Brett Mangel

Brett is a Data Engineer & Analyst.  Having worked for four years at Tesla in Fremont in California and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and having spent a year building a data infrastructure for an Agricultural Fintech start up in Kenya, he is now building data systems with Whetstone.ai, a consulting company focused on high stakes industries like finance, healthcare, and life sciences. 

He’s leveraged his skills to support operations in Service, Manufacturing, Quality, Sales, Supply Chain, HR, Finance, and been able to see a lot of sides of the automotive business, specifically around EVs. 

Brett's keen to share what he's learned about being a Data Engineer and Analyst so that others might benefit. The blogposts that he's written on the topic have been very well received and there's a link to these below. 

I enjoyed my conversation with Brett and was struck by the clarity of his assessment of situations and courage that he had  to act based on those assessments from an early age. His approach to his role in Tesla and the way it enabled him to increase his circle of influence is a valuable case study that has relevance even outside his specific field of expertise. 

I'm delighted to be able to introduce you to Brett and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on his fascinating journey so far. 

You can connect with Brett on LinkedIn or by email: brettmangel@gmail.com 

You can find some of his blog posts about working in analytics here.

Find out more about Opibus here. 

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Episode recorded on 30 September 2021 

Transcript

Brett Mangel: 0:00

I was kind of always thinking like your life really starts when you take control of it. And at this point, I was still on a pre described path, so it wasn't really yet my life.

Andy: 0:09

Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry, looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host Andy Follows. Brett Mangle listeners. Brett is a data engineer and analyst, having worked four years at Tesla in Fremont in California and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and spending a year building a data infrastructure for an agricultural Fintech startup in Kenya. He's now building data systems with Whetstone.ai, a consulting company focused on high stakes industries like finance, healthcare, and life sciences. He's leveraged his skills to support operations in service manufacturing, quality, sales, supply chain, HR, finance, and been able to see a lot of sides of the automotive business specifically around EVs. Brett's keen to share what he's learned about being a data engineer and analyst so that others might benefit. The blog posts that he's written on the topic have been very well received. And there's a link to these in the show notes for this episode. I enjoyed my conversation with Brett and was struck by the clarity of his assessment of situations and the courage that he had to act based on those assessments from an early age. His approach to his role in Tesla, and the way it enabled him to increase his circle of influence is a valuable case study that has relevance even outside his specific field of expertise. I'm delighted to be able to introduce you to Brett, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on his fascinating journey so far.

Aquilae Academy: 2:02

This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by the Aquilae Academy. At the Academy we turn individual development into a team sport, we bring together small groups of leaders from non competing organisations to form their very own academy team. We build strong connection between team members and create a great environment for sharing and learning. We introduce the team to content that can help them tackle their current challenges. And we hold them accountable to take the actions that they decide at their priorities. We say we hold our team members feet to the fire of their best intentions. We do this internationally with teams across the world. If you'd like to learn more about the academy, go to www.aquilae.co.uk.

Andy: 2:48

Hello, Brett, and welcome. Where are you coming to us from today?

Brett Mangel: 2:53

I'm in Austin, Texas.

Andy: 2:55

And where did your journey start Brett? Where were you born? And where did you grow up?

Brett Mangel: 3:01

Born in Fremont, California, raised there for the first 11 years of my life kind of ironically happened to be about one mile outside of the Tesla factory where I grew up. So that's where a lot of my career journey is around and spent my time riding bikes on the streets around that that factory.

Andy: 3:19

That's is quite remarkable. And or maybe it's not so remarkable. If you're born in Fremont, it's pretty, pretty normal thing it's about the most normal thing that you could do. But yeah, look forward to hearing out how you went from from being born there to to actually working at the factory. First of all, though, what was your family situation? Tell me about your your family. Do you have brothers and sisters?

Brett Mangel: 3:40

Yeah, so I have an older sister. She's about seven years older, and a brother who's five years younger. So we had a big gap in the age group, we all kind of grew up almost individually is like single children. But uh, yeah, we were all kind of there. And nowadays, we're all pretty tight knit.

Andy: 3:57

Yeah. And you're the middle child.

Brett Mangel: 4:00

I am.

Andy: 4:00

Yeah. Did that have any significance? Do you think in the way you were parented?

