Call —
Transcript batch
0:00 Caller: Hey Jed, this is Lena.
0:00 You: Hello.
0:04 Caller: How's it going?
0:05 Caller: I am good.
0:05 You: Hello, Lena. I'm well in yourself.
0:06 Caller: Is that still a good time?
0:09 Caller: Excellent.
0:10 Caller: Well, thank you again for hopping on with me.
0:11 You: Yes.
0:15 Caller: I'm really looking forward to speaking with you.
0:17 Caller: I think your background is super aligned to this role and definitely happy to share other roles as well.
0:22 Caller: Purpose of this call, I really want to make this more of like a two-way information sharing session.
0:28 Caller: So I would love to hear a little bit about you and what you're looking for.
0:30 You: Okay, so the things that I'm looking for, three things in any role.
0:32 Caller: I also want to share a little bit more about Spade and the process and all of that.
0:37 Caller: And then we'll go over logistics and then we'll send you on your way.
0:40 Caller: Great.
0:43 Caller: Mm-hmm.
0:47 You: The first is a place where data is both present and necessary.
0:51 You: I see instinct and insight as helpful, but they must always be backed by data.
0:58 Caller: Mm-hmm.
0:58 You: The second is a place where I have the relative freedom to pursue what I genuinely think is the best solution to a problem.
1:07 You: My experience is quite diverse and getting longer, and I want to be able to bring forward the skills, knowledge, and experience into the next role.
1:16 You: And the last is a place where the phrase, that's not my job, doesn't exist.
1:20 You: I see that as a sign of, genuinely, I see that as a sign of bureaucracy and I try to avoid it.
1:26 You: Now, in practice, I know that the job world tends to revolve around titles.
1:28 Caller: No.
1:32 You: So data engineer, ML engineer, MLOPS, software engineer, AIOPS, there's so many titles that I fit, but it's unclear because the titles themselves are inconsistently described across and occasionally within companies.
1:43 Caller: No.
1:44 Caller: No.
1:48 You: So, pardon the earlier ambiguity.
1:52 You: This is, I'm doing the best that I can.
1:56 You: Thank you.
1:57 Caller: I totally.
1:58 Caller: agree with you. Especially in the AI space, it feels like they're still sorting out what job title means exactly what, for context, an ML engineer means something totally different across a variety of different companies. Sometimes it's true software engineering. Sometimes it's more of data science focused. So I'm totally with you there as well.
2:19 Caller: What is the things that stood out to me about what you mentioned you're looking for is this relative freedom. And I think this kind of
2:26 You: Thank you.
2:28 Caller: goes hand in hand with the culture that you're looking for, of not having anyone say, like, oh, that's not my job in avoiding bureaucracy.
2:28 You: Thank you.
2:29 You: Thank you.
2:36 Caller: And one of Spade's cultural pillars, the best way I would describe it, is that they have this culture of best idea wins.
2:42 Caller: So if they are, they're a relatively small team, they're a team of 30 at the moment, but if someone who is, if an engineer proposes a sales strategy and it makes sense and the team is on board, and there's evidence to support that,
2:58 Caller: they will move forward with that suggestion or that recommendation.
2:59 You: Is Spade your only man, is Spade your only mandate? I ask because I happen to be a customer of Spade, so I'm quite familiar with at least the outward facing portion of the company.
3:02 Caller: There's not, I definitely want to emphasize that there's a lot of freedom and you will have a lot of ownership,
3:08 Caller: like very, very high ownership in this role.
3:15 Caller: Sorry, are you there?
3:28 Caller: Excellent. Yes. No, I am also working with a couple of other AI companies. Notably, I also work very closely with Snorkel AI. So speaking of data, that is definitely the programmatic, if you're into programmatic data development, that's definitely one of the places to be at the moment, especially since they just launched their data as a service side of the business. I will say that the roles I'm working on for Snarkle at the moment are for deployed engineers, mostly on the post-sale side of things.
3:29 You: Thank you.
3:36 You: Thank you.
3:58 Caller: And I'd be curious what your appetite is on a forward-deployed engineering role there.
