Google's Pittsburgh office has been making headlines with announced expansion and even deeper commitment to the Pittsburgh region.
We welcome Todd Underwood, Engineering Site Lead at Google Pittsburgh, to tell us more about Google's expanding presence and what that means for our entire tech ecosystem.
Gain more insight on projects and initiatives happening at the Bakery Square offices and learn how Google continues to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Transcription:
Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Friday. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. Nothing like wrapping up the week with another great guest and someone who I have a lot of fun with and have gotten to know over the years. And that's taught Underwood, I will formally introduce him in a moment, I want to thank Huntington bank who has been our partner through this entire journey. And if you don't know them, you should because they're very active in the community. They have been great civic engagement, folks during the entire pandemic and beyond. And they work with us on so many experiments that we've done in terms of telling stories, and trying to shine the light on Pittsburgh and the innovation ecosystem. Also 40 by 80. That's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council. And that's our charitable arm. why that's so important is that soon, you're going to hear a lot about the work that we're doing and apprenticeships in tech and innovation as well as our continued work in helping support entrepreneurism. So we've muted two mics, just so that we don't hear any noise in the background. And we have an opportunity for asking our guests questions. And Jonathan kersting, Vice President of all things, media and marketing is with us today, as he is every day, he's gonna keep his eyes on the chat. So without further ado, I want to bring to the forefront Todd Underwood. He's the engineering site lead for Google Pittsburgh. I'm thrilled to always talk to him. And I'm so glad that he took the time to join us today on a beautiful Friday.
So hi, Todd. Hey, lovely to see you all, hope everybody is doing what we're now calling pandemic well, as well as can be expected under the circumstances.
Well, I think I think, you know, we're sort of moving slowly upward. And I'm hearing a lot of good things. And on the show, we've been doing what we can to make sure that people are educated have access and and just see the kind of innovations that are going on. I know that you joined us at one point, when we have the folks from CMU, in terms of the partnership with Google, very exciting in terms of the work that you amassed in a short period of time with Carnegie Mellon to try to work on issues totally tied to COVID. So let's talk about Todd today as the engineering site lead for Google Pittsburgh. So what before I start, I always like to say who is Todd right? Um, I'm really looking for a guy. I know that's gonna be a lot.
philosophical here, aren't you? us really, oh, sorry.
Sorry. So Todd, tell us? How long have you been in that role? Just sort of set the table, you know, are you native? pittsburgher? Where'd you go to school? How you know what your journey is right up until this point?
Wow. Like I didn't, this is not where I thought we'd get started. So therefore, being unprepared with lies, I guess I'll have to tell the truth. But I'm disappointed. So I moved to Pittsburgh in 2008, because my partner got a job at one of these hospitals you have lying around here in Pittsburgh. When we moved here, everybody said, You moved back right. Now we moved here. And then why did you do that? for a job. They're like, we have jobs. It was the weirdest experience. And we had this conversation a lot with a lot of people were like, seems like a good city. There's good jobs. I started working at Google in 2009, shortly after we moved here, and I've been there ever since. So most of my management career there is working on machine learning and artificial intelligence stuff, which used to just be something weird that we did apply math, interesting problems. But I guess people seem to care a lot about it right now. So that's a thing. I've been cite lead at the Pittsburgh Office, I think year and a half or so. So you know, the st. Lead is a little bit of a, it is a formal title. But it's also sort of the job that nobody really wants to do, because everybody's got their day job. And this is the extra job. And so we regarded as sort of like further, you know, in the same way, like an academic dean sometimes or pay, who wants to be department chair who wants to do everybody takes a step back, and you're just a little bit too slow. I think that's what happened to me. But I love the site. You know, Google's been in Pittsburgh for a long time. And we just keep growing. And we're just really committed to the city we love. We love how affordable it is to live here. We love the quality of the workers and we love the quality of the community. We love the educational environment and the ability to recruit stellar talent here. So it's just like we find that for I mean, what's weird is for Pittsburgh, we are a big employer. for Google. We are a small office and so it's sort of like we live in a funny place like Google's got a couple 100,000 people around the world. I guess you're little chunk over there. 1000 just under 1000. in Pittsburgh, that's, that's good, good effort over there. And like they're being a little patronizing, right. We're a big employer and have some awesome jobs and really make a difference in the city. So I guess lots of us are in those kinds of positions, already. Other questions, I am not
only about your background as a technologist, because this is like you said, you have a day job.
