2023-12-19 Aadi Exit Interview

Owned by Daniel Puratich
Last updated: 2024-05-14 by R D
3 min read

  • @Anthony Luo @Daniel Puratich @Aaditya Chaudhary

  • Stepping Down bc

    • fourth year is a lot of work

    • felt burn out this term

  • Timeline

    • became lead start of summer term (right after comp) replaced Anni

    • lead for two terms

    • one of them (this term) was onsite

  • onboarding experience

    • was never onboarded

    • handed over passwords

    • Is trying to do more stuff for next efs leads, letting them run meetings & have more freedom

  • Freedom

    • recently EFS has tried to keep leadership very open

    • feels like the leadership transition is pretty gradual for the new EFS leads

  • Purchasing

    • this is the biggest annoyance

  • Leads meeting

    • skipped a bunch this term, not a big

  • Onsite vs offsite

    • easier to be involved in onsite

      • easier to stay in loop

    • not a big difference

  • Work impact

    • leadership is more about steering things and giving advice

    • lot of EFS people are very self sufficient and can take general goals all the way through

  • Zeropilot

    • pretty important personally to Aadi

    • aadi been on team since sept 2020 (3 years)

    • it’s taken a backseat with respect to the team

    • will never stack up to ardupilot

      • pretty depressing

    • decent chance Aadi will graduate before we consider ZP viable

  • Team direction

    • have directors given direction to leads?

    • EFS is currently kind of decoupled so historically didnt need a lot of direction

    • as EFS becomes more comp tied more direction will be required

  • skipping meeting

    • just bc its tough term for aadi school wise

    • majority is not tied to comp

      • besides tracking ant

    • lot of stuff EFS doesnt rlly need to be discussed

    • generally meetings stayed on time and were well structured

      • dodged lots of meanningless arguements

  • next efs leads support

    • bigest problem is not enough work

    • dont need as many people as they have

      • can only throw so many people at a problem

    • aadi this term hard committing to no more rewrites

      • zp has been rewritten so many times in the past

    • lot of projects are meaningless so not a lot of stuff to hand out to people

    • people join for experience, we need to give them work

    • had some idea generation meetings

      • lot of projects take time and not rlly people

    • is there enough mentorship to start more projects?

      • aadi not fully leaving just stepping down as lead

      • lots of cots projects are out of lot of leads knowledge

      • hard to assign out tasks that nobody rlly understands

        • have to hope that person becomes the expert

      • making investments for future in terms of knowledge

        • example rtk gps stuff

  • Project generation

    • EFS is limitted by what they can assign

    • realistically can only do software stuff

      • need more electrical stuff to facilitate projects

    • LED stuff

      • EE gated in Aadi’s eyes

      • (tho we’ve acc selected micro etc)

    • CAN control board

      • EE gated

      • cant rlly do anything till EE goes into it

    • tracking ant is good idea

      • mech, ee, efs,

      • good project

      • suitable work for all aspects

    • if it’s just EFS coming up with projects its going to be random

      • bc limited in what they can do

    • EFS gets a shit ton of new members

      • EE has less bootcampers

    • could do more things like Houston

    • more discussion with EE

    • people want to learn firmware

      • we cant rlly ask people to do more integration and planning

      • plans with EE should be discussed at meetings

    • worst feeling is starting something then realizing its not viable and killing it, very demoralizing

    • most rlly beneficial projects require EE or mech support

  • Sysint team

    • having a sysint team was kinda weird

    • sysint was just like project managers but people would get parachuted in as new members so it was kind of weird

    • instead of sysint having the PMs as an owner for the project who knows most about the project, attends meetings, does the architecture and cross subteam stuff

    • makes no sense to parachute people in

    • PMs should be evaluated by leads:

      • show up to meetings

      • do work

    • PMs require experience to do architecture

      • people only get experience by being thrown in the hot seat

    • leadership roles can be taught to technical people

    • leadership roles tough to hand to people who dont get technical stuff

    • example of this not working is someone was promoting to PM of something as a one person team but he kind of disapeared at end of term, wasnt replying to dms and stuff, and they needed his input on stuff, aidan and ayoung had to replace him and it was hard

    • usually this works though

      • worked well for Derek

    • most leads should evaluate PMs, we dont rlly need a sysint team

    • uni students need to learn time management anyways

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