August 28, 2025 • 45 mins
What does it really take to navigate a successful tech career without following the traditional path? In this revealing conversation, San Francisco native and Palestinian-American Peter Toto pulls back the curtain on his remarkable journey from a $7.75/hour temporary assembler to managing multi-million dollar deals at some of Silicon Valley's most influential companies.
Starting with nothing but a two-year trade school degree and a knack for tinkering with electronics, Peter shares how he strategically positioned himself at companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel, Cisco, Twitter, and Facebook. His story illuminates the power of seizing opportunities regardless of the initial position, the critical importance of supportive managers who recognize untapped potential, and the career-defining moment when he transitioned from technical roles to the business side of technology.
The conversation offers a fascinating glimpse into life at Twitter during its pre-IPO days, where Peter and host Bobby D collaborated to build systems like SupplyBird and LeftAtTheAltarBird that managed millions in computing resources. Their candid discussion about office culture highlights how spontaneous in-person interactions sparked innovations that might never have happened in today's remote work environment.
Most compelling is Peter's perspective on evolution in tech careers. "If you stay in tech and don't evolve, you're going to be left behind," he warns, explaining how he's reinvented himself multiple times—from hardware specialist to business operations expert to his current role working with no-code solutions and AI at Airtable. For young people considering tech careers today, he offers both encouragement and pragmatic advice, acknowledging that while his non-traditional path worked, getting a degree is increasingly essential in today's competitive landscape.
Ready to future-proof your tech career? Listen now to discover the mindset and strategies that have helped Peter stay relevant through decades of technological disruption—and might just help you do the same.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
These days.
I recommend kids or youngpeople that want to get into
tech.
They're going to have to have adegree.
It's just so hard to not get adegree.
I mean, you could try the waythat I did, but it took me a
long time to get where I wantedto be.
You know, ai people get a lot ofscared.
And, yeah, obviously, softwareengineers.
It's going to do a lot of thebeginning work, but it's going
to change the way the jobs areand what jobs are out there.
(00:22):
So, the way the jobs are andwhat jobs are out there.
So, again, if you're notevolving like I have throughout
my career not to say that youknow that's the only way to go.
But you gotta evolve, you gottamove where the technology is
moving and if you stay in techand you don't evolve, you're
gonna be left behind oh man,that's a gem right there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
What up, d-hustler?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What is going on?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Chilling.
My guy Guess where we still at,bro, when we right on Market
Street.
Oh, beautiful weather.
I can see the Ferry BuildingBeautiful weather, actually.
I can see what's that TreasureIsland and I can see the East
Bay from here.
You know how we do we always dobig things when we come to.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
San Francisco.
I like it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I like it.
And big shout-outs to SanFrancisco for hosting us for
another great conversation.
It's your boy, bobby D, withBackstage with Bobby D, and I
got a special guest for us.
Who we got?
Somebody I had a chance tochill with at Twitter.
You know, when I'm working atTwitter I rub shoulders with
some great minds.
You know, always somebody thathas inspired me to do really
(01:26):
cool things, and his journey,when y'all hear it, is going to
be one for the books.
For sure.
Let's bring to the stage PeterToto.
What up, peter?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Peter, how you guys?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
doing.
That's pretty good.
Glad to be here, peter.
Come and hang out with the crew, bro.
I like it, I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I like it Actually.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Peter's hung out with the crew before.
Yes, he has.
Yeah, yeah, we've hung out,yeah yeah, bring up Peter's mic
a little bit more.
Yeah, we've hung out there, wego, there, we go.
Yeah, peter's hung out with usbefore and obviously we've
worked together for a number ofyears while working at Twitter.
But let's get a quickintroduction.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Tell us where you're in tech.
Yeah, um so I'm born and raisedin san francisco I'm a
palestinian american.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Big shout outs to you , big shout outs yeah and uh.
You know.
Family came here, migrated herewhen they were young, like
maybe uh 12 or 13 each.
Uh, you know, on both sides ofthe family.
My father came here and got uhdrafted a vietnam war when he
turned 18 that was was like hisintro to America.
But you know, hey, it was a time, that period of that needed to
happen and he went.
(02:30):
But my mother came here shortlyafter.
They met here and eventuallyhad me and my sister.
We were born and raised here,so I guess it's considered first
generation.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah, you're first generation.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So yeah.
So grew up in the city, went toprivate school grammar school,
went to private high school.
You know, I had the privilegeof my father owning a grocery
store all our lives.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
He was on that hustle .
Yeah, bring that over right.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So it was after the war.
He got into working at theairlines and then eventually
made his way to own a store, andthat's all they knew over there
.
Back home is they just knewgrocery stores.
That's what my grandfatherowned.
He owned that coming here and myfather expanded that and that's
how we went and my father gaveme a choice.
He's like you either go toschool or you take over the
(03:13):
store.
And I was like you know what, Idon't know, if I want to do a
store, I didn't like workingwith my dad at that time, me and
him have two different views onthings.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That usually happens, right.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I wasn't really big on school either, so I kind of
just went into a trade school.
I went to Heald and that's kindof like.
You know, when I was a youngkid I used to like to tinker
with things.
I used to take apart my dad'sCadillac with the radio and just
start tinkering with it.
He used to get mad, but I'dplay with it, take it apart, put
(03:46):
it back together.
I had a couple of piecesmissing, yeah, yeah.
So basically yeah.
So from there I was like youknow what I want to do?
A little trade, maybe get intoelectronics.
So, that's what I did and it wasa couple of years school, it
was an AS degree and basicallywhen I went to after the AS
degree it was really hard tofind a job at that time.
But my uncle was working atHewlett Packard and he said that
(04:08):
they're hiring temporaryworkers during the summertime.
Yeah, so I was like, all right,fine.
So I went in and applied for atemporary assembler.
I was making $7.75 an hour.
Wow this was back in the 90s,obviously right.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Don't say you age too much.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
now I'm not saying which 90s but it was in the 90s,
so anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
so basically, I worked there as a temporary
assembler and then six monthslater they hired me as a
full-time technician.
I got my first salary.
I moved out to Santa Rosa andit was great.
It was like working in college.
Everybody was college students.
There was a lot of young peoplethere.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
The campus was huge, it 000 employees.
So my uncle pretty much set meup.
That's what's up to tech.
You know, big shout out to youruncle, big shout out to your
whole family, your pops, um,especially their journey, and
then establishing themselves.
And and you're a san franciscannative y'all, y'all not, y'all
not normal out here, are you notthese days?
And if the ones no, and theones that are over here, they
moved away.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Unfortunately they got priced out.
Yeah, I mean, because I have acommunity here and a family here
, it's a lot easier for me.
But yeah, there's a lot ofpeople that just couldn't do it.
No worries, I mean, I wouldn'tbe able to do it, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
But I will say when I , a San Francisco native, I knew
he knew all the spots, I knewhe knew where to go to get what
you needed to get right.
Yeah, we had some good time,but before we jump into Twitter.
So you worked at HewlettPackard on the assembly line and
(05:38):
for me, like just even hearingthat part of the journey, it
just gives our audience someinsights into how your pathway
can be into tech.
Right, Because we're going totalk about all the great places
you've worked and all your greataccomplishments.
But that being a starting point, what kind of advice would you
give to younger ones gettinginto the field right now?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You know, I didn't go the route of college, I just
went to a two-year degree, but Itook what I could get.
I mean I was getting paid $8 anhour after working swing shift.
I was starting with 775.
So I took a temp assembler jobbecause you know that was going
to get me in.
And sometimes it doesn't matterwhat position it is, it's if,
in the company or the type ofbusiness that you want to be in,
just take the opportunity thatpresents you in front of you and
(06:20):
move forward you know, andthat's you know.
My career went from there andI'll explain later on how it
evolved, but I invented myselfby pushing myself in as
something that I didn't want todo, or had to do and then,
eventually got there.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah, big big round of applause for Peter.
And the other thing for thosethat may be your first time
tuning in.
Thank you first of all forpulling up, but there's going to
be a nice little sound Cue thatsound up.
That's the sound for the gems.
If you hear that sound, thatmeans peter's dropping some gems
.
Rewind it a little bit andlisten in if you're here for
bobby you still kind of love myget the hustle come on my guy no
(06:58):
yeah, I appreciate you Iappreciate you, but I'm cool
with the one.
One, one, two, I'm too.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I want all the smoke.
I want it all.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
But definitely some really good advice and insights
into getting started.
And the cool thing is that,being out here in the Bay Area,
you have that opportunity tostart at really well-known
companies like HP, who arePackard, and then transition to
other opportunities.
So tell me where that took youfrom HP know HP assembly line
getting a full-time offer andthen, obviously, where your
(07:31):
journey took you from there.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, so I was sitting on the microelectronics
floor.
We were making microelectronicsthat go into the guts of like
network analyzers and they'reused, you know, for cell phone
towers and fun stuff.
It was original HP.
It wasn't like like computersand printers, although my
parents thought I was workingwith computers, but it was
basically microwave stuff and soI was sitting there tinkering,
(07:54):
doing gold bonding, doingcircuit testing, tweaking knobs
all day, and it got to me.
I was there for about six yearsbetween HP and Agilent because
they merged and my hands wereswollen at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Like it was just puffed up.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I was like I don't know if I want to do this long
term.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But so I started looking outside of the
opportunity.
I wanted to get more intoSilicon Valley because it's kind
of slower paced in Santa Rosa.
There's not too manyopportunities over there and I
was living in Rona Park and I'min my 20s.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I don't really want to do that he wants to be in the
cities, he wants to be movingright.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, I kind of made my way there, buddy, I found a
startup company that made indiumphosphide wafers and they were
silicon lasers and they werestarted by a couple of guys from
Lawrence Livermore Lab and thecompany was called Genoa.
It didn't go anywhere, but theyhad a nifty idea of basically
having it on the back of everycomputer and it was basically a,
an optical amplifier, and Ilearned so much there and they
(08:47):
hired me as a technician, but Iwas just a like, pretty much an
engineer yeah we went from.
You know, I was not, I was thefirst non-phd hired and
basically, uh, there was like 19people, I think.
I was like, uh, yeah, 18 or 19,and then we got as high as 250
employees.
I was running the lab for them.
I was doing all the lasertesting.
I was building any andphosphite waste first build
(09:09):
lasers on.
I mean it was some reallyexciting stuff.
I was always a nerd with that.
I love to tinker things, but Iwasn't always interested in
doing it as a job.
It was just there.
My, I always was good at it andthat's why I always got into
that, you know.
And eventually, after thecompany kind of went on, the red
herring report saying thatwe're going to be this big top
tech company, and then it justcollapsed.
(09:30):
Finisar bought us out, theylaid off everybody and it was
just a big mess.
So I eventually had to make myway into real Silicon Valley.
Well, I mean, fumarown is, butI wanted to make my way into
that.
And that's kind of where Ibroke into Cisco or Intel, and
Cisco and those two companies iswhere, you know, intel kind of
gave me my break out of, youknow, working in a lab.
(09:50):
So what happened there was.
I don't want to get too muchinto detail, but I got hired as
a technician.
But that's when I moved intothe business side and that was a
big turning point for me.
I had a great manager there.
His name was Sang Up Kim, andhe's an amazing guy.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Big shout-outs to him .
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And another guy, tom Youngin, and he was hiring an
operations program manager role.
