Latest / #TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙 / Backstage with BobbyD featuring Tayo Olukoya

Transcript

Backstage with BobbyD featuring Tayo Olukoya · #TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to our next episode of Backstage with Bobby D what up D-Hustle Backstage.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What's going on, man?
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Guess where we still at bro San Francisco.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Big shout-outs to San Francisco.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: We out here home of the Giants.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Home of the Giants, home of the Warriors.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You know Myesha was letting you know yesterday.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Don't get me in trouble out here player.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Me Myesha.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Myesha don't get, don't get me in trouble out here player, but yo audience, I have a special guest with us today.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It's somebody that yo uh, at the end of the day, I really, really respect his journey from the beginning to where he's at right now.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Um, I want to say a big, big shout out and round of applause for our guest, teo.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: What up, teo, what up?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: What up Bobby, what up my brother?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God, man, let me tell you I know I'm giving you just a little bit, or them just a little bit of an introduction, but let me tell you, I've seen your journey and I'm in awe.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Every time I look up to see where you're at and how high you've been climbing my brother.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it, yeah, man it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I appreciate it, yeah, man yeah for sure, and hopefully I contribute to it a little bit.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: You're the master of the tribe, dee's going to start, you see here again $40.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, $40.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: He's telling me the truth.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: My guy.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: He's definitely going to keep you on your toes, so definitely appreciate you pulling up, hanging up with us here at the backstage of Bobby D.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: It's a segment we have here at the Tech Hustle.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: If you didn't know, I'm your host, bobby D.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, click that button, subscribe all that good stuff.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: But anyways, we have a really good conversation lined up for us today and actually, just to kick us off, tell us you know where you're from, where you're representing and how it all got started.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, Bobby.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: This is a privilege and honor.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: So I go by.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Teo.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: African pronunciation is Teo.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, johnny, yeah, I was born in Lagos, nigeria.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Nigeria.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I migrated to the US right after high school, went through college, you know, just trying to figure it out.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think my interception with you was, like you know, my first job out of college.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Twitter.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: So Big blue bird Shout out to the Twitter, real Twitter, big blue bird.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that I always have difficulty explaining to people nowadays is like when I used to work at this place and I'm like where I was, like the one that used to be the little blue bird yeah, the little blue bird.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Y'all don't remember that, but big shout outs to you and that was one of your first opportunities.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So go ahead.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't mean to cut you off there yeah, no, I think.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of like the story you know it's been.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I was reminiscing on this a while back.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: It's been 10 years.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, can you believe that?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Like, my journey in tech has been 10 years, that's what's up?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Big round of applause.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Tayo, right, that's the African pronunciation.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: That's the African pronunciation and we talked about this earlier.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I still introduced him as tail.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It's always good, but I tell you your journey and I started way back in 2015.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: That's why it's like in tech, can you believe like 10 years is right there since you first touched?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: You know the keyboard and get involved in stuff like that and definitely going to dive into it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to tell a quick story about the first time that I met you.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, um, I remember so, uh, the other day, we had tunday here, um, and we was talking about you know just my first interactions and pulling up on y'all and seeing y'all, um, but y'all didn't know how much work, uh, like janet, you remember back in?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the day janet shout and then Saks 100% shout out to Janet.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Had put in work to get you all those opportunities and it was like yo, the day has come, they're about to pull up right.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And I remember the first time that I walked into the cafeteria and I saw you.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, you got height, so you look like a basketball player already, so you can see him a mile away and I was like is that him?
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And she was like yep.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I was like all right, let me go check him real quick.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So I'm walking over there, you know smooth, dapping up people like that, and I was like yo, what up?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And he dapped me and we dapped like that and I was like and you looked at me, I was like yep, we're connected, we good.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: No, like false impression is everything.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Remember that, like yesterday yeah like just in this big place with all the faces right like um, and you know like I mean maybe your audience knows this tech is not very diverse so you know you know you're going through your first day, this big twitter blue yeah, yeah yeah, um, you've seen other white people.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like imposter syndrome, like yeah, yeah, and I saw somebody just like walking up with swag, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah like that's one thing about Bobby.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Bobby will interact with everyone.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: He brings people together, so it was more like I noticed him Because we were getting a tour.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I think we were in the cafeteria getting a tour.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: This guy talking to Like a smooth operator walking the room.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember dapping you up Because we contact Twitch a lot right, Like we co-switch.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: So you know, I've been the whole day shaking everyone nervous as hell.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: But I don't know, I just it just came out.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I just I went for the dab.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: And I think, that very moment I would never forget that, because, again, that's where that comfort comes in yeah like I felt welcome for sure right, like that's my full self.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: I was able to show my full self to you the very first day I met you, but you set up that room made me comfortable.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: No doubt do that.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: No doubt that was pretty dope.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: No doubt experience to share with you I appreciate that because I purposely do stuff like that, right, because I'm making a mark that is going to last for a lifetime, right.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And it was like I knew what it felt when I first walked in there and feeling bewildered Like wow, like you said, nobody looks like me.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And they said I can get all and all the food, any food I want.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It was like word, and there's a DJ booth over there too, and what did they do on?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Friday, you know tea time and stuff like that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, shout out.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I was like oh, that's your point 1.0.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: 1.0, right, but it was like, that moment for me was just an opportunity for me to give something to you so that you could just fly as high as you wanted to in our industry and not feel that imposter syndrome.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Because as soon as I did that and you dapped me up I don't know, it's like your your shoulders went down, you was chill, you was like oh word.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: This is the spot and I was like, yeah, this is the spot and you got me.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: You got my guy chris coco shout out to chris coco uh, at that time leslie was there holding it down, oh my gosh, so it was just in terms of the, the type of environment for you to ascend was perfectly prime.