Meeting Title: Brainforge New Hire Orientation Date: 2026-05-12 Meeting participants: Abdullah Ahmad, Kaela Gallagher
WEBVTT
1 00:00:25.440 ⇒ 00:00:27.720 Abdullah Ahmad: Hey, good morning, Kayla, can you hear me?
2 00:00:33.670 ⇒ 00:00:35.470 Kaela Gallagher: Hey, Abdullah, good morning.
3 00:00:35.470 ⇒ 00:00:37.980 Abdullah Ahmad: Hey Kayla, good morning, how are you?
4 00:00:37.980 ⇒ 00:00:40.800 Kaela Gallagher: Good, how are you? How’s everything going?
5 00:00:41.180 ⇒ 00:00:48.839 Abdullah Ahmad: Doing good, doing good. Excited. Finally, we’re starting off this engagement, so… and I’m glad everything.
6 00:00:48.840 ⇒ 00:00:49.250 Kaela Gallagher: as we’.
7 00:00:49.250 ⇒ 00:00:51.559 Abdullah Ahmad: out, and I appreciate all the help.
8 00:00:52.080 ⇒ 00:01:00.650 Kaela Gallagher: Of course, of course. So, just confirming, you got both the I-983 and the offer letter, right?
9 00:01:00.650 ⇒ 00:01:01.820 Abdullah Ahmad: Correct, correct.
10 00:01:01.820 ⇒ 00:01:02.190 Kaela Gallagher: Perfect.
11 00:01:02.190 ⇒ 00:01:20.320 Abdullah Ahmad: The I-983 form, I’ve already submitted to my DSO, and I’ve already scheduled a call with them for tomorrow as well. I don’t think there is any issue there, it looks great to me. And the offer letter as well, I went through it, perfectly aligned with it.
12 00:01:20.430 ⇒ 00:01:39.590 Abdullah Ahmad: I’ve just sent it to my lawyer, just in case, like, as soon as I received it yesterday. And, in fact, like, I literally signed all of them except the last section, just so it doesn’t get submitted until I get the final go-aheads. Yes. No concerns there from my side, and I’m not anticipating anything as well.
13 00:01:39.810 ⇒ 00:01:53.589 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, yay! Well, I’m so excited to get you started. I know it’s a long time coming, and yeah, you are our first W2 employee, so very exciting.
14 00:01:53.590 ⇒ 00:01:54.850 Abdullah Ahmad: Amazing.
15 00:01:54.850 ⇒ 00:01:59.029 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, it was just like, I mean, Utam and Robert were like.
16 00:01:59.260 ⇒ 00:02:01.419 Kaela Gallagher: what… what do we need to do? Like…
17 00:02:01.420 ⇒ 00:02:02.150 Abdullah Ahmad: I see.
18 00:02:02.150 ⇒ 00:02:03.940 Kaela Gallagher: Abdullah on the team, like…
19 00:02:03.940 ⇒ 00:02:05.339 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay. So good, like…
20 00:02:05.340 ⇒ 00:02:08.970 Kaela Gallagher: W2, we’ll do it, like, anything. So, yeah, we’re.
21 00:02:08.970 ⇒ 00:02:09.880 Abdullah Ahmad: Exactly.
22 00:02:09.880 ⇒ 00:02:10.940 Kaela Gallagher: have you.
23 00:02:10.949 ⇒ 00:02:20.969 Abdullah Ahmad: Exactly, I’m glad. W2 was, like, literally the only thing, because otherwise I had met the team, like, we’ve discussed compensation, and all of that was aligned as well.
24 00:02:21.069 ⇒ 00:02:31.969 Abdullah Ahmad: I was just scared about, like, it, like, potentially impacting my chances later on to actually be in the US, so I really appreciate it, and, like, I think it shows really well on the team.
25 00:02:31.969 ⇒ 00:02:41.949 Abdullah Ahmad: as well, the amounts of effort and support they’ve done so in getting me here. And I’m hoping, like, now, like, this experience streamlines it for everyone else also in the forward.
26 00:02:41.950 ⇒ 00:02:49.560 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, I’m excited, and yeah, we’ll be getting you ramped up this week, okay.
27 00:02:49.970 ⇒ 00:03:00.980 Kaela Gallagher: Robert and Utsam are actually both traveling this week, so typically, like, both of them would call you on your first day. It might be maybe just sometime within this week in general.
28 00:03:00.980 ⇒ 00:03:01.550 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
29 00:03:01.850 ⇒ 00:03:04.610 Kaela Gallagher: But I’m here to support however you need, and…
30 00:03:04.740 ⇒ 00:03:14.080 Kaela Gallagher: We can go through, this orientation deck, and then just stop me at any time if you have any questions, but this should help you kind of get ramped.
31 00:03:14.080 ⇒ 00:03:20.490 Abdullah Ahmad: Sounds good. Yeah, and I’m hoping I’ll get a copy of this orientation deck as well. I’ll take notes simultaneously, but yeah.
32 00:03:20.710 ⇒ 00:03:36.509 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, you’ll have a copy, and then in our platform, you’ll have access to this call, this recording, the transcript, there’s an AI meeting note assistant, you can ask questions about this call, like, you’ll have access to everything.
33 00:03:36.510 ⇒ 00:03:37.100 Abdullah Ahmad: Amazing.
34 00:03:37.100 ⇒ 00:03:47.570 Kaela Gallagher: And I’ll show you… I’ll show you those features in a second. But, yeah, we’ll introduce you, kind of, to the company, our tooling, and then, just what your, kind of, first.
35 00:03:47.570 ⇒ 00:04:10.310 Kaela Gallagher: week and days will look like. So, our mission at Brainforge is to turn chaos into clarity. We use data and AI to drive faster and smarter decisions for our clients. Internally, our vision is that everybody eats, we all share success and grow together. We operate like giants, so thinking big, executing with excellence, always delivering at the highest level.
36 00:04:10.330 ⇒ 00:04:27.290 Kaela Gallagher: Always trying to leverage automation as well, and our AI tooling, and then giving back and paying forward. We’ve invested a lot into our internal tooling, we have an L&D team, and then just creating impact and sharing knowledge amongst, each other.
37 00:04:28.210 ⇒ 00:04:29.110 Abdullah Ahmad: Amazing.
38 00:04:29.110 ⇒ 00:04:52.450 Kaela Gallagher: What we do, these are the three service lines that we offer to our clients. So, you will be kind of within our strategy and analytics team, and when we refer to our delivery team, it refers to these three branches. So, our data platform and analytics team, our AI team, they focus on automation, co-pilots, and then our strategy and analytics team.
39 00:04:52.450 ⇒ 00:04:55.710 Kaela Gallagher: And for most of our clients, we’re gonna have probably
40 00:04:56.060 ⇒ 00:04:59.440 Kaela Gallagher: You know, people from two of these teams, maybe even three.
41 00:05:00.390 ⇒ 00:05:16.539 Kaela Gallagher: Sometimes our clients have started off on the data side, doing warehousing, and then we’ve branched out into AI for them, or sometimes clients come in directly as AI, and then our strategy and analytics team is almost always involved in each one.
42 00:05:19.350 ⇒ 00:05:35.660 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, who we serve. So, the clients that we’re working with and interacting with, are oftentimes, like, directors or heads of data or analytics. Maybe there’s, like, a head of marketing or a head of growth, and we’re kind of focused more on that side of the business.
43 00:05:35.660 ⇒ 00:05:40.750 Kaela Gallagher: And in terms of industries, we really work with clients across
44 00:05:40.750 ⇒ 00:05:57.650 Kaela Gallagher: a lot of different industries, but we do have quite a few, like, e-com and CPG brands, like Element or Magic Spoon, for example. They’re on the shelves at Target. Like SaaS and B2B, we have a healthcare client, so just kind of across… across the board.
45 00:05:59.920 ⇒ 00:06:07.959 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. So, for the team, you’ve probably met both Utam and Robert, at this point.