But I was a technician and Ihad no business sense whatsoever
.
So Sang was like you know what,maybe I could help you out and
I could push you and recommendyou, because an operations
program manager role you need toknow the technical side and you
need to know the business side.
So because I was lacking thebusiness, tom took a chance on
(10:28):
me and that's where my role justskyrocketed.
Because if you're not inengineering, when you're in
engineering, and you don't havea master's degree, or if you
don't have an advanced degree,you're really not going to grow
much.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
You're not going to do the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
You're going to be sitting in a lab for a long time
, so getting in on the businessside was huge for me.
As soon as I got the operationsprogram manager role, I learned
supply planning, demandplanning, I learned production.
I learned how to build in amanufacturing floor.
We were building hundreds ofthousands of optical
transceivers for Intel at thetime when they were in optics,
and so it was still the fieldthat I was in, learning from the
(11:01):
startup and coming through.
But now I'm learning thebusiness side, the business side
of it.
And that set me up to Cisco.
Cisco gave me a greatopportunity.
I grew very far at Cisco.
I went from just a normalsupply planner that was my first
real business job and then Ibecame a supply planner manager.
So I started managing the teamthat I was on and then I became
(11:22):
like a sales and operationsplanning manager, which was like
I learned that you don't haveto have a team of people to be a
high level contributor yeah,yeah and that's the first time
that they gave me a role that Ididn't have people report to me,
but I was had the influence.
I was owning, like the operatingplan.
I was uh talking to the gmabout their pnl statements.
I was.
It was a really high level planand guys, there's only like
(11:44):
three GMs at Cisco and they holdbillions of dollars worth of
business.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Correct, correct.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
It was a great opportunity and they actually
liked it so much that they movedme to Norway.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Oh yeah, I do remember this part of your story
.
Yeah, so that's when I livedthere.
How long did you live there?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It was supposed to be a couple years years, um, I
only stayed there for a littleless than a year, mainly because
there was some personal uhissues that happened.
Yeah, um, you know, with myfamily and I ended up having to
come back, but they, um overthere.
I basically they moved me outthere, um, they set me up.
I basically they did a.
They did an acquisition,tanberg, so it was on the
collaboration space and webasically did video presence.
(12:21):
So that's what they were doingat that time and it was.
It was unheard of back then, forsure that's when webex wasn't
existing exactly right likezooms, right yeah and uh, so
that was their niche, to getinto it and it was a
collaboration space.
So I basically moved out thereand helped cisco eyes them into
it and then, you know,eventually I had to come back
and leave cisco, but it wasunfortunate.
(12:42):
But I ended up taking like ayear off and uh, that's when I
started getting into like youknow what, what's big right now?
Social media, you know, and Iwant to reinvent myself again.
So I first got into tech andthen I got into the business
side and I was like you knowwhat I want to get into?
Social media and I went aftersocial media companies and
that's when I found Twitter.
Facebook, you know, and sothat's when we started working
(13:02):
together at Twitter and it wasjust out of a whim I applied
online.
They liked the fact that I hadthe supply planning background,
Even though everybody in thatteam was sourcing.
They wanted a planner to helpplan that.
So my first niche into therewas the planning role.
For sure, for sure.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And let me encourage you all to definitely tune in to
what Peter's talking about interms of his iteration to get to
Twitter and also thetransitions from being an
electronic engineer solderingboards to eventually developing
a skill set on the business side.
But one thing that reallycaught my attention when you
(13:40):
were giving us that insight isthat it was definitely the
support of others that opened upthe door to see your skill sets
and say, hey, you have theskill sets and opportunity, let
me give you a chance to go tobat.
And then obviously, it's to theraces.
Peter's a tinker.
Once you put two and twotogether, you're running with it
, right?
So it's definitely for thosethat are thinking about getting
(14:03):
into tech or transitioning intotech, just understand that.
Getting to these companies likeTwitter, which we'll talk about
, even more companies that he'stalked about, going through
Intel, going through Cisco,utilizing broader skills than
just tech skills to getopportunities as such, to be in
the field of engineering andtechnology.
So big shout outs to you, peter,and I know your family is very
proud of your journey and alland all that you've done, and
(14:26):
even me, right.
I remember when the first timeyou and I met, they were like,
hey, we're going to be bringinga new person that's going to
manage, you know, supply Rightor the operations and all that
stuff around supply.
And just to give you some youall, some more context, twitter,
a lot of people didn't knowthat we actually build our own
data centers.
We build our own servers.
We obviously had OEM andproducts that we ordered from
(14:49):
other companies, but there is aspecific team in our
organization that managed all ofthat.
Because we're at scale, we'rehypervisor or hyperscale, sorry
meaning that we're orderinghundreds of thousands of one set
of servers or a few of thesebuildings a multimillion dollar
building and peter sat at thosetables helping making those
decisions right.
Um, one of the cool thingsabout our journey at at uh, at
(15:12):
twitter also is that was beforeipo, was when we joined right I
joined a little bit after alittle bit after, okay, okay, I
think you joined before me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Oh, okay, I thought.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
I thought you was at the party.
I was remembering.
I thought I seen peter therejumping around at the party too.
I thought everybody was happylike the.
I was remembering, I thought.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I seen Peter there jumping around at the party too.
I thought everybody was happylike the month I started.
I was like I wonder why yeahyou?
Speaker 3 (15:29):
wonder why everybody's happy.
Right, I was happy, but it wasa great opportunity to work at a
company like that and also torun into somebody like me.
Hopefully I did, you see.
You see who's at theswitchboard D-Hustle.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
He told me to hit it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
No, he did that's funny Jumping into our time at
Twitter.
One of the cool things that Ienjoyed was number one your
experience out here in the Bay.
You're a San Francisco nativebut also have worked at Cisco,
intel, hp and have had thatexperience.
(16:03):
You also brought into ourconversations a different
perspective of how we shouldbuild and develop systems.
So one of the ones that came tomind and I was putting these
notes together, I was like man,I hope Peter remembers Supply
Bird.
Do you remember Supply Bird?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing it.
I don't remember the artifactsof it.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
So tell us a little bit more about Supply Bird
remember the, the artifacts ofit.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, I remember so.
So tell us a little bit moreabout supply bird.
Yeah, so, um, so we were usingspreadsheets, um, and it was
very confusing and I I suggestedto yogi, who's another great
manager.
By the way, big shout out toyogi yeah, so he was a great guy
and he, um, oh, he still is.
So he, uh, you know, I said youknow we want to buy a tool,
let's buy a tool, and andtwitter wasn't big on buying
tools- they wanted to buildeverything.
Inside they had a bunch ofsoftware engineers like why do
(16:47):
you need a tool right?
So ERP systems and things likethat, they're not very easy to
make.
But we wanted to do like asupply inventory of our.
We went by fleet.
The fleet management team waspart of our team.
That was my team.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
What up fleet management?
We still out here.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
We're still out here and it was basically an
inventory of all the uh the, thetypes of servers that are out
there.
Um, twitter was big on a lot ofdifferent uh skews yeah a whole
lot of different skews and justdifferent parts and like high
mem, extra high mem, you know,uh, high you know storage and
all that stuff, and this wasbefore.
Like data centers were reallymuch more defined now than they
(17:26):
were back then and so there wasa lot out there.
So we had to really kind ofunderstand the inventory levels
of such, and then we want torework them to be other if the
services shift over to this orshift over to that.
So we needed some kind ofautomated way of doing that
stuff, and the first step was tolearn kind of really what our
supply is.
And so they actually tasked meto work with a program manager
(17:50):
and a software engineer toliterally work on building a
supply inventory through a tool.
And we called it Supply Bird.
And that's kind of how itadopted and that's what you guys
use for your fleet management.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
To see what services need to shift over and so forth.
So it was exciting because Ididn't really build anything
before.
I'm not a product engineer, butI had the background of exactly
what supply looks like.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The software engineer had a look of what software
looks like and we kind ofintertwined and made it happen.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, big shout-outs to you, Give him a round of
applause, because this is thepart that I think sometimes,
peter, you don't give yourselfenough credit for, because your
insights into how to do it wereso valuable for what the product
results were going to be right.
Because, like you said, we'resoftware engineers just thinking
about the code, not actuallyunderstanding the flow or, more
(18:41):
specifically, what the real flowis, because we piece things
together.
But then when you came, he waslike yo, why you have this here,
why you have that there?
And I'm like, oh, I didn't eventhink about that and that was
from your perspective.
So that tool itself, uh, was oneof the first tools that I had
an opportunity to integrate with, because my tool that I worked
on was called autobird andautobirds and this just for
those that are listening in andgo check out some of our old
(19:02):
podcasts.
Uh, you know I've been droppinggems about aut.
Autobird became our automatedprovisioning system, right where
we talked to SupplyBird andAutoBird and basically all of
the things that Peter knew, andknowledge became programs and
all the things that I knew andknowledge became a program and
we had those programs talking toeach other and basically what
(19:23):
we did was streamline theprocess so that after Peter's
done all of the supply stuffmaking sure parts were the right
ones, ordered, making sure thatthey're landing in our data
center at this day that they'regoing to get plugged in Shout
out to all of the data centerengineering data center
technicians that did all theheavy lifting.
They used to put them in thespot, plug them in, turn the
systems on and then walk away.
(19:43):
Because AutoBird kicked inright and it made that system
for me one of the first timesthat I could really align how
automation could really take youfrom automating yourself out of
a job.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Literally right, that was uh, that was the point of
it, yeah right, it was supposedto be the point of it, yeah
right it never happened but,yeah I mean it might have
happened, but we definitely gotthere.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Bro, you stayed longer than I did, but yeah, but
that that was like the, the,the big, bigger picture, and
actually one of the reasons whyI joined twitter at the time was
we was working on solving thosereally hard problems, right, um
, and then, when you came on, itwas more or less helping us
figure out another piece that wewere missing, which was the
supply side of the house.
Uh, but there was this othertool that you and I worked on,
(20:28):
uh, and it was just like a sideconversation.
We named it left at the altarbird.
Do you remember that tool?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I.
I remember we did something,but yeah, no worries, I got you,
I got you player so we calledit, uh, ladder bird l-a-t-a.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Bird right, but it was left at the altar board bird
.
And and the reason why wecreated it was we.
We lost track of machines thatwere in the fleet right.
There was like so manycomputers that uh, either got
lost between the cracks orwhatever.
And the reason why we createdit was we lost track of machines
that were in the fleet right.
There was like so manycomputers that either got lost
between the cracks or whatever,and it ended up being millions
of dollars of computingresources that we were able to
pick up.
And the reason why I bring thisup is that for me and you, it
(21:04):
was just the conversation likethis Like Peter was, like yo, I
got this problem, like everytime I'm finding these machines
and I'm like all right, tell mea little bit more about it.
I'm there listening intensively, right, and then you're able to
take the uh like from the seatof the users, the workflow and
product, and feed me, theengineer, and then the results
for ladder bird yeah, I meanthis is that was the pro of
working, uh, in the office.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I mean I know people hate it, like people love to do
work from home now there's muchmore flexibility.
But you can't have thoseconversations working over Zoom.
And you know it was a while ago.
We went to lunch and we weretalking and you know we
chit-chat and we said what'sreally bugging you in your
business, what's bugging ours?
And we talked about, you know,underutilized servers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And that popped up.
So you know, just being therein the office together really,
really helped out in that.