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I couldn't let that opportunity go.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: I just want to share that with you.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that was.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Those are moments we never forget.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: For sure we got a few of them, though, because I made some marks on you that you definitely oh yeah, we're going to get to it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: For sure you definitely we're gonna get for sure.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: So so tell me um you started working at twitter as an intern what did you do when you was working as an intern?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: yeah so, um, I joined this team, so it was kind of like the growth team, that's what it was called, but it was murphing into this thing called fake accounts, um, so, like, if you take yourself back to 2015, you know, the problem twitter had at that time was it's all bots, you know, we had like a lot of like bots on the platform so we were trying to clean that up.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: So they spun up like a brand-new team at that time called the fake account team, and that was the team that hired me in and you know it was very interesting.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Like you know, coming as a new grad, the team was like mixed with.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: You know, you have machine learning like, yeah, detect, but but at that time using, like building a lot of systems, like I would say, even like the heuristic platform that we used to detect, like engineers to have to beat those path lines and they just dumped me into it can you swim or not?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: yeah, yeah, what's?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: I just know, java, what's going on, so um that's what's up, though, yeah but it was, it was really I mean it was really unique experience, because I think one thing, one thing twitter did at that time that was very impactful was just having people around you to like you know, guide you yeah you have this big like true to itself.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: The technology is very intimidating um but you, you know, like, and even till like my time day.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, like you, we always have new grad interns and just have someone to walk them through it yeah, yeah so I feel like, um, you know that experience, I became a better engineer.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Facts it's like.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: You know, like why are they even paying me for this?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Because I literally came here.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: You should be paying them right.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I was at Berkeley at that time.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like I'm paying over there.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Why am I getting all this free knowledge?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Facts.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And free food.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Free food right, Big shout out.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And I guess you did that for your internship.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And then you went back to school to graduate.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I went back to school to graduate, and how long did you go back to school?
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was supposed to be a year.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I think I was done in December.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I just came back in January.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And then you came back to Twitter.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I just came back to Twitter Because you had a full-time offer on the.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: He was like right, when they said all right, we'll see you later, but here we got something for you.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely did that.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Congratulations, though I was very excited.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: But he's being modest, though, right, because the thing about my guy here is that Twitter wasn't the only offer you had on the table at that time, because I even have another story I'm about to bring up.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: But tell us what kind of opportunities you had outside of just Twitter.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think after the internship I interviewed Google.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Facebook got offers from both.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I think Facebook was doing the match thing.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: That was taking too long, but then Google gave me an offer, actually a stronger offer than Twitter at the time.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it was a very hard choice.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: let's just put it that way.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, it was good problems to have, but it was, it was good.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah before, like I'm gonna pay you all this money, like oh wait, I'm gonna pay you more.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Uh, okay, that's what's up, yeah but the the side to this right to to help close this deal.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So there was one day i'm'm going to tell you a story real quick.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I was walking down the stairs and you know me, I'm always outside walking and getting some air.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: That's the thing about Bay Area is that, hey, we don't want you just caved up inside of a closet in a basement, but get out and get some air.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So I went downstairs to go do my normal walk around the street or around the block and all of a sudden I see in the corner of my eye, I see Tao, and I haven't seen you in a while.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, oh shit, look at my guy Tao.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I was about to go over there but then I seen who was walking next to you and I was like, oh shit, is that Jack Dorsey walking next to Tao?
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: I was like hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I sent Janet a message like yo, what's going on?
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Why is my guy over here?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And she was like, oh, jack's trying to close him.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I was like what, jack is trying to close tail to come and work for twitter.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I was a new brat okay, literally new brat.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Um but I think that was one of the dopest gestures you can think of.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So the quick story here yeah, for sure no, no, the quick story was you back in 2015,.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: You look at like I mean even until now, google when you go, especially like for a college student, google is that, that is the standard, yeah that's the mark Like that's where you want to go.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not even like they get to choose right, like you know.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I think at the time it was like maybe one to 120 applicants getting to.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Google.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: So it was very I mean, I had a great time and that's why the decision was very difficult.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: I had a great time at Twitter.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: I learned so much.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: You know, did all the interviews.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: You know that's what you're supposed to do.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: All the companies got offer.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Google was the offer that I was, you know, looking at at that time because I honestly it's just every kid's dream in college my colleagues to go to Google.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: So you have that offer and you've seen some of your friends that didn't even get in, and even the fact that I was contemplating it was like wait, what are you doing?
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Are you serious?
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I thought this was like an easy decision.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like no, it's not that easy.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But again, shout out to Janet because I would have gone with Google, like that's just what it is.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: It was more money because Google can afford it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: It's just like, also like, just it has that pedigree.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: So I was leaning, I remember.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And one thing about Janet like you know, to just paint the context for folks, janet's like that big sister.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: That's how I saw her, janet was the one that you know, even like we met at a conference without me knowing she already had a high I'm going to get you, so she was already like hunting me down.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: So you know it was one of those things, and Janet is also from Nigeria, so we shared that I felt like I could trust her, so she hit me up on that weekend I was like I'll be honest with you like it's google, I gotta take it.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: It's just like I've thought about this.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: It's like why wouldn't I take this?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was like well, I get it.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Like you know, and if I can remember, I think john had also worked for google yeah, she did yeah so she was able to, like.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: you know, like okay, I get it, you know I've worked there, uh, and she's like what she was able to like you know, like okay, I get it, you know I've worked there, and she was like what is your main concern?