46 00:06:08.020 ⇒ 00:06:19.179 Kaela Gallagher: So, Utam’s background is very much technical, and Robert’s background is, very much on the strategy side. So.
47 00:06:19.210 ⇒ 00:06:30.320 Kaela Gallagher: Robert works a ton with, like, our sales and strategy teams, and Utam works a lot with our data, AI, and then, like, people and operations teams.
48 00:06:30.630 ⇒ 00:06:37.499 Kaela Gallagher: This is your org chart. It’s located on our People and Culture page in Notion, so you can always…
49 00:06:37.500 ⇒ 00:06:53.779 Kaela Gallagher: go find this later, interact with it, scroll through it, you see it a little bit better. But just walking through it, like, we have some advisors that we work with here on the right. We have our marketing, design, go-to-market team here. This…
50 00:06:53.780 ⇒ 00:07:01.560 Kaela Gallagher: All three of these buckets here are our delivery team, and then it breaks down into AI here in purple, data in.
51 00:07:01.560 ⇒ 00:07:01.940 Abdullah Ahmad: Blue.
52 00:07:01.940 ⇒ 00:07:06.210 Kaela Gallagher: And then strategy and analytics in orange, and here you are, Abdullah.
53 00:07:06.210 ⇒ 00:07:07.390 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, awesome.
54 00:07:07.390 ⇒ 00:07:13.410 Kaela Gallagher: And then people and operations are kind of our internal teams over here.
55 00:07:13.780 ⇒ 00:07:26.299 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it. Just a quick question about this. So, are there particular categories of questions and concerns for which we go either to Otum or to Robert in this case?
56 00:07:26.980 ⇒ 00:07:34.240 Abdullah Ahmad: let’s say, like, in my role, for example, would I be reporting more to Robert, I’m assuming, as opposed to Otem, or is that…
57 00:07:34.380 ⇒ 00:07:36.460 Abdullah Ahmad: Assumption… less correct.
58 00:07:37.170 ⇒ 00:07:53.659 Kaela Gallagher: So, I think it’ll depend on the client. There’s certain clients that, like, Utam is more involved with, certain clients Robert is more involved with. Like, Utam is heavily involved with Element, whereas Robert’s, like, heavily involved with Eden. So…
59 00:07:53.950 ⇒ 00:07:58.700 Kaela Gallagher: I have a feeling you’ll actually be interacting with Utsom a little bit more.
60 00:07:58.700 ⇒ 00:07:59.080 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
61 00:07:59.080 ⇒ 00:08:10.660 Kaela Gallagher: Because he does all of the allocations for delivery, there’s, like, certain ways to escalate things, and sometimes that’ll go up to him.
62 00:08:11.210 ⇒ 00:08:14.970 Kaela Gallagher: he kind of runs delivery as an umbrella, so I just.
63 00:08:14.970 ⇒ 00:08:15.620 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it.
64 00:08:15.620 ⇒ 00:08:18.690 Kaela Gallagher: He’s probably who you’ll, interact with more.
65 00:08:18.890 ⇒ 00:08:25.209 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it. And in this line, like, my name goes up to Jasmine, so, like, would that be the case, that I…
66 00:08:25.210 ⇒ 00:08:30.600 Kaela Gallagher: No, so this is a little funky, but there’s actually no line connecting you to her.
67 00:08:30.600 ⇒ 00:08:31.130 Abdullah Ahmad: I see.
68 00:08:31.130 ⇒ 00:08:34.529 Kaela Gallagher: move you up next to, like, Greg or something.
69 00:08:34.539 ⇒ 00:08:36.009 Abdullah Ahmad: Oh, I see, I see.
70 00:08:36.010 ⇒ 00:08:39.139 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that looks a little funky, that’s a good.
71 00:08:39.140 ⇒ 00:08:46.230 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, okay, that makes sense. Okay, I got it, I got it. I see, yeah, you’re right, there’s no line connecting, I think it’s just, like, the layout, but makes sense, okay.
72 00:08:46.280 ⇒ 00:08:48.220 Kaela Gallagher: Go ahead. Okay, cool.
73 00:08:48.670 ⇒ 00:08:51.820 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, we just went backwards. Okay.
74 00:08:52.020 ⇒ 00:09:05.829 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so just some, like, acronyms that we use. OKRs, Objectives and Key Results you might be familiar with, but we measure these weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and you’ll probably have a couple that you are reporting on.
75 00:09:05.830 ⇒ 00:09:13.829 Kaela Gallagher: We also use AORs as areas of responsibility, so just understanding who owns what, you might hear that kind of thrown around.
76 00:09:14.280 ⇒ 00:09:33.909 Kaela Gallagher: And then just some, like, cultural notes. We are remote and async first and foremost. So, in general, I think we try to avoid, like, recurring meetings and, really only hold them if they’re necessary. And when we do have meetings, important to come prepared with an agenda and,
77 00:09:33.910 ⇒ 00:09:53.460 Kaela Gallagher: you know, make sure that they… they are worthwhile, and they’re driving decision-making. Important to have your camera on, too, as we’re… we’re fully remote. That’s just important for cultural reasons. And then, we like to have a culture of, like, failing quickly. I think we are kind of iterating on our own processes, like.
78 00:09:53.680 ⇒ 00:10:01.749 Kaela Gallagher: almost daily, I think a lot of companies work at, like, a quarterly pace or a monthly pace. We very much work at a daily or a weekly.
79 00:10:01.750 ⇒ 00:10:02.260 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
80 00:10:02.260 ⇒ 00:10:06.110 Kaela Gallagher: ace, so… Got it. Always see new things happening.
81 00:10:07.440 ⇒ 00:10:11.849 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, in terms of communication standards, I think these are…
82 00:10:12.290 ⇒ 00:10:26.309 Kaela Gallagher: for Slack, mostly, because that’s what we’re using to communicate with each other, so if you’re making an announcement in a channel, important to say not only what the announcement is, but why it’s important, and what people should do with it, if there’s any action items.
83 00:10:26.320 ⇒ 00:10:36.920 Kaela Gallagher: And then if somebody makes an announcement and you’d like to respond, you should do so in a thread. So responding to the Slack message with a thread.
84 00:10:37.180 ⇒ 00:10:37.790 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
85 00:10:38.620 ⇒ 00:10:49.299 Kaela Gallagher: Culture of recognition is really important, so if you want to give somebody a shout-out, like, please do it in a public channel. This is super important for us, especially as we’re remote first.
86 00:10:49.300 ⇒ 00:11:04.530 Kaela Gallagher: And then, just a couple client notes, so client privacy, I know we have a few clients listed on our website. For the most part, those are former clients, and current clients, we don’t typically, like, advertise, so just be sure not to mention
87 00:11:04.530 ⇒ 00:11:08.249 Kaela Gallagher: Client names to other clients or anything like that.
88 00:11:08.560 ⇒ 00:11:26.610 Kaela Gallagher: And then we do have, a playbook for client interaction, so there’s kind of a cycle we go through of, like, a Monday kickoff, a Friday wrap-up, being sure we’re using, like, a warm tone every time we’re interacting with them, and then just not using any acronyms to just be very clear.
89 00:11:26.730 ⇒ 00:11:28.040 Abdullah Ahmad: Fair.
90 00:11:28.600 ⇒ 00:11:45.599 Kaela Gallagher: For internal communication, we like to use what’s called Level 5 communication, which is, like, not only presenting an issue, but then saying, like, here’s what I’ve already done to address it, and here’s when I expect to have an update on that. And always default to
91 00:11:45.800 ⇒ 00:12:02.529 Kaela Gallagher: transparency, like, just be so communicative, especially as you’re getting started. Robert Nuptom can’t be, like, super hands-on with every single person, so when they see people, like, talking in public channels, they’re like, okay, they’re, like.
92 00:12:02.530 ⇒ 00:12:06.239 Kaela Gallagher: They’re working, they’re on it, like, it just makes a really good impression.
93 00:12:06.730 ⇒ 00:12:07.950 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it.