Yeah, Plus we got to have lunchtogether At the time we had the
best cafeteria Facts in thewhole city.
Right it was.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
People used to come far and wide to come into our
kitchen.
Even D-Hustle pulled up at theoffice.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yes, I did?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You got to see the sky view and then definitely the
good food.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
The meatballs.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The meatballs.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Swedish meatballs definitely the good food, the
meatballs the sweetest meatballs, oh man.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But the that type of experience that we had um of
working together, let me justtell you I really enjoyed it, my
guy because it was definitelylike an opportunity for me to
get um in terms of developingmore skills, because I was
moving away from systemsengineering but more into the
software engineering to automateourselves out of a job.
But it also became thefoundation because after you
(22:36):
left I took those same skills toanother team and basically
automated everything over there.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So I never had a chance to tell you this, but our
time together really didinfluence my growth and
development at Twitter.
So I want to say thank you somuch my guy.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I appreciate that man .
I you know you impacted me aswell.
I remember when I was makingthe decision to leave Twitter.
It was a short period of time,I mean.
I had everything at Twitter.
I had a great manager, I had agreat team.
I loved working with our team.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
And I was there.
I was there and I startedthrowing it out there, Like you
know, Facebook opportunity cameabout and I started throwing it
out there.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
like you know, uh, facebook, uh, opportunity came
about and I was like, am Ireally contemplating this?
And Bobby was like you know,put it out there, and if it's
something that is going to makeit happen, it's going to happen.
And I put it out there and itdid happen.
And it was up to you know,really, bobby.
Now it wasn't ended up beingthe the, the right move.
Probably.
You know, I don't know, I mean,you know everything.
(23:30):
I should I have stayed atTwitter, so that's kind of where
my career things.
I started to move a little bitmore often than I wanted to.
And I have absolutely noregrets in life.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I, I took a journey, I took a chance and I took an
opportunity and I becameaggressive in my, in my um, in
my, in my job, in my career.
Yeah, I wanted to really fightfor that next role and that next
opportunity and and it justseemed like you know, social
media was really big at thattime and you know I did make
that move to Facebook and and,uh, you know, things fell in
place that I ended up having toleave and then going to another
(24:02):
company and another company andjust you know, unfortunately,
the last several years I did hoparound a little bit, but again,
I have absolutely no regretsbecause every single company I
went to has taught me andlearned me a whole new skill set
that I could apply to the nextone.
I mean at Facebook.
You know what we built.
We built an inventory system inour tools.
That was mocking Supply Bird.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Same concept.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
We did it for network equipment.
I worked on the network side ofthe business and we wanted
somewhere where they do the PO.
They placed a PO Again.
Facebook didn't want to dotheir own.
They didn't want to buy tools,Correct, correct they wanted to
build their own tools.
So that's what we did and I'mnot sure if they're still using
it until today.
Maybe they have progressed overthere, because now they have a
whole different department.
But back then, you know, we tomy current status.
I'm at Airtable now andAirtable is great.
(25:00):
I never used Airtable before.
We actually had it at aprevious company and we didn't
use it the way that we shouldhave been using it.
I kind of used it as a Excelsheet, unfortunately, and I
didn't even know thecapabilities.
Now, working at Airtable, I'mstarting to help build things
and I'm a software engineer thewhole point of air table is low
code, no code right, yeah, yeahand it's basically allowing me
to build dashboards or buildautomation or things that you
(25:20):
know that assist my job and helpmy my business stakeholders
yeahto get their job done and it's a
great way of doing that andrunning your business.
So you build these apps up andI'm learning so much.
My my manager's manager.
She knows a lot about air table.
She's been there forever andit's a great way of doing that
and running your business.
So you build these apps up andI'm learning so much.
My um, my manager's manager.
She knows a lot about air table.
She's been there forever andand she's teaching me a lot and
I'm, you know, I'm learning fromthe source and it's another
(25:41):
resource that I have.
Now that's coming in and andthat's what the great
opportunity for me is.
That's why every companypresented a new opportunity for
me.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, amazing, oh, big shout out to you, peter.
And the cool thing that I thinkand I hope the audience heard
this is that, uh, going from onecompany to the next, you're
going to be taking the skillthat you learned from the other
company to the new company.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, you know, when you go to
college you're going to learnthe basics.
You're going to learn thefoundation You're going to.
It's going to get you in thedoor these days.
I recommend kids or youngpeople that want to get into
tech.
They're going to have to have adegree.
It's just so hard to not get adegree.
I mean, you could try the waythat I did, but it took me a
long time to get where I wantedto be you know, and it took some
(26:41):
pushing and some you know andsome hustle.
Yeah, yeah, I mean some grit.
You know I had to take a stepback to move forward.
I had to you, yeah, yeah, again, absolutely no regrets.
I learned a lot and everyposition or every place that
I've gone I've learned to helpme scale in the new role, and
that's all what it's about.
And so I mean, if you want to,you should get a degree.
(27:03):
I tell my niece and nephew allthe time you have to go out and
get a degree nowadays becauseit's so competitive and it's so
hard.
It's not even going to get youin the door.
If I was, I was to try to getmy position at cisco, the sales
and operations planning manager.
That I was doing.
I needed a master's degree forthat I wouldn't have been able
to get my own job yeah if itwasn't for me building myself up
yeah, in the ranks yeah so youknow, that's kind of where it's
(27:23):
at sometimes, and and at leastif you get that foundation, you
don't have to build yourself upto the ranks.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It'll get you at least somewhere, somewhere and
then you could go from therehigher up, you know, yeah, but
but I also, uh, uh, definitelyfeel like, uh, it just requires
a different type of person to totake the scenic route right.
Um, because I know for you,like you, you had to be on the
grind.
You had to be eye open anddefinitely willing to make
transition, to make moves likehow, how much value was that for
(27:48):
you during your journey I meanit, it was huge, right.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I mean, along the way , like I could have progressed
and stayed.
You know, if I stayed with thesame company continue moving up.
It would have been a slowprogression, but it would have
got me at a higher role, butI've learned that, you know,
it's not always about being adirector or being a VP.
Um, there's so many roles thatare high impact roles and, uh,
(28:11):
even high paid roles that, um,that have as much responsibility
or even more responsibilitywithout building it with a team,
because you're trying toinfluence others to do what you
need to get done.
And it's harder sometimes.
And that's what I love.
You know.
It's not about like I want tohave a director of, you know, 50
people reporting to me.
I mean, yeah, sure, I meanwould I like to have that
(28:36):
opportunity eventually, Maybe.
Yeah, I've managed people, I'vedone that.
But I've taken a step back andsaid you know what I think I'm
better at, you know, reallydriving initiatives and projects
that are really more impactful.
And that's sometimes.
You know, sometimes middlemanagers are.
It's a hard role and, you know,sometimes they're the first to
go, you know, unfortunately, andso you've got to show value and
that's what I'm trying to dohere at Airtable.
I didn't go in for a fancy job.
(28:57):
We're a very small procurementorganization.
I followed my manager over,which is another great manager.
I've had some really greatmanagers along the way and yeah,
I mean shout out to him, and sobasically, I followed him over
and we're working on some goodstuff.
We're building procurement.
We're, you know, we're prettymuch starting it from scratch
and building it out and growingthe company and supporting the
(29:17):
company.
So, you know, and we're usingAirtable to do it without the
software engineer.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
We don't build our own data centers over there,
right yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
You know it's.
So we got to evolve and movearound to what it is and it's
SaaS products and it's a lot ofSaaS tools and marketing and to
go to market and being able toprocure tools for those teams
are a whole different newballpark for us.
Facts.
You know, I was always ahardware guy.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I knew hardware very well.
Software took a long time forme to learn, like knowing what
Databricks does or what AWS does, and you know all these things,
like you know what the cloud isand everything I mean.
Obviously we're at.
You know data center companies,but the services that AWS
provides, they have names forthem.
Correct, different than whatwe're doing internally, right,
(30:03):
so it's knowing about theservice and you know how to
negotiate a you know a complexcloud deal.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Multi-million dollar deals.
Multi-million, multi-year clouddeals.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Those are huge and those are high impactful.
I mean they go right to the CEOright.
So it's not, like you know,paper dollars, it's real dollars
that's making impact on it.
So when you save it, you saveit.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Man.
The thing that that I'm takingaway from this is is is one gym
that I'm definitely hit.
The gym mark for.
This is Peter has had greatmanagers.
That has basically given himthe opportunity to continue to
ascend right, and we talkedabout the value of networking
and maintaining thoserelationships.
But also, when you have greatmanagers like our previous guest
(30:42):
, patrick Newman Big shout outto Patrick Newman what's up
player.
And definitely the advice thathe given about being a mentor
and a leader in the organizationis being those resources for
people that want to climb Right.
But then also, as you'reclimbing, you're giving back too
and you can see the valuebehind it.
So I really do appreciate youshouting that out.
And then the other thing that Ithink sometimes you don't stand
(31:05):
on enough Peter is Peter islike multimillion dollar, like
when he looks at spreadsheetsit's not thousands of dollars,
it's hundreds of not evenhundreds of thousands millions
of dollars of assets anddecisions that he's helped
support making.
And then, obviously, this isdata that you give into your
executive team.
So, it's like when, when you'reon your journey in tech, it
(31:25):
could be broad right.
You're on the business side oftech and you are financially
supporting the decisions thatare making based on the data
that you're able to present, andnow that you're doing no coding
stuff, I'm so excited aboutthis, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I mean it's evolving.
I mean things are evolving.
Now the big thing is AI.
You know I'm not trying to jumpon the AI bandwagon here, but
Airtable right now is is huge onai.
We use ai in our tools.
We just launched a big aiinitiative and and uh, I mean if
you look it up on air table andit uses all the major uh, um,
(31:58):
you know uh, open iis, chat, gbt, uh, anthropics, cloud and you
know the different.
You could choose which type ofuh ai you want to use in the
tool itself.
Yeah, which is amazing.
So it's integrating it.
It's integrating it, it'sevolving and, like you said, you
could tell it what to do andit'll figure it out for you and
kind of hit the baseline, andthen that's how you get going,
(32:19):
Instead of you trying to do theautomation and the building.
You just type in a few clicks.
You just got to have the good.
What do they call it?
The prompt, the prompt yes, soyou've got to have a good prompt
.
I heard that's a new job now.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah, prompt engineering, right, Can you
believe that I was like, oh myGod, look at that.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I would have never thought of that a few years ago,
right, right.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So you know it's amazing and you just tell it
what to do and the better youget at telling it what to do.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I took my first coding class a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
What year.
I'm not even going to say whatlanguage it was, but the fact
that I sat down in the class andthe teacher said write down how
many steps it will take to makea peanut butter and jelly
sandwich.
When I was done in like fiveminutes and I put five sentences
down and everybody else waslike drilling it down, I
realized I'm just not intocoding.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Because you've got to get down deep like that, right,
you've got to get into thatlevel, right.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I mean, with these prompts now you don't have to
get into too much level, butenough to describe it, to get it
to do what you want and thenyou evolve it.
So it's kind of like high-levelcoding kind of, but it's so
much easier to use and it's andit's you know it's.
It's not about replacing jobs.
I mean, I, you know AI peopleget a lot of scared and yeah,
obviously, software engineers.
It's going to do a lot of thebeginning work, but it's going
(33:36):
to change the way the jobs areand what jobs are out there.