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Like and.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: I was like honestly like it was just and again.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: If you go back to 2015, it was a very different time for Twitter.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that was when DeCostolo just left.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: The stock price just halved.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: You know it was, you know like, know it was, you know like it was struggling, so I was looking at like damn it.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So it was a very interesting time to you know, like again, twitter is still cool, it's still twitter, yeah, uh, so it's not.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not even trying to downplay that it was still cool.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: But, like you know, compared to google, the trajectory getting like you're getting more money, you're getting more stock compared to this company.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: So I was like, yeah, I think, um, you know, and I think I try to make, one thing I've been good at at a very young age is I try to make, uh, objective decisions.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: At the time I try not to.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I try to silence the noise and that that helped because I was being very pragmatic about this like yeah okay, forget the google.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Forget like what, what is what?
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: And when I start doing the math I'm like it's still google you know, and it and it's the other thing.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: So I talked to janet and she's like well, one thing you know I can tell you is like jack is coming back.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: This company, you know, just has a better growth trajectory in terms of like, um, impacts, um, and all that.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And I was like and that is true, like I interacted with jack that summer very briefly and I was like, yeah, actually I like Jack, it is dope.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: And again, going back to what you, what you talked about and this is my first time you know being a tech company, but you've seen a CEO that's very chill right like humble yeah yeah, when we interacted with Jack it was like damn, this guy's a billionaire exactly right, like you know.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Like you know you're right, jack is very dope, but you know um, I don't know any, and she earth.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like you know, like you know, you're right, jack is very dope.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: But you know, um, I don't know any, and she just offered like hey, you know, you know, jack knows you right, like I can definitely, you know, get you guys to talk.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm like I don't know about that, I know jen, you got connects, but I don't know about that, you know jack, you know yeah, he's a billionaire.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have time for a new grad and she hit me up like I think the next day, monday, just like hey, I just got you know, jack wants to.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Jack literally wants to have a lunch with you.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I was like whoa, what a word.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can't say no to that.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure have to hear what he said and um, yeah, and jack did close me and I think the key here was, uh, he said something that resonated with me a lot, which is like, hey, you know, like he said, hi, like you can go anywhere, like you, you know, you're a smart guy, you can go work on something, anything you want to work on.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: But you know the reason why I came back to twitter and one thing I can tell you that differentiates Twitter from the other places it's just like what are you working on?
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: and the impact in the world.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: And if you think about that, like you know, let's go 10 years ago, like the things that were happening on Twitter.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: The uprisings.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: World events.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Facts.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Like you being, being, you know, as an engineer building that platform.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: That is like a big microphone yeah, yeah to everyone, right, and I was like yeah, and you know, like it says something which is like kind of funny.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: It was like yeah, you know you could go walk on filters, like if you want yeah, yeah, just just that one tab right there.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: That's yours filters, if you want.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like if you come to twitter, you're going to work on impactful things, and I think that resonated with me.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah and yeah, I was sold immediately and it's funny because how you make decisions, I could have asked for more money.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I probably should have Look at you In retrospect.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I think you should have.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I think you should have.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, they tried.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: It wasn't like I didn't take the first offer, they tried.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: But you know, Google just had more resources.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they would have to pay me for like a sweet two at that time, which wouldn't make sense, but I think that resonated with me.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, actually I'm willing to bet to you know, roll.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Actually I'm willing to bet to you know, roll the dice and and and um and take this offer.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, after that.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: He did close me and a big shout out to jack.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Jack, don't wait for you to pull up on the show too.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So I'll let your boy right, but no like that, that moment right there, uh, knowing that that's the impact that it had, um, and and knowing like you're one of the first black interns and having that influence, and having a ceo step to the side and be like yo, we want you here.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: This is the type of work big round of applause for today.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Right like it is, it is, uh, a member.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: It's scarred in my memory and I, low-key, feel like the universe forced me to have that moment to see right, because it was in the corner of my eyes that I seen it and I was like, ah, look at my guy making moves.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: The funny part of that story is even my team, the manager right, that I was going to report to you know they didn't know that story.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Because, one.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't feel comfortable just saying like yo.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: By the way, it wasn't because you guys called me five times.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah that I took this offer.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: You know, jack does see.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: You know twitter, it's not.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Not everyone has access to jack.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: My manager doesn't.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: I don't even think my manager ever talked to jack so I can't just pull up and be like oh yeah, jack.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: It was like wait, what is this?
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So I didn't, I didn't want those problems.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, low key, yeah, and I was surprised when you brought it up.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Like oh somebody saw this.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: The streets are always watching player.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: The streets are always watching.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: So after Jack closed, you got you to come back.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Tell me what team did you work on and what kind of tech.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And I know you mentioned some programming language, so I want you to drop it so, um, so went back to the same team I interned for.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: So that was the fake account team uh, we own.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: So it was again like it was a growth team.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: So, like most companies, you have growth team that owns like, sign up, onboarding users onto the platform yeah, but I think the problem of like fake accounts was just so much that that team was the team in charge of, like, our sign up and everything like so, onboarding users in the platform.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: So that was the team I was on and um, you know we own the whole sign up flow funnel from end to end if you sign up on twitter.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: You know I helped build and improve some of those systems.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Um and um, the team morphed into also a little bit of like, uh, spam detection.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah I remember we were still doing a lot of spam stuff.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: But we built the platform for all of that.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: So if you like, report spam on the platform, where it goes, where we route those reports to, we built the whole stack for that.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: That's what's up.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: What programming language was all that written on?