Brett Mangel: 4:07

I mean, I don't want to go too Freudian into it all, it's probably probably a few lingering issues. But uh, for the most part, it was, it was good. I did kind of feel a little bit like an older brother, too. Or I was an older brother to my younger brother and tried to help encourage him in different ways. And I think, in some regard, I always challenged myself a little bit to be more of a leader in that sense, which was helpful. But yeah,

Andy: 4:31

So your first we might come back to that so the first leadership responsibility was taking care of a younger sibling or seeing yourself as having an opportunity to do the right thing by him.

Brett Mangel: 4:42

Right. Yeah, I really enjoyed always working with him teaching him new things. You know, I was enough years ahead that I could kind of teach him whatever it was that we were working on and help him with his math homework and whatever else and I always found that fun and exciting.

Andy: 4:57

Yeah. What did you folks do? What were your parents doing?

Brett Mangel: 5:01

So my parents were both working in Silicon Valley. My mom was a technical writer who wrote for different hardware companies, software companies. And then my father worked in the data space, actually. So he was primarily in technical support and like installation for big data projects that were, I don't know if you've heard of EMC, but they instal a lot of like data, data hardware on the back end that does, you know, data transfer network protocol type stuff. So a little bit different to what I do with data, but in the same space,

Andy: 5:33

yeah. So I'm always curious to ask what people's parents did to see what visibility, what sort of careers did they have visibility of growing up. So you know, you see influences, and sometimes it's completely, completely different, you know, there's no connection at all, but it sounds like there's a little bit of connection in the path that you've taken with what your parents did. And just to say a little bit about your school days Brett, what were you like as a student? How would your teachers have described you?

Brett Mangel: 6:05

I wasn't always the best student. But I was a really good learner. I really liked math, but the American school system, I just felt like was a little slow and I didn't always have the attention span for the homework and everything, but I always loved, like solving problems, learning new things. So some of the teachers loved me, some of my teachers found me a little bit annoying. But uh, yeah, for the most part, I enjoyed the act of being in school and the act of learning, but but the focus wasn't always there.

Andy: 6:29

Yeah, we only met recently. And and I'm glad we did. And I'm glad we got connected. And one of the things that struck me pretty early in our conversation was you came to a conclusion about the school system, at a fairly early age. And I was impressed by that. And thought it was a bit surprising, do you want to say a bit more about that?

Brett Mangel: 6:52

Yeah. I think some of it might have come from kind of the Silicon Valley mentality. You know, there are a lot of places that that were started by, you know, college dropouts, Apple and Bill Gates. Both had started their, their businesses without really finishing their college career. And for a lot of time, I was just kind of questioning what is the value of the actual grades, the GPA, and I kind of came to the conclusion that a lot of what we'll be focusing on in the future came down to, well, if you have Google, the value of memorization is not as high. And so we need to focus a little bit more on problem solving. And so perhaps it was a possibility. And I didn't really know what was true. But I kind of want to test the theory that showing up to tests and kind of guessing on things and trying to figure out your way through the problems and being able to solve them on your first try through or second try through, rather than studying and memorising things was probably going to serve you better in your later career. Since we were getting into a time when it was so full of change. We don't have the same repetitive factory work that we used to have where, you know, you could learn something and then learn to do it really well. Now, anything that can be learned to do really well can pretty much be automated. So try to focus on problem solving experience exploring new things, and really kind of fiddling with ideas to try to tease out their secrets. So yeah, I, I didn't always have the best grades, but, you know, I would do pretty well on a test. And we had some problem solving competitions, where I did pretty well . Yeah, the goal was just to kind of explore where that would take me. And fortunately, I've been pretty happy with where, where it's gone so far.

Andy: 8:31

Sometimes when people tell me things about, you know, ideas they had, or philosophies they have or theories, they have they, you're never quite sure whether it's with hindsight, or, or whether they actually thought that at the time, in this case, you you were taking action back then weren't you. What sort of age, I think you said it was 12 years old, you were having these thoughts. So and you know, you took action, then you changed your style, or your adopted an approach to to tests and exams based on that. So you know, for sure this was thinking you were having at the time not thinking that you're having with hindsight. And I think that's really fascinating and such a healthy challenge for the status quo, if you like or they're not just accepting the way things are done. And interestingly that you think that was possibly a little bit cultural, in the area that you're in, and having been influenced by people who had dropped out, as it were, and then been highly successful. So I thought that was really interesting.

