIn with Brainforge, we can also provide you assets if you want to, like, change your banner into something like this. Our marketing team is super helpful for that, so Hannah would be the person on the team to reach out for if you want any assets to update your LinkedIn, or if you’d like to make a post saying.
126 00:18:37.840 ⇒ 00:18:44.990 Kaela Gallagher: You’re in this new role. But, at minimum, if you can just follow our company page, that would be great.
127 00:18:46.870 ⇒ 00:18:47.360 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
128 00:18:47.360 ⇒ 00:18:47.950 Nikhil G: here.
129 00:18:48.350 ⇒ 00:19:01.040 Kaela Gallagher: Now we’ll dive into all of the tools that we’ll be using, and hopefully you were able to get a couple of these set up this morning. I know it was probably hard without the Google, though.
130 00:19:01.140 ⇒ 00:19:12.480 Kaela Gallagher: So, first tool, Clockify, this is what we use to track time, so super important tool. There’s a few different ways that you can log your time in this.
131 00:19:12.480 ⇒ 00:19:23.499 Kaela Gallagher: The first one is this timesheet function, which is a manual way of logging your hours. You click the project, and you enter your number of hours that you spent on it.
132 00:19:24.200 ⇒ 00:19:40.269 Kaela Gallagher: We have a time tracker function, so this might be helpful if you’re doing just heads-down work and you want to just click, like, start and stop button. And then there’s also a calendar feature where you can integrate your calendar, and it will upload the time from your calendar as well.
133 00:19:40.310 ⇒ 00:19:45.839 Kaela Gallagher: So whatever works best for you, you can choose any of these options.
134 00:19:46.200 ⇒ 00:19:53.919 Kaela Gallagher: And just some reminders, be sure to log your hours every day, and don’t create your own project.
135 00:19:54.790 ⇒ 00:20:01.999 Kaela Gallagher: You will have projects available to you, so, for example, let me…
136 00:20:02.540 ⇒ 00:20:20.569 Kaela Gallagher: show you. So this is what it will look like when you have a fresh week. You’ll select your, project, so most of my time is spent within the people or recruitment side, so I might click those. But maybe you’re working on certifications, and you want to click learning and development.
137 00:20:20.730 ⇒ 00:20:34.179 Kaela Gallagher: Maybe you’re chatting with your Brainforge buddy, which I know you’ll do this afternoon, so you can click that category, and then there’ll be some clients down here as well, whichever ones you’re working on will be available to you, and you can log time there.
138 00:20:36.420 ⇒ 00:20:41.020 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. And then…
139 00:20:41.300 ⇒ 00:20:50.479 Kaela Gallagher: Really important as well, our operations team will send out reminders via email and via Slack of when hours are due.
140 00:20:50.940 ⇒ 00:20:57.890 Kaela Gallagher: Please, please make sure you enter your hours every day. If you’re entering them every day, you will… you’ll never miss a deadline.
141 00:20:58.080 ⇒ 00:21:14.299 Kaela Gallagher: But super important when they send out the deadline to just make sure all of your hours are accurate. Late hours will result in delayed payments, and probably by a month or two, it will be delayed. So, just very important to submit them on time.
142 00:21:15.630 ⇒ 00:21:17.040 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
143 00:21:18.530 ⇒ 00:21:36.530 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so Notion is, connected to your Google email, so probably not something that you have access to yet. But this is really important for, a bunch of different resources. So, for example.
144 00:21:36.690 ⇒ 00:21:38.529 Kaela Gallagher: We’ll just pull up mine here.
145 00:21:40.710 ⇒ 00:21:43.329 Kaela Gallagher: Oh my goodness, it’s taking a while. Okay.
146 00:21:46.120 ⇒ 00:21:55.310 Kaela Gallagher: So, we store a bunch of our standard operating procedures here. We have a lot of different resources across the company.
147 00:21:57.540 ⇒ 00:22:08.540 Kaela Gallagher: You can see here, we have our mission and values, you’ll want to read that. Operating manual, people and culture, like I mentioned, our org chart is there, as well as a bunch of other resources.
148 00:22:08.540 ⇒ 00:22:18.970 Kaela Gallagher: Like learning and development, brand and assets. You’ll want to dig in, probably, to this data and data platform section here.