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was Scala.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Scala I know I was talking to Miro, entendé.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: It was like yep, scala, was it?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: That was the component and very valuable programming system language, especially when you're working at scale like that.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Right, and it was one of mine that I stayed away from.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I ain't on front, but I will say that it definitely put some respect because the scale that we were actually able to manage, because it's more than the audience can even imagine, how many connections or how many filters or things that you have to design to detect and you need a really good programming, literally at scale, and you know, like at that time, I mean, you're getting millions of signups right.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So it's just like that type of exposure, building systems that are taking thousands of requests per seconds, like it's like mind-blowing fact.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: You know that you, you'll be as a Sweet, you know even, like at that time, a new grad, you having access to this type of system.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah like if it goes down, it's gonna be on the news.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: The whole world knows about it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: That's always the thing I used to tell my mentees on my team is like yo, when we break something, it's on CNN and and for sure you put respect on engineers when you see their systems being reported down or something like that, because you know what that feeling is.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But that's the other thing about Twitter that I think a lot of people don't realize is like the technical level that we were iterating at Right.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: It's like a lot of people were like, oh, it's just one or two computers or you're using spreadsheets.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I was like what do you really know?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: what we do, all using spreadsheets.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I was like what Do you really know what we do?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Do you know the scale and infrastructure that we've built, but also the applications that we've developed, that we really set the pace for other organizations, because I always tell people when they see oh hashtag was over here, and then they did it, or we did Vine first and then they go do this right.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: It's like a lot of engineering stuff started at Twitter also and then other companies take it and then go and go do it right, or we work in open source and stuff like that.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: But in general people don't know that twitter was where a lot of core engineering came from no, literally, I mean I.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: I think that was one of the blessings.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Um, when I reflect on my career, it's just like the amount of people I had access to and also the amount of engineering problems I had access to at a very early, you know, like age in my career yeah, yeah you know like if you go to most companies like as a new grad, you should not be making changes to the signup funnel yeah, yeah, probably not.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: That should be a senior engineer.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: When did you graduate again?
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And you're like you deploy it to production, Like did it work For sure?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: But I think it was the phase and I think that was one of the beautiful things about my career at Twitter Like I felt like I got in at the perfect time where there was no fluff right.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: There were real problems.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: There were real systems that people need to maintain, and it doesn't matter if you're a senior engineer or a new grad someone has to maintain the system.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And there's also that freedom that we had as engineers, like, hey, you find problems.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, what about run after problems, or Africa, or those core values thing?
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: But like you have a.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: There's a problem with the system, Go do it.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: He just believe in you.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Like you know, you can do it, and I think I gained a lot of exposure from that.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and, and, and I'm so grateful that you got that early in your career, because it's it's shaped and mold you, you to where your trajectory is now absolutely yeah, yeah and and I and I know teo from intern now you're up at a different type of level like staff principal engineer.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Look at this guy.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: It's like I remember when I was leaving um I remember looking up people's names and I was like all right, let me see what they'll tell you, what you got word you tech lead of group tech lead, not just the tech lead, but the group tech lead.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, tell me how that part of your journey was yeah, no, it's, yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: I I am humbled.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know why they trust me with all that um no, but I think it was.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: That's going back to what we talked about.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: So, as you know, at least towards the end I mean even like at the time you left like Twitter, as you know, because when I joined again, it's still a big company, but it was run like a startup- yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: And I think we got to that maturity later where now I remember one time I wanted to touch one of my system.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: You know, like that I built, I literally built a system.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I sent a code review and somebody was like no, I'm like what?
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But at that point it hit me Like no, we're actually a more mature company.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: So there's red tapes everywhere.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: But that's the thing In your career when you're a junior engineer, I think.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Most of the time in some companies you get to work on bug fix and little things tinkering here and, yeah, you don't learn from the fire hose like I.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Like I did.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I'm very grateful for that, because when, literally, that's a real moment of like me trying to make change, and I think it was one of like the senior staff Engineer is like oh no, you can't do this.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Hey, you know, little Brian's like I, yeah, yeah oh no, you can't do this.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, little bra was like I.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I beat that system.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, go check the change and it was so confused because, again, as a mature company, this guy probably joined like a year ago.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, he had to try to mother me.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, um.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: But when I say like I built the system, it's like this is a very critical system.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: You built the system.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But when he looked at it, I actually built it.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Then he put some respect on it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: But that's it Going back to how I progressed.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I think I just got those learnings early in my career that kind of stretched me to grow at a faster pace.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm grateful for that.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Give faster pace.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure, and I I'm grateful for that.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Give him a round of applause basically he's saying check his resume, yeah, for sure, check the git logs.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Right, go to git blame and so you can see how many times my name is there.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's what's up congratulations on that.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So one topic that I want to pivot to uh briefly, and maybe actually even more than briefly, is the impact that ERG's had to you in terms of your development, not only as a black engineer or a person of color in the tech field, but also the engineering aspect.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So you were one of the founders in terms of the leads during the time.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about Blackbirds.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely so.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: You know Blackbirds out there on co-author founders At the time coming in.