94 00:12:07.950 ⇒ 00:12:14.320 Kaela Gallagher: The last note here would be for operations requests, and I’m actually going to pull this
95 00:12:14.550 ⇒ 00:12:18.630 Kaela Gallagher: Up and show you, because it’s a little bit easier to just demonstrate.
96 00:12:19.560 ⇒ 00:12:20.380 Kaela Gallagher: Nope.
97 00:12:20.600 ⇒ 00:12:22.500 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, let me…
98 00:12:25.410 ⇒ 00:12:41.899 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so on Slack, you can go into any public channel and press slash asks, and then hit enter. And when you hit enter, instead of it sending to the channel, it’s going to pull up a menu for you.
99 00:12:42.020 ⇒ 00:12:56.720 Kaela Gallagher: Where you can submit an operations request. Because I’ve already done this once, Linear Asks is now located in the app section of my Slack, but for the first time you do it, you’ll have to type it into a channel.
100 00:12:57.290 ⇒ 00:13:04.329 Abdullah Ahmad: Oh, I see. So you’re saying that… and I’m assuming this is in order to create a work ticket, for a particular person?
101 00:13:04.590 ⇒ 00:13:19.029 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, so these are all the things you can do through this function. You can submit an expense request, access, especially as you’re getting started, you might need access to HubSpot, or tooling, or things related to specific clients.
102 00:13:19.500 ⇒ 00:13:25.689 Kaela Gallagher: There’s a general office request, I don’t know, maybe you get, like, logged out, like, locked out of an account or something.
103 00:13:26.550 ⇒ 00:13:40.299 Kaela Gallagher: If you need to submit, for time off, or you’re sick, anything like that, there’s a function to do that. Those must be submitted, not for sick time, but for time off two weeks ahead of, ahead of the time off.
104 00:13:40.300 ⇒ 00:13:41.080 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
105 00:13:41.080 ⇒ 00:13:53.659 Kaela Gallagher: Platform, you can submit a platform team request, which will create a linear ticket for a platform team. That’s for anything, like, internal tool related, and I’ll show you our platform in a second.
106 00:13:54.590 ⇒ 00:14:12.900 Kaela Gallagher: Legal is not applicable to you, and then delivery, this is also not applicable to you. This is mostly for our hourly employees, if they need more than 40 hours a week, or something like that. So… Got it. Those are all the functions that you can… you can use through the linear asks.
107 00:14:12.900 ⇒ 00:14:14.910 Kaela Gallagher: Function on Slack.
108 00:14:15.380 ⇒ 00:14:30.000 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay. Quick question about this. I’m assuming, like, if I’m making a request to a person, probably we’ll just have to go to their name and do the slash asks, but you said something specifically about public channels. When would I be creating these tickets in a channel, though?
109 00:14:30.610 ⇒ 00:14:36.690 Kaela Gallagher: So, the ticket doesn’t get created in a channel, it’s just to activate this menu.
110 00:14:36.690 ⇒ 00:14:37.360 Abdullah Ahmad: Oh, I see.
111 00:14:37.360 ⇒ 00:14:45.450 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, if you go into, like, a public… oh my god, I remember that. If you go into a public…
112 00:14:46.300 ⇒ 00:14:49.429 Kaela Gallagher: Or a private channel and try to do it.
113 00:14:49.430 ⇒ 00:14:49.810 Abdullah Ahmad: It’s good.
114 00:14:49.810 ⇒ 00:14:55.759 Kaela Gallagher: say… oh, it actually worked in this one, so I guess you could just do it to yourself, too.
115 00:14:55.760 ⇒ 00:14:56.550 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, got it.
116 00:14:56.550 ⇒ 00:15:00.320 Kaela Gallagher: Did you see that I just typed in asked, and I clicked send, and it just populated?
117 00:15:00.320 ⇒ 00:15:03.520 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah, exactly. Okay, okay, yeah.
118 00:15:03.520 ⇒ 00:15:04.610 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, perfect.
119 00:15:05.950 ⇒ 00:15:06.700 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
120 00:15:07.150 ⇒ 00:15:11.200 Kaela Gallagher: You’ll probably be using that, quite a bit in your first weeks.
121 00:15:11.350 ⇒ 00:15:12.050 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
122 00:15:12.260 ⇒ 00:15:19.940 Kaela Gallagher: And then this is not going to be applicable to you. You’re on a biweekly pay schedule, so…
123 00:15:20.430 ⇒ 00:15:29.599 Kaela Gallagher: you’ll see everything come through bi-weekly. You will be registered in RAMP, which is a platform,
124 00:15:29.900 ⇒ 00:15:36.950 Kaela Gallagher: Where you’ll be paid out through, and if you have any questions about your payments.
125 00:15:37.160 ⇒ 00:15:56.809 Kaela Gallagher: This is our first time having W-2. It might be a little bit of a learning curve in the beginning. We have an external finance team that we work with, so I’ll partner with them, too, to just make sure everything’s smooth, but any questions that you have about payments, finance at Brainforge is a great email to reach out to.
126 00:15:56.810 ⇒ 00:16:05.390 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, and I’m assuming, like, I will definitely need to be sharing my bank information with them, so this is the email address to share that, with.
127 00:16:05.630 ⇒ 00:16:14.730 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, so they… they should send you an email in either a platform called RAMP, or a platform called JustWorks.
128 00:16:14.920 ⇒ 00:16:15.380 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
129 00:16:15.380 ⇒ 00:16:23.000 Kaela Gallagher: for you to log in, create an account, and enter your payment information. So you shouldn’t need to send it via email, it should be a little bit more secure.
130 00:16:23.180 ⇒ 00:16:23.750 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
131 00:16:26.000 ⇒ 00:16:26.720 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
132 00:16:27.800 ⇒ 00:16:28.660 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
133 00:16:29.480 ⇒ 00:16:41.229 Kaela Gallagher: And then, for your LinkedIn, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn. We do post quite a bit, and it helps us, just to have engagement to, promote our
134 00:16:41.680 ⇒ 00:16:46.490 Kaela Gallagher: So, not only clients, but also, like, new hires and candidates.
135 00:16:46.490 ⇒ 00:16:46.940 Abdullah Ahmad: Fair enough.
136 00:16:46.940 ⇒ 00:16:50.919 Kaela Gallagher: helpful. But also if you wanted any, like.
137 00:16:51.060 ⇒ 00:16:58.619 Kaela Gallagher: assets or, pictures or, like, a banner like this for your LinkedIn are.
138 00:16:58.620 ⇒ 00:16:59.110 Abdullah Ahmad: marketing team.
139 00:16:59.110 ⇒ 00:17:08.079 Kaela Gallagher: can totally help with that. Hannah would be the person to reach out to, if you’re wanting to, like, make a post or get any Brainforge assets for your LinkedIn.
140 00:17:08.260 ⇒ 00:17:10.760 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, got it. Amazing, amazing.
141 00:17:11.020 ⇒ 00:17:18.330 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. Okay, so now we’ll jump into the tools. We’ll just make sure you have access to each of these.
142 00:17:18.420 ⇒ 00:17:29.659 Kaela Gallagher: The first thing is Clockify. Even though you’re not hourly, we will have you log your hours, just so we can see where time is spent across the organization.
143 00:17:29.660 ⇒ 00:17:52.329 Kaela Gallagher: There’s a few ways to, track your time. The first one is the timesheet option, where you can go in, you can select the project that you’re working on, or the client that you’re working on, and you can say, I spent 3 hours on this client today, and then I spent 1 hour in internal meetings today, and I spent… and you can break it down manually.
144 00:17:52.880 ⇒ 00:17:53.590 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
145 00:17:53.910 ⇒ 00:18:03.790 Kaela Gallagher: The other option is the time tracker. If you’re doing heads-down work, this might be helpful, because you just click start and stop when you’re starting and finishing your work.