Yeah. So I'm, importantly, I started my career getting an undergraduate degree in philosophy, because I find that's really the most important foundation for a tech career. Now, that is not a great I mean, it's not a bad, it's a it's a foundation for something anyway, helps you read, write and think, but doesn't really help you use computers to do anything. I moved to New Mexico, again, with the same partner who went to med school out there. And like, I just, I liked computers. But I found that I didn't really know at any deep level, how they worked. And so I had a job running the helpdesk at the University of New Mexico. And I had some jobs, but I just didn't have the formal background. And as many of you know, you work for university, they frequently give you free classes. And I'm like, I will share with you all I'm a cheap person. And so from my perspective, not taking a free class is the same thing as taking a salary cut, like I just couldn't do it. So I had to take free classes. So I was like, Well, what should I do, I get two free classes a semester, I took one computer class, and then I also took Arabic. And the reason I took Arabic was the teacher's name was Muhammad Ali. And I just don't think you can turn down Arabic from Muhammad Ali, I just don't, I don't know how like you stare that opportunity in the face and step over it. So that's what I did. And eventually, I went to graduate school there and got a Master's. And since then, I mostly did networking and systems work, but was, you know, the Google opportunity was pretty stellar. And I thought, well, I'll try that out. I didn't think I wanted to work for a big company. I don't know many of you may work for big companies and know how tedious I mean how wonderful and large scale but like big companies are full of lots and lots of people, all of whom have opinions and processes and ways of getting in your way and slowing things down. And so I thought I didn't want that. But I thought if I ever wanted to work at a big company, Google was probably one of the few I could tolerate. And that turns out to have been true.
Wow. So we're lucky to have you here and you moved here from New Mexico?
No, I moved here from New Hampshire, where my partner did their residency. I have lived in all the new states, there are four of them. I know every single one of you is before it's fine. Like you'll you'll figure it out later. But I've lived in all the new states but not in alphabetical order. So
yeah, okay. Okay. So you lived in New York for a while.
Yep. I went to college in New York. Okay,
good. Just testing just just tossing. Yep. Yep. And you see in
York, New Mexico, New Hampshire and everybody, like, for some reason that other one people can't remember. And I don't know why that is,
it's okay. It's okay. But we're glad that you're here. And no BS, we really actually are glad that you're here. Because your your personality and ability to sort of not just do the stand up comedy that we're talking about right here. But your ability to sort of bring some pragmatism in terms of, you know, Google's presence here and being a great ambassadors really very noteworthy. So in no really no BS, because I think that really matters. But while you are a big employer, here, you are a small piece of Google. And people tend to forget that here. We think it's all Google. Google's done all this but but in all fairness, when I worked at my design, and Google hired, but the first engineer away from us, and I was like Google's here. How is that true?
I recall correctly, we hired quite a few engineers away from my InDesign now
you did but
what I that was not me, but apologies for that, that they were great.
But I actually went over and said, let me meet this Andrew, more person to find out what the heck was going on. And there were about 12 people over Carnegie Mellon at the time, doing pretty incredible things. So who would have thought fast forward now? So now there's all this talk about the Pittsburgh Office constantly evolving, you know, to support different needs at Google and growing? So can you talk about team's product, some of the things that might be a Mystique to the rest of us who are not inside of Google? But we speculate? Yeah, for sure.