Brett Mangel: 9:30

I think some of that game, you know, I had a period I said, I lived in the Bay area till I was 11. I moved at the end of the school year, and saw kind of a lot of bureaucratic regulations and skewed incentives in the school system. So there was some stupid things done with regards like what kind of classes I can take that were acknowledged is stupid, but hey, this is a system. And so that kind of helped me see that this isn't perfect. And you know, I think the international standardised testing was just coming out and so you can see that America was not at the top and it kind of made me question. Well, you know, how really well adapted is the system on the whole, and how well adapted is it to me as an individual, and it didn't seem like it was catering to the individual. And so I wanted that responsibility to fall on me. I didn't want to blame it on a bad school system. I figured, let me try this my way and and we'll see where it goes. At least that way. It's, it's my risk to take that not reliant on someone else.

Andy: 10:26

Yeah. And you prioritised being able to solve problems, as being more of a more useful benefit to you going forward in the changing, rapidly changing world that we now inhabit, over being able to memorise and repeat problems that have already been solved by, by everybody who came before you.

Brett Mangel: 10:51

Yeah. You know, my dad was in love with Google, he thought it was just the most amazing thing ever. And I was like, this is gonna change a lot of the way we work. And I think now, you see it with programmers and stuff, where a lot of their job lives on searching for things on Google, you know, go to Stack Overflow, and kind of explore and be able to piece it together yourself. So it's an interesting time we live in, and it's thrilling, but Google definitely changes the game.

Andy: 11:18

Yeah, I think it's very interesting to consider now the pace of change how people's roles are going to become obsolete. How people are, let's look at a very highly positive perspective, people are going to have jobs that currently aren't invented, people are in jobs now that are only recently been invented. So that's all great. But also the a lot of people are going to become obsolete, if they don't continue to upskill. And over the over the course of their career, and it sounds like you set out from age 12, you were sort of preparing yourself for that kind of a world and I have very interesting conversations with people in organisations about how to create continuous learning environments so that all associates can be you know, equipping themselves to still be relevant as they go through their career. We talked about then about how you were as a student, and how what the teachers might have said, What about the other kids? What how would they have described you?

Brett Mangel: 12:18

I was kind of a small, scrawny guy when I was really growing up. So in the Bay Area, I was a little bit nerdy once I moved up to. So I moved to towards the Sacramento area between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. And up there, I got more into outdoors. You know, we lived in a rural area where we could go explore and go fishing and go hiking and whatever else so I don't really know what the kids would have said about me. Except I was just kind of a normal kid just out there playing in the dirt. gotten off roading when I got my first truck and yeah, enjoy just getting a little sideways on a on a bicycle or on my truck. And yeah, just hanging out. Good wholesome fun.

Andy: 12:52

How far is it? How far did you move at that point?

Brett Mangel: 12:57

It's about two and a half hours, just a little past Sacramento.

Andy: 13:00

So quite significant, though. And how old? Were you?

Brett Mangel: 13:03

I was 11. Just about to turn 12

Andy: 13:07

Did that feel like a big deal? Or was that? Just took it

Brett Mangel: 13:12

It was fantastic. I loved it. Yeah, the Bay Area in your stride then? is a little bit of a, you know, you couldn't ride my bike too far from home, when I was growing up there as a kid. And so it was just, there's a lot more freedom that came with it. Probably a lot less to do but I had a great neighbour who I grew up hanging out with and we you know, skateboard on the street or ride bikes or go explore, and a couple of good friends. And you know, what more do you need.

Andy: 13:39

So definitely sounds a positive experience, a liberating experience, gave you more space, and allowed you you used the word nerd. But you clearly weren't spending your whole time in your room coding or doing anything like that you were out there in the great outdoors.

Brett Mangel: 13:57

And when we got up there, when we got up there, we actually went from cable internet in the Bay Area to dial up so I didn't spend hardly any time on computers. So that that may have stunted my career as a software developer, but but I've been happy with it on the other side of things looking back now.

Andy: 14:12

Yeah, well we know you caught up, at least. So when you were getting towards the end of your school days Brett, what sort of ideas were you having about what direction you wanted to go in there?

Brett Mangel: 14:25

So career wise, I didn't really know. I went and studied mechanical engineering in San Diego, San Diego State University. And a lot of that was because I had an older cousin who went studied mechanical engineering. You know, it seemed like it would prepare me for a number of things and I didn't really have to pick one yet. And I could either do the business side of it, or I could do more of the engineering side or maybe there would be something in between or I'd discover something along the way. So didn't really have any plans just figured out to go to school and great weather and that seemed like fun and headed off toward San Diego

Andy: 14:59

and how, how was your experience of that?