3:59 You: So what does that mean that is it snorkel?
4:06 You: Is it snorkel?
4:07 Caller: Yes, Snorkel AI. And Snorkel is a Series D startup, so it's a little bit bigger, a few about 200, and they're focused on building out really robust data sets that have expert contributor annotations that then can be used to build out better AI e-vales and also push the frontier
4:28 Caller: of AI and a more, there's some safety aspects when we have the expert contributor annotations as well.
4:29 You: I guess the domain the domain was available.
4:34 Caller: But the general message of it is they do programmatic data development and our names snorkel because they're
4:38 You: The domain was available.
4:44 Caller: snorkeling through the data and like making sense of it and making it usable for other AI systems.
4:58 Caller: They were actually founded back in 2019. They were spun out of Sanford's AI lab. So they have been around for a little while, a little while longer than Spade has.
4:59 You: Thank you.
5:09 Caller: Spade was just launched in 2021. Additionally, I'm also working on a data engineering role for another client. I actually just got this and we're doing our kickoff call next week. So I don't have a ton of details on this. But essentially, let me see if I can pull up some of the information.
5:28 Caller: in the meantime.
5:29 You: Thank you.
5:44 Caller: They are called Confido Health. They're looking for a data lead. They're looking for a data lead. They're a series AI, excuse me, series A company. Company. They're based in New York. And they're based in New York. And they're
5:57 Caller: looking to make this hire pretty quickly. I will say that they are also looking for someone who has, who is in New York and able to come into the office versus Spade is two days a week, but they're pretty flexible there. If you want to come in less, that's fine. If you want to come in more, that's fine too.
5:59 You: Understood.
6:14 You: Understood.
6:19 Caller: I do have a question about your background in regards to some of the things that you've been working on. I would love to hear because it sounds like you're working on.
6:27 Caller: on a lot of different things, especially with observability and also on the infrastructure side.
6:29 You: So the overarching theme of my career has been
6:32 Caller: And would love to know, like, what, which is a good thing, by the way, you're doing a lot.
6:39 Caller: But would love to know, like, what your main, what, like, really excites you about the role that you're in now and what you would like to change.
6:46 You: So the overarching theme of my career has been automation, building tools that relate people from monotonous tasks.
6:55 You: What's unique about my role at Roe,
6:57 Caller: Oh.
6:58 You: is I am functionally a separate engineering organization that only reports to the CTO,
7:04 You: separate from rest of the engineering organization.
7:07 You: So while it's great, I can choose my own projects, I also have to defend their business value,
7:13 You: and I'm also responsible for my own infrastructure.
7:17 You: So we are a full-stack developer or full-stack engineer is responsible for only the front-end and the back-end.
7:23 You: I, as an Omnistack engineer, I'm responsible for CICD,
7:27 You: ICD, security, fleet management, what else, observability, declarative configuration,
7:27 Caller: Okay.
7:36 You: everything from bare metal, the bare metal servers through to the user interface.
7:43 You: That's the distinction.
7:45 You: So it's unclear how mature any of your other clients' engineering stacks are,
7:52 You: but I'm able to at least solve meaningful problems at
7:56 You: at scale supported by the different cloud providers.
7:57 Caller: Mm-hmm.
8:06 You: And that in part comes from my time at Meta when I was responsible for Instagram's notifications telemetry.
8:11 Caller: Mm-hmm.
8:14 You: So 1.7 million events per second, 1.5 petabytes of data per day.
8:20 You: It is the scale few engineers reach in their career, and I'm not even confident I'll hit it again.
8:25 You: So yes, I'm comfortable with AWS. I'm comfortable with AWS. I'm
8:27 Caller: that's a big, big number. I haven't ever heard that before, so that's super impressive.
8:33 Caller: And as far as, as far as your event, you just touched on some clouds. So while we're on that topic, are you comfortable with AWS? I think I saw this quite a bit on your resume, but I always just like to ask because sometimes I've been surprised in terms of, like, depth of experience.
8:55 You: comfortable with GCP. The important distinction, however, is I do not use, I very intentionally
8:57 Caller: Thank you.