146 00:18:04.060 ⇒ 00:18:16.510 Kaela Gallagher: And there is an option to sync with your Google Calendar. It’ll upload any time blocks that you have in there, and try to categorize them for you, although you will still need to
147 00:18:16.790 ⇒ 00:18:18.989 Kaela Gallagher: Audit those hours yourself.
148 00:18:19.100 ⇒ 00:18:24.329 Kaela Gallagher: So, you can use any of these three options. Honestly, for myself, like.
149 00:18:24.940 ⇒ 00:18:31.189 Kaela Gallagher: My time basically all goes into 3 buckets, either internal one-on-ones.
150 00:18:31.410 ⇒ 00:18:37.949 Kaela Gallagher: people ops or recruiting, and so for me, because it’s only 3 buckets, I just use the timesheet.
151 00:18:38.510 ⇒ 00:18:38.870 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
152 00:18:38.870 ⇒ 00:18:39.970 Kaela Gallagher: very straightforward.
153 00:18:40.230 ⇒ 00:18:43.839 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it. And yeah, I think you briefly said it, but,
154 00:18:44.660 ⇒ 00:18:57.530 Abdullah Ahmad: since I’m a W-2, like, do I need to be… I’m assuming I need to be still filling it for internal tracking, but it is not for, payroll purposes or things like that, but I’ll still be using Clockify for that.
155 00:18:57.730 ⇒ 00:19:07.650 Kaela Gallagher: Right, right. Yeah, still important you’re tracking it, especially for client work. If there’s any sort of, like, billable hours, we just want to make sure that we’re charging the clients for those as well.
156 00:19:07.650 ⇒ 00:19:08.970 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, sounds good.
157 00:19:08.970 ⇒ 00:19:22.599 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. And then, just a couple reminders, just enter your time daily, just be in the habit of doing that. There’s usually a deadline Friday end of day, to have your hours in for the week.
158 00:19:22.600 ⇒ 00:19:35.590 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. And then operations will send out email reminders of, like, hey, the hours for the month of May are due by 2PM on this day. And then there’s, like, hard cutoffs for each month. Okay.
159 00:19:35.660 ⇒ 00:19:50.750 Kaela Gallagher: That just ensures that everybody gets paid on time, and yeah, especially for, like, our hourly team members, any late hours result in delayed payments, but obviously you’ll be on a little bit more of a consistent schedule.
160 00:19:51.000 ⇒ 00:19:52.199 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, awesome.
161 00:19:53.960 ⇒ 00:19:58.199 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. Were you able to get access to Notion yet?
162 00:19:58.450 ⇒ 00:20:02.630 Abdullah Ahmad: No, I have not received a tooling email yet.
163 00:20:03.220 ⇒ 00:20:11.169 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so for Notion, actually, it’s synced to your Google, so if you just want to download, like, the desktop app.
164 00:20:11.340 ⇒ 00:20:15.630 Kaela Gallagher: You can log in with your BrainForge, Google email.
165 00:20:15.970 ⇒ 00:20:17.089 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, okay.
166 00:20:17.090 ⇒ 00:20:25.340 Kaela Gallagher: And Notion is going to be very handy for a few things. It is…
167 00:20:25.540 ⇒ 00:20:41.340 Kaela Gallagher: All of our, kind of, SOPs, like, standard operating procedures, internal notes, super helpful, like, your ramp-up plan will be located in there, the onboarding guide that you’ll be following as you’re getting started will be there,
168 00:20:41.790 ⇒ 00:20:42.690 Kaela Gallagher: just…
169 00:20:42.940 ⇒ 00:20:57.579 Kaela Gallagher: very helpful, and you can connect your cursor to Notion, so that when you’re asking questions about BrainForge to cursor, it’s also able to access Notion documents.
170 00:20:57.580 ⇒ 00:21:05.089 Kaela Gallagher: So you could even, like, once you connect cursor to Notion, you could even ask it, like, oh, what is the policy for
171 00:21:05.250 ⇒ 00:21:06.260 Kaela Gallagher: time off.
172 00:21:06.910 ⇒ 00:21:10.930 Kaela Gallagher: And then Cursor will literally tell you that.
173 00:21:11.160 ⇒ 00:21:12.180 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it.
174 00:21:12.180 ⇒ 00:21:16.649 Kaela Gallagher: Or you could ask, oh, am I on track with my ramp-up plan? Like, it’s really cool.
175 00:21:16.650 ⇒ 00:21:17.270 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it.
176 00:21:17.270 ⇒ 00:21:23.440 Kaela Gallagher: So, that’s what Notion will be helpful for. And then Cursor, have you been able to access cursor yet?
177 00:21:24.070 ⇒ 00:21:37.360 Abdullah Ahmad: No, I… yeah, so for the tooling part, like, I was under the impression maybe the orientation is basically what’s gonna get me through it, because I have not received my Brainforge email address yet either, so I would not have known how to log into these.
178 00:21:37.360 ⇒ 00:21:41.409 Kaela Gallagher: Oh, because the contract isn’t signed. Okay.
179 00:21:41.410 ⇒ 00:21:41.810 Abdullah Ahmad: I see.
180 00:21:41.810 ⇒ 00:21:42.380 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
181 00:21:42.650 ⇒ 00:21:47.859 Kaela Gallagher: That makes sense. So, Eureko doesn’t usually send…
182 00:21:48.320 ⇒ 00:21:51.780 Kaela Gallagher: The email until the contract is signed.
183 00:21:52.050 ⇒ 00:22:03.350 Abdullah Ahmad: I see, okay, okay, that makes sense, because I was like, yeah, I think we were on a different page around it, because I only saw in the… today’s email, for the orientation email, like, these tools being mentioned.
184 00:22:03.350 ⇒ 00:22:12.829 Abdullah Ahmad: But I was, like, yeah, waiting for some information around that. I can… I literally, as soon as we get done with our call, I have a scheduled one with my lawyer.
185 00:22:12.830 ⇒ 00:22:13.220 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
186 00:22:13.220 ⇒ 00:22:18.010 Abdullah Ahmad: I should not… the contract should be with you within the next hour and a half, or two hours.
187 00:22:18.010 ⇒ 00:22:19.030 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay.
188 00:22:19.030 ⇒ 00:22:20.489 Abdullah Ahmad: Never seeing any issues there.
189 00:22:20.860 ⇒ 00:22:24.519 Kaela Gallagher: No worries, I can just go over each of the tools, high-level them, and then…
190 00:22:24.520 ⇒ 00:22:25.070 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah.
191 00:22:25.070 ⇒ 00:22:29.989 Kaela Gallagher: Just let me know if you’re having any issues getting them set up. Okay.
192 00:22:29.990 ⇒ 00:22:30.430 Abdullah Ahmad: Awesome.
193 00:22:30.430 ⇒ 00:22:51.929 Kaela Gallagher: But for Cursor, we actually have what we call a quick start training course that is going to walk you through exactly how to set up Cursor and connect it to the BrainForge brain and all of our knowledge. So, that course is going to be so essential for you to do, I would say, in, like, the next 2 days.
194 00:22:51.930 ⇒ 00:22:52.360 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
195 00:22:52.360 ⇒ 00:22:59.290 Kaela Gallagher: not going to be able to be effective until you have Cursor. So that is a huge priority for sure.
196 00:22:59.290 ⇒ 00:23:00.500 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, got it.
197 00:23:00.500 ⇒ 00:23:05.689 Kaela Gallagher: And Cursor is our AI tool, so it’s our cloud, or our chat GPT, basically.
198 00:23:05.690 ⇒ 00:23:06.540 Abdullah Ahmad: minutes ago.
199 00:23:06.960 ⇒ 00:23:20.840 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, so for Slack, a couple reminders. You’ll want to update your profile photo once you’re logged in. I would recommend having the desktop app for it as well, it’s way easier than the web interface.