So, again, if you're notevolving like I have throughout
my career not to say that youknow that's the only way to go,
but you've got to evolve, you'vegot to move where the
technology is moving and if youstay in tech and you don't
evolve, you're going to be leftbehind.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Oh man, that's a gem right there.
Thank you so much for that,peter, and I think you hit that
thing a few times.
You dropped like three, fourgems in one comment.
That's why you why do you allthink I hung out with Peter all
the time?
Because he's dropping in them.
I'm right there picking them up, right next to him, me and
Bobby, we both love the tech, welove the hustle we love it a
(34:13):
lot I mean, like I said, I don'thave any regrets in life.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Could I have gone a different road on a different
crossroad?
Yeah, but I mean I got where Iam from the grit and the grind
and learning and evolving andbuilding relationships and just
getting it done, and it's notjust getting the right manager.
I mean when I interview andwhen I find people, I interview
them too right.
And that's another thing thatyoung people don't realize is
(34:38):
that it's not only an interviewfor them to be interested in you
, it's an interview for you tobe interested in them, and I've
done a lot of interviews, trustme, and so I mean it's really,
you know, an opportunity for youto know whether that's the
right place to go to.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Roger that, roger that.
That's some really goodinsights there, and I think that
the thing that I'm reallytaking away from this is number
one skill set wise is that youalways got to keep learning, you
always got to keep iteratingthe old days and the old
programming languages.
They're not even here, no moreright you got to be moving
forward.
Number two is not being afraidof this tool, this new tool
(35:11):
called ai, which, you are right,language is becoming a new
programming language.
Um, but the the cool thing thatI think, um, uh, especially for
us old heads, is that we haveso much experience that we can
describe things with moredetails that a younger engineer
or someone new don't have orknow, right, um, and then for me
, like the, the third thing ingeneral is like that grit, that
(35:32):
hustle, that mindset that youhave to have and not have any
regrets, just know that it's apart of the path for you to get
to where you got to go, embraceit and keep moving forward.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
That's what's up, Peter.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Peter's, my guy bro, and this is how we used to chill
every day, go to lunch.
Obviously we used to have funat the office, some good times,
but definitely these type ofconversations are those that
were really foundational for meas I continue to iterate, so in
terms of like Airtable, which Ilike the product, I really do.
(36:03):
It's like one of my preferreddatabase services that I like to
use when I'm recommendingbecause, it just has a very
easier interface and not toomuch barrier for you to kind of
understand what's going on.
And you were saying that you'redoing some no coding stuff.
So are you building likeapplications similar to like
Supply Bird type things, or areyou doing more simpler, smaller
pieces?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
It pertains more to the procurement process.
You know, like you could haveit read contracts.
You could basically have itfeed in the contract, point out
certain things in the contractusing AI and say you know
where's the payment terms?
How much is the?
What is the start and end datesof these terms?
Are there renewal clauses inthese terms?
(36:43):
You know there's specifics interms of contracts that we want
to look at to make sure thatthey're in the benefit of the
company, right?
And so, instead of me searchingthrough 100 pages, you can use
AI and Airtable to basicallypull that information in,
summarize it for you and then dowhat you want.
And so, instead of me buildinga software to do it, I build an
app in Airtable and use the AIcapabilities to help build that.
(37:07):
I mean, there's so many thingsthat I think it just opens the
door up for that, and I'mlearning more about the tool for
me to learn more how I can makeit more efficient with a
business that I'm in.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Man, you're going to be air table spokesperson soon
Sponsored by.
It's a great tool.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
I mean I think the people that use it and learn how
to use it and know how it works, they love it.
Use it and learn how to use itand know how it works, they love
it.
So it's yeah, I mean I standbehind the companies that I
worked at.
I mean I've worked at somereally good high-tech companies
and you know they produce reallygood products.
There's really smart engineersthere that work there.
And like you, Bobby, I mean, oh, look at that.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I mean I'm not snubbing noses or anything I
mean you know your team.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We did a lot at Twitter.
I mean in the short period Iwas there, but you were there
for a lot longer than I was.
I mean, you guys handled it.
That's a nightmare to manageall those SKUs.
I mean when I left and I waslike wow, this is not normal
what we did over there, right,yeah, so I mean, but we had to
evolve the business.
You know Twitter was seasonalityright.
Yep, the World Cup, these bigevents that are happening
(38:13):
worldwide.
You know I remember saying likeNew Year's Eve was really big
in.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Japan.
Yeah, that was the biggestoutages we usually had was New
Year's Eve, so you know the bigwhale that came up and the
issues with the site coming down.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I think who broke the site Ella DeGeneres Yep coming
down.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
I think who broke the site?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Ella DeGeneres when she spoke and we weren't ready
for it, I mean.
So we had to really do somegood things out there back then
to make sure that it gets done,to not have that happen again.
You know, it just stands forthe engineers that were there.
I mean, everybody was learningat that time.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I mean I'm not going to take all the credit, all of
the credit.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
but thank you, peter thank you, peter, thank you the
the fans out there listening,and I have not paid peter to see
any of this stuff.
This is coming from inside.
It was a whole thing, yeah fiasaudi carter.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, yeah, robert, robert, pulley, robert is
traveling the world right now,uh, uh, nikhil, nikhil.
Uh uh, nakil ended up going touber.
Uh, faez went to uber, audie'sgone to from credit karma.
Uh, robert pulley, he'straveling the world now he's
taking some time off, um, and wewere the squad though we was
holding it down and then we hadgreat partners to work with,
which was really cool, because,uh, normally we we don't really
(39:24):
and like sit next to the peoplethat are ordering the supplies,
or the next uh, table that wasthere were the people that are
ordering the supplies, or thenext table that was there with
the people that were designingthe software, right, like that's
how close it was.
And then we had a really chill,you know, director at the time
too, right, so it definitelyallowed us to, you know, build a
better relationship so that wecould really create some really
cool stuff.
And those were like real, likeworld level type challenges that
(39:48):
I didn't even know exist untilI worked at a place like Twitter
.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I mean, every time I heard something that they wanted
us to figure out, we're like,oh my God, I don't know if
that's possible.
I mean you know that's whattech does.
I mean it evolves fast, itmoves fast.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
If anybody wants to break into tech, be ready to
move fast.
I've I've seen people come fromother companies.
They come from fintech or theycome from uh, you know, uh like
a, like a health company, or oruh pharmaceutical company.
They don't move as quick as wedo pharmaceutical.
It takes 10 years to to evolvea product.
It's a production and you knowwe're iterating as we go we're
(40:25):
deploying every hour almostliterally shout out to peter and
that crew out there doing bigthings.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yes, yes, sir.
And then big shout out to Yogi.
You mentioned Yogi.
I haven't seen Yogi in a minute.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yogi's great I still keep in touch with him on.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I just chat with him, is he?
Speaker 3 (40:40):
at.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
NVIDIA.
I think he's at Pure Storagenow.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Oh no, yeah, there was somebody else that went to N
.
I mean, we got friends maybe atevery single big tech company
you know, at least one person,and that's the other thing about
being out here.
So tell us about you know I know, being a native.
There's a lot of people cominginto the city and the reason why
we come over here is toexperience the tech experience,
(41:02):
and this is my alwaysrecommendation to my mentees is
like, if you're in tech and theopportunity presents itself,
come to San Francisco toexperience what it is to be here
, but you've been here since dayone, from like how has that
been?
Like seeing the evolution oftech from when you, when you,
were growing up, to where we arenow.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, I mean I didn't have to move anywhere to see it
.
I mean it was in my back door,it was in my backyard and yeah,
I'd say, you know, we have agreat community here of friends
and family that I did growing up.
I know a lot of people fromhigh school days, from grammar
school days, that I still see,that are still in the Bay Area,
and then I have my foundation onmy family, a lot of my family's
here.
My family is huge, right, andnot my direct family, they're
(41:40):
just my cousins and uncles andeverything yeah your community.
So the community is really bigand so we have a lot of contacts
.
You know, my dad owned grocerystores, so he knows a lot of
police officers, he knows a lotof firemen, he knows a lot of
people that worked in theMission District and the Potrero
Hill District, and I built thefoundation of building
relationships early on in life.
You know, working at a grocerystore helping my dad out, that's
(42:02):
how you become accustomed totalking to people and I had that
privilege to be able to do thatand that's what helped me later
on in life and to buildrelationships, because all you
did was talk at a grocery storeand you talk to customers and
you listen to their problems,they listen to your problems
sometimes and growing up in thatenvironment you also learn the
(42:24):
grit, the hustle, the grind.
I had to fill thoserefrigerators, make sure the
stock, make sure the papers wereout.
I had to wake up at six o'clockin the morning.
My dad said, that's the reasonwhy I didn't do it.
So I love my dad and everything, but you know me and him
working.
It was just we.
We saw different views.
Uh, yeah I was younger and I'mkind of glad because it helped
me pursue something else forsure and it got me where I
(42:47):
wanted to be today.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
So yeah, to be today.
So, yeah, big shout outs tothat, peter, big shout outs to
that.
That's what's up.
Well, we are coming close tothe end of our conversation.
My guy, I think we've beenreally running at it, for it
looks like 40, 40 minutes, 40plus minutes on the clock.
I told you it was going to be agreat conversation, but this is
an opportunity for you to givesome last words of advice, and
you've been giving gems andadvice from the beginning of the
conversation.
So if there is anything thatyou wanted to reiterate but also
(43:11):
just leave something impactful,this is your opportunity, peter
.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, I'd say you know people who want to break
into tech or even just anyanything in life.
You know it's all aboutbuilding relationships.
You know you have to go afterwhat you want and you said it to
me at Twitter put it out there,get it out there.
I remember specifically sittingdown on lunch telling me you
(43:35):
know, peter, put it out in theworld and let it find you, and
if it's the right thing to do,then just go after it.
And that just resonated with mea lot.
I mean, I appreciate that andI've followed that through and I
say you know, this is what Iwant.
You know, and this is my nextstep and this is what I'm going
to do and I get there.
I try to get there as much as Ican and I don't stop until I do
.
And so I built relationships, Ibuilt foundations, I've met
(43:59):
people, I've learned.
I'm on LinkedIn and really Itry to show off what I'm doing
but also help people learn.
I'm in different groups onthere showing people how to hail
no procurement, uh, addressingquestions and and really trying
to evolve.
And you know these aren't out inthe open they're in internal
groups that people don't knowabout so um, you know, and
(44:20):
you're building relationshipswhen you do that.
So when there's a position openfor something, or there's an
opportunity or something, youyou're people are aware.
Oh my god, that guy knew hisstuff so if you know something
and you have a good skill set,try to get there on those groups
, on LinkedIn or other means,and then build your network from
there and that's going to helpyou find something later on.
I honestly believe that.
(44:42):
I mean, you've got to make ithappen.
It's not going to come to you.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Facts, facts, wow, cue up the music D.
I don not going to come to you.
Facts, facts.
Wow, cue up the music d.
I don't know if y'all beenlistening, but there's a button
that says rewind.
Press the rewind button to goback.
We got triggers and signs.
What's the sound?
Beat d, all right.
There we go.
Whenever you heard that, thatmeans my guy, peter total, was
dropping some gems, I want tosay, first of all, thank you so
much, peter, for pulling up withbackstage with bobby d.
