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0:00 Caller: Hi, Jed.
0:00 You: This call will be recorded.
0:07 You: Hello.
0:11 You: Hi there.
0:12 Caller: Jed, it's Jim Olson with Elliott Management Recruiting.
0:15 You: Hello, Jim.
0:20 Caller: how are you today good things i had us today at this time to speak is this
0:20 You: i'm well and yourself it does forgive me am i on speaker or you're you're echoing somehow all right we'll make the most of it
0:27 Caller: still work for you or oh perfect uh nope you're on a landline i'm on a
0:40 Caller: Do you want me to try you back?
0:40 You: It should be fine.
0:45 Caller: I mean, it's a voice of Rocky, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a wired in line. Uh, hold on, one second.
0:53 You: It should be fine.
0:53 Caller: Let me know. Um, yeah, so I guess.
1:00 Caller: Look, our firm leverages partners to find us great talent in the market.
1:00 You: I went through a gentleman named Graham, so I assume Ben is the account manager that talks to you and Graham is the
1:08 Caller: I think Ben Solom, do you deal with Ben Solomons directly at ROS or somebody else?
1:20 Caller: Okay, great. Great. So I'm happy to maybe begin. I hope today was to give you some more framework, right, of what we're doing and kind of more about us. And then from there, decide, obviously, if it makes sense to move forward and walk you through some of that. So that was really like the purpose of to ask some pointed questions.
1:20 You: the one, the sorcerer who talks to me.
1:40 Caller: but certainly want to like have some dialogue and then kind of see how we progress from there.
1:40 You: Okay.
1:47 Caller: So what do you what if I guess to this point have you been read into much of the narrative about
1:55 Caller: Elliott and what we're doing or can I just kind of show you just kind of like some
2:00 Caller: groundwork or I don't know yeah yeah so we're a 50-year-old hedge fund right we are about
2:00 You: So I have what is publicly available.
2:03 You: I don't know how aligned that is to what you intended to say.
2:12 Caller: 800 about 700 sorry total employees ish right around the world most of our you know presence are
2:20 Caller: of gravity's in New York of course our big lean has been always in activism that's kind of where
2:20 You: I'm
2:25 Caller: we've always been as far as kind of positioning right and look getting involved in the
2:30 Caller: in the companies we invest in and then i would say like switching just i mean you might have
2:38 Caller: seen some of that or no kind of
2:40 Caller: where we sit in the market or kind of, you know, how we are positioned. That said, with an AI,
2:40 You: We're going to be.
2:46 Caller: you know, every company is doing different things with AI, right? I mean, we are, there's a bunch
2:51 Caller: we are kind of looking at as a firm and how we can leverage broadly more, you know, throughout the
2:58 Caller: firm and then also specific.
3:00 Caller: around technology, right? So we have a global head of software engineering for all of
3:00 You: I'm
3:05 Caller: Elliot. He is interested in bringing in a somebody to help really the broader topic is software
3:14 Caller: development lifecycle for the whole firm and how could we leverage AI to better leverage that whole
3:20 Caller: process firm-wide with you know obviously so it's a core technology lives in this position with
3:20 You: We're going to be.
3:25 Caller: living technology but work with obviously the development community to help strategize and then
3:33 Caller: kind of implement how we can leverage AI so that's like the biggest that that what i think is
3:37 Caller: like the biggest umbrella of what so every
3:40 Caller: thing we're interested as far as, you know, candidates coming from organizations or initiatives
3:40 You: We're going to be.
3:42 You: We're going to be.
3:44 You: I'm
3:45 Caller: where software-dural life cycle for the firm is really kind of like the center of topic and
3:46 You: I'm going to
3:48 You: I'm
3:53 Caller: what hopefully, you know, folks are working on, right? So it's not really just tool-based or
3:58 Caller: product-based, right?
4:00 Caller: more about the whole kind of rig around software development life cycle from, you know,
4:00 You: Thank you.
4:04 Caller: gathering requirements to, you know, delivering software, shipping software, quality, you know,
4:09 Caller: you name it, right? So that's like the bigger, I guess, topic of what we are the kind of
4:14 Caller: what problem we're trying to solve, let's say. We are, we don't have.
4:20 Caller: anything implemented today so i think that's important to say like we don't you know we have we
4:20 You: We're going to be.
4:22 You: I'm
4:24 You: I'm going to
4:26 You: Thank you.