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Janet was one of them.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And you know like again, janet literally ushered me in and she just dragged me into the leadership, like hey.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I want to keep you engaged.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: So I became one of the leaders for Blackbirds and I think that kind of really, really helped me.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Because one thing that Janet and I shared is just like a passion for the community.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: So you know, like when we're talking, you know she saw that like pure passion.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: So that's why she wanted to, like you know, pull me into the role I think Blackbird made me.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: You know, stay at Twitter for as long as I did.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: It's like when you have that sense of community when you have.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: You know it was writing code, but I feel like some of the most impactful thing I did outside of writing code was for the Blackbird community.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I remember when it was just like a few engineers, like I think, even when we met during lunch.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: I remember it was one table.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: That was all the engineers in the company Like one table having lunch.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: It's like four of us, that's it.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having lunch.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So I think you know being part of Blackbirds and advocating for more people to be able to come into the company and we had that one team that we had in 2018 and I saw the picture of how many black engineers we have now.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Wow yeah yeah, um, and a lot of that was, you know, a lot of influence.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Like you know, you, chris coco and the whole blackbird community like advocating for more of us for sure.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Twitter 100 man.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And this is the thing about your journey, because, even though I had the capacity, I still needed to give space.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is when I say, hey, you were a lead.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a position I wanted, right, it was like a position I left open for those that are coming up.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: And I made sure, jan, I was like, yeah, that one for sure.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Because, made sure, jan, I was like, yeah, that one, that one for sure.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Because it was like passing on the rain, right, it's like we're making space for y'all to grow, develop and then seeing the impact that it had, oh my gosh, I believe there was even one time there was a Blackbirds event and it was kind of close to my last few days, and you were hosting it and I was in the cut and I was sitting at this table and nobody could see me, and I was way in the cut and I was like, and he was like yo, you should be in the front, you should be, you know.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And I was like no, no, no, no, no.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: This space is for me to see and for y'all to.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: You know, fill that void, right.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing that I've always respected about the opportunity you had created this space.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I think Blackbirds was not like the other VRGs, because we got to interact with other VRGs In the Bay.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: We had an event with Google and all this Airbnb.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: We had all this partnership, but I think it hit me at one point that, wow, all these people are VPs.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: So I'm like wait, I'm in this, this position.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't even be in this position, you know like maybe people like bobby should be in this position, but I think that was the beauty.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Like you guys gave us that room.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Like, hey, the new guys, you guys, we're giving you the baton, now is your turn for sure to lead and I think, um, that was one of the things that made it unique, because we were hungry, we had energy.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Uh, we kept asking.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: We kept asking the same thing, like, oh yeah, when are we gonna get this thing?
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: yeah, like for sure there was no, there was no ego involved, because everyone I'm talking to is already so high up I didn't have much to lose and the things that we were able to hold leadership to.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: I think that it's kind of counterintuitive.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I think that even VPs might have not been able to have the influence we had, because, at the end of the day, as a VP, you're talking to the C exec.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You say we need more people, you need more black people and all that but that's still your manager.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: You got to go talk to, after you've talked to them in a diversity forum.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Right, but for me I don't.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Even the level is so high I don't care.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like hey, when are we?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: You know, it was like who is this kid?
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Let me talk to Jack.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Let me talk to Jack.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know like I'm sending emails?
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like I sent emails at one point Cece or Parag and all of that.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Who the hell is this kid?
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: For sure, for sure.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: But it was beautiful because, yeah, you don't know who I am, so it's be like hey that yeah, yeah, you know, like pipe it down.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: So it was beautiful, it was a perfect, perfect opportunity.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was beautiful and let me tell you, it was like a layup and y'all were dunking it like crazy and I was like so grateful, so grateful, and I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I'm so proud of everything that you've done because it really has made an impact to me in terms of growth and understanding.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Like, hey, um, even though I'm this extra extrovert person, I don't need to be the tip of the sword, right, and if I, if I just see those that are around me, just has a little bit of uh, just to push just a little bit, and they shine so bright, y'all don't know how much joy I get out of it, just to see y'all for sure I appreciate it it was again.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: It was thank you for creating a space yeah thank you for creating a space yeah, thank thanks a lot.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So the one other thing that I was uh, talking to maisha the other day, uh, we was reminiscing about afro tech 2019 and we had an event at the office, right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: And then it was like yo, bobby, uh, you want to get on the mic and say a few things real quick?
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I'll introduce myself, tell them a little bit of something.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: And then there was this part where it was like yo, uh, tell us what lift as we climb means to me, and I was like, are you sure you want to?
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: know, like that's the audience.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Y'all want to know because I wrote a few bars down a little nice little poem that I wrote and I go up there and I drop the mic, I kill it and all of a sudden I look in the corner and I see teo over there.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: He's like, and I was like, oh, I hit this one out the park no, no, it was, it was beautiful and I think it's also, you know it's beautiful, like you mentioned that because, like looking at your journey, it was was shortly after that.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: You, you know, you started your journey.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: And I think it was very evident to me that this is what you're passionate about.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: This is your calling, yeah.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Because the way you were able to walk the room, the way you were able to inspire everyone, and you know, like it's a very like, know, I think we I forgot the guinean uh.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Is this sound?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: There's something, it was a thing, the, the meaning, the lift as you climb.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: We found it like in a guinean uh thing and we made it like a hashtag right so the whole topic was you know what is what does lift as you climb?