(45:07):
It wasn't that bad, was it?
I told you it's gonna be chill.
My guy, he was worried when hefirst came in and he seen the
setup he was like, oh snap,they're doing big things.
But as always, peter, I like tomake sure that the setting, the
mood, the environment isexactly what we need.
Um, and definitely want to sayI appreciate you pulling up, um
and definitely for your audience, thank y'all so much for tuning
in to Backstage with Bobby D.
(45:28):
We on our next stop to New YorkCity.
Yeah, we're pulling up back toNYC.
We're going to have another setof guests that pull up and, as
always, thank you all so muchfor tuning in my guy D Hustle.
What's going on?
Last words player.
Enjoy the rest of your day,roger, that I'll let you boy it.
These days.
I recommend kids or youngpeople that want to get into
tech.
They're going to have to have adegree.
It's just so hard to not get adegree.
I mean, you could try the waythat I did, but it took me a
long time to get where I wantedto be.
You know, ai people get a lot ofscared.
And, yeah, obviously, softwareengineers.
It's going to do a lot of thebeginning work, but it's going
to change the way the jobs areand what jobs are out there.
(00:22):
So, the way the jobs are andwhat jobs are out there.
So, again, if you're notevolving like I have throughout
my career not to say that youknow that's the only way to go.
But you gotta evolve, you gottamove where the technology is
moving and if you stay in techand you don't evolve, you're
gonna be left behind oh man,that's a gem right there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
What up, d-hustler?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
What is going on?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Chilling.
My guy Guess where we still at,bro, when we right on Market
Street.
Oh, beautiful weather.
I can see the Ferry BuildingBeautiful weather, actually.
I can see what's that TreasureIsland and I can see the East
Bay from here.
You know how we do we always dobig things when we come to.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
San Francisco.
I like it.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I like it.
And big shout-outs to SanFrancisco for hosting us for
another great conversation.
It's your boy, bobby D, withBackstage with Bobby D, and I
got a special guest for us.
Who we got?
Somebody I had a chance tochill with at Twitter.
You know, when I'm working atTwitter I rub shoulders with
some great minds.
You know, always somebody thathas inspired me to do really
(01:26):
cool things, and his journey,when y'all hear it, is going to
be one for the books.
For sure.
Let's bring to the stage PeterToto.
What up, peter?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Peter, how you guys?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
doing.
That's pretty good.
Glad to be here, peter.
Come and hang out with the crew, bro.
I like it, I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I like it Actually.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Peter's hung out with the crew before.
Yes, he has.
Yeah, yeah, we've hung out,yeah yeah, bring up Peter's mic
a little bit more.
Yeah, we've hung out there, wego, there, we go.
Yeah, peter's hung out with usbefore and obviously we've
worked together for a number ofyears while working at Twitter.
But let's get a quickintroduction.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Tell us where you're in tech.
Yeah, um so I'm born and raisedin san francisco I'm a
palestinian american.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Big shout outs to you , big shout outs yeah and uh.
You know.
Family came here, migrated herewhen they were young, like
maybe uh 12 or 13 each.
Uh, you know, on both sides ofthe family.
My father came here and got uhdrafted a vietnam war when he
turned 18 that was was like hisintro to America.
But you know, hey, it was a time, that period of that needed to
happen and he went.
(02:30):
But my mother came here shortlyafter.
They met here and eventuallyhad me and my sister.
We were born and raised here,so I guess it's considered first
generation.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah, you're first generation.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
So yeah.
So grew up in the city, went toprivate school grammar school,
went to private high school.
You know, I had the privilegeof my father owning a grocery
store all our lives.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
He was on that hustle .
Yeah, bring that over right.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So it was after the war.
He got into working at theairlines and then eventually
made his way to own a store, andthat's all they knew over there
.
Back home is they just knewgrocery stores.
That's what my grandfatherowned.
He owned that coming here and myfather expanded that and that's
how we went and my father gaveme a choice.
He's like you either go toschool or you take over the
(03:13):
store.
And I was like you know what, Idon't know, if I want to do a
store, I didn't like workingwith my dad at that time, me and
him have two different views onthings.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That usually happens, right.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
I wasn't really big on school either, so I kind of
just went into a trade school.
I went to Heald and that's kindof like.
You know, when I was a youngkid I used to like to tinker
with things.
I used to take apart my dad'sCadillac with the radio and just
start tinkering with it.
He used to get mad, but I'dplay with it, take it apart, put
(03:46):
it back together.
I had a couple of piecesmissing, yeah, yeah.
So basically yeah.
So from there I was like youknow what I want to do?
A little trade, maybe get intoelectronics.
So, that's what I did and it wasa couple of years school, it
was an AS degree and basicallywhen I went to after the AS
degree it was really hard tofind a job at that time.
But my uncle was working atHewlett Packard and he said that
(04:08):
they're hiring temporaryworkers during the summertime.
Yeah, so I was like, all right,fine.
So I went in and applied for atemporary assembler.
I was making $7.75 an hour.
Wow this was back in the 90s,obviously right.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Don't say you age too much.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
now I'm not saying which 90s but it was in the 90s,
so anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
so basically, I worked there as a temporary
assembler and then six monthslater they hired me as a
full-time technician.
I got my first salary.
I moved out to Santa Rosa andit was great.
It was like working in college.
Everybody was college students.
There was a lot of young peoplethere.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
The campus was huge, it 000 employees.
So my uncle pretty much set meup.
That's what's up to tech.
You know, big shout out to youruncle, big shout out to your
whole family, your pops, um,especially their journey, and
then establishing themselves.
And and you're a san franciscannative y'all, y'all not, y'all
not normal out here, are you notthese days?
And if the ones no, and theones that are over here, they
moved away.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Unfortunately they got priced out.
Yeah, I mean, because I have acommunity here and a family here
, it's a lot easier for me.
But yeah, there's a lot ofpeople that just couldn't do it.
No worries, I mean, I wouldn'tbe able to do it, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
But I will say when I , a San Francisco native, I knew
he knew all the spots, I knewhe knew where to go to get what
you needed to get right.
Yeah, we had some good time,but before we jump into Twitter.
So you worked at HewlettPackard on the assembly line and
(05:38):
for me, like just even hearingthat part of the journey, it
just gives our audience someinsights into how your pathway
can be into tech.
Right, Because we're going totalk about all the great places
you've worked and all your greataccomplishments.
But that being a starting point, what kind of advice would you
give to younger ones gettinginto the field right now?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You know, I didn't go the route of college, I just
went to a two-year degree, but Itook what I could get.
I mean I was getting paid $8 anhour after working swing shift.
I was starting with 775.
So I took a temp assembler jobbecause you know that was going
to get me in.
And sometimes it doesn't matterwhat position it is, it's if,
in the company or the type ofbusiness that you want to be in,
just take the opportunity thatpresents you in front of you and
(06:20):
move forward you know, andthat's you know.
My career went from there andI'll explain later on how it
evolved, but I invented myselfby pushing myself in as
something that I didn't want todo, or had to do and then,
eventually got there.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah, big big round of applause for Peter.
And the other thing for thosethat may be your first time
tuning in.
Thank you first of all forpulling up, but there's going to
be a nice little sound Cue thatsound up.
That's the sound for the gems.
If you hear that sound, thatmeans peter's dropping some gems
.
Rewind it a little bit andlisten in if you're here for
bobby you still kind of love myget the hustle come on my guy no
(06:58):
yeah, I appreciate you Iappreciate you, but I'm cool
with the one.
One, one, two, I'm too.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I want all the smoke.
I want it all.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
But definitely some really good advice and insights
into getting started.
And the cool thing is that,being out here in the Bay Area,
you have that opportunity tostart at really well-known
companies like HP, who arePackard, and then transition to
other opportunities.
So tell me where that took youfrom HP know HP assembly line
getting a full-time offer andthen, obviously, where your
(07:31):
journey took you from there.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, so I was sitting on the microelectronics
floor.
We were making microelectronicsthat go into the guts of like
network analyzers and they'reused, you know, for cell phone
towers and fun stuff.
It was original HP.
It wasn't like like computersand printers, although my
parents thought I was workingwith computers, but it was
basically microwave stuff and soI was sitting there tinkering,
(07:54):
doing gold bonding, doingcircuit testing, tweaking knobs
all day, and it got to me.
I was there for about six yearsbetween HP and Agilent because
they merged and my hands wereswollen at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Like it was just puffed up.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I was like I don't know if I want to do this long
term.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But so I started looking outside of the
opportunity.
I wanted to get more intoSilicon Valley because it's kind
of slower paced in Santa Rosa.
There's not too manyopportunities over there and I
was living in Rona Park and I'min my 20s.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
I don't really want to do that he wants to be in the
cities, he wants to be movingright.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, I kind of made my way there, buddy, I found a
startup company that made indiumphosphide wafers and they were
silicon lasers and they werestarted by a couple of guys from
Lawrence Livermore Lab and thecompany was called Genoa.
It didn't go anywhere, but theyhad a nifty idea of basically
having it on the back of everycomputer and it was basically a,
an optical amplifier, and Ilearned so much there and they
(08:47):
hired me as a technician, but Iwas just a like, pretty much an
engineer yeah we went from.
You know, I was not, I was thefirst non-phd hired and
basically, uh, there was like 19people, I think.
I was like, uh, yeah, 18 or 19,and then we got as high as 250
employees.
I was running the lab for them.
I was doing all the lasertesting.
I was building any andphosphite waste first build
(09:09):
lasers on.
I mean it was some reallyexciting stuff.
I was always a nerd with that.
I love to tinker things, but Iwasn't always interested in
doing it as a job.
It was just there.
My, I always was good at it andthat's why I always got into
that, you know.
And eventually, after thecompany kind of went on, the red
herring report saying thatwe're going to be this big top
tech company, and then it justcollapsed.
(09:30):
Finisar bought us out, theylaid off everybody and it was
just a big mess.
So I eventually had to make myway into real Silicon Valley.
Well, I mean, fumarown is, butI wanted to make my way into
that.
And that's kind of where Ibroke into Cisco or Intel, and
Cisco and those two companies iswhere, you know, intel kind of
gave me my break out of, youknow, working in a lab.
(09:50):
So what happened there was.
I don't want to get too muchinto detail, but I got hired as
a technician.
But that's when I moved intothe business side and that was a
big turning point for me.
I had a great manager there.
His name was Sang Up Kim, andhe's an amazing guy.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Big shout-outs to him .
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And another guy, tom Youngin, and he was hiring an
operations program manager role.
But I was a technician and Ihad no business sense whatsoever
.
So Sang was like you know what,maybe I could help you out and
I could push you and recommendyou, because an operations
program manager role you need toknow the technical side and you
need to know the business side.
So because I was lacking thebusiness, tom took a chance on
(10:28):
me and that's where my role justskyrocketed.
Because if you're not inengineering, when you're in
engineering, and you don't havea master's degree, or if you
don't have an advanced degree,you're really not going to grow
much.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
You're not going to do the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
You're going to be sitting in a lab for a long time
, so getting in on the businessside was huge for me.
As soon as I got the operationsprogram manager role, I learned
supply planning, demandplanning, I learned production.
I learned how to build in amanufacturing floor.
We were building hundreds ofthousands of optical
transceivers for Intel at thetime when they were in optics,
and so it was still the fieldthat I was in, learning from the
(11:01):
startup and coming through.