4:26 Caller: have ideas of how we want to have we're just in the beginning stages so it is a
4:28 You: Thank you.
4:30 Caller: relative i would say it's relatively greenfield right where we have some methodology from him
4:35 Caller: as far as what he's looking to do and the value of that but now it's about execution
4:40 Caller: Right? So the role itself is obviously always engineering first. So folks, and you know, you probably know from hedge funds, you know, we, any person we really hire and this, you know, as far as we look, we look for people to be have leadership, technical leadership, but also very much hands-off.
4:40 You: We're going to be.
5:00 Caller: right so they can you know get into the nitty gritty and you know be able to be a
5:00 You: Thank you.
5:04 Caller: contributor there too so I think this is how the vision of you know just broadly I
5:09 Caller: guess what we're overall looking for or interested in let's say so if that
5:15 Caller: resonates at all or kind of a parallel to what you might have heard
5:20 Caller: that's a little more of what we're doing so look I'm just kind of in no right or
5:20 You: Excellent. So that does align with what Graham had shared with me. So I guess where would you like to start?
5:33 Caller: wrong answers here I just have some like things I'd be walking through just
5:36 Caller: up looking at your CV and some of the some of this is
5:40 Caller: housekeeping but others just kind of more about yourself right to get some understanding
5:40 You: Correct, they're my present employer.
5:44 Caller: you are so today i guess i have is it r h0 technologies is that are you currently uh working there
5:54 Caller: tell me i guess um business banking platform for venture back startups um
6:00 Caller: Are you pretty active in the market, would you say, or were you passively looking or, you know, sometimes recruiters will call candidates, right? Or maybe you have a relationship or maybe you're active. Just kind of curious of your, the appetite there.
6:00 You: So some time ago, maybe a week or two, a startup founder reached out to me.
6:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
6:20 You: and invited me to interview for their firm because they found my GitHub and were impressed by what they saw.
6:24 You: So I figured it would be a good time to assess how my accumulated skills, knowledge, and experience would be valued in the market.
6:40 Caller: Okay. Yeah, Jed, I guess, yes, Sue.
6:40 You: So I guess active, but I'm active in the sense that I'm accepting in bounds from recruiters.
6:49 You: I'm not directly applying myself.
6:50 Caller: What are the things that are resonating to you? You're doing some assessment.
7:00 Caller: it's only been maybe a week or two, as you said, but like, what, what, you know, I kind of say,
7:00 You: Thank you.
7:05 Caller: like, what it's sure you're not able to maybe scratch today that you'd like to or otherwise, right?
7:11 Caller: Like if, you know, maybe you're not unhappy, but how else can you graduate, right, and do something
7:17 Caller: more and what's, what's been getting you a little bit more?
7:20 Caller: about what you've been seeing I just like broadly.
7:20 You: Well, for starters, the solutions that I developed at Rowe are not universal, which implies there's plenty of opportunity not only to refine the solution, but redeploy it elsewhere.
7:33 You: So in the case of the software development lifecycle, I've gotten to the point where agents
7:40 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:40 You: are now autonomously generating code and producing features and doing it in a way that still allows us to maintain track of every penny that is administered or for which row is a steward because as a fintech we're responsible for clients funds so
7:45 Caller: Mm-hmm.
7:47 Caller: Mm-hmm.
8:00 Caller: Yes.
8:00 You: we found a good balance within the software development lifecycle of the features at Rowe
8:04 You: that allow us to move at a much faster pace, iterating on details,
8:10 You: but doing it in a way that preserves the banking experience,
8:14 You: not just from a user experience perspective, but also from regulatory compliance.
8:20 Caller: Okay.
8:20 You: Roe is a fintech, so the biggest surface area is providing banking service.
8:23 Caller: Like if you were to say, you know, I'm not familiar with Roe Technologies.
8:31 Caller: What is their sweet spot?
8:33 Caller: Like what do you deliver?
8:34 Caller: What do they deliver mostly, I guess?
8:40 Caller: We're going to be able to be able to show me.
8:40 You: services, so being able to transfer money to and fro, expense management and tracking, so handling the capture of receipts and assigning it to the transactions which caused them, accounting integrations, so to take the card and bank transactions and sync them over to the customer's accounting platform.
8:44 Caller: It's
9:00 Caller: cool and is this is this is this roh have like if you will you know i think of like
9:00 You: more recently an invoices surface so that businesses can now send invoices to their customers
9:06 You: from Roe.