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: and the beauty of it is it was authentic because that's what you've done yeah, a lot of people will come in and you know, talk about it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: You know theoretically yeah that was your lived experience.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: So you're like hey, you've given it raw, like hey, this is how you lift and climb facts, because I've done it I'm here.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing all of you in the room.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know how many of you have right like it was very relatable.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so that was dope and and and, like looking at your journey, journey like, right after that, like it was no accident.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, that's a puppy, yeah, that's what's up next.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: So that was dope, that was beautiful.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I mean, I reflect on that as one of my proudest moments at Twitter, because we talked about tea time Before y'all got there.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I used to be up on tea time and try to, you know, inspire, but not really feel brave enough to pull something off like that, and I was like yo, this might be one of my last few times because you said like I was getting gearing up.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, nah, I'm gonna give it to them raw this time, just so that they can see.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And there was definitely people afterwards come back and be like yo.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever heard an engineer do something like that and you said how long you've been doing this?
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: and what?
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: what you're like and I was like yeah, yeah yeah, just be yourself, just just be yourself and watch and watch, and that's that's.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: That's the beauty I think um you know, I hope I'm not going off topic here.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I think to piggyback off of that, like that was the thing like being yourself right and you showing that allowed a lot of people to also be themselves.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So so it was just beautiful, like how you can mentor uh, that way yeah, I I, low-key always call myself a cultural mentor, right, I'm going to give you a little bit.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: If you got some tech problems, come and holler at me, but watch this cultural work and it's going to change your mind, right, because I know you have the technical skills.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Just let me just show you how you can sauce it up a little bit.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Actually, talking about tech, right, or the technical skills, I remember one time Tao came up to me.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: He was like yo, there was this incident that was going on, and I was in the Slack room too, and the Slack, for us, was the centralized place.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Obviously, I don't know where DMs and stuff like that is, but where, like, the Twitter command center held it down, right.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And who was watching this Slack?
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Everybody in engineering, all management, everybody's watching this because the system is down.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And I remember the moment because you know me, I'm in the cut, whatever and I reply back something like hey, don't worry about his work in progress.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I'll let you know in a little bit, and I don't know how that, how it took to you, but tell me a little bit about how that that scene for you.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: No, literally this.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I remember this like yesterday.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: So basically we have on calls, right so like I was on call um.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: It was actually a big incident.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: This is a big incident.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I think major systems were down one of my system was one of them.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: So the next thing we always do is we go to like the command center yeah, I forgot what it's called tcc.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah um, join the channel.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I'm like trying to figure out what's going on.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Everyone is panicking, posting like, hey, this service is down, this service is down, and Bobby just came in the room, and again, by the way, so for context, we have thousands of engineers on Twitter.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: So even you know like you have rare moments where your work actually shines right.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: You know, you see all these names, different names.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: So I'm in this room I don't know most of these people, obviously, but we're trying to figure out what's going on and bobby just shows up.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh yeah, no, no, I got it.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: This is what's going on.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: You know, doing some remediation, I'm going to, like you know, do some computing.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: I got it.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: I'm like oh Bobby.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: You know, like, obviously, like that's my man.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, Bobby got this Okay, but the beauty of that, but the beauty of that was just, you know, like we don't get a lot of opportunity where you watch each other work.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: And.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: I watch you work.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: And it was a one-man show.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Like it was like wait, wait, this is a big incident.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Normally we're going to a war room yeah, yeah, normally right like like, for instance, if you didn't step in, the next thing was going to be a war room.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, get into war room.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: And war room yes, you know, you get all the engineers yeah all the main engineers in in the room and trying to figure out what's going on.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: So well for some for bobby to come here and say, no, no, y'all chill, like I know what's going on.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: So for Bobby to come in and say, no, no, y'all chill Like I know what's going on, like I got this, I got it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And everyone just stand back and just watch you work.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: And in a few hours or whatever, the systems were back up and I was like so I had to come to you and be like yo, bobby.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: That was so dope, that was a dope experience.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: That was a dope.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: That was a dope that was a dope experience, a dope moment for me.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, for sure, it's low-key, one of my brightest moments.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And, um, I have a book, book, yeah, yeah, plug, plug.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I have a book I'm working on where I have a chapter called the world knows me, but y'all don't know me yet.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: The world knows me, but y'all just don't know me yet, right?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Because during that time, 2019, uh, the world knew about me, but they didn't know.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I was the one that was that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that that that was real, and then it just turned back on type stuff what you have to do.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: He's definitely in there.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about?
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: actually, I'm asking what chapter is he in?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: No, don't worry about it?
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't even sent him the copy yet over here trying to get him money already bro but no, it was really one of those moments that I think a lot of people really respected it after that, because it was one of those catastrophic failures and it's like that's where my level of engineering shined, because as a site reliability engineer, it's not only like deploying new features or doing this, it's like yo when my stuff break.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Everybody knows about, world knows about it.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Jack is watching that number.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: What's up with this metric?
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: why isn't the ads flowing right?
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and it's just like during those moments um, it's just so great to to have practiced that so much that it just looks so easy and smooth no, I mean it looked.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: It looked easy because again, like I'm on call, so pager, I'm getting paged.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I'm like what's going on?
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I can go to sleep yeah like and like.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: You have tens to hundreds of I mean TCC is always like 1000 people in that room yeah um.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: So to just have one person take the charge like that, I actually have not seen it right.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: You know, and like I just haven't seen it Right.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: You know, and like I, just haven't seen it Like most of the time when things like that happen, you, it ends up in the war room.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Where you have a bunch of the most all the principal engineers and all those people like come in and they like.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, they like.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's what they pay you guys for.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Right, okay, you guys do.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: But you took charge and you know you recovered the whole system.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, got it back up, yeah, and that was beautiful, so I did have to share that with you.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: See, the streets are always watching, right?
