2023-12-19 Conall Exit Interview

Owned by Daniel Puratich
Last updated: 2023-12-20
3 min read

  • @Anthony Luo @Daniel Puratich @Conall Kingshott

  • Onboarding

    • not much of onboarding experience

    • became lead within two month of joining team

      • one past lead was MIA, Megan needed help

    • lead documents were lot of admin stuff just passwords

    • directors at the time there wasn't a lot of support there

    • Conall was managing Icarus airframe at the time so transition went smoothly

  • Current onboarding process

    • lot of documents and admin things

    • Conall doing best to be around for the knowledge transfer, trying to explain things to PMs and junior leads as much as possible

    • pushing the culture of continually teaching

    • lead onboarding shouldn't be just one week, ongoing process of teaching leaders

  • Term

    • 14 months (5 terms)

    • stream: 2 months onsite, 4 off, 4 on, 4 pseudo on

    • transition being offsite for first co-op was very tough bc not a lot of support structure

      • he couldn’t really step back

    • part of reason of stepping down is wants to pass off the time requirements over co-op

      • especially first co-op was a lot of time

  • Projects

    • lots of stuff is directly comp focused

    • scoping of Houston is pretty tough

    • eventually integration kind of becomes leads job

    • projects weren't poorly scoped it was more so people weren’t able to do the required leg work

      • didnt know how or weren’t willing to

      • lot of people tried to outsource critical thinking to leads

      • struggle to give people actual tasks

    • transition in mindset throughout being a lead

      • better defined projects and forcing people to critical think on it

      • spend time building up team to give people knowledge

        • alison, smile, etc

  • Meeting structure

    • widely shared frustration: fact people don't go to aeac syncs anoys people (including conall)

    • people dont read meeting mins, skip meetings, then they dont know anything

      • if u wanna drive (be a lead/pm) u have to read the map (go to meetings).

    • leads meetings broadly are fine

      • we don't drag things out so much anymore

      • ensuring things get time

      • occasionally we get into the weeds which is bad

    • leads is no longer an operations meeting which is good

    • no solutions on general meetings

      • same symptoms where people skip aeac meetings, people feel they dont rlly need to be there

      • now that general isnt about what details are happening, the aeac and leads meetings the leads feel like they need to be there to help

      • nobody had a hand in general made it feel less important

    • technical depth and duration for aeac sync

      • how to get people to show up

      • issue isn't breadth vs depth

      • team members should have a responsibility to attend

      • cant rlly change structure, need personal accountability

      • if subteam has a bunch of leads, some of them should attend aeac sync

    • Inter-subteam communication

      • gotten better over time

      • stronger directorship (people who know a bit about everything)

      • technical leadership has improved this not rlly meeting structure

  • Technical Direction of Mech / Growth and future pathways

    • are there enough technical people? yes

    • team is on a good path right now

    • current leads very strong, PMs very strong

    • maybe more of the broader skillset a gap is arising, more of a transition toward docu and knowledge transfer

  • New Members

    • bootcamper retention

    • wasn’t as strong as desired this fall,

      • was also overall on team not too strong

    • moving in right direction

    • net wise positive

    • team pitch

      • nebulous

  • Sysint Thoughts

  • Director-Lead interactions

    • start of term director syncs

    • avoid micro-managy stuff from directors

  • team has come a long way, common Conall W

    • final product this year is much better then in the past and strong team to keep it going !

    • full time PMing becoming grindy, interested in technical (havent open saladworks in a few months)