9:14 Caller: shrink graph like off-the-shelf product right like that they offer to
9:20 Caller: Sorry?
9:20 You: Roe is a service, so it functions like a bank, but in practice is a fintech, mainly because Roe doesn't have its own banking charter, so it's effectively promoting the creation or advertising the creation of accounts with our partner banks.
9:21 Caller: John?
9:22 Caller: Yep.
9:23 Caller: Got it.
9:24 Caller: And did they, again, did they do more?
9:40 Caller: similar things to for other clients or is it really all customizable like to just
9:40 You: There is only one, well, technically, two partner banks.
9:45 Caller: depending on what the what the need is of the bank or the of the cost of the
9:48 Caller: client if you will is it or a little bit of both I don't know got it got it
9:54 You: It's not meant to scale beyond that.
9:57 You: The goal is to secure as many deposits as possible.
10:00 Caller: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. So there's just okay. So I could see where that might be a little bit limited to some degree if it's, you know, what else is out there or what else could, you know, be more, you know, a little more outside those lines. Okay. That makes sense.
10:00 You: I'll
10:18 Caller: Okay.
10:20 Caller: Great. So tell me a little bit, and then just kind of, you know, again, like, I'm curious about, you know, the now state, but I am curious around, like, some of your, the timing and, like, your CV that you kind of, definitely something referencing, if I'm going back, like, I don't know.
10:20 You: We're going to be.
10:40 Caller: I don't know. I guess ad quant media back in 2014. Can you walk me through like your places
10:40 You: So how far back do you want to go?
10:46 Caller: of work and just like through your motivation for moving through these kind of places, right?
10:50 Caller: You're, you know, it looks like just kind of curious of your motivation.
10:54 You: 10 years
10:55 Caller: I guess, you know, I go to 10 years like so. What is it? Is it ad quent?
11:00 Caller: I want media.
11:00 You: Okay. So, ad quant media, I was running their Asian office out of Bangkok on what was supposed to be a three-month assignment. They kept extending my assignment in Bangkok, so I was inadvertently relocated, and so eventually resigned.
11:02 Caller: Yeah.
11:06 Caller: Oh, were you?
11:20 Caller: you were doing remote and I'm sorry you were you were you were you're
11:20 You: i was sent i was sent to bangkok to run the asian office on what was supposed to be a three-month assignment and they kept extending my return date eventually i just quit i suppose it's constructed dismissal but i didn't want to bother litigating it to get another job
11:23 Caller: in Bangkok yeah because you yeah because you
11:40 Caller: Okay, so that was a voluntary move on your side, is that right?
11:40 You: correct after at a place called content i landed at a place called content IQ about nine months into my tenure there
11:47 Caller: Okay.
11:48 Caller: All right.
12:00 Caller: Oh my gosh.
12:00 You: At the time, the company was trying to sell themselves to, I forget the name of the acquiring company,
12:07 You: but we're trying to put themselves up for sale, and I was asked to falsify a document.
12:11 You: So I resigned instead.
12:15 Caller: Oh my gosh.
12:18 You: The specifics aren't important, but we're going to do.
12:20 Caller: Yeah, I don't, I don't blame you.
12:20 You: What is important is that it was not a company I could stay after that request.
12:32 Caller: Okay.
12:32 You: Now, after that, I landed at Spotify.
12:37 You: About, toward the end of my time,
12:40 Caller: Yeah.
12:40 You: at Spotify, COVID was raging, and Spotify headquarters was offering six months to anyone who would raise their hand. So I figured I'd raise my hand.
12:47 Caller: I'm sorry, say that again.
12:52 Caller: They were...
12:52 You: So COVID was raging and then Spotify headquarters out in Europe in Sweden offered
13:00 Caller: And I'm sorry, like they just, just overall to say if you're interested in concluding or accident.
13:00 You: six months severance to anyone who would raise their hand. So I did. I don't know if everyone
13:13 You: received the same deal, but mine was six months.
13:17 Caller: I guess what I'm asking is, like how.
13:20 Caller: were you at Spotify you like how many nine 13 months okay and I just I guess the
13:20 You: I was at Spotify, I was at Spotify for 13 months.
13:30 Caller: what was the reasoning of stem saying hey take a package or not I just I was trying
13:36 Caller: to understand that I guess
13:40 Caller: Yep.
