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0:00 Caller: Hey Jedd, how's it going?
0:00 You: This call will be recorded.
0:05 You: Hello.
0:08 You: Tommy.
0:10 Caller: Yes, this is Tommy.
0:11 You: Excellent.
0:12 You: I'm well in yourself.
0:14 Caller: Doing well, doing well. Yeah, I just came across the profile. I was excited since it really, really
0:20 Caller: matched up on what one of the recruiters was looking for, a friend, at perplexity.
0:20 You: Thank you.
0:26 Caller: And we're just, yeah, I was just curious a little on your background, just like some,
0:30 Caller: you know, general thoughts of like, you know, what type of work you do and some of your
0:35 Caller: past experiences just to kind of hear a little bit more from the man himself.
0:40 Caller: I don't want to make it long for you, like, you know, five to ten minutes is great.
0:40 You: So I guess how much time do you have?
0:49 Caller: I'm going to hop in an Uber here in a minute, so no need to, you know, waste your time.
0:51 You: Okay.
0:53 You: I'll keep this brief.
0:56 You: The through line of my career has been automation, building tools.
1:00 Caller: Sure.
1:00 You: that liberate people from monotonous tasks.
1:02 You: So I started out on Wall Street.
1:04 You: On the Mortgage of Back Securities Desk at RBS
1:07 You: and the Equity Deridatives desk at Sochchain,
1:09 You: eventually made my way to marketing technology
1:12 You: at a place called At Quantum Media,
1:15 You: made my first foray into Big Tech at Spotify.
1:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
1:20 You: where i was measuring above-the-line marketing effectiveness so think tv commercials billboards stuff like that made my ended up at bigger tech at meta building the telemetry to measure the instagram notification surface and most recently at row where
1:40 Caller: Thank you.
1:40 You: I was originally brought on to automate a lot of the underwriting function.
1:44 You: And after increasing their capacity 400X,
1:48 You: was invited by the rest of the leadership to look for gaps
1:52 You: that can benefit from engineering attention,
1:55 You: but were not large enough to justify a full squad.
1:58 You: So now every leader consumed...
2:00 Caller: very interesting how do you like your experience at real i've worked with the company for a little
2:00 You: something from me as well as every team at row.
2:09 Caller: bit in the past um more unlike the uh for context i help startups raise and then obviously i
2:15 Caller: help them place engineers um and uh yeah i've loved the team
2:20 Caller: there are you are you liking it now just maybe like you know four years there it's it's been a while
2:20 You: So, some week and a half, two weeks ago now, a founder reached out to me cold based off of my GitHub, suggesting I interview with them.
2:24 Caller: and maybe looking for a change or um curious
2:27 Caller: Mm-hmm
2:38 You: I'm still in process.
2:40 Caller: yeah it's a kind of cross-check totally totally makes sense totally what types of
2:40 You: But I figured if my profile is that interesting to have them reach out calls, I'm curious to see how the market would value my combined skills, knowledge, and experience.
2:51 You: And so I'm taking more of these recruit calls.
2:58 Caller: companies are maybe most
3:00 Caller: interesting to you. I kind of gave the one based on my opinion, but obviously you have your own
3:00 You: I'm partial to New York.
3:04 Caller: opinion about the types and sizes and, you know, maybe location. I don't know if you want to stay in
3:09 Caller: New York, probably. I would make a lot of sense based on your background being there for a good
3:13 Caller: amount of time now. But what size is maybe most interesting?
3:16 You: So I'm partial to New York.
3:20 Caller: Mm-hmm.
3:20 You: relocation to San Francisco would require $1.5 million total comp only so that I can be competitive against everyone else competing for housing there.
3:29 You: So if any of your clients ever are willing to offer that much, that's the kind of conversation I take to move to San Francisco.
3:38 You: Company size, large...
3:40 Caller: Okay.
3:40 You: indifferent doesn't really matter how big the company is the number of people I
3:44 You: work with is more or less the same and that goes from meta down to I think
3:49 You: Roe is the second smallest company I've ever worked at
3:55 Caller: And, yeah, is that industry agnostic then, or like to stay?
3:56 You: Thank you.
4:00 Caller: somewhat in the financial sector and tech sector.
4:00 You: So I'm not partial to finance or tech, but I do avoid industries that have a lot of regulatory drag.
4:03 Caller: Sure.
4:11 You: So health care, health tech tends to be problematic, and legal tech has also...
4:20 Caller: We're going to be.
4:20 You: caused a stir.
4:22 Caller: We're going to do.
4:23 You: Generally, I look for places that are both,
4:24 Caller: POMAYOR.
4:26 Caller: Thank you.
4:27 You: look for places where data is both present and necessary,
4:28 Caller: Thank you.