I think one of the so the good part about Pittsburgh is from a technology perspective, Pittsburgh has some stunningly good, advanced technologists. So we're talking you know, people who are really on the cutting edge of very difficult stuff. That's great for us at Google because a we need some of those people and be like we can we can actually take advantage. Like we have a large enough scale of operations, that it's not just you know, rocket science on the corner. It's like actually applicable to things we do. So the bad part about that For an event like this is a lot of the things we work on aren't super consumer visible. So when I started, when I came to Pittsburgh, I was working on making the system that targets ads more reliable. And I don't know how many people fell asleep in the middle of that sentence, I would not, I would not be surprised or sad to learn that you did. It doesn't sound very interesting. You know, the way I would explain that system is, ads. ads are what makes the internet free right now. So if you don't have ads, you got to come up with some other way to pay for all of the stuff we love. And I'm not saying I love ads, because absolutely don't. And I probably feel similarly about them as many of you, but they are the thing that makes the internet free. And if we're going to have ads, they should at least be useful. They should at least be not terrible. Let's go for not terrible. So the system that I worked on to start with a Google was a system whose objective was to make the ads not terrible, so that when you do a search, you search for lawnmowers. I don't give you ads for undershorts, I give you ads for other things related to lawn mowers, maybe seeds, maybe sharpening services, maybe lawn mowers themselves. Now, you don't have to click on any of those, we honestly, we only want people to click on the ads if they're actually relevant, and they care. But at least they're not terrible. So we work on a lot of machine learning things related to that. Similarly, the team here works on a ton of things behind the shopping site. So like the all of the product listing ads, things related to commerce, online, shopping, google.com, and the associated stuff, a lot of work on that. Since Andrew Morris, you mentioned Andre came back, he started up the cloud AI team in Pittsburgh, and that continues to grow. So that's the group of people who are building and selling AI and industry solutions to the outside world. So that's a that's a very new challenge for us. We've been using these technologies inside for years and years and years. But it turns out the outside world wants some of them too. But they want them quite a bit differently than we want them for ourselves. And that's fine. But like it just means we have some learning to do to try to figure out how do we make these usable by everyone else. There's a few other teams, there's some teams that work on other cloud services, logging and monitoring. And one of the cool but like, again, like way, way back, there's a team that works on the tools that help us install and maintain servers and data centers. And you're like what, like, That just sounds? It sounds so but it's so Pittsboro, right? Because in the end, all of this stuff exists in the real world. Like we all feel like I just type things on a computer. And it's not some magic. There's human beings who are plugging things into machines who are connecting power, the machines are powered by power plants. They're spinning up, we need electrical engineers, we need mechanical engineers, we need data center technicians, and all of those people need all of their work coordinated. And so like the we have a team that works on coordinating that work. So it's a, it is not super concise to say like, Oh, we make Gmail, it'd be cool if we made Gmail. Yeah, go I know, Gmail, but it's we make a lot of the technologies behind what everything else uses.
So what so in terms of that, and that growth over the last decade, in particular, you've you've amassed an attraction of a whole different set of skill sets than the beginning. That's right.
That's right.
It has really changed. So what is the complexion? Can you just talk about what the complexion is of the Pittsburgh skill sets just in rough percentages? Like, you know, how many are in, you know, this field? Or how many you know what I'm saying? Like,
do you know what you're saying? So at a high level, it's still completely an engineering office. So we are at like 90, mid percent, 90 low percent engineering. And so in Google, like engineering is king and you know, which is fine is like that, you know, the sales organization should be a lot more powerful than they are, but I know something cultural, blah, blah, blah, but it's mostly engineering. But we do have a small sales presence. We do have a customer engineering and customer support group that's growing. And then within engineering, there's also I don't have good numbers on this. But within engineering, we started with some very, very hard core machine learning specialists and a few very senior experts in some of those technologies. But since then, we've gone well into the like generalist space. So we hire, you know, user interface user interaction designers, we hire, you know, front end software engineers, we hire systems engineers, we hire generalist software engineers who you know, work on a huge variety of things. So we've really turned into a general engineering office with a whole lot of options for a bunch of different people.
So what's the impetus for this next surge of growth?