13:40 You: was tightening and so they say I guess they were looking to cut head cut or to
13:42 Caller: Yep.
13:45 You: accept those who would accept a severance package in exchange for resigning.
13:47 Caller: Yep.
13:50 Caller: Okay.
13:53 Caller: What made you do that, I guess?
13:55 You: So six
13:56 Caller: What made you kind of opt for the package?
13:59 Caller: Thank you.
14:00 Caller: It's
14:00 You: Six months paid, including certain other benefits, basically meant I had a chance to refine
14:05 You: my skill set and hunkered down, keep my family safe, so we didn't have to go into the office
14:12 You: or commute while the rest of the world locked down.
14:16 You: And so I spent a lot of time figuring out data.
14:20 Caller: So that was like
14:20 You: engineering manipulating data at scale and experimenting with or re-experimenting with
14:26 You: options and options trading so seeing what I learned when I was at Society General
14:32 You: still applied then
14:40 Caller: a conscious decision on that side to say I'll take some time how was the work that you
14:40 You: It was a calculated risk.
14:51 Caller: did at Spotify overall how do I mean can you tell me a little bit about like how did
14:56 Caller: you what was your like feedback of that position while you
15:00 Caller: were in it I guess let me ask it that way
15:00 You: So I was responsible for something called ATL marketing measurement.
15:07 You: ATL is above-line marketing, so measuring the impact of TV commercials, billboards, and so on.
15:14 You: And it got to the point where I was able to package something called Bayesian structural
15:20 Caller: I don't know.
15:20 You: time series, just a mathematically defensible way of measuring what if, and deploying it to
15:22 Caller: We're going to do.
15:24 Caller: I don't know.
15:25 Caller: I'm sorry.
15:26 Caller: We're going to do.
15:26 You: data science and marketing analytics team that's Spotify worldwide. So my performance reviews
15:28 Caller: I don't know.
15:29 Caller: Thank you.
15:32 You: were excellent. My proper track was clear, although there wasn't yet a slot to land into.
15:40 Caller: Okay.
15:40 You: I like to think that I was beloved and respected on the teams that I served.
15:50 Caller: But again, you're, yeah, and your decision was to exit or just to kind of conclude and
15:50 You: I certainly wasn't hated.
15:56 Caller: then maybe refine.
16:00 Caller: skills as I think you said right yeah yeah yeah yeah okay okay got and then you
16:00 You: it was to exit and then upskill because six months to basically be at home the first two weeks were fun and then i got itchy and bored so i started trying to be productive
16:18 Caller: had mentioned kind of
16:20 Caller: around the experience or work you were doing at Sochgen, that was back in 21st.
16:20 You: Well, Sochgen predated, predated adquant, so I was last there 2013.
16:34 Caller: How were you at Sachgen?
16:36 You: Just over, just, how was it, December? So eight months. I was originally
16:40 Caller: Okay.
16:40 You: there to help the equity derivatives desk. I supported securities lending and then moved
16:44 Caller: Okay.
16:45 You: into high-frequency trading. And then Flash Boys got published. The high-frequency
16:49 You: trading desk got shut down. The head brought his seniors with him to start a fund and
16:55 You: left the juniors behind.
17:00 Caller: Okay, got it. Okay, interesting. So somebody, I know I'm kind of going back and forth, so apologies, but I'm just kind of the narrative of how I'm thinking about it. So I'm just kind of curious, but I appreciate you're kind of keeping up with my questions. And then, so it looks like in 21, you found meta.
17:00 You: Meta found me.
17:20 Caller: Okay.
17:20 You: recruiter reached out, they saw that I was ex-spotify and suggested I interview for their
17:24 You: data engineering role, and I landed it. So while I was at Meta, I was responsible for
17:29 Caller: Okay.
17:33 You: Instagram's notification systems telemetry. So on Instagram, there's a notification pane.
17:40 Caller: Yep.
17:40 You: and all impressions, clicks, all events that passed through that pain were consumed by my systems,
17:42 Caller: Yep.
17:46 You: and then enriched, grouped, analyzed, and fed downstream to machine learning engineers,
17:54 You: data scientists, product managers, product growth analysts.
17:59 You: So I took all...
18:00 Caller: Okay, great. How old were you at Met up for?