149 00:22:18.970 ⇒ 00:22:25.949 Kaela Gallagher: So, I would spend some time today exploring each of these categories and the resources that we have for you in Notion.
150 00:22:27.820 ⇒ 00:22:31.720 Kaela Gallagher: Cursor is another thing that you’ll want to get set up.
151 00:22:31.770 ⇒ 00:22:51.210 Kaela Gallagher: We have a guide and a training course on how to do that. So I would say do this immediately. Cursor is connected to our company brain, our repo, so even before you’re meeting with people, you can go into Cursor and say, hey, I have a meeting with this person. Tell me about them. What do they do for Brainforge?
152 00:22:51.210 ⇒ 00:22:57.129 Kaela Gallagher: And it can kind of prep you ahead of your calls, it can prep you for client meetings.
153 00:22:57.130 ⇒ 00:22:59.280 Kaela Gallagher: Super useful tool.
154 00:23:02.530 ⇒ 00:23:03.540 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
155 00:23:04.050 ⇒ 00:23:08.799 Kaela Gallagher: Slack? Are you on Slack yet? Or that’s also connected to Google?
156 00:23:09.090 ⇒ 00:23:13.429 Nikhil G: to Google, yeah. I just got an email from operations.
157 00:23:14.340 ⇒ 00:23:18.940 Nikhil G: That, with my password, so just doing that now, yeah.
158 00:23:19.360 ⇒ 00:23:20.090 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
159 00:23:22.170 ⇒ 00:23:25.540 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so for Slack…
160 00:23:26.040 ⇒ 00:23:33.790 Kaela Gallagher: You’ll want to review with Awash which channels are important for you to join, and he can get you added to those.
161 00:23:33.790 ⇒ 00:23:50.130 Kaela Gallagher: But just some best practices. It’s very important to update your Slack status if you’re out of office, very important to change it there. We don’t have a way of advertising everybody’s lunches, or out of offices, or anything like that.
162 00:23:50.130 ⇒ 00:23:54.620 Kaela Gallagher: to the team, so very important to keep your Slack status updated.
163 00:23:55.290 ⇒ 00:23:55.920 Nikhil G: Yep.
164 00:23:55.920 ⇒ 00:24:04.809 Kaela Gallagher: I would also recommend the desktop app for this one, it makes it a lot easier, and then just be sure you get your profile photo updated as well.
165 00:24:07.390 ⇒ 00:24:16.240 Kaela Gallagher: For linear, linear is what we use for all of our ticketing, so it’ll be really important to you as you’ll be assigned work in linear.
166 00:24:16.400 ⇒ 00:24:26.470 Kaela Gallagher: It’s kind of like Jira, so we use it to track all of our projects and tasks. Have you used Jira or something like that in the past?
167 00:24:26.710 ⇒ 00:24:28.140 Nikhil G: I know, I don’t, yep.
168 00:24:28.140 ⇒ 00:24:32.339 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, so linear should be, very familiar to you.
169 00:24:34.790 ⇒ 00:24:35.520 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
170 00:24:36.400 ⇒ 00:24:48.330 Kaela Gallagher: The next thing I want to talk about is the Brainforge platform. I will wait until you get your, Google set up, because you’ll need your Google to access this.
171 00:24:50.310 ⇒ 00:24:50.840 Nikhil G: Yep.
172 00:24:52.290 ⇒ 00:24:53.930 Kaela Gallagher: Were you able to log in yet?
173 00:24:54.890 ⇒ 00:24:57.140 Nikhil G: Just doing that now on the.
174 00:24:57.140 ⇒ 00:24:57.470 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
175 00:24:57.470 ⇒ 00:24:58.160 Nikhil G: window.
176 00:24:59.320 ⇒ 00:25:00.790 Nikhil G: Yeah, I’m in now.
177 00:25:01.100 ⇒ 00:25:01.770 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
178 00:25:02.680 ⇒ 00:25:05.340 Kaela Gallagher: Cool, so I will show you the platform.
179 00:25:06.170 ⇒ 00:25:11.730 Kaela Gallagher: You’ll want to go to… platform.brainforge.ai.
180 00:25:11.940 ⇒ 00:25:16.219 Kaela Gallagher: on your browser, and you’ll log in with your Google to access this.