But now I'm learning thebusiness side, the business side
of it.
And that set me up to Cisco.
Cisco gave me a greatopportunity.
I grew very far at Cisco.
I went from just a normalsupply planner that was my first
real business job and then Ibecame a supply planner manager.
So I started managing the teamthat I was on and then I became
(11:22):
like a sales and operationsplanning manager, which was like
I learned that you don't haveto have a team of people to be a
high level contributor yeah,yeah and that's the first time
that they gave me a role that Ididn't have people report to me,
but I was had the influence.
I was owning, like the operatingplan.
I was uh talking to the gmabout their pnl statements.
I was.
It was a really high level planand guys, there's only like
(11:44):
three GMs at Cisco and they holdbillions of dollars worth of
business.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Correct, correct.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
It was a great opportunity and they actually
liked it so much that they movedme to Norway.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Oh yeah, I do remember this part of your story
.
Yeah, so that's when I livedthere.
How long did you live there?
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It was supposed to be a couple years years, um, I
only stayed there for a littleless than a year, mainly because
there was some personal uhissues that happened.
Yeah, um, you know, with myfamily and I ended up having to
come back, but they, um overthere.
I basically they moved me outthere, um, they set me up.
I basically they did a.
They did an acquisition,tanberg, so it was on the
collaboration space and webasically did video presence.
(12:21):
So that's what they were doingat that time and it was.
It was unheard of back then, forsure that's when webex wasn't
existing exactly right likezooms, right yeah and uh, so
that was their niche, to getinto it and it was a
collaboration space.
So I basically moved out thereand helped cisco eyes them into
it and then, you know,eventually I had to come back
and leave cisco, but it wasunfortunate.
(12:42):
But I ended up taking like ayear off and uh, that's when I
started getting into like youknow what, what's big right now?
Social media, you know, and Iwant to reinvent myself again.
So I first got into tech andthen I got into the business
side and I was like you knowwhat I want to get into?
Social media and I went aftersocial media companies and
that's when I found Twitter.
Facebook, you know, and sothat's when we started working
(13:02):
together at Twitter and it wasjust out of a whim I applied
online.
They liked the fact that I hadthe supply planning background,
Even though everybody in thatteam was sourcing.
They wanted a planner to helpplan that.
So my first niche into therewas the planning role.
For sure, for sure.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And let me encourage you all to definitely tune in to
what Peter's talking about interms of his iteration to get to
Twitter and also thetransitions from being an
electronic engineer solderingboards to eventually developing
a skill set on the business side.
But one thing that reallycaught my attention when you
(13:40):
were giving us that insight isthat it was definitely the
support of others that opened upthe door to see your skill sets
and say, hey, you have theskill sets and opportunity, let
me give you a chance to go tobat.
And then obviously, it's to theraces.
Peter's a tinker.
Once you put two and twotogether, you're running with it
, right?
So it's definitely for thosethat are thinking about getting
(14:03):
into tech or transitioning intotech, just understand that.
Getting to these companies likeTwitter, which we'll talk about
, even more companies that he'stalked about, going through
Intel, going through Cisco,utilizing broader skills than
just tech skills to getopportunities as such, to be in
the field of engineering andtechnology.
So big shout outs to you, peter,and I know your family is very
proud of your journey and alland all that you've done, and
(14:26):
even me, right.
I remember when the first timeyou and I met, they were like,
hey, we're going to be bringinga new person that's going to
manage, you know, supply Rightor the operations and all that
stuff around supply.
And just to give you some youall, some more context, twitter,
a lot of people didn't knowthat we actually build our own
data centers.
We build our own servers.
We obviously had OEM andproducts that we ordered from
(14:49):
other companies, but there is aspecific team in our
organization that managed all ofthat.
Because we're at scale, we'rehypervisor or hyperscale, sorry
meaning that we're orderinghundreds of thousands of one set
of servers or a few of thesebuildings a multimillion dollar
building and peter sat at thosetables helping making those
decisions right.
Um, one of the cool thingsabout our journey at at uh, at
(15:12):
twitter also is that was beforeipo, was when we joined right I
joined a little bit after alittle bit after, okay, okay, I
think you joined before me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Oh, okay, I thought.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
I thought you was at the party.
I was remembering.
I thought I seen peter therejumping around at the party too.
I thought everybody was happylike the.
I was remembering, I thought.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
I seen Peter there jumping around at the party too.
I thought everybody was happylike the month I started.
I was like I wonder why yeahyou?
Speaker 3 (15:29):
wonder why everybody's happy.
Right, I was happy, but it wasa great opportunity to work at a
company like that and also torun into somebody like me.
Hopefully I did, you see.
You see who's at theswitchboard D-Hustle.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
He told me to hit it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
No, he did that's funny Jumping into our time at
Twitter.
One of the cool things that Ienjoyed was number one your
experience out here in the Bay.
You're a San Francisco nativebut also have worked at Cisco,
intel, hp and have had thatexperience.
(16:03):
You also brought into ourconversations a different
perspective of how we shouldbuild and develop systems.
So one of the ones that came tomind and I was putting these
notes together, I was like man,I hope Peter remembers Supply
Bird.
Do you remember Supply Bird?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, I mean, I remember doing it.
I don't remember the artifactsof it.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
So tell us a little bit more about Supply Bird
remember the, the artifacts ofit.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yeah, I remember so.
So tell us a little bit moreabout supply bird.
Yeah, so, um, so we were usingspreadsheets, um, and it was
very confusing and I I suggestedto yogi, who's another great
manager.
By the way, big shout out toyogi yeah, so he was a great guy
and he, um, oh, he still is.
So he, uh, you know, I said youknow we want to buy a tool,
let's buy a tool, and andtwitter wasn't big on buying
tools- they wanted to buildeverything.
Inside they had a bunch ofsoftware engineers like why do
(16:47):
you need a tool right?
So ERP systems and things likethat, they're not very easy to
make.
But we wanted to do like asupply inventory of our.
We went by fleet.
The fleet management team waspart of our team.
That was my team.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
What up fleet management?
We still out here.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
We're still out here and it was basically an
inventory of all the uh the, thetypes of servers that are out
there.
Um, twitter was big on a lot ofdifferent uh skews yeah a whole
lot of different skews and justdifferent parts and like high
mem, extra high mem, you know,uh, high you know storage and
all that stuff, and this wasbefore.
Like data centers were reallymuch more defined now than they
(17:26):
were back then and so there wasa lot out there.
So we had to really kind ofunderstand the inventory levels
of such, and then we want torework them to be other if the
services shift over to this orshift over to that.
So we needed some kind ofautomated way of doing that
stuff, and the first step was tolearn kind of really what our
supply is.
And so they actually tasked meto work with a program manager
(17:50):
and a software engineer toliterally work on building a
supply inventory through a tool.
And we called it Supply Bird.
And that's kind of how itadopted and that's what you guys
use for your fleet management.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
To see what services need to shift over and so forth.
So it was exciting because Ididn't really build anything
before.
I'm not a product engineer, butI had the background of exactly
what supply looks like.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The software engineer had a look of what software
looks like and we kind ofintertwined and made it happen.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, big shout-outs to you, Give him a round of
applause, because this is thepart that I think sometimes,
peter, you don't give yourselfenough credit for, because your
insights into how to do it wereso valuable for what the product
results were going to be right.
Because, like you said, we'resoftware engineers just thinking
about the code, not actuallyunderstanding the flow or, more
(18:41):
specifically, what the real flowis, because we piece things
together.
But then when you came, he waslike yo, why you have this here,
why you have that there?
And I'm like, oh, I didn't eventhink about that and that was
from your perspective.
So that tool itself, uh, was oneof the first tools that I had
an opportunity to integrate with, because my tool that I worked
on was called autobird andautobirds and this just for
those that are listening in andgo check out some of our old
(19:02):
podcasts.
Uh, you know I've been droppinggems about aut.
Autobird became our automatedprovisioning system, right where
we talked to SupplyBird andAutoBird and basically all of
the things that Peter knew, andknowledge became programs and
all the things that I knew andknowledge became a program and
we had those programs talking toeach other and basically what
(19:23):
we did was streamline theprocess so that after Peter's
done all of the supply stuffmaking sure parts were the right
ones, ordered, making sure thatthey're landing in our data
center at this day that they'regoing to get plugged in Shout
out to all of the data centerengineering data center
technicians that did all theheavy lifting.
They used to put them in thespot, plug them in, turn the
systems on and then walk away.
(19:43):
Because AutoBird kicked inright and it made that system
for me one of the first timesthat I could really align how
automation could really take youfrom automating yourself out of
a job.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Literally right, that was uh, that was the point of
it, yeah right, it was supposedto be the point of it, yeah
right it never happened but,yeah I mean it might have
happened, but we definitely gotthere.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Bro, you stayed longer than I did, but yeah, but
that that was like the, the,the big, bigger picture, and
actually one of the reasons whyI joined twitter at the time was
we was working on solving thosereally hard problems, right, um
, and then, when you came on, itwas more or less helping us
figure out another piece that wewere missing, which was the
supply side of the house.
Uh, but there was this othertool that you and I worked on,
(20:28):
uh, and it was just like a sideconversation.
We named it left at the altarbird.
Do you remember that tool?
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I.
I remember we did something,but yeah, no worries, I got you,
I got you player so we calledit, uh, ladder bird l-a-t-a.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Bird right, but it was left at the altar board bird
.
And and the reason why wecreated it was we.
We lost track of machines thatwere in the fleet right.
There was like so manycomputers that uh, either got
lost between the cracks orwhatever.
And the reason why we createdit was we lost track of machines
that were in the fleet right.
There was like so manycomputers that either got lost
between the cracks or whatever,and it ended up being millions
of dollars of computingresources that we were able to
pick up.
And the reason why I bring thisup is that for me and you, it
(21:04):
was just the conversation likethis Like Peter was, like yo, I
got this problem, like everytime I'm finding these machines
and I'm like all right, tell mea little bit more about it.
I'm there listening intensively, right, and then you're able to
take the uh like from the seatof the users, the workflow and
product, and feed me, theengineer, and then the results
for ladder bird yeah, I meanthis is that was the pro of
working, uh, in the office.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I mean I know people hate it, like people love to do
work from home now there's muchmore flexibility.
But you can't have thoseconversations working over Zoom.
And you know it was a while ago.
We went to lunch and we weretalking and you know we
chit-chat and we said what'sreally bugging you in your
business, what's bugging ours?
And we talked about, you know,underutilized servers.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And that popped up.
So you know, just being therein the office together really,
really helped out in that.
Yeah, Plus we got to have lunchtogether At the time we had the
best cafeteria Facts in thewhole city.
Right it was.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
People used to come far and wide to come into our
kitchen.
Even D-Hustle pulled up at theoffice.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yes, I did?
Speaker 3 (22:05):
You got to see the sky view and then definitely the
good food.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
The meatballs.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
The meatballs.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Swedish meatballs definitely the good food, the
meatballs the sweetest meatballs, oh man.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But the that type of experience that we had um of
working together, let me justtell you I really enjoyed it, my
guy because it was definitelylike an opportunity for me to
get um in terms of developingmore skills, because I was
moving away from systemsengineering but more into the
software engineering to automateourselves out of a job.
But it also became thefoundation because after you
(22:36):
left I took those same skills toanother team and basically
automated everything over there.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So I never had a chance to tell you this, but our
time together really didinfluence my growth and
development at Twitter.