200 00:23:21.170 ⇒ 00:23:29.140 Kaela Gallagher: For Slack, it’s super important that you are adding, your status updates, so if you are
201 00:23:29.230 ⇒ 00:23:44.460 Kaela Gallagher: out of office, or you have a doctor’s appointment, just make sure you update your Slack status as a way, because we don’t have a super great way of having visibility into everybody’s out of office yet. So, Slack.
202 00:23:44.460 ⇒ 00:23:48.530 Abdullah Ahmad: No, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s very consistent with TikTok also.
203 00:23:49.260 ⇒ 00:23:58.140 Abdullah Ahmad: That was, like, their first priority, make sure that on your profile it shows exactly what’s your status at the moment, because if people, someone is reaching out to you, it should be very easy to know where you are at.
204 00:23:58.520 ⇒ 00:24:13.990 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, yes. And then, actually, Jasmine, I think, would be the best person to help you understand, like, which channels are going to be most important for you to join. So, once you’re up on Slack, you can just ask her for, like, a screenshot of all the ones she’s in and join the.
205 00:24:13.990 ⇒ 00:24:14.470 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
206 00:24:15.230 ⇒ 00:24:16.680 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it. Okay, cool.
207 00:24:16.680 ⇒ 00:24:17.250 Kaela Gallagher: boom.
208 00:24:17.390 ⇒ 00:24:35.869 Kaela Gallagher: And then linear is, like, our JIRA, so it is all of our project tracking, ticketing, so that’ll be super important for you to get set up as well. And I also highly recommend the desktop app for this one, rather than, like, a web interface. It’s much, much easier.
209 00:24:35.870 ⇒ 00:24:37.310 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it.
210 00:24:37.760 ⇒ 00:24:41.659 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, for Zoom,
211 00:24:41.860 ⇒ 00:25:00.020 Kaela Gallagher: you will have basic access through your Brainforge Google account, but if you need an upgrade to it, if you are finding you’re, like, running out of the time limit or whatever it might be, you can ask for that upgrade through the linear asks function that we went over before.
212 00:25:00.140 ⇒ 00:25:01.700 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
213 00:25:02.650 ⇒ 00:25:10.859 Kaela Gallagher: And then… the Brainforge platform, so I’m actually going to show you… mine here.
214 00:25:11.680 ⇒ 00:25:18.920 Abdullah Ahmad: Sorry, just one quick question. For all of these internal toolings, who would be the POC that I can reach out to if I’m having any issues with this?
215 00:25:19.410 ⇒ 00:25:24.500 Kaela Gallagher: So, we are going to have you in a new hire channel on Slack.
216 00:25:24.500 ⇒ 00:25:25.050 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
217 00:25:25.050 ⇒ 00:25:28.879 Kaela Gallagher: And the new hire channel will have myself.
218 00:25:28.880 ⇒ 00:25:47.100 Kaela Gallagher: It’ll have Learning and Development Lead B, and it will have our operations team as well with RICO. And so, between us three, one of us is gonna know the answer, and we’ll just be able to help you the quickest in that channel. So, any questions that you can’t just submit, like a…
219 00:25:47.100 ⇒ 00:25:51.280 Kaela Gallagher: Linear asks for, you can ask in that channel.
220 00:25:51.460 ⇒ 00:25:53.389 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, amazing, amazing, thank you.
221 00:25:53.880 ⇒ 00:26:07.339 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. So this is our Brainforge platform. The way you’ll access it is by going to platform.brainforge.ai, and you’ll log in with your Google account.
222 00:26:08.400 ⇒ 00:26:18.810 Kaela Gallagher: Once you’re in the platform, there are so many features here on the left-hand side. I recommend just spending some time and clicking through them all.
223 00:26:18.810 ⇒ 00:26:29.529 Kaela Gallagher: But a couple to highlight for you is, number one, your dashboard. When you open it, it will automatically have you as the participant and all of your clients.
224 00:26:29.530 ⇒ 00:26:34.600 Kaela Gallagher: It’ll populate every call that you’ve had on Zoom that you have recorded.
225 00:26:35.080 ⇒ 00:26:40.830 Kaela Gallagher: And it’ll give you a score for it. Then, once you click in.
226 00:26:42.430 ⇒ 00:27:04.629 Kaela Gallagher: You’ll be able to see the call recording, you can see, a summary here with key action items, you can see the transcript, you can create linear tickets from it, you can create an email summary, a Slack summary, you can identify, like, sales opportunities in the call, so there’s a lot of cool functions down here you can use.
227 00:27:04.630 ⇒ 00:27:10.339 Kaela Gallagher: You can also go to the meeting assistant over here and ask it questions about the meeting.
228 00:27:10.900 ⇒ 00:27:11.650 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it.
229 00:27:13.350 ⇒ 00:27:25.100 Kaela Gallagher: This is super cool, you can also ask Cursor. Cursor will have knowledge of these calls, so you can ask Cursor, hey, when was the last time I talked to this person? Oh, what was the meeting about?
230 00:27:25.320 ⇒ 00:27:35.579 Kaela Gallagher: oh, I have a call today with this person, prepare me for it, with this client, whatever. So, really cool features here, for every meeting that you have.
231 00:27:35.580 ⇒ 00:27:46.350 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it. And what’s the company culture around recording calls? Like, is it something that’s encouraged? And, like, is there a difference between when doing it internally versus with clients, or is a certain cadence that I should follow?
232 00:27:46.900 ⇒ 00:28:03.609 Kaela Gallagher: So, for, clients, it’s important, I would say, to disclose that the meeting is being recorded. I think Zoom does that on its own, like, you probably saw when you logged in. So as long as that’s there, it’s okay. Greg has actually
233 00:28:03.750 ⇒ 00:28:09.639 Kaela Gallagher: Had some scenarios with clients and recordings, so he might be a good person to talk to about
234 00:28:10.090 ⇒ 00:28:22.559 Kaela Gallagher: handled that. Internally, I would say the culture is that, by default, everything is recorded. The platform is built to filter out sensitive information.
235 00:28:22.790 ⇒ 00:28:40.410 Kaela Gallagher: for example, like, a lot of what I do is sensitive information, and probably shouldn’t be shared with the entire company. So in that case, like, I am able to just stop the recording. Like, if I’m having a sensitive call, the… whoever is the host of the meeting can just stop the recording.
236 00:28:40.600 ⇒ 00:28:41.589 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, awesome.
237 00:28:41.960 ⇒ 00:28:43.480 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool.
238 00:28:43.940 ⇒ 00:28:47.820 Kaela Gallagher: Work here is,
239 00:28:48.200 ⇒ 00:28:59.189 Kaela Gallagher: being rolled out in the next couple weeks, but this is going to be basically an internal chat GPT for us, full AI chatbot platform, with all of our skills and everything.
240 00:28:59.430 ⇒ 00:29:01.339 Kaela Gallagher: You can…
241 00:29:01.720 ⇒ 00:29:11.550 Kaela Gallagher: search all of the, calls that have been had with each of our clients, but one other thing I wanted to call out here is our Learning Hub.
242 00:29:12.450 ⇒ 00:29:31.860 Kaela Gallagher: So, this is the Quick Start course that I was referring to that’s going to get you set up on Cursor. Okay. So two to two and a half hours, it’s a few modules, and, you can click in, there’s video, there’s text, it’s pretty interactive, and overall a great course, but if you do have feedback.
243 00:29:32.090 ⇒ 00:29:34.700 Kaela Gallagher: This is new, so feel free to share it with us.
244 00:29:34.700 ⇒ 00:29:35.450 Abdullah Ahmad: Alright.
245 00:29:36.240 ⇒ 00:29:49.400 Kaela Gallagher: After you do Quick Start, maybe, like, week 2 or 3, you can do an AI accelerator course. It’ll go through more integrations, automations, agents, a little bit more, like, advanced skills.
246 00:29:49.400 ⇒ 00:29:57.349 Kaela Gallagher: And then compound engineering, this is a newly released course. I would say this would be, like, course number 3 that you would do.
247 00:29:57.380 ⇒ 00:29:58.440 Kaela Gallagher: Okay. So…
248 00:29:59.220 ⇒ 00:29:59.920 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it.