181 00:25:22.420 ⇒ 00:25:38.659 Kaela Gallagher: So, as you can see on the left-hand side here, there’s a ton of different features, agents that we’ve built out. So you’ll want to take some time today to just explore all the resources available to you, but a few things I want to
182 00:25:38.660 ⇒ 00:25:46.920 Kaela Gallagher: point out here would be, the dashboard, first of all. This shows every single Zoom meeting that you’ve had.
183 00:25:47.070 ⇒ 00:25:49.080 Kaela Gallagher: And it gives it a rating.
184 00:25:49.190 ⇒ 00:25:56.330 Kaela Gallagher: Then when you click in… To one of these calls.
185 00:25:58.650 ⇒ 00:26:03.329 Kaela Gallagher: You can find the recording for it, you can find the transcript.
186 00:26:03.720 ⇒ 00:26:17.160 Kaela Gallagher: If you scroll down, you can create linear tickets from the meeting, you can create an email summary, a Slack summary, it’ll give you your key action items here, and a quick summary as well.
187 00:26:17.360 ⇒ 00:26:23.909 Kaela Gallagher: Again, the transcript, and then you can go to this agent on the side and ask it questions about the meeting as well.
188 00:26:25.170 ⇒ 00:26:32.879 Kaela Gallagher: So, this is super helpful, and all of the knowledge from these meetings is stored in our repo.
189 00:26:34.590 ⇒ 00:26:48.940 Kaela Gallagher: You can also filter it by client, so say you wanted to go back to your call with a specific client, you can filter it that way. You can filter it by participant, so, oh, what’s the last time I talked to this certain person?
190 00:26:48.940 ⇒ 00:26:55.690 Kaela Gallagher: And you can find that call. So, super helpful. All of your meetings are stored here on the dashboard.
191 00:26:56.590 ⇒ 00:27:02.390 Kaela Gallagher: Another thing that I want to call out here is the Learning Hub here.
192 00:27:03.620 ⇒ 00:27:07.519 Kaela Gallagher: So you’ll be spending a lot of time here during your first week.
193 00:27:08.020 ⇒ 00:27:22.880 Kaela Gallagher: This Quick Start course you’ll need to accomplish in your first week has 5 modules, and it goes over how to set up your cursor, connect it to the Brainforge hub, GitHub, the Forge. This is, like, required for all team members.
194 00:27:23.360 ⇒ 00:27:32.729 Kaela Gallagher: Then, maybe in your first month, you’ll want to move to an AI accelerator, talking about, you know, automations and the MCPs that we have and our skills.
195 00:27:32.820 ⇒ 00:27:44.090 Kaela Gallagher: We also just newly released this compound engineering course, which is really exciting, so we’re building this out a ton, and you’ll spend a lot of time in this Learning Hub in your first week.
196 00:27:45.980 ⇒ 00:27:56.679 Kaela Gallagher: As you’re gaining certifications as well, we have a section here for that, so you’ll notice the team is focused a lot on Snowflake and Omni right now, but we’ll be expanding this.
197 00:27:57.450 ⇒ 00:28:05.410 Kaela Gallagher: We have enablement guides as well, so how to get started on open code, if you choose to use open code instead of cursor.
198 00:28:06.240 ⇒ 00:28:09.670 Kaela Gallagher: So, all of this is here in our Learning Hub.
199 00:28:10.340 ⇒ 00:28:23.519 Kaela Gallagher: You can even see, like, the company OKRs and how we’re doing. You can see, data on clients. We even have this work section, which is, like, our own kind of chat GPT.
200 00:28:23.680 ⇒ 00:28:30.150 Kaela Gallagher: So you can… yeah, just… there’s a lot here to explore. I would spend some time here today.
201 00:28:30.430 ⇒ 00:28:32.509 Kaela Gallagher: So that’s the Brainforge platform.
202 00:28:33.640 ⇒ 00:28:34.420 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
203 00:28:36.050 ⇒ 00:28:50.030 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, and then Zoom, you have access to a basic Zoom account, through your Google, but if you need an upgrade, if you need more minutes, if you need the pro version, just let us know.
204 00:28:50.140 ⇒ 00:28:56.040 Kaela Gallagher: You can ask for that in the linear asks function in Slack that we reviewed earlier.
205 00:28:58.850 ⇒ 00:29:00.540 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool.