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, the streets are always watching.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, I learned that from you the streets are always watching.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that was a great, great, great moment.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, man, it was by far one of those moments that I definitely always treasure.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: And when you came back and told me, I was like yeah, I was like I saw you, yeah, yeah, I saw you, yeah, yeah All right, tao.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: So the next thing I want to mention is, like, what else you got going on now, like some stuff that you're passionate about ERGs, blackbirds was something really impactful to your journey.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I know you've already moved on to other organizations.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: You already got the good principal engineer holding it down, doing it big and, yeah, just want to catch up and see how things are going, what you doing now.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: So I think right towards the end of my time at Twitter I had already just like you did for me I already passed the baton of Blackbird leadership to other folks and you know they took it to even a greater height, so that was really beautiful as well.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: So I think I was just advising at that point and I think I'm glad you brought this up, because going into my new organization, I'm like trying to figure out do I really want to get involved?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: in this Like do I want to do this again.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: Or do?
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: I just want to be on the side, but I think I just realized that the way I do like I don't need to have that visibility of like, oh, you know the, you know, I guess they call it the global lead now for whatever company I'm working for, but I'm spending my time on real one-on-one development of people and one of the impactful things was, I mean, you know, last year, for tech was really really.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, brutal, it was brutal.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And one of the rewarding things for me was getting on the call with engineers that I've mentored and like, hey, let's have a mock interview, let's get this resume ready mentored and like hey let's have a mock interview, let's get this resume ready, yeah, and just doing that and realizing that, okay, I can actually impact at a deeper level more than, like you know, just being out there, but having one-on-one like hey, this is how you, you know, grow your career.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And having mentor mentees now that, like hey, I'm trying to get that promotion and I'm like, well, I've been in the same Facts, I've been in the same Like this is how you navigate this.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: And seeing the result like wait, you just got promoted, yeah, yeah.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: That's kind of like what I'm doing now, like.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I'm doing, spending time on giving time.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: You know, giving back, yeah, but like a more very intentional about how focused time to like develop yeah, round of applause.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Let's give it up to him.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: And then the thing is about as technologists uh, especially for from underrepresented is that we can keep iterating, we can go, we can just keep going, keep going, keep going.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: But then when you get there, it's like you got blinders on.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: You look around, there's nobody else and you're like I know I'm not the only one, I know, I know, when I back home, my dude that was right across the street.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: He was an, a student, so if I could do this, he'd definitely kill it, right.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So it's like that's when that trigger happened for me too, it's like all right, so what are they missing?
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Or what don't they see, or why isn't this path opening up?
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: And when you get to this point in your career, this is that iteration.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: So congratulations, no thank you, it's very important.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what's up.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Well, we're getting to the tail end of our show here.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Um, this, this is uh.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Time flies when we have a good time catching up and bringing up some good old stories before we end.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: No, no, we're not ending yet.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: You're already here trying to.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, go ahead.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: D hustle-Hustle, go ahead.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: For real.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: The offer still stands $60 now.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Tell me the truth.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Bobby, good work, bobby's amazing.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Bobby, he's still not convinced.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: $100 now you keep going up I appreciate you.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: I mean when Bobby told me like he's going to be in San Francisco, like I'm here and I think that's.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: That's the thing.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: So when you want to know, um, you know, our impact for people who have been in your journey is like someone eating you up.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Like you know, come hang out like right after work on a Friday.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I'm like I'm coming.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: For sure it's Bobby yeah, and that's.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: That's the impact.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Right, like you, you know I talk about like what I'm doing now, but you know you gave that level of impact also, so I appreciate you.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: My brother shout out he's true, he is a good guy, yeah yeah, d hustle has confirmed so this part of our um conversation is uh, I wanted to give you the floor.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: It's almost like when you interview and the interviewer says hey, do you have any questions for me?
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: So this is a chance for you to ask any questions that you may have, and definitely don't take no money from this dude.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: I just want to you know, like, how's your?
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: I remember, like when we had the conversation.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Like you know, I know that I'm glad that you told me that, hey, I'm going to be out the nest.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: And this is um.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: You know, we call twitter like when you're leaving, we call it a nest yeah, yeah I'm gonna be out the nest.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: This is what I want to do um, how's your journey?
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Um been so far like doing this yeah, what are the things that you learned?
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Were there any surprises?
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: To like this new chapter?
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: yeah, um, in your career for sure, thank, thank you so much for this question and you are right, like there was definitely people that I needed to talk to before I even let the other people know and you were definitely on top of that list for just a conversation.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: You know, and the thing that really just was, you know, heavy in that conversation what was next, right, and really just pursuing that continued impact to our community directly as possible.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: So how's it been going?
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: You know, these streets man out here is hustling, you know what I'm saying, trying to keep it up right Definitely made some real great impacts for some nonprofits, organizations that we partner with.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: We got our own tech community where we're really iterating on building communities that build products, that build companies, don't steal my tagline.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: You know I'm over here trying to kick it right, but also speaking publicly, speaking on stages around the world.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I went to London last year to go talk about imposter syndrome and stuff like that, and we're going to Austin in about two months to go speak at another conference.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: So I'm, you know, spinning the wheels on that and I'm just really working on, you know, amplifying this voice and amplifying this experience because it was so unique right.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Every time I talk to a fellow Tweet and we talk about what was unique right.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Every time I talk to a fellow Tweet and we talk about what was it right, we talk about the culture, the vibe, the feeling, the little things that we did and how impactful it was.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: It's like I got to tell people about it, I got to right and I want to make that global impact.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: It ain't going to happen in one year, two year.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: I'm still on this hustle and you know I'm here for it player and I appreciate you pulling up right, absolutely, absolutely.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: I guess another question is about your time on Twitter, right, like you know, I've had time to reflect on my career on Twitter, which is interesting because I never really reflect while I was there, I just kept walking and walking and trying to climb.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: But have you reflected on your time on Twitter?