249 00:29:59.920 ⇒ 00:30:04.849 Kaela Gallagher: This is our learning hub, but yes, quick start, very important to complete this week.
250 00:30:04.850 ⇒ 00:30:06.829 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, yeah, sounds great.
251 00:30:07.570 ⇒ 00:30:12.779 Kaela Gallagher: We also have some efforts across the organization right now to,
252 00:30:13.070 ⇒ 00:30:32.260 Kaela Gallagher: achieve certain certifications, so you can see we’re focused on Omni and Snowflake right now. I have a feeling you will be getting Omni certified in the near future, so this certification section of the Learning Hub has, some guides to get you started on those certifications.
253 00:30:32.260 ⇒ 00:30:33.730 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, sounds good.
254 00:30:34.770 ⇒ 00:30:35.530 Kaela Gallagher: Okay.
255 00:30:35.960 ⇒ 00:30:41.049 Kaela Gallagher: Cool, I think those are the main things to call out about the platform, but again,
256 00:30:41.440 ⇒ 00:30:44.349 Kaela Gallagher: I would recommend just digging through all the features.
257 00:30:44.640 ⇒ 00:30:51.220 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah, I figured, like, I think, I mean, like, this is good information, I’ll get a better hang of it once I start, like, playing around with it and hitting things.
258 00:30:51.220 ⇒ 00:30:51.820 Kaela Gallagher: Yes.
259 00:30:51.820 ⇒ 00:30:53.519 Abdullah Ahmad: Seeing how it responds, yeah.
260 00:30:53.720 ⇒ 00:30:56.230 Kaela Gallagher: 100%. Okay.
261 00:30:56.810 ⇒ 00:31:05.110 Kaela Gallagher: Cool. Oh, yeah, just going back, this is the new hire channel, it’s called Ask New Hires. So as soon as we have you provisioned on Slack, we’ll get you added to that.
262 00:31:05.440 ⇒ 00:31:06.840 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, sounds good.
263 00:31:08.040 ⇒ 00:31:26.479 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. You already got to join one of our Friday team meetings, but yeah, they’re super fun. We have a different host every time, so I’m sure probably next quarter you’ll be a host of one, running, like, an icebreaker in a lab share, and then each department gets to give updates, so we do these bi-weekly.
264 00:31:27.000 ⇒ 00:31:31.220 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay. Yeah, I love the office, by the way. I love it that you guys headed there.
265 00:31:31.550 ⇒ 00:31:32.330 Abdullah Ahmad: My favorite.
266 00:31:32.330 ⇒ 00:31:35.909 Kaela Gallagher: I know, I love that show, that’s probably one of my favorites of all time.
267 00:31:35.910 ⇒ 00:31:36.450 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah.
268 00:31:36.450 ⇒ 00:31:41.309 Kaela Gallagher: Have you seen the paper? It’s, like, a spin-off of it.
269 00:31:41.520 ⇒ 00:31:43.179 Abdullah Ahmad: No, who’s in it?
270 00:31:44.390 ⇒ 00:31:46.580 Abdullah Ahmad: Who did they spin off? Is it…
271 00:31:46.910 ⇒ 00:31:53.640 Kaela Gallagher: It… so… they have one… they have one of the original characters.
272 00:31:54.010 ⇒ 00:31:54.660 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
273 00:31:54.660 ⇒ 00:32:01.419 Kaela Gallagher: was it? Maybe, like, Stanley or something? Okay. But it’s… it’s a newspaper.
274 00:32:01.420 ⇒ 00:32:02.090 Abdullah Ahmad: I see.
275 00:32:02.090 ⇒ 00:32:19.799 Kaela Gallagher: trying to stay afloat in the present day, and the girl, the really funny Italian girl from White Lotus, who, like, is the hotel manager, is also the newspaper manager, and so she’s, like, so funny in it. Anyway…
276 00:32:19.930 ⇒ 00:32:25.329 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, I’ll definitely check it out. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been looking for a new show, so perfect, I wasn’t aware.
277 00:32:25.330 ⇒ 00:32:40.440 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, cool. So we put together, like, a few things that we think are characteristics that everybody who’s successful here shows, like, regardless of what role you’re in, so…
278 00:32:40.470 ⇒ 00:32:58.200 Kaela Gallagher: like I mentioned earlier, like, contributing publicly is super important, like, we are always going to default to public channels for knowledge sharing rather than DMs. Okay. Closing the loop is super important, so taking ownership, driving outcomes, like, not waiting for
279 00:32:58.200 ⇒ 00:33:05.780 Kaela Gallagher: problems to arrive, or not waiting for things to be told to you, like, really kind of taking initiative in your work is super important.
280 00:33:06.270 ⇒ 00:33:22.330 Kaela Gallagher: Continuous improvement, so, whoever you’re partnering with, whether that is, you know, Utam as more of, like, a boss, or maybe Greg or Jasmine as peers, consistently asking for feedback is super important.
281 00:33:22.330 ⇒ 00:33:37.379 Kaela Gallagher: And then AI adoption. Like, we are such an AI-forward company, we’re doing AI projects for our clients, and if you’re not adopting AI yourself, then you’re not gonna succeed at Brainforge, so…
282 00:33:37.380 ⇒ 00:33:37.780 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah.
283 00:33:37.780 ⇒ 00:33:42.479 Kaela Gallagher: And very, very important to utilize the tools that are presented to you.
284 00:33:44.830 ⇒ 00:33:45.590 Kaela Gallagher: Cool.
285 00:33:45.910 ⇒ 00:34:04.270 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, getting started, so we will send you, once we have your Brainforge email provisioned, we will send you the onboarding guide. So this is going to be a document that walks you through, you know, day one, what you should be doing. And day two, I can actually send this to your personal email, too, while we’re.
286 00:34:04.270 ⇒ 00:34:04.770 Abdullah Ahmad: and all of that.
287 00:34:04.770 ⇒ 00:34:09.879 Kaela Gallagher: stuff set up, just so you can start looking into kind of what’s expected of you.
288 00:34:09.989 ⇒ 00:34:29.019 Kaela Gallagher: And then for your ramp-up plan, this is going to be tailored to you. So, whereas the onboard guide is more overarching for everybody that’s starting and ramping up, the ramp-up plan is a 90-day plan specific to your role and what we expect of you, and we try to write them in a way where
289 00:34:29.020 ⇒ 00:34:36.210 Kaela Gallagher: If you are… Succeeding and accomplishing everything in it, then you are doing very well in your role.
290 00:34:36.210 ⇒ 00:34:37.159 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
291 00:34:37.239 ⇒ 00:34:49.549 Kaela Gallagher: because the ramp-up plan is specific to you as well, you can go in, there’s things listed as, like, check boxes, and you can go in and mark off things as you’re doing it. I think that’s a great idea, because
292 00:34:49.739 ⇒ 00:34:56.170 Kaela Gallagher: you know, that document is shared with Robert and Utam, and it creates visibility of, like, hey, you’re making progress.
293 00:34:56.909 ⇒ 00:35:16.830 Kaela Gallagher: So those are the two most important documents you’ll be following as you’re ramping up, and then today, I would say very important to just send a message to the team channel, introduce yourself. I know everybody already got to meet you in the Friday call, but, just shoot a message in and let them know that you’re here.
294 00:35:17.100 ⇒ 00:35:32.750 Abdullah Ahmad: Of course, of course. And on the ramp-up plan, is that specifically for new joiners, or a ramp-up is, like, in general, like, for all employees, and is that the main document, or the main source that’s taken into consideration for your performance review?
295 00:35:33.210 ⇒ 00:35:49.590 Kaela Gallagher: So, the ramp-up plan, they are specific to people starting. Okay, okay. So they are specific to new hires, but they do cover, like, a first 90 days, so, they are pretty, like, comprehensive for your first quarter here.
296 00:35:49.590 ⇒ 00:35:52.559 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, awesome, awesome, makes sense. Perfect.