So I want to say thank you somuch my guy.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I appreciate that man .
I you know you impacted me aswell.
I remember when I was makingthe decision to leave Twitter.
It was a short period of time,I mean.
I had everything at Twitter.
I had a great manager, I had agreat team.
I loved working with our team.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
And I was there.
I was there and I startedthrowing it out there, Like you
know, Facebook opportunity cameabout and I started throwing it
out there.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
like you know, uh, facebook, uh, opportunity came
about and I was like, am Ireally contemplating this?
And Bobby was like you know,put it out there, and if it's
something that is going to makeit happen, it's going to happen.
And I put it out there and itdid happen.
And it was up to you know,really, bobby.
Now it wasn't ended up beingthe the, the right move.
Probably.
You know, I don't know, I mean,you know everything.
(23:30):
I should I have stayed atTwitter, so that's kind of where
my career things.
I started to move a little bitmore often than I wanted to.
And I have absolutely noregrets in life.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
I, I took a journey, I took a chance and I took an
opportunity and I becameaggressive in my, in my um, in
my, in my job, in my career.
Yeah, I wanted to really fightfor that next role and that next
opportunity and and it justseemed like you know, social
media was really big at thattime and you know I did make
that move to Facebook and and,uh, you know, things fell in
place that I ended up having toleave and then going to another
(24:02):
company and another company andjust you know, unfortunately,
the last several years I did hoparound a little bit, but again,
I have absolutely no regretsbecause every single company I
went to has taught me andlearned me a whole new skill set
that I could apply to the nextone.
I mean at Facebook.
You know what we built.
We built an inventory system inour tools.
That was mocking Supply Bird.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Same concept.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
We did it for network equipment.
I worked on the network side ofthe business and we wanted
somewhere where they do the PO.
They placed a PO Again.
Facebook didn't want to dotheir own.
They didn't want to buy tools,Correct, correct they wanted to
build their own tools.
So that's what we did and I'mnot sure if they're still using
it until today.
Maybe they have progressed overthere, because now they have a
whole different department.
But back then, you know, we tomy current status.
I'm at Airtable now andAirtable is great.
(25:00):
I never used Airtable before.
We actually had it at aprevious company and we didn't
use it the way that we shouldhave been using it.
I kind of used it as a Excelsheet, unfortunately, and I
didn't even know thecapabilities.
Now, working at Airtable, I'mstarting to help build things
and I'm a software engineer thewhole point of air table is low
code, no code right, yeah, yeahand it's basically allowing me
to build dashboards or buildautomation or things that you
(25:20):
know that assist my job and helpmy my business stakeholders
yeahto get their job done and it's a
great way of doing that andrunning your business.
So you build these apps up andI'm learning so much.
My my manager's manager.
She knows a lot about air table.
She's been there forever andit's a great way of doing that
and running your business.
So you build these apps up andI'm learning so much.
My um, my manager's manager.
She knows a lot about air table.
She's been there forever andand she's teaching me a lot and
I'm, you know, I'm learning fromthe source and it's another
(25:41):
resource that I have.
Now that's coming in and andthat's what the great
opportunity for me is.
That's why every companypresented a new opportunity for
me.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, amazing, oh, big shout out to you, peter.
And the cool thing that I thinkand I hope the audience heard
this is that, uh, going from onecompany to the next, you're
going to be taking the skillthat you learned from the other
company to the new company.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, you know, when you go to
college you're going to learnthe basics.
You're going to learn thefoundation You're going to.
It's going to get you in thedoor these days.
I recommend kids or youngpeople that want to get into
tech.
They're going to have to have adegree.
It's just so hard to not get adegree.
I mean, you could try the waythat I did, but it took me a
long time to get where I wantedto be you know, and it took some
(26:41):
pushing and some you know andsome hustle.
Yeah, yeah, I mean some grit.
You know I had to take a stepback to move forward.
I had to you, yeah, yeah, again, absolutely no regrets.
I learned a lot and everyposition or every place that
I've gone I've learned to helpme scale in the new role, and
that's all what it's about.
And so I mean, if you want to,you should get a degree.
(27:03):
I tell my niece and nephew allthe time you have to go out and
get a degree nowadays becauseit's so competitive and it's so
hard.
It's not even going to get youin the door.
If I was, I was to try to getmy position at cisco, the sales
and operations planning manager.
That I was doing.
I needed a master's degree forthat I wouldn't have been able
to get my own job yeah if itwasn't for me building myself up
yeah, in the ranks yeah so youknow, that's kind of where it's
(27:23):
at sometimes, and and at leastif you get that foundation, you
don't have to build yourself upto the ranks.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
It'll get you at least somewhere, somewhere and
then you could go from therehigher up, you know, yeah, but
but I also, uh, uh, definitelyfeel like, uh, it just requires
a different type of person to totake the scenic route right.
Um, because I know for you,like you, you had to be on the
grind.
You had to be eye open anddefinitely willing to make
transition, to make moves likehow, how much value was that for
(27:48):
you during your journey I meanit, it was huge, right.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
I mean, along the way , like I could have progressed
and stayed.
You know, if I stayed with thesame company continue moving up.
It would have been a slowprogression, but it would have
got me at a higher role, butI've learned that, you know,
it's not always about being adirector or being a VP.
Um, there's so many roles thatare high impact roles and, uh,
(28:11):
even high paid roles that, um,that have as much responsibility
or even more responsibilitywithout building it with a team,
because you're trying toinfluence others to do what you
need to get done.
And it's harder sometimes.
And that's what I love.
You know.
It's not about like I want tohave a director of, you know, 50
people reporting to me.
I mean, yeah, sure, I meanwould I like to have that
(28:36):
opportunity eventually, Maybe.
Yeah, I've managed people, I'vedone that.
But I've taken a step back andsaid you know what I think I'm
better at, you know, reallydriving initiatives and projects
that are really more impactful.
And that's sometimes.
You know, sometimes middlemanagers are.
It's a hard role and, you know,sometimes they're the first to
go, you know, unfortunately, andso you've got to show value and
that's what I'm trying to dohere at Airtable.
I didn't go in for a fancy job.
(28:57):
We're a very small procurementorganization.
I followed my manager over,which is another great manager.
I've had some really greatmanagers along the way and yeah,
I mean shout out to him, and sobasically, I followed him over
and we're working on some goodstuff.
We're building procurement.
We're, you know, we're prettymuch starting it from scratch
and building it out and growingthe company and supporting the
(29:17):
company.
So, you know, and we're usingAirtable to do it without the
software engineer.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
We don't build our own data centers over there,
right yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:28):
You know it's.
So we got to evolve and movearound to what it is and it's
SaaS products and it's a lot ofSaaS tools and marketing and to
go to market and being able toprocure tools for those teams
are a whole different newballpark for us.
Facts.
You know, I was always ahardware guy.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I knew hardware very well.
Software took a long time forme to learn, like knowing what
Databricks does or what AWS does, and you know all these things,
like you know what the cloud isand everything I mean.
Obviously we're at.
You know data center companies,but the services that AWS
provides, they have names forthem.
Correct, different than whatwe're doing internally, right,
(30:03):
so it's knowing about theservice and you know how to
negotiate a you know a complexcloud deal.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Multi-million dollar deals.
Multi-million, multi-year clouddeals.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Those are huge and those are high impactful.
I mean they go right to the CEOright.
So it's not, like you know,paper dollars, it's real dollars
that's making impact on it.
So when you save it, you saveit.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Man.
The thing that that I'm takingaway from this is is is one gym
that I'm definitely hit.
The gym mark for.
This is Peter has had greatmanagers.
That has basically given himthe opportunity to continue to
ascend right, and we talkedabout the value of networking
and maintaining thoserelationships.
But also, when you have greatmanagers like our previous guest
(30:42):
, patrick Newman Big shout outto Patrick Newman what's up
player.
And definitely the advice thathe given about being a mentor
and a leader in the organizationis being those resources for
people that want to climb Right.
But then also, as you'reclimbing, you're giving back too
and you can see the valuebehind it.
So I really do appreciate youshouting that out.
And then the other thing that Ithink sometimes you don't stand
(31:05):
on enough Peter is Peter islike multimillion dollar, like
when he looks at spreadsheetsit's not thousands of dollars,
it's hundreds of not evenhundreds of thousands millions
of dollars of assets anddecisions that he's helped
support making.
And then, obviously, this isdata that you give into your
executive team.
So, it's like when, when you'reon your journey in tech, it
(31:25):
could be broad right.
You're on the business side oftech and you are financially
supporting the decisions thatare making based on the data
that you're able to present, andnow that you're doing no coding
stuff, I'm so excited aboutthis, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I mean it's evolving.
I mean things are evolving.
Now the big thing is AI.
You know I'm not trying to jumpon the AI bandwagon here, but
Airtable right now is is huge onai.
We use ai in our tools.
We just launched a big aiinitiative and and uh, I mean if
you look it up on air table andit uses all the major uh, um,
(31:58):
you know uh, open iis, chat, gbt, uh, anthropics, cloud and you
know the different.
You could choose which type ofuh ai you want to use in the
tool itself.
Yeah, which is amazing.
So it's integrating it.
It's integrating it, it'sevolving and, like you said, you
could tell it what to do andit'll figure it out for you and
kind of hit the baseline, andthen that's how you get going,
(32:19):
Instead of you trying to do theautomation and the building.
You just type in a few clicks.
You just got to have the good.
What do they call it?
The prompt, the prompt yes, soyou've got to have a good prompt
.
I heard that's a new job now.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Yeah, prompt engineering, right, Can you
believe that I was like, oh myGod, look at that.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I would have never thought of that a few years ago,
right, right.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
So you know it's amazing and you just tell it
what to do and the better youget at telling it what to do.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I took my first coding class a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
What year.
I'm not even going to say whatlanguage it was, but the fact
that I sat down in the class andthe teacher said write down how
many steps it will take to makea peanut butter and jelly
sandwich.
When I was done in like fiveminutes and I put five sentences
down and everybody else waslike drilling it down, I
realized I'm just not intocoding.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Because you've got to get down deep like that, right,
you've got to get into thatlevel, right.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I mean, with these prompts now you don't have to
get into too much level, butenough to describe it, to get it
to do what you want and thenyou evolve it.
So it's kind of like high-levelcoding kind of, but it's so
much easier to use and it's andit's you know it's.
It's not about replacing jobs.
I mean, I, you know AI peopleget a lot of scared and yeah,
obviously, software engineers.
It's going to do a lot of thebeginning work, but it's going
(33:36):
to change the way the jobs areand what jobs are out there.
So, again, if you're notevolving like I have throughout
my career not to say that youknow that's the only way to go,
but you've got to evolve, you'vegot to move where the
technology is moving and if youstay in tech and you don't
evolve, you're going to be leftbehind.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Oh man, that's a gem right there.
Thank you so much for that,peter, and I think you hit that
thing a few times.
You dropped like three, fourgems in one comment.
That's why you why do you allthink I hung out with Peter all
the time?
Because he's dropping in them.
I'm right there picking them up, right next to him, me and
Bobby, we both love the tech, welove the hustle we love it a
(34:13):
lot I mean, like I said, I don'thave any regrets in life.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Could I have gone a different road on a different
crossroad?