18:00 You: I took the 1.5 petabytes a day worth of information and turned that into, well, of data and
18:07 You: turn that into information that could drive those kinds of retention decisions.
18:17 You: 16 months?
18:20 Caller: Okay, and what, tell me about that, I guess, why a relatively shorter spin.
18:20 You: January to the – so March 8th. It's short in calendar terms, I acknowledge, but by the time I left, I was there longer than about 70% of my metamates. So I think that was a – that helps contextual.
18:40 Caller: yeah yeah no look i mean you're i think you're a good company jed i have been in the seat
18:40 You: I suppose how quickly they hired and how quickly they were also churning through people.
18:44 You: But more importantly,
18:50 Caller: for a long time and i've seen a lot of the trends about you know like technologists all around
18:56 Caller: these companies so uh yeah i mean absolutely i'm just
19:00 Caller: Yeah, I think these are somewhat catered, these conversations are one-on-one, right?
19:00 You: So in my specific case, the stock price of meta was down, the stock price of meta was down 60%.
19:03 Caller: So I feel like I'm just trying to get some, like, some color specifically on your case, right, more than anything else.
19:13 You: Wall Street was punishing Zuck because he wanted to make Metaverse a thing.
19:18 You: Rumors of layoffs were swirling.
19:20 Caller: So walk me through your decision to exit, it just kind of go to row, I guess.
19:20 You: So I figured jump now before I have to compete against my soon-to-be former metamates.
19:25 You: And that's how I ended up at Rowe.
19:35 Caller: I mean, that's a, you know, I hear the banner of that.
19:38 Caller: I'm just wondering like.
19:40 Caller: What clicked for you on that specifically?
19:40 You: I was not confident, I was not confident in medicine
19:42 Caller: Was it just like, you know, meta and Roe are really kind of different companies, right?
19:48 Caller: Was it just a exit plan just to get out of meta?
19:51 Caller: Or was it calculated around the, you know, the tech they were doing at Roe?
19:55 Caller: Or, you know, I don't know, fill in the blank.
20:00 Caller: Okay.
20:00 You: continued ability to grow at the time. I'm glad I'm wrong, but at least in the moment it certainly felt like the best decision I could make for myself. As for how I ended up at Roe, I also had offers from OpenC, eBay, and Paxos. What made Roe stand out a
20:07 Caller: Yeah.
20:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
20:20 You: among them is that the specific problem that they needed to solve was their underwriting.
20:25 You: So Roe had a card product. It acted functionally like a credit card, 30-day payment terms.
20:31 You: And at the time, underwriting was quite manual. It was run by a guy who's a financial history or career.
20:40 Caller: Got it got it.
20:40 You: career was predominantly in distressed credit. So he treated everything, every underwriting like a
20:45 You: distressed credit model. And that basically meant every credit client had their own custom
20:51 You: spreadsheet. And so I was brought in to automate as much of that process as I could. And eventually
21:00 Caller: We're going to be able to be.
21:00 You: got to the point where the capacity for the underwriting team to process applications went up
21:03 Caller: I don't know.
21:05 Caller: It.
21:06 You: 400x. So not only did the backlog of applications complete, but it also improved the granularity
21:13 You: with which a re-underwriting or reassessment of a company's creditworthiness could be run.
21:20 Caller: Got it.
21:20 You: also led to more visibility or more granular visibility in the performance of the portfolio.
21:27 Caller: Tell me about what, you know, you've had some time here and talking like with different companies
21:32 Caller: and maybe putting your dip in your, you know, your, your foot in the water of other things
21:35 Caller: and having conversations outside a row and otherwise.
21:39 Caller: What's ideal for?
21:40 Caller: you, right? Like, what do you, if you can paint the picture, right, of the ideal opportunity for you, Jed, what does that look like to you?
21:40 You: So three things that I look for in any role.
21:50 You: The first is a place where data is both present and necessary.
21:54 You: I see instinct and insight are still good, but I'm of the opinion they might have
22:00 Caller: Okay.
22:00 You: must always be backed by data.
22:02 You: The second is a place where I have the relative freedom
22:05 You: to pursue what I genuinely think is the best solution to a problem.
22:10 You: My career is quite diverse and getting longer,
22:12 You: so I want to be able to bring those earned skills,
22:17 You: knowledge, and experience forward into the next role.
22:20 Caller: Okay.
22:20 You: And the last is a place for the phrase, that's not my job, doesn't exist.