Brett Mangel: 15:02

It was good. I enjoyed my classes for the most part, I went to trying to get an economics minor. But after a short while I realised that was, I was actually closer to the Econ degree than I was mechanical engineering. So I just switched over, tried to get out. There's a lot of sense of waiting. I think when I was at college, that, you know, this is kind of just in prep for what I'm going to do next, I was kind of always thinking like, your life really starts when you take control of it. And at this point, I was still on a pre described path. So it wasn't really yet my life. I was enjoying it and having a great time. But I wanted to get out there and start, you know, spending my time and effort on things that I wanted to spend time and effort on.

Andy: 15:42

Yeah, I'm feeling a sense of urgency about you. Was there, was there a sense of urgency? Or were you Okay, with the pace of it and just recognised this is I got to stay in this sort of structure until I drop out the end, and then I'll be able to fly? Or how will you find it?

Brett Mangel: 15:58

Yeah, some of it was a little bit more of a frustration, I think. I talked about frustrations with the school system. And when you're frustrated with something, the only thing you can think of is I can't wait to get out of here. You know, so that was a part of it. I think I always had the sense of like, being a nerd. And you know, I didn't want a peak in high school, I felt like that was gonna come after. So let me get to the peak as quickly as I can. And so, and then there was also the sense of like, I just want to do something and kind of figure myself out. And I think a lot of that was gonna come through work rather than school, a place where you can kind of build what you want to build, move as fast as you want, or as fast as you're capable of. And, yeah, go explore the world.

Andy: 16:36

It sounds like you had a really positive perspective on what work was going to be like, and what it would allow you to do, and it was going to be a lot better than school its gonna be a lot less frustrating than school and university. And not much fear or, or you don't sound at all daunted by it. Is that fair?

Brett Mangel: 16:54

I think so. I know, a lot of people told me I was naive, but I was, I was pretty excited.

Andy: 16:59

Yes, it doesn't really matter why does it if you're gonna go in? It's great to go in positive. So where might that have come from that highly positive, looking forward to the freedom of work? What where might that have come from? Can you tell?

Brett Mangel: 17:17

I haven't really dove too deep into this at all. I think you're kind of the first time I've like experienced someone telling me that. But yeah, I'd have to think a little bit harder about that. Yeah, I think for the most part, I was just excited to see things getting done in the world and wanting to be a part of it. I wasn't really too afraid of the like, financial aspect, or any new salary I was, you know, I always figured when I was growing up, I remember like, the average salary being like,$45,000 a year in the US, wow, that's so much money, I can buy so many candy bars, you know, when I was 10 years old, or whatever. And so I was never really worried about being able to survive. And so it was just a matter of, oh, what can I do with this? You know, the world is kind of my oyster and I can play around with it however I want.

Andy: 18:00

Yeah. But the reason I am curious, because I just remember being at university and not being a great student. And it's not my episode. So I'm not going to go into exactly why that was, but almost wondering sort of, having a feeling that once I get to work, I'll be able to really knuckle down. And I'll be much better, able to apply myself in a way that I didn't feel able to apply myself and what I was doing, but with a little bit of doubt about, you know, I hope my theory is right, that I'm going to be much better when I get to work than I am as a student. Fortunately, it turned out to be okay. But that's just to explain a little bit why I was curious about what you were saying there and wanted to go down there with you. So when you got to when did you start to sort of have thoughts about career? Or did you just fall into your first role? Tell us a little bit about that transition from college to to the first job, or maybe your first job when you're at college. But tell us about your first experience of working?

Brett Mangel: 18:59

Yeah, so my, my job in college, I worked as a math tutor. I didn't really have any internships. And I was just I thought, learning math, learning how to do math, well, when you explain math would be helpful. And I was actually once I got out into the real world, I had about six months where I was kind of like still finish up one final class for a math minor but didn't have my degree. So I kind of struggled with getting a job right at first, which I kind of knew might be the case, given my GPA. And, you know, I didn't think I was gonna get recruited into the Apples and Google's but I basically realised I didn't have any tangible skills. So I took an online Excel course, and applied for a marketing analyst intern and wound up getting the role full time. So they dropped the intern and brought me on to a little small little marketing company that was doing online, Google paid Google ads and some lead generation stuff, but ultimately unfulfilling a little bit of a mercenary type role. So

Andy: 19:53

So it was a full time role, full time role, but a I was a little bit unfulfilling. So did you find it easy?