9:01 You: don't use the customized products within either cloud platforms. So where AWS has light sale versus GCP's
9:08 You: compute engine or their IAM or any of the other opinionated AWS flavored or GCP flavored products,
9:17 You: I usually am able to administer the open source equivalent for myself. And the main advantage is that
9:24 You: migrating from one provided to the next is an overnight job as opposed to a months or quarters long effort.
9:27 Caller: Got it. Great. Excellent. And as far as, as far as your background goes, I think I have a good understanding, again, very generally speaking, but wanting to get a better sense of, like, companies that you'd be interested in, are you only targeting startups? I imagine based off of ownership and lack of bureaucracy. I'm imagining that probably would be an area.
9:54 You: I am open to large companies, but I would generally avoid the regulated ones.
9:57 Caller: you'd like to stay in, but are you also open to large companies? What does that look like for you?
10:06 You: So if it's a health tech company, for example, that is involved in some sort of HIPAA or Kappa or similar regulatory drag, I hesitate mainly because my main advantage is iterating very quickly through solutions to solve a problem.
10:23 You: And if I always have to go through compliance, it usually is a major bottleneck.
10:27 Caller: Yep. Yeah.
10:30 You: So unclear if any of your health tech clients are like that.
10:34 You: And for large companies in general, it really depends on the team or the project.
10:39 You: Because yes, while I've worked at both large and small companies, the number of people I've interacted with that each is functionally the same.
10:40 Caller: Yeah.
10:42 Caller: Yeah.
10:43 Caller: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
10:49 Caller: Well, I am glad to know this because another company that comes to know this because another company that comes to mind
10:53 You: Thank you.
10:54 Caller: is a company called Honey Hives, but they are specifically working on building an
10:59 Caller: observability tool, an AI observability product, but they're specifically focused on regulated
11:07 Caller: industries. So while the company itself, you'll have a lot of ownership working at Honey Hive
11:12 Caller: and definitely, you'll have a lot of ownership working at Honey Hive and definitely will be very, like,
11:20 Caller: you'll have a lot of autonomy there. You might get a little frustrated working with some of the
11:23 You: Telecom and insurance are regulated for reasons that don't have to do with privacy for reasons that don't have to do with privacy.
11:24 Caller: clients just because, again, it is a four-deployed engineering role, and they're only working
11:29 Caller: with regulated industries, which is kind of their company differentiator, like telecom, insurance,
11:35 Caller: and I believe some health care as well.
11:44 You: Usually it's just setting the price correctly.
11:47 You: What makes things tricky with the likes of insurance or health tech is the pay
11:53 You: patient encryption requirements and the certification for that encryption.
11:54 Caller: Great. Excellent. What would...
11:58 You: That's an important distinction I'd like to call out.
12:02 You: But I'll have my agents do more research on, is it honeyhive.aI?
12:07 Caller: Yes, it's Honey Hive, and there is another one that's very, I believe it's Honey Hive.
12:14 Caller: .aI is their website. There is, they're building the observability layer for production agents. That's their tagline.
12:23 Caller: Yeah.
12:23 You: Okay, so I'll dispatch a pair of agents to do more research there.
12:24 Caller: Great.
12:25 Caller: Yeah, that would be great.
12:30 Caller: Very small team series A, I definitely recommend, definitely recommend taking a look there.
12:38 Caller: And if you're interested, I'd love to send you over there as well.
12:41 Caller: Or for any of the companies that I've mentioned, Snorkel AI, Honey Hives, and the new one that I don't have
12:48 Caller: have up the top of my hat, it's called Confido Health.
12:52 Caller: C-O-N-F-I-D-O.
12:53 You: Confido.
13:02 Caller: That one, I think you'll, you may run into some,
13:06 Caller: you may run into some of that, but definitely let me know what you're interested in
13:11 Caller: because I'd love to share you across a variety of different clients.
13:15 Caller: In regards to Spade, however, I see a lot of alignment here, and I'd love to just go over the process.
13:21 Caller: to just go over the process and also just get your thoughts as well.
13:23 You: Thank you.