Yeah, but I mean I got where Iam from the grit and the grind
and learning and evolving andbuilding relationships and just
getting it done, and it's notjust getting the right manager.
I mean when I interview andwhen I find people, I interview
them too right.
And that's another thing thatyoung people don't realize is
(34:38):
that it's not only an interviewfor them to be interested in you
, it's an interview for you tobe interested in them, and I've
done a lot of interviews, trustme, and so I mean it's really,
you know, an opportunity for youto know whether that's the
right place to go to.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Roger that, roger that.
That's some really goodinsights there, and I think that
the thing that I'm reallytaking away from this is number
one skill set wise is that youalways got to keep learning, you
always got to keep iteratingthe old days and the old
programming languages.
They're not even here, no moreright you got to be moving
forward.
Number two is not being afraidof this tool, this new tool
(35:11):
called ai, which, you are right,language is becoming a new
programming language.
Um, but the the cool thing thatI think, um, uh, especially for
us old heads, is that we haveso much experience that we can
describe things with moredetails that a younger engineer
or someone new don't have orknow, right, um, and then for me
, like the, the third thing ingeneral is like that grit, that
(35:32):
hustle, that mindset that youhave to have and not have any
regrets, just know that it's apart of the path for you to get
to where you got to go, embraceit and keep moving forward.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
That's what's up, Peter.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Peter's, my guy bro, and this is how we used to chill
every day, go to lunch.
Obviously we used to have funat the office, some good times,
but definitely these type ofconversations are those that
were really foundational for meas I continue to iterate, so in
terms of like Airtable, which Ilike the product, I really do.
(36:03):
It's like one of my preferreddatabase services that I like to
use when I'm recommendingbecause, it just has a very
easier interface and not toomuch barrier for you to kind of
understand what's going on.
And you were saying that you'redoing some no coding stuff.
So are you building likeapplications similar to like
Supply Bird type things, or areyou doing more simpler, smaller
pieces?
Speaker 1 (36:22):
It pertains more to the procurement process.
You know, like you could haveit read contracts.
You could basically have itfeed in the contract, point out
certain things in the contractusing AI and say you know
where's the payment terms?
How much is the?
What is the start and end datesof these terms?
Are there renewal clauses inthese terms?
(36:43):
You know there's specifics interms of contracts that we want
to look at to make sure thatthey're in the benefit of the
company, right?
And so, instead of me searchingthrough 100 pages, you can use
AI and Airtable to basicallypull that information in,
summarize it for you and then dowhat you want.
And so, instead of me buildinga software to do it, I build an
app in Airtable and use the AIcapabilities to help build that.
(37:07):
I mean, there's so many thingsthat I think it just opens the
door up for that, and I'mlearning more about the tool for
me to learn more how I can makeit more efficient with a
business that I'm in.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Man, you're going to be air table spokesperson soon
Sponsored by.
It's a great tool.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
I mean I think the people that use it and learn how
to use it and know how it works, they love it.
Use it and learn how to use itand know how it works, they love
it.
So it's yeah, I mean I standbehind the companies that I
worked at.
I mean I've worked at somereally good high-tech companies
and you know they produce reallygood products.
There's really smart engineersthere that work there.
And like you, Bobby, I mean, oh, look at that.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I mean I'm not snubbing noses or anything I
mean you know your team.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We did a lot at Twitter.
I mean in the short period Iwas there, but you were there
for a lot longer than I was.
I mean, you guys handled it.
That's a nightmare to manageall those SKUs.
I mean when I left and I waslike wow, this is not normal
what we did over there, right,yeah, so I mean, but we had to
evolve the business.
You know Twitter was seasonalityright.
Yep, the World Cup, these bigevents that are happening
(38:13):
worldwide.
You know I remember saying likeNew Year's Eve was really big
in.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Japan.
Yeah, that was the biggestoutages we usually had was New
Year's Eve, so you know the bigwhale that came up and the
issues with the site coming down.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I think who broke the site Ella DeGeneres Yep coming
down.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
I think who broke the site?
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Ella DeGeneres when she spoke and we weren't ready
for it, I mean.
So we had to really do somegood things out there back then
to make sure that it gets done,to not have that happen again.
You know, it just stands forthe engineers that were there.
I mean, everybody was learningat that time.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I mean I'm not going to take all the credit, all of
the credit.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
but thank you, peter thank you, peter, thank you the
the fans out there listening,and I have not paid peter to see
any of this stuff.
This is coming from inside.
It was a whole thing, yeah fiasaudi carter.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yeah, yeah, robert, robert, pulley, robert is
traveling the world right now,uh, uh, nikhil, nikhil.
Uh uh, nakil ended up going touber.
Uh, faez went to uber, audie'sgone to from credit karma.
Uh, robert pulley, he'straveling the world now he's
taking some time off, um, and wewere the squad though we was
holding it down and then we hadgreat partners to work with,
which was really cool, because,uh, normally we we don't really
(39:24):
and like sit next to the peoplethat are ordering the supplies,
or the next uh, table that wasthere were the people that are
ordering the supplies, or thenext table that was there with
the people that were designingthe software, right, like that's
how close it was.
And then we had a really chill,you know, director at the time
too, right, so it definitelyallowed us to, you know, build a
better relationship so that wecould really create some really
cool stuff.
And those were like real, likeworld level type challenges that
(39:48):
I didn't even know exist untilI worked at a place like Twitter
.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I mean, every time I heard something that they wanted
us to figure out, we're like,oh my God, I don't know if
that's possible.
I mean you know that's whattech does.
I mean it evolves fast, itmoves fast.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
If anybody wants to break into tech, be ready to
move fast.
I've I've seen people come fromother companies.
They come from fintech or theycome from uh, you know, uh like
a, like a health company, or oruh pharmaceutical company.
They don't move as quick as wedo pharmaceutical.
It takes 10 years to to evolvea product.
It's a production and you knowwe're iterating as we go we're
(40:25):
deploying every hour almostliterally shout out to peter and
that crew out there doing bigthings.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yes, yes, sir.
And then big shout out to Yogi.
You mentioned Yogi.
I haven't seen Yogi in a minute.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yogi's great I still keep in touch with him on.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I just chat with him, is he?
Speaker 3 (40:40):
at.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
NVIDIA.
I think he's at Pure Storagenow.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Oh no, yeah, there was somebody else that went to N
.
I mean, we got friends maybe atevery single big tech company
you know, at least one person,and that's the other thing about
being out here.
So tell us about you know I know, being a native.
There's a lot of people cominginto the city and the reason why
we come over here is toexperience the tech experience,
(41:02):
and this is my alwaysrecommendation to my mentees is
like, if you're in tech and theopportunity presents itself,
come to San Francisco toexperience what it is to be here
, but you've been here since dayone, from like how has that
been?
Like seeing the evolution oftech from when you, when you,
were growing up, to where we arenow.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, I mean I didn't have to move anywhere to see it
.
I mean it was in my back door,it was in my backyard and yeah,
I'd say, you know, we have agreat community here of friends
and family that I did growing up.
I know a lot of people fromhigh school days, from grammar
school days, that I still see,that are still in the Bay Area,
and then I have my foundation onmy family, a lot of my family's
here.
My family is huge, right, andnot my direct family, they're
(41:40):
just my cousins and uncles andeverything yeah your community.
So the community is really bigand so we have a lot of contacts
.
You know, my dad owned grocerystores, so he knows a lot of
police officers, he knows a lotof firemen, he knows a lot of
people that worked in theMission District and the Potrero
Hill District, and I built thefoundation of building
relationships early on in life.
You know, working at a grocerystore helping my dad out, that's
(42:02):
how you become accustomed totalking to people and I had that
privilege to be able to do thatand that's what helped me later
on in life and to buildrelationships, because all you
did was talk at a grocery storeand you talk to customers and
you listen to their problems,they listen to your problems
sometimes and growing up in thatenvironment you also learn the
(42:24):
grit, the hustle, the grind.
I had to fill thoserefrigerators, make sure the
stock, make sure the papers wereout.
I had to wake up at six o'clockin the morning.
My dad said, that's the reasonwhy I didn't do it.
So I love my dad and everything, but you know me and him
working.
It was just we.
We saw different views.
Uh, yeah I was younger and I'mkind of glad because it helped
me pursue something else forsure and it got me where I
(42:47):
wanted to be today.
Speaker 3 (42:48):
So yeah, to be today.
So, yeah, big shout outs tothat, peter, big shout outs to
that.
That's what's up.
Well, we are coming close tothe end of our conversation.
My guy, I think we've beenreally running at it, for it
looks like 40, 40 minutes, 40plus minutes on the clock.
I told you it was going to be agreat conversation, but this is
an opportunity for you to givesome last words of advice, and
you've been giving gems andadvice from the beginning of the
conversation.
So if there is anything thatyou wanted to reiterate but also
(43:11):
just leave something impactful,this is your opportunity, peter
.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, I'd say you know people who want to break
into tech or even just anyanything in life.
You know it's all aboutbuilding relationships.
You know you have to go afterwhat you want and you said it to
me at Twitter put it out there,get it out there.
I remember specifically sittingdown on lunch telling me you
(43:35):
know, peter, put it out in theworld and let it find you, and
if it's the right thing to do,then just go after it.
And that just resonated with mea lot.
I mean, I appreciate that andI've followed that through and I
say you know, this is what Iwant.
You know, and this is my nextstep and this is what I'm going
to do and I get there.
I try to get there as much as Ican and I don't stop until I do
.
And so I built relationships, Ibuilt foundations, I've met
(43:59):
people, I've learned.
I'm on LinkedIn and really Itry to show off what I'm doing
but also help people learn.
I'm in different groups onthere showing people how to hail
no procurement, uh, addressingquestions and and really trying
to evolve.
And you know these aren't out inthe open they're in internal
groups that people don't knowabout so um, you know, and
(44:20):
you're building relationshipswhen you do that.
So when there's a position openfor something, or there's an
opportunity or something, youyou're people are aware.
Oh my god, that guy knew hisstuff so if you know something
and you have a good skill set,try to get there on those groups
, on LinkedIn or other means,and then build your network from
there and that's going to helpyou find something later on.
I honestly believe that.
(44:42):
I mean, you've got to make ithappen.
It's not going to come to you.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Facts, facts, wow, cue up the music D.
I don not going to come to you.
Facts, facts.
Wow, cue up the music d.
I don't know if y'all beenlistening, but there's a button
that says rewind.
Press the rewind button to goback.
We got triggers and signs.
What's the sound?
Beat d, all right.
There we go.
Whenever you heard that, thatmeans my guy, peter total, was
dropping some gems, I want tosay, first of all, thank you so
much, peter, for pulling up withbackstage with bobby d.
(45:07):
It wasn't that bad, was it?
I told you it's gonna be chill.
My guy, he was worried when hefirst came in and he seen the
setup he was like, oh snap,they're doing big things.
But as always, peter, I like tomake sure that the setting, the
mood, the environment isexactly what we need.
Um, and definitely want to sayI appreciate you pulling up, um
and definitely for your audience, thank y'all so much for tuning
in to Backstage with Bobby D.
(45:28):
We on our next stop to New YorkCity.
Yeah, we're pulling up back toNYC.
We're going to have another setof guests that pull up and, as
always, thank you all so muchfor tuning in my guy D Hustle.
What's going on?
Last words player.
Enjoy the rest of your day,roger, that I'll let you boy it.
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