206 00:29:00.770 ⇒ 00:29:19.179 Kaela Gallagher: We will be adding you to this Ask New Hires channel for your first 30 days on Slack, so if you have any questions at all, myself, our operations team, and our learning and development team is in this channel, and instead of just reaching out to one of us.
207 00:29:19.200 ⇒ 00:29:38.290 Kaela Gallagher: ask the question in the channel, it’ll allow us to help you the quickest, because all three of us are in there and can just get to it as soon as possible. And then you’re probably also helping your other fellow new hires, because they probably have the same question you do. So, we’ll get you added to that.
208 00:29:40.210 ⇒ 00:29:59.940 Kaela Gallagher: Cool, and then you all… you already joined a Friday team meeting, so you already know how these go, but every Friday we have a different host, or every other Friday we have a different host. So they’ll run through an icebreaker, a lab share, and then each department will get to share, their updates. So, those are really fun.
209 00:30:01.460 ⇒ 00:30:16.919 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, just a few notes about success at Brainforge and what it looks like. We put together a few things that we feel like all of our successful hires do. So one is contribute publicly. I know I mentioned this earlier, but
210 00:30:16.920 ⇒ 00:30:29.130 Kaela Gallagher: Please, please, please share your learnings, your updates, your ideas in public channels, so others can benefit from your work. We’re always going to lean towards public channels on Slack rather than DMs.
211 00:30:30.130 ⇒ 00:30:45.839 Kaela Gallagher: Continuous improvement, super important to consistently ask for feedback. You might have regular calls with Awash, but don’t hesitate to, you know, throw a call on his calendar and ask for feedback, or, ask Utom for feedback as well.
212 00:30:46.960 ⇒ 00:31:06.050 Kaela Gallagher: And then, closing the loop is super important, so be sure to take ownership and, you know, drive outcomes. Like, Uthalm gets so excited when people ship a skill or a playbook, that’s just such a good sign of, success and driving outcomes at Brainforge.
213 00:31:07.360 ⇒ 00:31:22.540 Kaela Gallagher: And then AI adoption, this is, hopefully obvious, but we’re a very AI-first company, so please embrace the tools that we’re offering you, whether that’s cursor or open code or anything on the platform.
214 00:31:22.540 ⇒ 00:31:28.940 Kaela Gallagher: To help improve your work, and hopefully you’ll learn a lot about AI being here as well.
215 00:31:30.540 ⇒ 00:31:49.180 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so getting started, we sent you the onboarding guide via email, so that’s a Notion link, you can click into that, and super important, it kind of covers everything you’re gonna need to do to ramp up in your first two weeks. All the tooling you’ll need access to,
216 00:31:49.180 ⇒ 00:31:51.660 Kaela Gallagher: And all of the steps that you should be taking.
217 00:31:52.880 ⇒ 00:32:00.830 Kaela Gallagher: We also have a ramp-up plan for you. I’ll be sharing this with you today as soon as we kind of,
218 00:32:00.840 ⇒ 00:32:15.319 Kaela Gallagher: finish it up, but you’ll review this with Awash and Utam, and the ramp-up plan will cover your first 90 days. So this is tailored specifically to you and your role, whereas the onboarding guide is more general to all of our team members.
219 00:32:15.570 ⇒ 00:32:25.229 Kaela Gallagher: So, be sure to follow the ramp-up plan. It’s designed in a way where if you are accomplishing what is on it, then you’re doing well at the company.
220 00:32:25.770 ⇒ 00:32:44.280 Kaela Gallagher: So, that’s something good to stick to. And then today, if you can go into our Brainforge team channel on Slack, post a quick introduction about yourself, who you are, what you’re doing with Brainforge, where you’re located, and maybe, like, a fun fact about you. Would love to just have you introduced to the team.
221 00:32:46.710 ⇒ 00:32:48.010 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool.
222 00:32:48.210 ⇒ 00:33:05.969 Kaela Gallagher: Feedback is super important to us, so we’ll be asking for your feedback on your onboarding journey at days 7, 30, and 90, but if you have any feedback outside of those checkpoints, like, please let us know. Always open to improving this process, and
223 00:33:06.050 ⇒ 00:33:17.849 Kaela Gallagher: yeah, just let me know if you need any help at all. We have the new hire channel for you in Slack as well. Are there any questions that I can help answer?
224 00:33:20.000 ⇒ 00:33:26.710 Nikhil G: Not at the moment, but yeah, once I start, Installing out, like,
225 00:33:26.870 ⇒ 00:33:31.410 Nikhil G: start using tools, then probably I will learn more, so… Okay.
226 00:33:32.960 ⇒ 00:33:42.979 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah, no worries. I know you have a lot to probably, like, log into and get set up right now and everything, so, feel free to get started on that.
227 00:33:42.980 ⇒ 00:33:53.940 Kaela Gallagher: We do have a Brainforge buddy with you, so you’ll be meeting with Demi later today, I just put time on your guys’ calendar. So he’ll be a great resource to you as well.
228 00:33:53.940 ⇒ 00:34:03.620 Kaela Gallagher: And then I would recommend you just sending Awash and Utam a quick little ping, and see if you can chat with them in the next…
229 00:34:03.620 ⇒ 00:34:08.009 Kaela Gallagher: you know, day or so. So, excited to have you get started.
230 00:34:08.600 ⇒ 00:34:13.439 Nikhil G: Yeah, yeah, sounds good. Just one more question regarding the working hours, you know?
231 00:34:13.610 ⇒ 00:34:20.720 Nikhil G: Yeah, like, we did talk about that in the initial rounds.
232 00:34:20.860 ⇒ 00:34:28.049 Nikhil G: It’s just, like, what is the exact ask? Because, you know, like, my local time, around, like,
233 00:34:28.210 ⇒ 00:34:32.579 Nikhil G: two to three hours, like, I need to step away, you know, because of some…
234 00:34:33.030 ⇒ 00:34:36.750 Nikhil G: personal… things I need to…
235 00:34:36.889 ⇒ 00:34:50.350 Nikhil G: manager on that one, but, like, what’s the expectation is, like, which overlapping time zones, we have to do some overlapping and all that, you know, so if you give some clarity on that, that would be helpful.
236 00:34:50.850 ⇒ 00:35:05.479 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, so I can say, in general, kind of what the expectations are, and then you can confirm exactly with the Weishin Utam. But in general, the expectation would be that you’re available for U.S. Eastern hours.
237 00:35:05.480 ⇒ 00:35:11.180 Kaela Gallagher: I would say, like, 9 to 5 Eastern, or maybe 8 to 4 Eastern.
238 00:35:11.180 ⇒ 00:35:28.829 Kaela Gallagher: So that’s the general expectation. If you do need to step away, maybe you have an appointment in the middle of the day, and you need to step away for an hour or two, the expectation would be that you block your calendar off for that time, and that you update your Slack status for that time.
239 00:35:30.390 ⇒ 00:35:52.869 Kaela Gallagher: super important to keep your calendar very up-to-date if you’re going to be out of office, if you have an appointment, whatever it might be, because we do have a culture of people being able to just add time to other people’s calendars. Like, if I, you know, want to meet with you in a week, I’m just going to add it to your calendar at a time that I see you’re available, so…
240 00:35:52.870 ⇒ 00:35:55.090 Kaela Gallagher: Super important to keep that up to date.
241 00:35:56.310 ⇒ 00:35:57.399 Nikhil G: Sounds good, Clos.
242 00:35:57.850 ⇒ 00:35:58.540 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
243 00:35:58.780 ⇒ 00:36:02.279 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. Any other questions that I can help answer?
244 00:36:02.940 ⇒ 00:36:04.450 Nikhil G: No, I’m good.
245 00:36:04.660 ⇒ 00:36:05.050 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
246 00:36:05.050 ⇒ 00:36:05.580 Nikhil G: Hello.
247 00:36:05.580 ⇒ 00:36:12.640 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, yeah, keep me posted. I’m excited for you to… to join, excited for what you’re going to bring to the team.
248 00:36:13.760 ⇒ 00:36:14.979 Nikhil G: Thank you. I’m ready.
249 00:36:15.190 ⇒ 00:36:18.410 Kaela Gallagher: Alright, cool. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good one.
250 00:36:19.010 ⇒ 00:36:20.010 Nikhil G: You too, bye.
251 00:36:20.010 ⇒ 00:36:21.120 Kaela Gallagher: Thanks, bye.