Well, I think you know, one of the questions that we looked at, and I imagine all of you did, too, is what's next, like what a year let's take a big breath for a second. What a year. Okay, um, no, we are all and I would imagine all of you as well are in the unenviable position of predicting the future as we so often find ourselves. Okay, so we need to predict what work is going to look like what our business is going to look like and how those things land here in Pittsburgh, for the next and real estate doesn't work on quarter basis, month basis, real estate works on the decade basis. So we're like, what is the next five to 15 years look for us in Pittsburgh? And when we looked at that, what we saw is we just keep growing here. We're not like we're growing in a super Pittsburgh way. We're not doubling year on year. And like, Do you all remember, like the financial crisis hit and the housing crisis hit, and Pittsburghers flipped out? Because house prices went flat and went down by half a percent one year, I thought the world was ending Meanwhile, like Arizona's like melting into the ground, and the rest of us are like, well, housing prices used to go up three or 4%. And now they went down half a percent. The world is ending, you're like, No, we didn't get the huge boom. But we also didn't get a bus, we just kind of did the thing. And so we're just kind of doing the Google version of that, like we grow relatively quickly compared to lots of employers, but we're just kind of growing steadily and thoughtfully. But when we look at that we say, we're here for the long haul, actually. And what I think is interesting is then let's bring it locally, like where do we want to be in town like? So we frankly just are starting to outgrow the spaces we have not urgent but like you know, again, looking at this long thing. We're like, well, should we stay bakery Square was I don't know how many of you remember this bakery Square was a huge risk for Google. And it was a it was considered to be a bold and wacky choice. Like the city was like, Wait a second, the cookie factory, you're going to the cookie factory. Like Baba, a celebrity never works. larm is terrible. tech companies will work there. And like to his credit, Andrew Mars, like now the space is going to be great and like get a vision. And so we're there. We're like we've looked at all over town. And like for the foreseeable future, we're going all in on that part of town, in in our current campus. And so when we look at that, we're like, Well, what do we need to do, we need more space. So we took advantage of some of the timing of employees being out of the office to accelerate and shift up some of the development schedule. So you know, we we develop, when we do construction and build outs, we do it anyway. But we usually pay for that work to be done overnight, so that we can still have employees undisturbed in the adjacent spaces. That's very inconvenient for the workers. It's very expensive for everyone. When our just like nobodies here, just go build, build as fast as you can, as quick as you can, which is great. The thing I'm most excited about the Audrey is like the the ground floor. So I don't know how many of you have been to Google's bakery Squarespace, but it's hard to find, do you just go and like, how do we get into this building one side has a has a huge wall, the other side has a dead end at a parking lot. I don't understand where the entrance I don't understand how to access this. And so the thing we're really excited about is we're bringing our lobby down to the ground floor wrapping around the existing entrance there, there'll be ground floor accessible, kind of where, you know, there'll be an entrance somewhere. And we're still in planning somewhere where the Verizon shop or the massage app used to be. So we'll have like that. And it'll be like, finally, it'll be instead of us being you know, nerdy engineers hidden up on the sixth and seventh floor of this building you can't get into, it's going to be like, yeah, Google's a part of this part of town. And we're it's going to be much more permeable and much more accessible. And I'm super excited about that.
So what about going back to the office? Can you talk about that? I mean, yeah, we're listening to other places around the country, and even locally, that are just saying, we're thinking through what our office strategy is. And you're, you're saying something different?
Well, so I think, yeah, so we are, I think one of the things that you might have noticed over the last year, if this is the kind of thing you track is that Google's been really deliberative and very thoughtful about this, but not particularly bold or fast. And I think that's to the the sense that I get from Google's very senior leadership is, Google wants to make commitments that we can keep to employees to partners to real estate. So we want to be very thoughtful about what this looks like. We're trying to balance two things, and then I'll tell you what I think is gonna happen. But we're trying to balance two things. One is we're trying to balance in the long term. So in the short term, we're all trying to balance a pandemic. And we're not going to go back to the office until it's safe. And when we do go back to the office, it's going to be slow, and it's going to be measured, and it'll be opt in. So none of what I'm talking about now is about this summer, I'm really thinking about what does the future look like in the long run. So let's pretend we all actually get vaccinated and we actually take care of sorry. COVID v2 and things look very different in 2022 than they do in 2021. I would like to pretend that if you do not agree that that is like, Okay, well present them that what we think in the long run is we have to balance two things. One is we need to balance employees needs to be productive. And the second is we need to balance employees needs to collaborate with each other. Those are not the same kind of work. And they're not the same either. Like all kinds of professional lawyers have this marketing people have this, bankers have this, there's times where you need everybody else to shut up and just need two hours to do some work. And then there's times you've got a lot of questions, and you need to brainstorm with someone or you need to sort something out. So we have observed that the range of those activities is pretty big. And not everybody wants to do every one of them at the same time. So what's tricky for us is, you know, Audrey, if you and I are on the same team, and