4:31 You: only because instinct and insight are good,
4:34 You: but I'm of the opinion they must be backed by data.
4:37 You: And then a place where I have the relative freedom
4:40 Caller: Thank you.
4:40 You: to pursue what I genuinely think
4:41 You: is the best solution to a problem
4:43 You: only because my career
4:45 You: is quite diverse and getting longer
4:48 You: so I want to be able to bring forward
4:49 You: those earned skills
4:51 You: and experience forward into the next
4:54 You: role and then a place for the phrase
4:56 You: that's not my job doesn't exist
4:58 You: I see that as a sign of bureaucracy
5:00 Caller: So a very meritocratic environment.
5:00 You: and I try to avoid it.
5:03 You: And I prefer preferred.
5:09 You: And I also lean very heavily on LLMs to do my job now,
5:15 You: especially with the scope that I have at Rome.
5:18 You: So any place that would welcome.
5:20 Caller: Sure.
5:20 You: this sort of working and working habit would be preferred.
5:22 Caller: Not the ones I work with, that's for sure.
5:24 You: I know some places are insisted on artisanal handwritten code,
5:29 You: and for me, that is the past.
5:34 Caller: Very, very welcoming of that, that's for sure, if not a requirement, I think.
5:40 Caller: to make you more productive, as you know.
5:40 You: We're going to be.
5:43 Caller: And then the desire, you kind of said the desirable work
5:47 Caller: to be mainly in this freedom, kind of,
5:50 Caller: it seems like obviously being a research engineer,
5:52 Caller: you're a little more open to, like,
5:55 Caller: there's obviously more freedom in that,
5:57 Caller: like world itself, I would think, and with Ro.
6:00 Caller: like I guess is that what you're kind of wanting to stick with or more I guess desire to be like
6:00 You: it's more like
6:05 You: if you want me to own the outcome
6:08 You: I also want to own the decisions to drive the outcome
6:10 Caller: totally okay and then and then is it mainly like kind of the preferred work is more
6:11 You: I don't know.
6:13 You: I don't know.
6:15 You: Thank you.
6:20 Caller: usually in the back end i see a few different kind of signals on the profile that i i mean
6:20 You: So that's trickier.
6:24 Caller: mentioned infrastructure and um is it so some more back in there but okay
6:28 You: So where a full-stack engineer handles both back-end and front-end, I consider myself Omnistack, from bare metal all the way through to front-end.
6:38 You: So what's unique about
6:40 Caller: Thank you.
6:40 You: my experience at Roe is I operate as an independent engineering org with the help of several dozen agents.
6:42 Caller: Thank you.
6:50 You: So I'm able to spin up prototypes, validate ideas, fill gaps, without the same overhead or burden as the rest of the engineering org.
7:00 Caller: Yeah, I'm curious, how do you best pitch yourself then?
7:00 You: which also means a lot of the new features Roe has released recently have come out of my lab,
7:06 You: for lack of a better term, and then the rest of the engineering org simply integrates it into the core application.
7:20 Caller: to companies, like as you're starting to go through this process, so I can kind of, you know,
7:20 You: The biggest trouble I've
7:24 Caller: best articulate that style of work, which is probably, you know, many are open to, but might
7:30 Caller: be unaware of as well at the same time with, you know, being, being so, kind of omni-stack, if you
7:38 Caller: say.
7:40 Caller: Thank you.
7:40 You: had is persuading them that my profile and skills are legitimate.
7:45 You: They can't yet picture a world where a single engineer is capable of shipping at the
7:52 You: velocity of two full squads. A squad at row is approximately 15 people.
7:59 You: And...
8:00 Caller: Understood.
8:00 You: I try to explain to them the bulk of the savings, ironically, isn't in writing the code.
8:06 You: It's in not having alignment meetings and avoiding all of those one-on-ones,
8:12 You: trying to ensure that everyone is aligned with whatever vision the product manager had.
8:19 Caller: Understood.
8:20 Caller: Okay. This is very interesting. Well, I will shoot over a note to the recruiter. I'll send you some other companies that could also fit. And if they pique your interest, let me know. But yeah, this one makes a lot of sense if you want me to pass that along. And then I guess I guess
8:20 You: Thank you.
8:40 Caller: the last dollar is, like, work trials, do you think you can, like, if obviously, like,
8:40 You: It depends.
8:45 Caller: you're, obviously, you know, you're claiming this type of work, right, do people bring
8:49 Caller: you in for work trials, and are you able to execute in, and within a work trial to show this
8:54 Caller: type of, like, you know, two-squad type of entity that you operate in, or is that kind of
8:59 You: Depends.
8:59 Caller: you know.