22:25 You: I see that as a sign of bureaucracy and I try to avoid it.
22:31 Caller: Okay.
22:32 You: So what appealed about this role is one, it's Greenfield and two.
22:36 You: I've been able to establish myself as a proper expert
22:40 Caller: mrs.
22:40 You: within the LLM and coding LLM coding spaces.
22:43 You: I track independently a number of the other detected
22:48 You: LLM users or LLM coding users on GitHub.
22:51 You: So of the half a million or so profiles I've detected
22:55 You: as using LLMs to write code,
22:58 You: I'm defensively within the
23:00 Caller: Okay, got it.
23:00 You: top 1%, and I'm comfortably within the top 1%, and I'm defensively within the top 50.
23:07 You: So it's a level that I've been able to achieve that's given me enough of an advantage to know
23:17 You: Thank you.
23:20 Caller: Okay.
23:20 You: What's the term? To know maladaptive patterns or to avoid pitfalls, things that would slow down someone else's greenfield implementation.
23:35 Caller: Back to Ro, I'm just curious.
23:40 Caller: of what does your interact, like, who do you interact with on a weekly, daily basis, doing your job at Roe? Is it like?
23:40 You: Every leader at Roe consumes something from me directly.
23:51 You: So I usually have biweekly one-on-ones with each of them
23:55 You: and weekly one-on-ones with my own boss, the CTO.
23:58 You: And then...
24:00 Caller: Okay.
24:00 You: Occasionally, if someone has a need or some of feedback, then I'm able to dispatch my agents to address that feedback or meet with them to talk through the feature and prepare all of the details needed so that my agents can operate in my absence.
24:15 Caller: Okay.
24:20 Caller: Got it. So you said every leader at Roe, like who, what kind of folks are they, are they technologists? Are they on the business? Like just, you know.
24:20 You: So the CEO, the CFO, the C-O, the C-O-O-C-R-O, so executive office, the financial office for
24:40 Caller: Yeah.
24:40 You: reconciliation, our chief operating officer who handles customer support, compliance, and other
24:41 Caller: Okay.
24:42 Caller: Okay.
24:43 Caller: Okay.
24:45 You: like back office type work, chief revenue officer who handles go-to-market motions, including marketing,
24:54 You: the CTO, so my own boss, consume stuff from me, as well as the broader engineering org.
25:00 Caller: Yep.
25:00 You: So, with the exception, the executives, I'm probably one of the most widest reaching, I'm another of the widest reaching people at Rowe.
25:07 Caller: Yeah.
25:10 Caller: What do you, how do you, I mean, if you had a bucket, and this might vary, but like just on average, if you had to bucket the time your hands-on engineering.
25:20 Caller: as opposed to, you know, not, right?
25:20 You: Well, that's tricky.
25:22 Caller: Everything else you do maybe at row.
25:25 Caller: Where would you put that sort of percentage
25:27 Caller: or buckets, if you will, your time spent the most?
25:31 Caller: Yeah.
25:31 You: That's a little tricky because I'm at the point where my agents are comfortably able to produce finished application.
25:40 Caller: okay yeah yep yeah yeah
25:40 You: independent of me so early on it was probably 70% hand-on keyboard 30% meetings now
25:47 You: it's closer to 80 90% meetings or me attending talks or trying to figure out what
25:56 You: other gaps exist where I can add value and
25:57 Caller: yeah
26:00 Caller: Yeah. Sure. Yep. Yep. Yep.
26:00 You: The rest is reviewing the output from the agents where the output is sensitive,
26:04 You: or verifying that the produced code serves its purpose.
26:09 You: So a recent example would be a new feature we're working on prototyping at Rowe to handle accounting integrations.
26:20 Caller: Thank you.
26:20 You: And the documentation is already in the context.
26:21 Caller: Okay.
26:22 Caller: Thank you.
26:24 You: The information about the requirements or the specifics about the business is already available in the context.
26:25 Caller: Mm-hmm.
26:26 Caller: Thank you.
26:30 You: And the agents have a North Star against which they can independently measure their progress.
26:38 You: So I trust my agents to do...
26:40 Caller: Yeah.
26:40 You: the right thing every time, but only after trying everything else. So I make sure the sandbox
26:45 You: is wide, the sandbox within which they operate is wide enough to allow the most magnificent
26:47 Caller: Yeah.
26:50 Caller: Yeah.
26:51 Caller: Mm-hmm.
26:51 You: sandcastles to be built, but has tall enough, thick enough walls to prevent malicious
26:55 Caller: Mm-hmm.
26:56 Caller: Thank you.
26:57 You: intrusion and to also contain the agents.
27:00 Caller: Yeah.
27:00 You: So as a quick example, I don't touch the banking function.
27:01 Caller: What were the hard?
27:04 Caller: Go ahead.
27:05 Caller: Right.
27:05 You: That is administered by what amounts to a council of engineering leads, and for good reason,
27:06 Caller: Okay.
27:12 You: because misplacing a penny is unforgivable.
27:16 You: But many other functions
27:20 Caller: Yeah. Do you have staff or no? Is it just yourself on your
27:20 You: that are not as consequential,
27:22 You: I'm free to improve
27:24 You: where I can legitimately
27:25 You: demonstrate business value.
27:33 You: I used to,
27:34 You: I used to head up a team of three,
27:36 You: and then they were allowed to,
27:39 You: well, when they were.
27:40 Caller: got it okay tell me about like the trend i'm sorry yep sure yeah no doubt i'm sure um
27:40 You: designed and moved on to other things, they were replaced in Europe.
27:47 You: So in a way, building the agents was out of necessity because the work didn't stop simply because they left.
28:00 Caller: Tell me about, I guess, the difference of the work you're doing now as opposed to when you're building things out and being more hands-on, right?
28:00 You: So it's tricky, right?
28:07 Caller: Like at Rowe, tell me a little bit about those, like different, like the.
28:12 You: Prior to the advent of LLM, senior engineers who went the management track, spent more time reviewing or ranked
28:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
28:20 You: resources or aligning other teams to help their respective engineers do their best work.
28:21 Caller: Mm-hmm.
28:27 You: I do elements of that, but because my team, effectively, are a bunch of agents,
28:33 You: I can just as easily spin them up and spin them down without having to deal with the likes
28:38 You: of severance or performance reviews.
28:40 Caller: Okay.
28:40 You: So I spend a lot of time looking for requirements, figuring out how to improve the performance of these agents, reduce the collisions or the retried work, or improve the quality of the outputs, or reduce the rework necessary, or autonomously detect errors and fix them before
29:00 Caller: Okay.
29:00 You: one of its users detects and offers their feedback.
29:01 Caller: Yep.
29:03 You: So a lot of my day-to-day is looking for places where something can go wrong
29:12 You: and shoring it up and fixing it before someone else finds it.
29:14 Caller: Yep.
29:15 Caller: Yeah.
29:17 Caller: Yeah.
29:20 Caller: do you have what do you do you have um yeah thanks dread yeah so tell me is there a developer
29:20 You: Does that all help?
29:32 Caller: community within row and are you interacting with them and to what could not like to what end to one end
29:40 Caller: Thank you.
29:40 You: developer community, but it is not exclusively engineers. We're now at the point where the non-technical
29:41 Caller: Okay.
29:42 Caller: Thank you.
29:43 Caller: Thank you.
29:44 Caller: Thank you.
29:46 Caller: Thank you.
29:47 You: folks, and I hesitate to use that term, but the people who are not classically engineers, are
29:53 You: starting to experiment in cloud code in order to build their own tools or applets. So there are
30:00 Caller: Okay. Cool. Awesome.
30:00 You: there are Slack channels and other groups that allow them to share not only their wins,
30:06 You: but their learnings, as well as pose questions or ask for suggestions from other LLM users.
30:20 Caller: And then some other like just housekeeping questions, are you at Roe? Are you remote? Are you on site? You know, is there a mix?
30:20 You: So technically I'm hybrid.
30:30 You: Two days in three days not.
30:33 You: And I guess for other housekeeping, I'm a U.S. citizen.
30:38 You: My official notice period is technically
30:40 Caller: Sure.
30:40 You: two weeks, but in practice, just because of the surface area that I cover, I will probably
30:44 You: need four to six to fully transition everything off. And then, I guess that's all the housekeeping
30:47 Caller: Well, I guess are you open to something that's like, for example, are
30:53 You: questions.
31:00 Caller: environment is four days in the office in New York, right? Monday through Thursday is in the office,
31:00 You: That's fine by me.
31:04 Caller: Friday's remote. Is that, does that align to potential, you know, opportunities you're
31:10 Caller: looking at?