you never want to come into the office, and I sometimes need your help, we're gonna have to figure that out, right? Because like, if I don't want to brainstorm with you, and you never want to be in the office, that's not going to be great for me. And it might show up as you're doing an amazing job. And I can't get anything done, which as a manager, that makes it hard for me to figure out what's happening here. I was doing all of his work ton of her work, Todd's not getting anything done, what is happening, what's happening is Audrey is hoarding all the information and refusing to collaborate with God, as is always the case, she's always the case. Oh, you see, you see, what we're trying to balance those? Well, we have observed is, the range of what people want is pretty big. So some people want to almost never come into the office, some people want to always come into the office. And there's everywhere in between. and it has to do with your workspace at home. And it has to do with kids and family and commutes and school and parent teacher meetings, and elder older relatives and you know, church responsibilities. All this stuff, like real human beings have stuff to do this, like we have lives, which is great. So I think what we're expecting is we're going to have offices, the way we use those offices is going to be pretty different from what it used to be. So we used to be a almost everyone almost every day in some office, if you might travel to another site, but almost everyone almost every day. And I think what we're gonna end up with is a lot more variation by team and by product area, and by work so that some people are going to be mostly worked from home with coming into the office, you know, once or twice a day, and we've announced sort of a three or once or twice a week, we've announced sort of a three to model that might work where, you know, three days in the office two days out, or three days out of the office two days, then that might work for some people, we might we have always had a very small number of people who are completely remote except for like, once every month, or two or three they would come into work with their team will probably have more of those people. But we're definitely going to have people who are like, you know, have young kids at home have someone who is taking care of those young young kids or do not understand work, they do not understand don't talk to nine out that's not a thing, right? So, so young kids benefit from Well, sorry, the parents of young kids benefit from not being near those young kids during some portion of most of their days. And if you do not have the right physical setup, and you are not mean enough to your kids, if you made mistakes, and they like you, then you have to do something about November. So
that's also a problem with pets. Like my dog nice.
Yes. Right. Like, yes, the number of cats on keyboards that I see during these meetings. I like a lot. The rest of you as well.
I love your candor, though, on the complexity of the fact of what leadership is going to have to deal with. Because I don't think it's particularly to Google. I just think you're being candid, and you have the floor right now. And you're saying I'm gonna we're gonna figure out some ways to accommodate, so I am sure
I'll get fired for all of this. Yeah, let's have fun while we're at it anyway,
it's a it's okay, we have a job for you. So don't worry about it. There's a backup plan. Excellent. And so, um, you know, but what about, you know, as we wrap up this conversation, there's so much that we can talk to you about? Here you are in terms of the mothership of Google, this being sort of like a little bit of a flex in terms of their offices around the world around the country. What is their view now it what is the view of the mothership and people there about Pittsburgh? Because it used to be there used to be a lot of conversations about the view of Pittsburgh, to Google, you know, the prices and the way that you live and etc. Where is it now?
So I'll say so I'll say a super high point and then a low point. So the high points are, we are regarded as an incredibly productive office full of some of the most productive and talented people in the company. We our turnover is astonishingly low because we hire like it's not that there were a million other jobs but it's also not that kind of culture like people have a work centered honorable culture. We are regarded as an office with great work life balance, who also gets things done. And people like a lot of people are like, Well, how do you do that if people aren't working all the time, I'm like, well, brains don't work when they're tired. So just don't make people work when they're tired, and we'll get a lot more done. So that is all good. And that's a really strong point. And I think like, that's been what's given us some of these really important, I know, they don't they sound boring to most of you. But they're really important projects that are central to Google's making of money, serving a core customer needs and core infrastructure needs. So that part's good. The one downside is on the subject of racial equity and diversity, this is a very, very White City, it is a very white city. And that is obvious to So Google senior leadership wants to give a lot more opportunities for a lot of people of color. One of the good things about Pittsburgh is it is affordable, and we've recruited a ton of people of color to come work for us from other cities on the basis of It's not scary to come to Pittsburgh and pay rent, whereas like sometimes you give someone a job offer in New York, and even if they can afford it, they see some three or four or $5,000 rent for a tiny place tonight. I don't I never what that's not just doesn't fit in their head. And that was certainly true for me growing up. So I really think that's the, you know, the the where we need to see the city do better. And Google's going to keep trying, but I would encourage all of you to keep trying is this is not a welcoming city for people of color on the whole like the this is not an inclusive city. And it's sometimes not a very fair city. And that's going to hurt our ability to grow. Because one of Google's core priorities is really to make it a accepting, welcoming place for people of color. And to do that, we have to be in places where large numbers of people of color are happy to live. And I think like this isn't always that place. And we need to make it that place. So that's on us. But it's also on all of you, please.