9:00 Caller: short of a time usually or sure
9:00 You: It depends on the size of the project.
9:04 You: I've already demonstrated over roughly a two-hour interview,
9:12 You: or they called it a super loop, didn't matter.
9:15 You: Over two hours, I was able to show how I could quickly stand up.
9:20 Caller: Thank you.
9:20 You: a search engine for biological molecules.
9:28 You: So it's a kind of thing that completely unknown to me,
9:31 You: I relied exclusively on the LLM to produce,
9:36 You: my agents to produce the research as well as the architecture.
9:40 Caller: Okay.
9:40 You: And all I had to do was pretty much curate, vet, ask important questions,
9:45 You: dodge known edge cases that were already dodged,
9:48 You: and then dispatch the agents to actually build the thing.
9:51 You: So at the end of the two-hour stretch, I had a working prototype.
9:55 Caller: Okay.
9:56 Caller: Okay.
9:57 You: That for my interviewer...
10:00 Caller: very interesting i guess the lot no no yeah i already looked at your github i don't have doubts i guess
10:00 You: I assume would have taken more than the two hours it took me.
10:05 You: And if they have doubts, they are welcome to look at my GitHub.
10:09 You: They are welcome to look at my website.
10:14 Caller: it was more so just best how to articulate to the to the company for sure um the uh the last
10:19 You: Then I guess...
10:20 Caller: It's just like, I'm cute, I'm, yeah.
10:20 You: if my personal website would probably be the best place to direct their agents to ask how I wield agents.
10:28 You: There's the notes section in particular talks about how I wield agents as cattle, not as pets.
10:35 You: And anyone who's been in the tech space since roughly the tour,
10:40 Caller: very interesting the last like more curious personal thought is just like how did you how did you get into all of this and what's the driving passion for you and i mean especially coming from a more like seems more like financial
10:40 You: 2010s would recognize that distinction when servers were shifted from pets to cattle.
11:00 Caller: wall street my whole family's and kind of wealth management and finance so i'm curious that
11:00 You: I don't know if it's fully 10x, but what's important is that my degree is in finance,
11:03 Caller: kind of shift for you and and uh this this like very 10x engineer vibe that you give
11:15 You: but I was already writing code since I was 11, 12 years old.
11:20 Caller: Sure.
11:20 You: at the time in my hubris I didn't see the need to go get a CSE degree figured and that and that's how I ended up on Wall Street but when when the high frequency desk I was sitting on got shut down and this was a
11:40 Caller: Thank you.
11:40 You: in the midst of flashboys being published it was a lot easier to take the solutions in the high frequency world and apply them to the problems in the marketing technology world and it was very it was easy enough to rack up some quick wins that at least in that space weren't uh
12:00 Caller: Awesome.
12:00 You: weren't thought possible. And then it's sort of coalesced and the whole automation is my superpower.
12:08 You: And that's largely how I can jump from industry and across industries and disciplines.
12:15 Caller: And then last, like last, it was just how do you get
12:20 Caller: intro to Roe or how did they notice
12:20 You: In the wake of meta, at the time, just to give you context, the metaverse was a thing, stock was down 60%, Zuck was...
12:21 Caller: you or how did that like
12:23 Caller: conversation spark?
12:40 Caller: Gotcha.
12:40 You: committing $10 billion a year to burn, and Wall Street was punishing him for it.
12:44 You: So I applied very heavily and broadly, and I assume Roe ended up in my dragnet somehow.
12:51 You: And it was between them, Talos, eBay, and OpenC.
12:53 Caller: Gotcha.
12:55 Caller: I see.
12:56 Caller: I see.
13:00 Caller: And the company that, the other one that mentioned, that reached out to you, is that a, like, Seed, Series A, larger company?
13:00 You: The company that reached out was autopilot.
13:10 You: They're the RAA behind Pelosi tracker.
13:11 Caller: Autopilot, yes?
13:15 Caller: Yes, yes, I'm familiar.
13:17 Caller: Well, very cool.
13:18 Caller: I really appreciate that.
13:20 Caller: time and uh yeah like i said i'll send it i'll sign over the recruiter and and uh then uh share share a few
13:20 You: excellent do you need a resume or do you have what you need
13:26 Caller: more with you if they make sense um should have what i need um very fairly friendly um is you know
13:38 Caller: usually a blurb
13:40 Caller: is good enough in a LinkedIn.
13:40 You: Sounds good.
13:41 Caller: But if I need it, I'll let you know.
13:44 You: All right.
13:44 You: Thank you, Tommy.
13:45 Caller: I appreciate it.
13:47 Caller: Thanks so much.
13:47 Caller: Talk soon.
13:48 Caller: Bye.