#606 AI Can Generate Code. It Still Can’t Replace Engineering Judgment | Jason Li

Great.

Thank you again, Jason, for being here with me today.

Now, Laurel started it originally, as per my researches, like as automated timekeeping.

But, you know, now the messaging kind of evolved, and this is very normal, into time intelligence.

Like, walk us through this, you know, uh, what does it mean from, you know, product perspective?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So timekeeping, like that, that product, that focus, you can think of it as there's a bunch of people in the world who bill for time, right? You think about lawyers, you think about accountants, they, they bill by, per the hour, right? Um, and if you're not in that area, you may not realize how antiquated that is.

Like, people effectively will write down notepads or write somewhere like, "I spent six minutes doing this thing," or, "I spent 12 minutes doing this thing." And then they go back and write like they spent hours in a day or, you know, hours at the end of the week going, filling out those bills, right? And so like that's, that's why automated timekeeping is so impactful.

However, on technology side, if you think about how you solve that problem, which is what Laurel has done, is like, hey, we actually kind of track what you're doing and give visibility and surface that activity back up to you so you can build those time sheets.

That kind of technology is relevant for everyone, right? Like I would venture a guess, the vast majority of people who listen to this and knowledge workers, et cetera, you know, you spend a lot of time working on the computer, but you wouldn't-- you don't actually know where you spend your time, right? And you would love to, right? And so effectively, our technology allows you to know where you spend your time so that you can, in the, in our initial case, is to bill for time, but also just get that visibility to do whatever else makes sense.

You know, invest strategically here because you're spending time, more time there than you want or whatever else.

So yeah.

Right.

Now, most of people when they think about time tracking, they think about it as an administrative problem, right?

Yep.

So, right, purely.

You frame that into an operational intelligence problem actually.

Mm-hmm.

So wh- what do you think the market understand too late about time data? Like or, or as, is, are they still missing that, I would say?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's just, it's one of those things that I think if you talk to people is actually very obvious, but it's like so far from what actually people are used to that people don't think about it, right? Like if you go tell people, "You should know where you spend your time," everyone would be like, "Obviously I should know where I spend my time." Like that's not a, that's not a, a huge insight.

However, it is kind of is in the sense that no one is like, "Oh, hey, how am I gonna get a better insight at what we're, we're doing?" Right? Like, and it's funny 'cause like there's all kinds of work.

You think about software engineering, like, like a lot of what we talk about, you know, people do, people do, uh, agile, they do points, they track how much a team can do, et cetera.

So you try to get some sense of like where are you spending your time in terms of work, but you miss so many different things.

Great.

Thank you again, Jason, for being here with me today.

Now, Laurel started it originally, as per my researches, like as automated timekeeping.

But, you know, now the messaging kind of evolved, and this is very normal, into time intelligence.

Like, walk us through this, you know, uh, what does it mean from, you know, product perspective?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So timekeeping, like that, that product, that focus, you can think of it as there's a bunch of people in the world who bill for time, right? You think about lawyers, you think about accountants, they, they bill by, per the hour, right? Um, and if you're not in that area, you may not realize how antiquated that is.

Like, people effectively will write down notepads or write somewhere like, "I spent six minutes doing this thing," or, "I spent 12 minutes doing this thing." And then they go back and write like they spent hours in a day or, you know, hours at the end of the week going, filling out those bills, right? And so like that's, that's why automated timekeeping is so impactful.

However, on technology side, if you think about how you solve that problem, which is what Laurel has done, is like, hey, we actually kind of track what you're doing and give visibility and surface that activity back up to you so you can build those time sheets.

That kind of technology is relevant for everyone, right? Like I would venture a guess, the vast majority of people who listen to this and knowledge workers, et cetera, you know, you spend a lot of time working on the computer, but you wouldn't-- you don't actually know where you spend your time, right? And you would love to, right? And so effectively, our technology allows you to know where you spend your time so that you can, in the, in our initial case, is to bill for time, but also just get that visibility to do whatever else makes sense.

You know, invest strategically here because you're spending time, more time there than you want or whatever else.

So yeah.

Right.

Now, most of people when they think about time tracking, they think about it as an administrative problem, right?

Yep.

So, right, purely.

You frame that into an operational intelligence problem actually.

Mm-hmm.

So wh- what do you think the market understand too late about time data? Like or, or as, is, are they still missing that, I would say?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's just, it's one of those things that I think if you talk to people is actually very obvious, but it's like so far from what actually people are used to that people don't think about it, right? Like if you go tell people, "You should know where you spend your time," everyone would be like, "Obviously I should know where I spend my time." Like that's not a, that's not a, a huge insight.

However, it is kind of is in the sense that no one is like, "Oh, hey, how am I gonna get a better insight at what we're, we're doing?" Right? Like, and it's funny 'cause like there's all kinds of work.

You think about software engineering, like, like a lot of what we talk about, you know, people do, people do, uh, agile, they do points, they track how much a team can do, et cetera.

So you try to get some sense of like where are you spending your time in terms of work, but you miss so many different things.