No, absolutely. And and I think it's a good point. It is a good point. And you know, there are all of us that are trying to figure out ways to work on this. I've got some ideas on things that I'd like to follow up with you on and we've started an apprenticeship program that we probably want to talk to you about is creating some new pathways. It's you know, it's not the be all end all, but it's certainly one piece. And you know, listen, I always love talking to Todd, as you can tell, he is not only to smart, he's a ton of fun. He cares about this place. There's a bunch of questions here, we might have a few moments to grab some of the questions. Yeah. Can you can you see some of them? Or do you want?
So I don't know the I don't know about the Google Shopping question. But I will try to get back to Ben town on that. advice to students and professionals are interested in working for companies such as Google have non traditional backgrounds. I think one of the things we see is like, go get some progressive experience anywhere because it's you know, you can't go from nothing to like your dream job right away. But my experience was work for someone who can't afford to hire the person who they actually need for the job and is willing to give you a chance. Like that's how I got my career started, like you and me couldn't afford me couldn't afford someone who was good at it. So they hired me and like, they're like, take a chance because they couldn't afford the real person like so there are some good opportunities there. Um, let's see public schools. Yes, please address Google's diversity associated with women, minorities, especially how current employees are stratified in management. I think that's a great point. I think, like one of the things that I have seen in organizations that I've worked for is that if you get someone from whatever demographic and from whatever background, and sometimes it's like a cultural, religious, educational background, geographic background, people attract people who feel comfortable with them. That's not bad. That's just true. But what that means is that when you're trying to build an inclusive workplace, you really need to have representation all the way up and down the workplace. And so because like, you know, all of us have seen like, there's an mostly male organization, and there's one woman and senior leadership and guess where all the best women want to work. And like it's not irrational, it makes perfect sense. But what that means is you need more than one woman and senior leadership. So I think that's a great point. I'm not in a stellar position to fix all of that, but I will work hard to do my part.
You definitely work hard to do your part. So really appreciate that. We're, we have run out of time, Todd, I can always talk to you for longer than the time ever a lot. Just so you know, this. This guy is not only funny, and smart and candid, but he's here in Pittsburgh, and he's calling us on the things that we need to do. And Google can't do it without us. It's not like we have to say Google, you have to fix all these things. And we you've been just great partners over the years and and really, I'm happy about the expansion. So Todd is a guy that walks at least 25,000 steps a day, I made him get off of his treadmill, but usually when I talk to him, I get pretty nauseous. And he is what he wants. Now we're
done so I can start. Wow. All right.
See him now he is. So he's very accessible, easy to find. If you want any other information about Google, you know, definitely about hiring, you know about what's happening there. You know, they really are transparent are incredible partners. I laughed very hard Dodd. When I think about Andrew. And the fights that people used to say is East liberty is so far away. How are we going to do anything out there? So here we just
like a pure Pittsburgh point. Google is not in East liberty. We have two campuses, we're in larmer. And we're in shadyside. Liberty, so I just want to be technically correct. We have the only larmor any building so how did it ever
get to be East Liberty? Right, how
the targets in East liberty the Trader Joe's is he serving wine larmer and shady side?
That's great. Well, you've done you've done a lot for the community. If you look and you pick, you push out past larmer. And you start to head towards Braddock out, you can see all that has proliferated out there. So I want to thank you. You're awesome. Thank you, Google for just being incredible partners, for us and for the entire community. And Jonathan, what do we have going on next week, it's the weekend.
It's the weekend, we're gonna rest up because we have county executive rich Fitzgerald joining us on Monday for all things update around COVID in the vaccinations and the rates and really how the counties moving forward in the summer months to get businesses back up and running and outside doing stuff.
That's great. So I want everyone to know that h n today and tomorrow. If you go on to the website at HSN. There is actually walk ins available there so you can walk in and register for a vaccine today. So if you have any other questions about that, don't hesitate to reach out to us and we can forward you the link. So stay safe. Thanks, Todd. Thanks everyone. Have an amazing weekend.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai