#132 – Murillo’s journey on Levels’ software engineering team | Murillo Nicácio De Marães & Ben Grynol

Company culture is what makes or breaks most employees’ experiences. For Murillo Nicácio De Marães, one of Levels’ software engineers, our company culture is what drew him in. After getting introduced to Sam Corcos, CEO and Co-Founder, Murillo started contracting right away in early 2020 as one of the first developers at Levels and eventually began to work for us full time. In this episode, Levels’ Head of Growth Ben Grynol sat down with Murillo to talk about his move from Brazil to Portugal and why he loves Levels’ company culture.

06:42 – From contractor to employee

Murillo started working at Levels as a contractor, but he became so invested in the product and the company that he wanted to work with Levels full time.

Over that period of like six months that I was working as a contractor, I became really invested. And I remember this one ask Sam sent on an investor update, which had to do with product development books and things like that. And I replied, and immediately he just got me to a thread with David and Andrew, and now we’re talking about, “Oh yeah. Do you know this book? And what do you think about it?” And it was like I was really invested, but I think it was because I was seeing that feedback of that conversation wasn’t… I wasn’t talking into like this black hole. I was getting replies, and I was included in the conversation. And it felt like, okay, this is different. And at the same time, I also started using the product. And that was when things just came together, and I realized that even though I didn’t start out thinking I’m looking for my next thing, I sort of just found my next thing, because even though Levels was one of the clients I worked with in that period, I can tell you I just care that much. I wanted to get into it. And I thought about so much. And even my own projects, I saw myself putting my own projects aside to, oh yeah, no, but let’s work on this for Levels. So that’s when I realized this was, yeah, you know what? I’m not going to pretend I’m not interested.

09:57 – Finding a place to call home

As a remote worker, Murillo traveled all over the world. But he kept coming back to Lisbon, Portugal, over and over again.

I think it was less I’m in Brazil, I want to go to Portugal, and it was more I’m in Brazil, I’m mostly working remotely, and there’s not a lot holding me here, so I want to see the world. And so initially what I did was I would just travel around and stay in a place for three months or so. And it had everything to do with what do I want to do with my free time? So initially I just… I had this dream since I was very little of snowboarding. So it was like, okay, I want to learn how to snowboard. So I went to Argentina and just learned how to snowboard and just traveled around Argentina for a while. And then, oh, I want to learn how to surf. So I came to Portugal to learn how to surf. And in those travels, whenever I was in a place and I didn’t know where to go, I was like, no, I don’t know where to go now. Three months I have to be out of where I am, because most countries won’t allow you to stay there for more than three to six months. Just I have to be out of here. I don’t know where I want to go. I would just come back to Portugal, to Lisbon, and I’d just be here. And whenever I couldn’t be here, I was always counting down the days so I could come here. So after a while of that, it’s just the same story. It’s just like, you know what? I keep coming back to Lisbon. I really want to be in Lisbon. Let’s just do the jump. Let’s just get a visa, move there and make home.

12:29 – Family ties

While Murillo lives in Portugal now, he has a lot of family back home in Brazil. Even through the distance, he still feels connected and close with them.

It’s always going to be the people. My people are there, my friends, my family, my mom, my aunts. And I think it’s sort of uniquely… Or I don’t want to say uniquely Brazilian, but it’s very Brazilian, in that we have really large families, and families just that large extended family is just number one. So there is no chance of me saying I’m in Portugal now, and I’m not going back. There is no chance of that, just because my people are there. So I have to see my friends, my family, and all the people who are still there. So the last time we were back, me and my wife, we got married in Brazil just seven months ago. And yeah, just seeing everyone, moments like those sort of just highlight that these are my people, and it just feels like these moments are impossible without them. We could have gotten married here in some office or had a small party with some of our friends here, but it just wouldn’t feel the same without these people who have seen us, who have been with us, for all this time. Even throughout this distance, you go back, and you still feel connected, and it still feels the same. And it still feels just great to be next to them. And you remember all of those memories and all of the things you’ve built since you’ve been there.

15:53 – Home away from home

Murillo said that though he’s traveled to many places, he has always been able to find other Brazilian connections.

Here’s one of the very first things I learned about Brazilians. When I left outside of Brazil, it’s the one thing I learned about Brazilians. We’re everywhere. There’s no place in the world that’s not chock full of Brazilians. And so wherever you have a group of 10 or more Brazilians, there’s a Brazilian store, and there’s a Brazilian party. Yeah, so when it comes to food and culture and all those things that we get used to, you can find in most places and you can sort of end up building this home away from home. And yeah, we’re in industrious people like that. So it’s just that access is always there. It’s not going to be the people who are back there, but you’re going to find those people who share those same codes and who share the things you care about. I’m pretty sure that you can pick most countries in the world and there’s a samba party going on. There’s some samba playing there, I’ll bet you. And we’re very good at finding ourselves, finding each other. It’s something I noticed. Whenever I was out and about in the US, which was the first place I went after leaving Brazil for real, was you’re attuned. You’re walking around, it’s just, okay, wait. I hear Brazilian Portuguese, and oh yeah, those people are Brazilian right there. So it’s just we sort of have this capacity of just finding each other.

19:58 – Staying connected

Murillo said casual get-togethers called churrascos are very common in Brazil. It’s not a party, just a way to be together.

It’s almost like a day at the park. A day at the park is not a party. It’s just where you go with people you care about and just hang out. That’s our version of it. It’s just hanging out and just enjoying each other’s company and just, not to beat this comparison to death, but it’s like at a party you need to socialize. You go at a party, and if you’re just standing in a corner, that’s weird. But if you’re at a churrasco, you can just sit there and just have your beer and like, yeah, just be… Because it’s this long, drawn-out event that you do every Sunday. Now think about this. On most Sundays, you’re seeing the same people over and over. There is no pressure to make conversation, because there’s just no conversation that’s going to fill all those days in the year. So it’s just that. It’s just being together and enjoying ourselves and listening to music if the music is good. If it’s not, just do something else. So there’s that think about the party without those social pressures. And again, I feel like I’m not doing it justice, just because it’s better experienced than explained for sure.

23:53 – Take a break

Levels takes a break every quarter, which allows employees to come back to work with fresh eyes and a new perspective.

We have this policy of taking a break every quarter, and I don’t think I’ve ever come back to work at the same company, because whenever I take a break, I come back and things are different. And it feels like we’re at a new level and we have new priorities and we try to execute on different things. Personally, I really like that, because I’m one of those people who get bored really easily. And it has happened many times in my career where it’s just like, well, I’m doing the same thing today that I was doing when I joined this company like a year or two ago. We’ve talked about growing, but the work hasn’t changed. The team, maybe we have like two or three new people, but my responsibilities are the same. At Levels, it feels like my responsibilities today are wildly different than even when I joined officially. And even like six months after I joined officially, I already had different responsibilities. It just felt like a different team working together. And many of those times it’s just like we have that one person joining the team, and that just changes things. And it just feels like, whoa, okay, now we’re working at a different level.

31:46 – The importance of specialty training

Company-wide onboarding is a great practice, but you also need to have some onboarding sessions for different sectors or specialties who will have specific questions and needs.

We had a really good company-wide onboarding that Miz put together, but we didn’t have anything engineering specific. And the thinking there that went through my head was like we should probably have something for engineers joining, because I’m pretty sure that these questions I’m asking would be the same questions that the next person joining are going to ask. These are natural questions, and it’s just I’m in Portugal, and everyone is mostly US time. So it’s just I can’t have that immediate response of just, “Oh, how do I do this? Can we jump on a call so you can walk me through this?”

32:27 – Document everything

While documentation takes some work upfront, it saves you a lot of time on the back end because you don’t have to redo or relearn the same work over again.

Documenting these things then becomes really valuable, because if I had that document, then I wouldn’t have to ask these questions. And even if I don’t think of all the questions that can be asked in this situation, people are going through this after me. Whatever questions they may have, we can append, and we can build upon this. So that’s when we started the engineering onboarding. And again, so this is me, this radical person who hates bureaucracy and process. It’s just this now, let’s get a doc together. But then we have these things that we want to improve, but we never really get time to do it. Well, we should probably get on a call and talk about it so we can find time to improve upon these things and discuss these common challenges we’re all facing. And I think it’s very much about going through the pain of learning and then realizing, yes, if we do this, yeah, documenting your code adds some overhead, but removes so much extra work that you have to do on the other end that it becomes very clear you would want to do it, because the first time you come back to code that’s well-documented and you just read that documentation

34:35 – The value of being proactive

Documenting processes and codes ahead of time allows other people to see your work, which makes tasks go much faster.

The first time where I was developing a feature where I had to go into the chart, I was just like, oh my. This is going to take so long. This is going to be so painful. I can’t believe this. But yeah, I’m the person who loves challenging myself, so I’m going to go in. Then I’m going to dig into that code, and I’m going to figure it out. And I get to the code, and everything is documented. And every parameter he used, he documents, and every little procedure he went through while building that is just like, okay, this is super easy. I just go here and, oh, look, he pointed out the place. And now I understand this so much better, and I have the context on why things were built this way. And all of that digging, all that toil that I expected to go through just isn’t there. And immediately you go, oh, okay, so that’s why we do this. I didn’t have to bring Justin into a call and like, “Hey, can you explain this to me?” Which would’ve been super understandable, because not only did he build the really complicated code. It’s understandable that after building all that, he wouldn’t, like, “I just don’t have the brain or the patience or the mindset to just go back and document all of this.” But, well, he did. So now I don’t need to bug him about it. The thing I thought was going to take like two weeks just to figure out, no, I can do it in a couple of days, and it’s fine. And then that value is very clear. It’s very obvious immediately.

Transcript

Murillo (00:06):

One of the very first things I learned about Brazilians when I left outside of Brazil, we’re everywhere. There is no place in the world that’s not chock full of Brazilians. You have a group of 10 or more Brazilians. There’s a Brazilian store. And there’s a Brazilian party. So yeah, when it comes to food and culture and all those things that we get used to, you can find in most places, so you sort of end up building this home away from home.

Ben Grynol (00:45):

I’m Ben Grynol, part of the early startup team here at Levels. We’re building tech that helps people to understand their metabolic health, and this is your front row seat to everything we do. This is A Whole New Level.

Ben Grynol (01:11):

No matter where you go in the world, there’s always one place that everyone will think of as their home, that being the place that maybe they’ve got fond memories of, or the place where they grew up. There’s something about home that always draws you back. Well, when you live in different locations and when you’ve traveled around the world, sometimes it’s a matter of finding things that feel like home outside of that place. And so for Murillo, one of the developers on our software team, Murillo has been part of Levels since early 2020, who was one of the first developers working on the product. Initially, he started out as a contractor, but he ended up coming on full-time in March of 2021. Murillo’s originally from Brazil, but he spent time outside of Brazil traveling the world, getting exposed to different tech companies. And now he lives in Lisbon. Murillo always seems to find home wherever he goes, home being a group of Brazilians. He knows where they are. He knows where to find them. And so when he finds this connection, it always feels like home anywhere he goes. It was a great conversation. It was very much a team member spotlight, and we talked about everything related to software development at Levels, some of the things around documentation, and even how he finds home away from home. No need to wait. Here’s the conversation with Murillo.

Ben Grynol (02:35):

So we should rewind all the way back. I mean, you’ve got some of the most tenure with the company, as far as you would’ve been working as an eng when… I mean, you’re in the first five, granted, from a contract basis.

Murillo (02:49):

Yeah.

Ben Grynol (02:49):

Before you came on board full-time, but you’ve been working with Levels for a really, really long time. So why don’t we rewind all the way back to when you started, when that was, what it looked like, and take it from there?

Murillo (02:59):

So I started, I think it was, what?

Ben Grynol (03:04):

2020? Yeah.

Murillo (03:06):

Yeah. I had just left my last company, which I had worked for, I think, two to three years with them. And at the end there, I was just like, okay, I was really burnt out when I left that company. And I just wanted to, one, take a break, and two, see if I just could find another way of relating to my job, which at the time felt like overwhelming. I was easily overwhelmed with my job, because I care. I feel like I still do. I care a lot, and that tends to, yeah just build up, build up, build up. So it’s just like that kind of time usually.

Murillo (03:43):

So I wasn’t looking to find a new client or a new position or any of that. I was really just looking to do like the minimum amount of contract work just to pay my bills and sort of do that exploration work of seeing what else I can do, maybe developing new skills, seeing if there was anything else I was interested in. And so that’s when the CEO of my previous company introduced me to Sam. And then we had a quick conversation. I think Sam shot me an email, like, “Yeah, so we should jump on a call and talk about what it is that I need you to do,” because he was looking for someone to fix an animation on the app, and the CEO of the previous company was like, “Oh yeah, Murillo really knows animations. So you should talk to him.”

Murillo (04:34):

Yeah, so Sam shot me an email and was like, “Oh yeah, let’s have a call,” and I responded with this really trying to put out this air of professionalism and just like, “Oh yeah. Here’s my calendar link. Just schedule some time. And he was like, “No, I was thinking right now. Let’s just jump on a call.” “Okay. Let’s do it.” And then we jumped on a call, and he explained what he needed me to do, and it was pretty simple work. It looked really simple, so I just got started on it. And that’s when Sam started sending me links related to the company, things like investor updates and just things like that. And the simple work sort of dragged on for a couple of weeks, because it wasn’t as simple as I initially thought it was. But at the same time, I was keeping communication mostly with Sam and John, who was the main mobile engineer. So they could see the progress that I was making, and they could see the thing that I was solving was really hard, was a really tough problem.

Murillo (05:38):

And it got to this point where I really wanted to finish it to send it over. And they were like, “Yeah, you’ve been working on this for a long time.” I remember Sam sent me an email, like, “Can we pay you now? Because you’ve been working on this for a while.” I was like, “No, I really want to finish this before that.” And then I delivered the project, and after that, they just kept sending me work, and I kept taking it. And the thing is now I look at it, it feels like this really… They were winning me over, in the sense that they kept sending me work, and not only was tough work, was challenging work, but the bar was really high. I would send them initial versions of the work that I was doing, and John would be like, “Oh yeah, this is good, but how about we do it like this so it’s better.” I said, “Okay. Let’s do it like that.” And then I started talking to David, and whenever David had some work, he would send it my way. And then at the same time, Sam was sending me updates on the company.

Murillo (06:41):

And over that period of like six months that I was working as a contractor, I became really invested. And I remember this one ask Sam sent on like a investor update, which had to do with product development books and things like that. And I replied, and immediately he just got me to a thread with David and Andrew, and now we’re talking about, “Oh yeah. Do you know this book? And what do you think about it?” And it was like I was really invested, but I think it was because I was seeing that feedback of that conversation wasn’t… I wasn’t talking into like this black hole. I was getting like this, this. I was getting replies, and I was included in the conversation. And it felt like, okay, this is different. And at the same time, I also started using the product. And that was when sort of things just came together, and I realized that even though I didn’t start out thinking I’m looking for my next thing, I sort of just found my next thing, because even though Levels was one of the clients I worked with in that period, I can tell you I just care that much. I wanted to get into it. And I thought about so much. And even my own projects, I saw myself putting my own projects aside to, oh yeah, no, but let’s work on this for Levels.

Murillo (08:13):

So that’s when I realized this was, yeah, you know what? I’m not going to pretend I’m not interested. So I shot Sam an email, said, “You know what? If you’re interested, I’d love to join,” and went through the process of interviewing with Andrew and meeting the entire team, and yeah.

Ben Grynol (08:31):

You were in Portugal this whole time?

Murillo (08:34):

Yeah.

Ben Grynol (08:36):

We have to paint the picture. You’re originally from Brazil-

Murillo (08:41):

Brazil. Yes.

Ben Grynol (08:42):

And you moved to Portugal a couple of years ago, was it?

Murillo (08:46):

So I’m six months away from closing out five years. I know that because that’s meaningful for legal reasons. So six months away from that five-year mark.

Ben Grynol (08:58):

And so were you working remotely in Portugal as a-

Murillo (09:02):

Yeah.

Ben Grynol (09:02):

An engineer?

Murillo (09:03):

Yeah. No, this whole time, I think my whole career, I was working remotely, just because, well, I’m from Brazil, and I started working as a software engineer in Brazil. And it’s just because of my English and because of my access to the American market, I just had better access to better projects, to better pay and all that. So I always worked remotely. So it was always like I’m looking for either clients in the US or the UK. It was always the case, yeah.

Ben Grynol (09:40):

And so when you made that move, when you decided to move from Brazil to Portugal, what was the catalyst for that change? What led you down the path? Because I’d imagine that life in Brazil as an engineer would be much different than the life that you have built in Portugal.

Murillo (09:56):

Definitely. I think it was less I’m in Brazil, I want to go to Portugal, and it was more I’m in Brazil, I’m mostly working remotely, and there’s not a lot holding me here, so I want to see the world. And so initially what I did was I would just travel around and stay in a place for three months or so. And it had everything to do with what do I want to do with my free time? So initially I just… I had this dream since I was very little of snowboarding. So it was like, okay, I want to learn how to snowboard. So I went to Argentina and just learned how to snowboard and just traveled around Argentina for a while. And then, oh, I want to learn how to surf. So I came to Portugal to learn how to surf. And in those travels, whenever I was in a place and I didn’t know where to go, I was like, no, I don’t know where to go now. Three months I have to be out of where I am, because most countries won’t allow you to stay there for more than three to six months. Just I have to be out of here. I don’t know where I want to go. I would just come back to Portugal, to Lisbon, and I’d just be here.

Murillo (11:11):

And whenever I couldn’t be here, I was always counting down the days so I could come here. So after a while of that, it’s just the same story. It’s just like, you know what? I keep coming back to Lisbon. I really want to be in Lisbon. Let’s just do the jump. Let’s just get a visa, move there and make home. So that’s kind of how I ended up here. So yeah, life here is very different than any life I could imagine having where I’m from. And yeah, life’s been good to me for sure.

Ben Grynol (11:44):

But you still get time to go back to Brazil by the sounds of it. And there’s-

Murillo (11:48):

Yeah.

Ben Grynol (11:48):

Probably always something that pulls any person back to their mental model of home. There’s always going to be where you live and what you consider to… In your mind… Everyone sort of knows this… it’s like a feeling this sense of being home.

Murillo (12:03):

Definitely.

Ben Grynol (12:04):

That can’t be replaced. No matter where you go in the world, you can feel comfortable, you can love the environment you’re in, but there’s something that anytime people go back, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a big city that they grew up in or a town of 300 people, a village, right?

Murillo (12:19):

Yeah.

Ben Grynol (12:19):

You feel this connection. And so it sounds like you still have that and you still make time to go back to Brazil. So what is it that draws you back there, given that the lifestyle is so different?

Murillo (12:29):

Well, it’s the people. It’s always going to be the people. My people are there, my friends, my family, my mom, my aunts. And I think it’s sort of uniquely… Or I don’t want to say uniquely Brazilian, but it’s very Brazilian, in that we have really large families, and families just that large extended family is just number one. So there is no chance of me saying I’m in Portugal now, and I’m not going back. There is no chance of that, just because my people are there. So I have to see my friends, my family, and all the people who are still there. So the last time we were back, me and my wife, we got married in Brazil just seven months ago. And yeah, just seeing everyone, moments like those sort of just highlight that these are my people, and it just feels like these moments are impossible without them. We could have gotten married here in some office or had a small party with some of our friends here, but it just wouldn’t feel the same without these people who have seen us, who have been with us, for all this time. Even throughout this distance, you go back, and you still feel connected, and it still feels the same. And it still feels just great to be next to them. And you remember all of those memories and all of the things you’ve built since you’ve been there.

Murillo (14:03):

And there’s also that. There’s also the point of how life moves, how life changes. It feels like life is always changing and it’s always evolving. And then when you’re back there, it feels like, oh no, but this core, this part, this very important part, this is still here, and this is solid. This doesn’t change. This care, this feeling that you have for these people, this doesn’t change. It’s almost like this incredible feeling of safety that lets you do all these crazy daring things outside of there, because you always have that place of safety to come back to.

Ben Grynol (14:43):

Yeah. It sounds like it’s the food and the music and the culture, the lifestyle, all these things that ground you, because things might evolve architecturally. Things might evolve from an industry and an economic standpoint, but there are certain things that are relatively static, that being the food, food that you grew up with. Culturally things are so different. And so what is it that you do? So you’re remote and you’re living away from all of these things that ground you, that being the people that you care about in your circle of friends and family, that being the food. Some of those things get harder to replace because there’s no IRL. There’s no in real life version in Portugal. You can’t just teleport somebody over. But what is it that you do? A lot of it’s connected to how we operate as a team. We’re remote. We’re entirely remote, and so you have to find ways to be intentional about these things that give you fulfillment or meaning. What is it that you do with food, culture, music, all these things, so that you still feel being in Lisbon is as much of a home as it can be outside of Brazil?

Murillo (15:53):

So here’s one of the very first things I learned about Brazilians. When I left outside of Brazil, it’s the one thing I learned about Brazilians. We’re everywhere. There’s no place in the world that’s not chock full of Brazilians. And so wherever you have a group of 10 or more Brazilians, there’s a Brazilian store, and there’s a Brazilian party. Yeah, so when it comes to food and culture and all those things that we get used to, you can find in most places and you can sort of end up building this home away from home. And yeah, we’re in industrious people like that. So it’s just that access is always there. It’s not going to be the people who are back there, but you’re going to find those people who share those same codes and who share the things you care about.

Murillo (16:49):

I’m pretty sure that you can pick most countries in the world and there’s a samba party going on. There’s some samba playing there, I’ll bet you. And we’re very good at finding ourselves, finding each other. It’s something I noticed. Whenever I was out and about in the US, which was the first place I went after leaving Brazil for real, was you’re attuned. You’re walking around, it’s just, okay, wait. I hear Brazilian Portuguese, and oh yeah, those people are Brazilian right there. So it’s just we sort of have this capacity of just finding each other.

Ben Grynol (17:26):

Yeah, Brazilians congregate. That is without a doubt. You see a soccer ball, and there’s probably 10 of them around. What’s with this, though? So this is something that I noticed when we brought on many devs at Skip and we brought them from Brazil, and they moved here with their families, and some of them knew each other before, and some of them didn’t know, but there was still like a centralized place where it was relatively easy to come together, because everyone’s like, hey, we’re here in this building, this room, with this team. So it’s easy enough to meet them, but the funny thing was how important the sense of grilling meat was, this thing that you did together. And they loved it. It was like a celebration of life. I’d never experienced anything like it before, where the idea of grilling meat together was this… I don’t want to oversell it, but this like sacred pastime where it would go on for hours and hours, like 12 hours straight of grilling meat and just sort of being together. And I was like this is a very interesting thing, because it’s not transactional. It is very much this we’re here together and let’s be present. So go into that, because I thought that was one of the coolest things, being an outsider in North America and seeing this culture come into this world that we had around us.

Murillo (18:48):

I think it has to do a lot with us finding out that translations for things aren’t really translations. So [foreign language 00:18:57], the way you’d say that in English is just a barbecue, but they’re not the same thing, in that, at least in Brazil, a [foreign language 00:19:08], it’s not a party. It’s just people getting together and bringing meat, and there’s beer there and families there. And it’s just a group of people there, and it’s this day-long event. And it’s just a big part of what I think keeps us together, is that you need an excuse for a party. You need a reason to have a party, but you don’t need a reason to have [foreign language 00:19:35]. You just need meat and charcoal, and you have a [foreign language 00:19:40], and let’s just do it. And that’s a lot to do with, just like you said, just being together and just. I’m sort of introverted, so I’m not big into parties, but a [foreign language 00:19:56] is more just how you chill.

Murillo (19:58):

It’s almost like a day at the park. A day at the park is not a party. It’s just where you go with people you care about and just hang out. That’s our version of it. It’s just hanging out and just enjoying each other’s company and just, not to beat this comparison to death, but it’s like at a party you need to socialize. You go at a party, and if you’re just standing in a corner, that’s weird. But if you’re at a [foreign language 00:20:29], you can just sit there and just have your beer and like, yeah, just be… Because it’s this long, drawn-out event that you do every Sunday. Now think about this. On most Sundays, you’re seeing the same people over and over. There is no pressure to make conversation, because there’s just no conversation that’s going to fill all those days in the year. So it’s just that. It’s just being together and enjoying ourselves and listening to music if the music is good. If it’s not, just do something else. So there’s that think about the party without those social pressures. And again, I feel like I’m not doing it justice, just because it’s better experienced than explained for sure.

Ben Grynol (21:13):

By the sound of it, sort of the differences, parties have this association with them that they’re formal. You invite people to a party, but from what I observed… And again, it’s like-

Murillo (21:23):

You show up to the house.

Ben Grynol (21:25):

Yeah, very small samples, that it’s like no one’s invited because everyone is, and it’s just like you show up or you don’t. It’s a lot more informal. Whereas a party, you somewhat invite people, like you are invited to this party. And so the people that are invited feel this need to go because they’re invited. Whereas the opposite is, “Hey, we’re going to be doing this thing on Sunday.” That’s it. And it’s like anyone can show up. It’s like really one of those things. It’s a lot less formal, but yeah, it just felt very positive in it being this celebration of life without being a formal celebration. No one said, “Hey, we’re here celebrating,” but that’s really what it feels like, or it felt like.

Murillo (22:07):

No. Yeah. And that’s what it is. And that’s where it starts too. It’s just families that… Usually it’s the Sunday lunch they’d go to, but it’s just the day. Think about it like that’s how I experienced it. When we were really young, we would go to church, and then right after we’d go have lunch at my grandpa’s house. And most of the days, the Sunday lunch was a [foreign language 00:22:39]. So we would just be there. And I think that’s sort of how this happens is just we are here together as a family. Let’s just do it. And then when you grow up and you do it with your friends, you already understand that code of like we don’t really need a reason to do this. It’s just something we do.

Ben Grynol (22:57):

Yeah. It gives you that sense of balance.

Murillo (22:59):

For sure.

Ben Grynol (23:00):

So we’ve grown immensely. So when you started June of ’20 and came on, yeah, I guess it was full-time March of ’21… June of ’20, I guess, really it was you and John at that time that were working on eng work, especially, definitely mobile work. It was definitely the two of you, but now we’re at over 50 people, and engineers make up roughly half of the team. And so what has it been like to see this evolution from a contractor that was getting sent the odd investor update and the odd ask of, we’ll call it task work, to coming on full-time and even from roughly a year ago until now? Just what has it felt like to go through that evolution as we’ve grown as a team and how eng has grown as a function within the team?

Murillo (23:50):

Sort of to answer this in an indirect way, we have this policy of like taking break every quarter, and I don’t think I’ve ever come back to work at the same company, because it’s like whenever I take a break, I come back, and things are different. And it feels like we’re at a new level and we have new priorities and we try to execute on different things. Personally, I really like that, because I’m one of those people who get bored really easily. And it has happened many times in my career where it’s just like, well, I’m doing the same thing today that I was doing when I joined this company like a year or two ago. We’ve talked about growing, but the work hasn’t changed. The team, maybe we have like two or three new people, but my responsibilities are the same. At Levels, it feels like my responsibilities today are wildly different than even when I joined officially. And even like six months after I joined officially, I already had different responsibilities. It just felt like a different team working together.

Murillo (24:59):

And many of those times it’s just like we have that one person joining the team, and that just changes things. And it just feels like, whoa, okay, now we’re working at a different level. I think when Alan joined, it felt a lot like that. When Justin joined, it felt a lot like that. These people that come in and it’s just like, oh, okay, so now we’re at a new level because this is possible now. We can do this. And we have this person who’s really pushing us towards that. For myself, I think I’ve led some projects in this time and had to think about things from different lens than I would’ve had if my role was just implementing code, which is it’s very exciting, because you get to sort of flex this entire new muscle they didn’t even know you had. The first time you do it, it feels like, oh, I have no idea what I’m doing, but then there are people around you that are like, “Okay, if you need help, there’s help available.”

Murillo (26:03):

And then just working with people throughout this experience as well, I remember working as the eng stakeholder for the blood testing and just working with JM and just seeing what he had to do to just crush blockers that would come up and what he had to do to just bring everyone together and just align expectations, even working with an external team. This feels like a whole new level of education. I’m learning so much right now just watching JM talk to this external team and just getting everyone aligned and jumping into these conversations. And it’s never something passive either. It always feels like I’m not just watching this happen. I’m expected to contribute, and I’m expected to, yeah, to do my role in this. And when that’s made very clear, it’s very empowering, because it’s never, oh, but this needs to be done. So who’s going to do it?

Murillo (27:03):

Now, I know what my role is. That was made clear. So I need to make it happen. How am I going to make it happen? Maybe I need to ask people who are more experienced, but it’s on me. There’s never that doubt of like, oh, I guess I’ll just sit here and wait for this to be solved. That doesn’t happen. It’s more like, okay, I need to solve this, and I need to just find out how. Yeah, so it’s a rambling answer to say most days at the office, if you go from like week to week, they feel pretty similar. That’s why I think the break is so important, because if you take that macro lens and you compare quarter to quarter, it feels like, oh, what I’m doing this quarter is vastly different than what I was doing last quarter. So it’s never boring.

Ben Grynol (27:56):

Yeah. The experience that you get and the exposure is very different. The blood work example is a great one, where… And again, you can structure an eng team or an eng function within a greater team in many, many different ways, but you are not just tasked with shipping code for some feature. You’re responsible for being part of developing an entire revenue stream. Sure, we can call it like it has to be built into the product, and it appears to be a service line feature, but it’s a lot bigger than that. It’s not just like, cool, let’s update this… And I’m saying it colloquially, but it’s not just like, cool, let’s update this button, or let’s change the aesthetic of this graph or the animations, what you started with. It’s not just this piecemeal task work. It’s like here’s your ticket, go finish your ticket. And I’ll give you a new ticket.

Ben Grynol (28:45):

And some eng teams operate that way where it’s very much this piecemeal task work, and the lens is like, great, I’m contributing and shipping and moving things forward, but your lens on the why changes so much, because by being exposed to blood work, you see all the pieces of the infrastructure, like the ops infrastructure, the eng infrastructure, like everything that gets built to actually get this thing live. And then you see the fruits of that labor, and you’re like, holy smokes, this is a cool thing. You see people using it. We start to do pieces of content around it. And you’re like, wait a minute. I was part of that thing. So it’s an interesting way that we’ve built the team so that we’ve got multiple stakeholders that are involved in working together to bring these new things forward. And it happens time and time again. But one of the things to go into that’s tied into this idea of structuring eng teams in very different ways is, as we’ve evolved, we’ve always had a focus on documentation and its importance, but as we bring more team members on board, you realize the importance of communicating really well, really clearly, and setting things up for the next person so that we’re not just going so fast that we’re shipping some janky code, knowing that like, yeah, it’s probably going to break, but we want to avoid tribal knowledge so much.

Ben Grynol (30:10):

But what’s it been like to see that evolve? Even where like in most companies where it’s just like some PR happens and that’s it, and we’re like, no, there is a process for what is expected when you want to do a review. And ours is like down to the detail of doing it well in notion, having a loom and all of these little pieces of the puzzle, knowing that that’s a state in time and we’re very willing to break that to say what’s a better way of doing it? But what’s happened like where you went from getting these emails that were sort of like, “Get this thing over the line,” to all of a sudden we’re, not buttoned up on process, but implementing it with enough rigor to make sure that as we build the team people are set up for success and to be way better at understanding what exists and why it’s done and then also so that they can be part of this culture?

Murillo (30:59):

That’s a funny question, because when I think of process, I usually think of like bureaucracy. So when you think about establishing all these sort of blockers I have to get through to just get my co-chip, the initial thought is just resistance. No. Why? But I’m sort of in a privileged position of having gone through those steps and those phases in the company and just looking at things in the different lens. And the thing is no one has the entire context, and that became very clear to me when I joined as a hired engineer, which we didn’t have the engineering onboarding at the time. We had a really good company-wide onboarding that Miz put together, but we didn’t have anything engineering specific. And the thinking there that went through my head was like we should probably have something for engineers joining, because I’m pretty sure that these questions I’m asking would be the same questions that the next person joining are going to ask. These are natural questions, and it’s just I’m in Portugal, and everyone is mostly US time. So it’s just I can’t have that immediate response of just, oh, how do I do this? Can we jump on a call so you can walk me through this?

Murillo (32:26):

So documenting these things then becomes really valuable, because if I had that document, then I wouldn’t have to ask these questions. And even if I don’t think of all the questions that can be asked in this situation, people are going through this after me. Whatever questions they may have, we can append, and we can build upon this. So that’s when we started the engineering onboarding. And again, so this is me, this radical person who hates bureaucracy and process. It’s just this now, let’s get a doc together. But then we have these things that we want to improve, but we never really get time to do it. Well, we should probably get on a call and talk about it so we can find time to improve upon these things and discuss these common challenges we’re all facing.

Murillo (33:17):

And I think it’s very much about going through the pain of learning and then realizing, yes, if we do this, yeah, documenting your code adds some overhead, but removes so much extra work that you have to do on the other end that it becomes very clear you would want to do it, because the first time you come back to code that’s well-documented and you just read that documentation… And again, I need to shout out Justin on this. We did the entire chart library we use for the app. And he did just this fantastic job of documenting it. And charts, working on charts, it’s super intimidating because you’re talking about SVGs, and you’re talking about these really weird mathy functions that you have to sort of grok to change and to make sense of. And these are large, large, large functions that we have, just rendering every little detail of the chart, every tick, every area of the chart. And it’s super intimidating.

Murillo (34:35):

So the first time where I was developing a feature where I had to go into the chart, I was just like, oh my. This is going to take so long. This is going to be so painful. I can’t believe this. But yeah, I’m the person who loves challenging myself, so I’m going to go in. Then I’m going to dig into that code, and I’m going to figure it out. And I get to the code, and everything is documented. And every parameter he used, he documents, and every little procedure he went through while building that is just like, okay, this is super easy. I just go here and, oh, look, he pointed out the place. And now I understand this so much better, and I have the context on why things were built this way. And all of that digging, all that toil that I expected to go through just isn’t there.

Murillo (35:20):

And immediately you go, oh, okay, so that’s why we do this. I didn’t have to bring Justin into a call and like, “Hey, can you explain this to me?” Which would’ve been super understandable, because not only did he build the really complicated code. It’s understandable that after building all that, he wouldn’t like I just don’t have the brain or the patience or the mindset to just go back and document all of this. But, well, he did. So now I don’t need to bug him about it. The thing I thought was going to take like two weeks just to figure out, no, I can do it in a couple of days, and it’s fine. And then that value is very clear. It’s very obvious immediately.

Ben Grynol (36:04):

It’s pretty atypical of startups or engineering functions to go this deep into documentation, but what you do is, not only are you setting up the next person for success, but you’re creating mental shortcuts for yourself, where you can almost forget it. You just go I’ve already done the work. I don’t need to hold this as real estate in my mind to remember what was done, because the chance of us actually remembering what it is, we’ll think that we remember exactly how it was done, and then you go back like a week later, a year later, 10 years later. It doesn’t matter. It’s like you’ll never remember exactly why certain decisions were made. And so by putting the work in up front, then it gets so much easier when you need to reference that material in the future. And I think being a remote company, we have to be so intentional with documentation, whether it’s related to eng or related to finance, related to anything where you’re doing work that other people are going to review in the future so that people understand the decisions and you understand your own decisions.

Ben Grynol (37:11):

I remember in that eng documentation episode that we did, Ian shared the parable, which was hilarious, of the engineer goes back into his code, and he’s like, “Who the hell wrote it?” And then he’s like, “Oh, wait, it was me.” But that’s kind of the point, is that you never really need to remember why decisions were made. Or if decisions were made, and it doesn’t matter who had done the work initially, you can always call yourself out and be like I think that could be better. And so there is a ton of importance in doing this, because as a remote company, and as we try to be intentional, it’s like what you avoid is what happens in person is people take the shortcut of not thinking they need documentation because, well, Murillo and I were sitting beside each other, and we discussed this thing, and the way we decided to… Whatever it is… the way we decided to actually build this feature was X, Y, and Z. And you sort of make the decision.

Ben Grynol (38:05):

And even if somebody asks you in the future, it’s like you’re still trying to remember what was done, but that happens because the default is speed with startups. You can’t replace speed, but speed does come at a cost. And it’s a pretty high cost when you spend twice as long having to go into hypothetically, you went into that code that Justin had written, and you spent so much mental energy and effort. And then you pull him into a call. It’s just like it is actually way faster to do it right from the get-go.

Murillo (38:33):

And not only that. As someone who has often been on the other end, when you write some code and then six months later somebody asks you, “Oh, how does this work?” it’s on you. You can’t get someone… “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.” So now you need to like pretty much rediscover that code, which it could have been avoided if you had done the better work of just making that clear the first time, for sure.

Ben Grynol (39:00):

So much faster too if you need to fix any bugs, like there you go. You can go into the documentation. It’s a lot easier for many people to figure things out, as opposed to like, well, we can’t get ahold of Murillo, and we’re trying to figure out where this bug is. Whereas you might know. It’s like, oh, I know this is where we should look, and then everyone can reference that thing. And it’s like the fix is so much… Assume it’s not some wild bug that is super hard to fix… it’s just so much faster when troubleshooting and when actually being able to make changes when you’ve got all these reference points. Part of it is also having great warehousing, so the architecture, the storage of that information. It’s like almost all for not, if you do half of the work, which is documenting it and you document it thoroughly and well, but the architecture of where it’s warehoused and how it’s warehoused is really hard to discover for anyone, that’s the other side of it, is there’s so many layers to the, air quotes, documentation, how to do it well.

Ben Grynol (40:00):

If everything ended up being, let’s use the example of it was on like Google Drive and on people’s like individual drives, and it’s like, oh, well, we’ve got the documentation, but no one could discover it. That’s almost like it doesn’t even matter, because you won’t be able to find your own documentation or other people can’t discover it. So there’s a lot of layers to it, but the main takeaway is realizing how important it is. And it helps to build trust with each other, trust with ourselves. And it helps to build rapport. You appreciate when somebody takes the time to do something and you go, wow, I really trust that they’ve thought this through, because they’ve documented it well. Trust isn’t eroded because it’s like, well, that thing’s janky, and I don’t know how it’s bolted together. The analog in design, which is hilarious, is the creative cloud file, whether it’s Illustrator or Photoshop, and it’s like 92 layers, and exactly zero of them are named. They’re all like layer one, layer two. And you’re like what do you do? You’d just have to turn them on and off to figure out which layer’s which. It’s that same thing. So it’s funny how that all works.

Murillo (41:07):

And yeah, I think this is something we’re still struggling, well, we’re still figuring out, we’re still working on it. But at the same time, I feel like we are 100 times better than any other place I’ve worked with. And that does improve your productivity, just knowing that whatever you need is available. You can probably find some documentation that goes through it. I think that frees up a lot of mind space and just lets you do your work, whatever needs to be done. It’s much easier that way.

Ben Grynol (41:42):

So as we grow, what are you looking forward to with everything ahead?

Murillo (41:47):

I think team growth is always great. And on that note of me being the anti-process, anti-bureaucracy, just having more structure, it’s something that I’m excited about, just having more structure to the eng team, and yeah, the obvious thing of just figuring out new challenges and new things, new tough problems. That’s what excites me.