297 00:35:53.620 ⇒ 00:35:55.470 Kaela Gallagher: Awesome.
298 00:35:55.470 ⇒ 00:36:16.610 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, as you’re going through onboarding, feedback is super important, so we’ll ask for feedback at 7, 30, and 90 days, and I’ll have touchpoints with you, at those days as well. But yeah, if you have any feedback about the onboarding process in general, anything that else that you would have liked to see in this orientation, anything like that, I’m super open to feedback.
299 00:36:16.610 ⇒ 00:36:20.100 Kaela Gallagher: I’ve only been doing this for a couple… couple months, so…
300 00:36:20.100 ⇒ 00:36:21.010 Abdullah Ahmad: Anything else?
301 00:36:21.010 ⇒ 00:36:24.670 Kaela Gallagher: you have for me is greatly appreciated.
302 00:36:25.390 ⇒ 00:36:28.299 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, any questions, anything I can help answer?
303 00:36:28.300 ⇒ 00:36:43.729 Abdullah Ahmad: Yeah, I mean, first off, thank you so much. This was very, very thorough, and I appreciate that. Even a TikTok, like, they just threw a document at me, and I had to figure it all out by myself, so this is, like, super helpful, like, just being able to run through this. I’ll just…
304 00:36:44.790 ⇒ 00:36:54.099 Abdullah Ahmad: recap, I guess, like, some of the important things that I need to be doing. So I’ll let you know that right after this, I have the call with the lawyers, we’ll have…
305 00:36:55.320 ⇒ 00:37:00.539 Abdullah Ahmad: Contracts, submitted within the next hour, hour and a half.
306 00:37:00.710 ⇒ 00:37:09.339 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay. To you, so I think we should be good there. As soon as the contract is submitted, I’m assuming that I’ll be waiting for my email address.
307 00:37:09.450 ⇒ 00:37:11.859 Abdullah Ahmad: Who should I ping?
308 00:37:12.000 ⇒ 00:37:17.549 Abdullah Ahmad: for that, after having submitted the contract, if I’m, like, requesting that email address?
309 00:37:17.750 ⇒ 00:37:22.170 Kaela Gallagher: Rico will be the one that’s, like, provisioning all of your access for you.
310 00:37:22.170 ⇒ 00:37:23.800 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it.
311 00:37:24.150 ⇒ 00:37:30.060 Abdullah Ahmad: So yeah, as soon as I get the email address, I’ll start downloading all of these apps.
312 00:37:30.170 ⇒ 00:37:41.119 Abdullah Ahmad: that you have just mentioned to me, and I’m sure they’re in the onboarding doc, like, there would be a list of these as well. So for today, I’ll focus on, like, getting access to all of those, getting signed in.
313 00:37:41.360 ⇒ 00:37:45.030 Abdullah Ahmad: I’ll go through the onboarding doc, Again.
314 00:37:45.370 ⇒ 00:37:49.119 Abdullah Ahmad: And I’ll start with the learning plan.
315 00:37:49.320 ⇒ 00:37:52.190 Abdullah Ahmad: For the new hires, right? Like, that’s the main priority, like, for this.
316 00:37:52.190 ⇒ 00:37:52.689 Kaela Gallagher: excuse me, because…
317 00:37:52.690 ⇒ 00:37:53.270 Abdullah Ahmad: well.
318 00:37:53.510 ⇒ 00:37:58.459 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay. So all of these things, that’s what I’ll be on top of.
319 00:37:59.200 ⇒ 00:38:07.109 Abdullah Ahmad: maybe a question that I ha- and I’ll put, like, my introduction into the Slack channel as well. I’ll schedule a time with Jasmine…
320 00:38:08.600 ⇒ 00:38:15.770 Abdullah Ahmad: for channels, and basically just to, like, touch base with her. She’s, like, the person that I’m most familiar with as well, so she can, like, ramp me up on some of this.
321 00:38:16.300 ⇒ 00:38:29.529 Kaela Gallagher: Perfect. And Greg… Greg is the one that is doing the same role as you. He’s actually the only other CSO in the company, so I would recommend, connecting with him for sure.
322 00:38:29.530 ⇒ 00:38:36.009 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, yeah, that was going to be my question, that as next steps, when it comes to, like, me…
323 00:38:36.120 ⇒ 00:38:44.230 Abdullah Ahmad: getting information about what project I’m working on, and some background information about the clients, and where we are in that particular engagement.
324 00:38:44.700 ⇒ 00:38:48.439 Abdullah Ahmad: Who should I be reaching out in relation to that stuff? Greg, I’m assuming?
325 00:38:48.720 ⇒ 00:39:05.019 Kaela Gallagher: The people that will have the client information for you will be Robert, Utam, and Greg, probably. I think you’re gonna be working on Element as a client, and Jasmine’s been working a ton with them, too, so she would have Element information.
326 00:39:05.190 ⇒ 00:39:10.430 Kaela Gallagher: In your ramp-up guide, I’m going to try and get
327 00:39:10.720 ⇒ 00:39:14.269 Kaela Gallagher: Some client-specific information in there for you, too.
328 00:39:14.620 ⇒ 00:39:19.380 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it. And you said Utsum and Robert are away this week?
329 00:39:19.520 ⇒ 00:39:27.329 Abdullah Ahmad: I’ll probably meet them, like, Monday or something, but in the meantime, so is this… is the expectation for me?
330 00:39:27.520 ⇒ 00:39:29.080 Abdullah Ahmad: To complete both.
331 00:39:29.870 ⇒ 00:39:34.180 Abdullah Ahmad: The onboarding process, and start with the client work itself?
332 00:39:34.400 ⇒ 00:39:40.099 Abdullah Ahmad: By contacting Greg, or is the focus primarily on getting, like, onboarding completely sorted out by Friday?
333 00:39:40.590 ⇒ 00:39:52.369 Kaela Gallagher: I would say your first couple days will be very onboarding heavy and intros with the team. Maybe towards the end of this week, they’ll start adding you to client calls, but that’s something that…
334 00:39:52.480 ⇒ 00:40:01.819 Kaela Gallagher: Utam, I think, will, lay out for you quite a bit as well. I do think Utam and Robert will be able to call you this week, I just don’t know if we’ll be able to, like…
335 00:40:02.250 ⇒ 00:40:04.779 Kaela Gallagher: schedule it on the calendar, they might just.
336 00:40:04.780 ⇒ 00:40:05.240 Abdullah Ahmad: I see.
337 00:40:05.240 ⇒ 00:40:12.259 Kaela Gallagher: you at the airport. Okay, okay, okay. So we’ll see. I’ll make sure that they both give you a ring, though.
338 00:40:12.260 ⇒ 00:40:20.940 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, perfect. This is… this is actually great, and maybe, like, on a personal note, what I was, like, letting you know, I was actually here attending a funeral for my aunt.
339 00:40:21.990 ⇒ 00:40:33.120 Abdullah Ahmad: So this actually works out really well for me in that capacity as well, since a lot of, like, the focus is on onboarding, tooling, introductions, and
340 00:40:33.120 ⇒ 00:40:43.769 Abdullah Ahmad: some of the learning plans or the things, and getting familiarized with the tools itself as well, so I know that I can sort of, like, move some time around, around my commitments as well. Yeah.
341 00:40:43.950 ⇒ 00:40:54.690 Abdullah Ahmad: And obviously, like, my commitment is definitely, like, 40 hours, like, as the contract suggests, so I’ll be completing, obviously, those hours, just getting a sense of what’s the company culture.
342 00:40:54.740 ⇒ 00:41:06.409 Abdullah Ahmad: around timings as well? Is everyone doing 9 to 5, or are people, like, distributing it, like, as per their engagements? Because I know this is also a remote position as well, right?
343 00:41:06.790 ⇒ 00:41:20.780 Kaela Gallagher: Yes, so I would say, in general, most of the organization tries to align with Eastern or Central time. Okay, okay. For me, to align with Eastern time, I would have to start at, like, 5 or 6 AM.