13:24 Caller: So as far as the interview process goes.
13:29 Caller: So the next step with Spade will be for me to share your resume with the team,
13:34 Caller: and also they'll be reaching out to schedule the first round.
13:39 Caller: If they're interested, they're pretty engaged.
13:41 Caller: This is like their number one priority role moving quickly
13:45 Caller: and pretty good about getting back to me with feedback.
13:48 Caller: And they're a series B company.
13:50 Caller: they raised $56 million backed by A16 Z Y Combinator,
13:53 You: The reason.
13:54 Caller: and then Floresh and Oak Ventures as well.
13:58 Caller: And you will, in this rule, you'll essentially be owning the full infrastructure,
14:02 Caller: cloud services, data pipelines, observability, dev tooling,
14:03 You: A space.
14:05 Caller: and you'll be processing billions of transactions monthly.
14:07 You: A spade who anybody who anybody who is a space who a space who understand, who, who is a spade who a
14:09 Caller: So hopefully getting up to some of those numbers you were at over at NETA, but who knows?
14:15 Caller: And then as far,
14:18 Caller: Yes.
14:20 You: spade who is because Roe is a customer, a spade who, a spade who a space, a spade who, a spade who.
14:23 You: Seize my candidacy could leak it back to row.
14:25 Caller: Yeah.
14:26 You: That's why I hesitate.
14:28 Caller: Oh, yes.
14:30 Caller: I assure you that will absolutely not happen.
14:33 Caller: We, that would be highly illegal of both me and the hiring manager as well.
14:37 Caller: as well.
14:41 You: So does this then mean they are liable if there's a retaliatory firing?
14:45 You: Because I don't believe that's what's protected.
14:49 Caller: That I don't know the answer to, but for context, I know that the, I don't know any of the legality here.
14:53 You: It's an ethic, but I don't think it's enough for a civil lawsuit.
14:56 Caller: I'm definitely not a lawyer.
14:57 Caller: I don't want to give legal advice.
14:59 Caller: But the, as far, like, for example, but for example, it's a
15:06 Caller: If there is any retaliation, I believe that that is, well, I'm in California, so I'm a bit more familiar with California law than New York, but in California, any sort of retaliation is considered a violation.
15:20 You: Proving it is always the difficult part, but it's always the difficult part, but understood.
15:23 Caller: Yes, yes, definitely.
15:23 You: Do you happen to have the name of the hiring manager?
15:25 Caller: But it may be different, and I'm almost certain is different in New York.
15:30 Caller: California has some pretty strict standards, so yeah.
15:34 Caller: And then on top of that, I,
15:35 Caller: On top of that, I can also, I will also ensure that the hiring manager absolutely does not do any, like, back channel or get back to row about any of this, but I completely understand your concerns.
15:49 Caller: Yes, her name is Tess Block.
15:53 You: Okay.
15:54 Caller: She's the co-founder and the COL.
15:56 Caller: Do you know her?
16:00 You: So she knows me.
16:01 Caller: Oh, okay.
16:03 You: So that might be a problem because I evaluated Spade just for that history.
16:04 Caller: Okay, got it.
16:13 You: I evaluated Spade as a potential vendor to Roe and Tess worked with me to make sure that Spade satisfied the requirements.
16:22 You: So if test finds out, if test sees my profile, there's a very strong chance it may come back to Roe, and I'm not willing to take that risk.
16:34 Caller: Okay, well, I can definitely share other other roles that might be better aligned.
16:40 Caller: But yeah, feel free to get back to me on any of those other companies.
16:44 Caller: I, yes, I guess first, we'll count it out then.
16:50 Caller: Yeah, no problem.
16:52 You: Only because, well, you know why now.
16:57 Caller: Well, thanks again for taking the time.
17:00 Caller: Feel free to get back to me on the other clients as well.
17:03 Caller: Otherwise, I hope you have a great rest of your Friday.
17:07 You: You as well. So to repeat, Snorkel, Honey Hive, Confido?
17:13 You: Excellent. All right, I'll have, I'll go through those shortly. Thank you very much.