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Was there anything that you know like at Twitter?
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: Was there anything that surprised you?
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Was there anything that you would have done differently?
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: And how do you feel about the entirety of your career?
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, that's a really great question.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I reflect on my impact at Twitter all the time.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I do miss the keyboard.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to front right, I miss the hustle bustle the large-scale hyperscale infrastructure.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: You talk about compute.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: The one thing I realize is how far ahead we were at Twitter and where the industry is.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I'm still waiting for them to catch up with us, right, because we was working at hyperscale.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And when you're starting to talk about that, your design strategies and your implementations are different and or the incidents that you have are at a different level type stuff, um, but I tell you when, whenever I get the chance to chat, up with some old folks.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's like getting that itch again right, because it definitely was, uh, something that is noteworthy and and I don't care who, who you know from 2013 to 2023, you knew what the blue bird was and I was one of those people that was contributing to it at a very high level, so it's definitely something that I spend time now.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: What would I have done better or done different?
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: right I mean de-hustle de-hustle the run the show right what would I have done different?
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: so I think, um, a lot of um, and and truly the thing that I would have done different is I wouldn't have held back in terms of how much I could have done even more right.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I built some really cool systems, um, and I feel like, even when I think about them, I could have done even more right.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: It's like yo, my iteration was my obsession, right, it was like as soon as I iterate, iterate again, iterate again, and it just kept getting better and then, before you know it, it's like all right, um, my focus is not on that iteration anymore, it's shifted.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: And if I kept that iteration, oh my gosh yeah and and I wish I was still in the game when ai first came out if I was in the game, like another part of the story is is that a lot of people don't know is that I put in some of the first GPUs in the production at Twitter.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: It was through my configuration, my settings and all that stuff.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know that, and the scheduled workloads?
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: So it was like yo, if I had that cycle some more, oh my gosh, I would have dabbled even more.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: But overall the experience was a lifetime, once in a lifetime type thing.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Like I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about a company, talk about an experience they had even close to what we have, and you mentioned something like hey, you used to dabble a little bit with all the other ERGs at other companies and none of them were holding it down like us.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't close.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So it was something that was so special and I'm just grateful I've had the opportunity and, yeah, I'm out on these streets trying to, you know, spread the love and let everybody know that they can do it.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: So I appreciate you, I appreciate you player.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, so yeah man, so I do appreciate you pulling up we coming to the what are we at 50 minutes.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Look, probably our longest interview we've had this whole time.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Man D-Hustle's like yo don't press the, don't not press the record button right, leave it recording.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: We keep going.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Turn it up a little bit so we can close it out.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: So first of all I want to say thank you so much, audience D-Hustle, you enjoyed it.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: That's right there.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I got the truth and he didn't have to spend a dollar on it at all.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man I appreciate that.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: So definitely, we really do appreciate y'all pulling up here backstage with Bobby D.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: We got a few more episodes coming out soon.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: We're traveling the country.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: New York is up.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Next we're heading out to MIC D Hustle.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: That's it, yeah, yeah, any shout outs to him?
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean hey, so you know some of the topics we talked about like towards my the end of my time at Twitter, I finally had a black manager right, so I mean you actually know, I'm Tucson shout out to Tucson.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Tucson, it was a great manager, yeah like I wish we had more time at Twitter yeah and you know, like going back to the reflection of my career, I think you know my very first manager you know my very first manager.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: You know Yin Shan.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: You know he's probably not even watching this podcast, but I think I had to, like give him a shout out, because a lot of things I learned later like, hey, wait, you know, like you have to advocate for yourself.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: But he advocated for me, roger, that Early, early.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know how to do that until like when I was trying to get a staff.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I'm like wait yeah, yeah no one is calling me for this promotion.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: What's going?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: on, I'm doing all this work.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Then I realized, oh wow, your manager really, really is important 100%.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: So shout out to him, shout out to Chris Coco oh, chris Coco, my guy, I mean like I mean, like I don't even.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: There's so many, so many, so many.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: You know, tj was one like that's.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: That was my brother.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: You know he wasn't in engineering, but he had that like influence on his own lane, doing his own thing so going back to like when I first got into the company.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: You're in Crescent and down this side you have you know TJ is shining in.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: New.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: York.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: There's just so many people amazing people, we work with.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, twitter has talent F, there's just so many people, amazing people we work with.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Twitter has talent Facts All around the spectrum, so shout out to everyone involved Like Blackbirds Beats.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Black Engineering.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Attender Black Engineering at Twitter.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: That was a dope, you know, like my guy.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Tunde Facts.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: Holding it down on that.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Tunde.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's beautiful.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm sure I don't want to get in trouble because I'm going to forget somebody, so I'm just going to say shout out to all of you.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Sounds good, sounds good.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you for giving that space D and listen.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: If y'all missed anything, there's a button on the right hand side Press rewind.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: That means it goes back.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Press play and listen again for sure.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: But thank you all so much for tuning in.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: This is another episode.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Highlight your boy.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: It's Bobby D.