344 00:41:21.120 ⇒ 00:41:29.339 Kaela Gallagher: I don’t. I usually am on by, like, 8 AM, though, just to try to get as much overlap with the team as possible, so I think…
345 00:41:29.380 ⇒ 00:41:47.089 Kaela Gallagher: I think we all try to get as much overlap with Central or Eastern time as much as we can. Okay, perfect. But I would say in terms of, like, the culture, if you have an appointment, if you have somewhere you need to be, just be sure to block it off on your calendar, because
346 00:41:47.150 ⇒ 00:41:59.220 Kaela Gallagher: we very much have a culture of just putting time on people’s calendars if we see it. So, if it’s open there, like, somebody will probably just try to add time there. So, yeah.
347 00:41:59.220 ⇒ 00:42:00.140 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, keep your camera.
348 00:42:00.140 ⇒ 00:42:01.180 Kaela Gallagher: are up to date.
349 00:42:01.180 ⇒ 00:42:05.799 Abdullah Ahmad: Awesome, and yeah, maybe, like, for an update for you as, like, HR-specific also, which is, like, yeah…
350 00:42:06.200 ⇒ 00:42:11.700 Abdullah Ahmad: These days, I am in Central Time, because I’m actually in Houston right now, for the event.
351 00:42:11.900 ⇒ 00:42:22.660 Abdullah Ahmad: I’ll be traveling back to the Eastern Time, but yeah, I’ll definitely make sure to update people about it, and we’ll make sure that my calendar is up to date in a given week.
352 00:42:22.750 ⇒ 00:42:33.300 Abdullah Ahmad: For sure, just so, like, what the openings are and what the commitments are as well. Yeah. I’m assuming, like, things like appointments, or…
353 00:42:34.020 ⇒ 00:42:37.689 Abdullah Ahmad: Blocks, like, all of that is through,
354 00:42:38.180 ⇒ 00:42:42.729 Abdullah Ahmad: the calendar itself, or am I, like, submitting something to you as well, separately?
355 00:42:43.380 ⇒ 00:42:46.360 Kaela Gallagher: I would say, so if it’s an appointment.
356 00:42:46.520 ⇒ 00:42:50.120 Kaela Gallagher: just put it on the calendar. But if you need, like.
357 00:42:50.360 ⇒ 00:42:56.340 Kaela Gallagher: a half day off, or a full day off, then I would use the linear asks function.
358 00:42:56.340 ⇒ 00:42:56.760 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
359 00:42:56.760 ⇒ 00:42:59.059 Kaela Gallagher: Submit the time off.
360 00:42:59.180 ⇒ 00:43:15.139 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, okay, awesome, awesome, yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely not seeing any time off, I literally just started. So, yeah, just about the flexibility of the time, just, like, trying to make sure that I’m aligned with the company culture as well, and I make sure to communicate things in a timely manner as well.
361 00:43:15.290 ⇒ 00:43:23.270 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, and for time off, like, honestly, we’re very flexible, like, we are offering unlimited time off.
362 00:43:23.270 ⇒ 00:43:35.439 Kaela Gallagher: It’s more so just about, like, the notice. Like, if you’re able to put it in before the allocation is done for the month, because we usually try to do monthly allocations, that would be the most helpful.
363 00:43:35.440 ⇒ 00:43:35.900 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
364 00:43:35.900 ⇒ 00:43:37.170 Kaela Gallagher: But, like, minimum.
365 00:43:37.230 ⇒ 00:43:37.980 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
366 00:43:37.980 ⇒ 00:43:38.980 Kaela Gallagher: Thanks for sure, yeah.
367 00:43:38.980 ⇒ 00:43:56.690 Abdullah Ahmad: Sounds good. And maybe a quick question also about the culture. Do you guys do sprints? Like, what’s the structure? Are you guys doing weekly sprints and, like, doing stand-ups, or are we sync… aligning with the bi-weekly, sync? But just trying to get a sense of…
368 00:43:56.760 ⇒ 00:43:59.959 Abdullah Ahmad: How quickly, like… because right now, it seems like…
369 00:44:00.450 ⇒ 00:44:06.140 Abdullah Ahmad: Not really… like, these are startups, so, like, there are smaller individuals, as opposed to, like, full teams, essentially.
370 00:44:06.140 ⇒ 00:44:06.670 Kaela Gallagher: working on something.
371 00:44:06.670 ⇒ 00:44:07.250 Abdullah Ahmad: thing.
372 00:44:08.540 ⇒ 00:44:12.079 Abdullah Ahmad: So just, like, trying to see, like, do we have, like, a daily stand-up, or…
373 00:44:12.330 ⇒ 00:44:18.779 Abdullah Ahmad: Is it more async in relation to, like, who you’re working, you reach out to them directly, like, have that one-on-one relationship?
374 00:44:18.780 ⇒ 00:44:29.859 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, I think this is actually something that you will be able to… to influence for your clients, and I think it’s done by… by client.
375 00:44:29.860 ⇒ 00:44:30.660 Abdullah Ahmad: So… Okay.
376 00:44:30.880 ⇒ 00:44:36.070 Kaela Gallagher: There is, like, a weekly, like, delivery leadership call.
377 00:44:36.070 ⇒ 00:44:36.660 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
378 00:44:36.660 ⇒ 00:44:44.100 Kaela Gallagher: So there will be that. I think the AI team that’s working on, like, our internal tools.
379 00:44:44.400 ⇒ 00:44:48.580 Kaela Gallagher: they do, like, a daily 15 minutes. Okay.
380 00:44:48.760 ⇒ 00:44:57.890 Kaela Gallagher: For, like, Element, I know there’s a weekly call with the client, and I think there’s also, like, maybe two syncs a week… a week.
381 00:44:58.110 ⇒ 00:45:00.600 Kaela Gallagher: for the team that’s working on it. So it just really.
382 00:45:00.600 ⇒ 00:45:01.060 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay.
383 00:45:01.060 ⇒ 00:45:02.590 Kaela Gallagher: On the client, basically.
384 00:45:02.800 ⇒ 00:45:07.929 Abdullah Ahmad: Got it, got it, got it. Okay, amazing, amazing. This is great. Thank you so much.
385 00:45:08.110 ⇒ 00:45:11.040 Abdullah Ahmad: And, like, that list of things that I owe to you.
386 00:45:11.170 ⇒ 00:45:16.029 Abdullah Ahmad: I’ll definitely keep you posted, reach out to Rico and all the other…
387 00:45:16.900 ⇒ 00:45:21.249 Abdullah Ahmad: key actions for today that I mentioned. Yeah, we’ll keep you updated on that as well.
388 00:45:21.250 ⇒ 00:45:28.750 Kaela Gallagher: Okay, okay, awesome, cool. Well, thanks so much for your time, appreciate it, and yeah, just let me know how I can help.
389 00:45:28.750 ⇒ 00:45:42.379 Abdullah Ahmad: Okay, thank you so much, Kalia. Yeah, I’ll try to get, like, on the channel as quickly as possible, because I think, yeah, that will be moving forward, and then if I need… until then, then I’ll just, like, message you directly, if that’s okay. Okay. For any requests, right?
390 00:45:42.510 ⇒ 00:45:43.960 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, that sounds good.
391 00:45:44.240 ⇒ 00:45:44.660 Abdullah Ahmad: interface.
392 00:45:44.830 ⇒ 00:45:46.170 Kaela Gallagher: Thank you so much!
393 00:45:46.170 ⇒ 00:45:48.200 Abdullah Ahmad: Alright, thanks, Akila, I really appreciate it.
394 00:45:48.200 ⇒ 00:45:49.569 Kaela Gallagher: Yeah, talk to you later.
395 00:45:49.740 ⇒ 00:45:50.300 Abdullah Ahmad: Right.
396 00:45:50.420 ⇒ 00:45:51.040 Kaela Gallagher: Bye.