31:11 You: The only, I guess, accommodation I would ask for is the flexibility to attend to my disabled wife.
31:20 Caller: Got it.
31:20 You: an hour autistic sun when emergencies arise.
31:25 Caller: Okay.
31:26 Caller: Okay, cool.
31:40 Caller: and then what else like we don't sorry for all the typing jed we don't like take applications
31:40 You: Certainly.
31:51 Caller: right so this is why i want to get all this stuff as i were talking kind of live um what about the
31:56 Caller: other like what about the other landscape of opportunities are you like
32:00 Caller: I know it sounds like you're like relatively new in maybe some of these conversations,
32:00 You: So I'm at a mix of recruiter stage, sort of like
32:03 Caller: but are you, like, is timing for you, like, do you have any other offers in hand,
32:09 Caller: or is timing like critical in anything as far as maybe finding another opportunity,
32:13 Caller: or are you just kind of more beginning stages?
32:20 Caller: Yep.
32:20 You: what we're having now through to I think the furthest process is now the third the third level layer
32:26 You: instance so no offers in hand yet but I anticipate a half I anticipate a few by the end of the month
32:27 Caller: Yep.
32:35 You: if not sooner so I want I'm already in touch with
32:40 Caller: Got it.
32:40 You: the recruiter who's handling this process just to make sure that all of the different processes land roughly within the same week or two of each other.
32:50 Caller: Okay.
32:51 Caller: We talked about your two-week notice, but likely four to six.
32:55 Caller: Two weeks officially, likely.
33:00 Caller: four to six yeah that makes sense okay yeah absolutely no doubt okay okay great so thanks for
33:00 You: I have a meaningful options grant from Roe, so it's in my interest to ensure they can continue and thrive without me.
33:18 Caller: all the questions I just like
33:20 Caller: to be answered. I think what I can do, my hope is to, I wanted to follow back, as far as
33:20 You: We're going to be.
33:22 You: I'm
33:24 You: I don't know.
33:26 You: Thank you.
33:27 Caller: next step, so I want to follow back up with the Global Head of Software Engineering, let him know
33:28 You: Thank you.
33:31 Caller: we just got, you know, our conversation. The next step would be getting you lined up
33:35 Caller: with, like, probably like a 45-minute Zoom call with him. That would probably be the next step.
33:40 Caller: as far as it's more exploratory, some depth and breadth of, like, more of the things you're doing at Row and in your background, and then obviously expound on what we're doing here.
33:40 You: We're going to be.
33:51 Caller: And then from there, it's obviously a couple, you know, there's more, there's other folks that we'd have you speak with if it's mutual.
33:57 Caller: Obviously, this is a little bit more calibration because.
34:00 Caller: you'd want to talk i think to the manager of the whole kind of effort to see a is this
34:00 You: Understood.
34:04 Caller: even makes sense or kind of a line so um that's that's kind of how this would kind of sequence out
34:10 Caller: so um if that's a vicious to you i'm happy to kind of advance it you know to have a conversation
34:15 Caller: with him and if he's interested to take next steps come back to you i'll go through ben and
34:18 Caller: get a bell's etc
34:20 Caller: Awesome.
34:20 You: Absolutely. If it helps, I believe you have my personal website on the CV. So if you direct your agents or your preferred LLM to explore that website, it can summarize my opinions on agentic development and how to do it safely.
34:37 Caller: This is Jeddit Jedd
34:40 Caller: pardon.com for you yeah yeah cool
34:40 You: jet arden.com and then if on from the home page there's a little notes link so i do not expect anyone to read that front to back my expectation is they deploy chat gpt or claude to review those pages and to summarize its contents in the context of whatever
35:00 Caller: Very good. Any questions I can answer broadly based on our conversation thus far.
35:00 You: dimension they're hoping to assess.
35:09 Caller: Okay.
35:09 You: Nothing specific, but I'll be sure to follow up through, well, my contact is Graham, so I assume it'll go Graham, Ben, back to you if I have any follow.
35:14 Caller: Absolutely.
35:20 Caller: Please do. Absolutely. Okay, great. So I have much to do to take for next steps and appreciate the time today. Thanks for let me walk through some of your background and appreciate the conversation.
35:20 You: Of course, enjoy the rest of your day.
35:32 Caller: You too, Joe. Thanks. Bye.