Brett Mangel: 20:00

Yeah, I was part of like a five person company. And they were doing okay. And then, about two months after I got there and started taking over analytics and building dashboards and building our marketing campaigns, our revenue, like our profits, like tripled. And so it was kind of like, oh, this is, this is easy. This is all. Yeah, this is a little simpler than I thought it would be.

Andy: 20:23

Yeah. And that was linked to the work that you were doing, was it that success was linked to the analysis you've been able to provide?

Brett Mangel: 20:32

I mean, I don't know how much of it was a lot of it was linked to what they built before, and the platform that was there, but I was able to kind of build things out quicker and get things launched quicker. And yeah, basically streamline some stuff because their, their files for doing things were too complicated. And I was like, Well, let me just do it this way, it's gonna go faster. So they were appreciative of it. They showed their support through my own, like, I got out of my entry level salary pretty quickly. And they seem to think so to some extent, but I don't know how much of it was me.

Andy: 21:01

Yeah. So yeah, well, if they thought so there's a clue there isn't there that it? Definitely some of it is and but as I can hear you saying it's maybe not the most helpful, first experience of work to give you an accurate reflection of how difficult or easy work really is, it's a bit like if you, if you if you ever bet, it's the first time you gamble. Ideally, you don't want to win. Because if you win, if you win the first time you gamble, you're going to get a totally incorrect impression of what gambling is really how gambling really works. So there we were you doing you're in a small business five person company went really well, how long did you stick it out there for

Brett Mangel: 21:42

about a year and a half, year and a half before I was ready to move on

Andy: 21:45

Okay, It sounded like, just going back a little bit that you looked at what they were doing, and you intuitively could think of better ways to do it, you could find a more streamlined way or an easier, quicker way to do this, did that come sort of naturally?

Brett Mangel: 22:03

Yeah, I think a lot of what I had was, there's kind of a tendency in the world to build something and then keep iterating on it until it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Kind of the complexity and chaos that comes with that. I showed up after they already had something that was big and complex. And I said, I see what you're trying to do. But I don't want to go through all those giant formulas. And, you know, try to figure out a way to get this done faster. Let me just, I already see the starting point, I already see the ending point. Let me do it in a simpler way. And kind of shorten that, that distance from start to finish.

Andy: 22:35

And do you generally prefer to start from a clean sheet of paper, or are you comfortable building on other people's stuff?

Brett Mangel: 22:42

My preference is to start from a clean sheet. Yeah, when I build most of my dashboards, I usually always have one that goes out there and works for a couple of weeks, and then gets the point where it's like, Alright, there's too much stuff on here. There's too many additional requests that came in last minute. And let's throw it all out and start and it's gonna get all shiny and pretty. And I definitely like the ability to kind of build a picture in pieces, and then later on, simplify it, distil it and bring it back to its core elements. And, yeah,

Andy: 23:12

okay, we'll talk more about that, I'm sure as we go on, so 18 months at the marketing company, and then what happened and who was behind the next move.

Brett Mangel: 23:21

So I had some money saved up, I realised that didn't like what they were doing. It was a lot of pop up ads, and kind of like lead marketing, lead generation stuff that was more a little annoying for customers most of the time. And I realised that I wanted to make a difference. So I'd previously heard about Tesla, right. As I was finishing up college, I met a an engineer from there at a party and I knew what they were doing. And I was like, this is the right way to build a car, and I want to go apply. So I quit my job and applied and applied and applied at Tesla, and one year later started there. So yeah,

Andy: 23:55

I'm smiling, because it often took quite a while to get into Tesla, from the stories from people there, you know, I heard a lot of people's stories when I was there. And you said, that's the right way to build a car. Say a little bit more about that.

Brett Mangel: 24:11

Yeah, so I grew up kind of working on my own cars in the mess of cables and stuff that was in there. We bought my first truck when it was not running. I paid 1100 bucks for it and had to fix it up. And you know, so I knew a little bit about what was in the cars. I knew a little bit about how much my dad complained about newer cars and how complex they were and how they can be worked on. And then I studied mechanical engineering, and I just, you know, cars are just a hack on top of hack on top of a hack to get this one little explosion to turn a wheel, you know, and it's kind of a crazy system. It's beautiful. And there's a lot you can there's a lot of beauty in the way that thing is organised. But at the end of the day, the electric car is so efficient, so clean, so well designed for stability, for handling for safety, that it makes sense that this is this is going to be the way And so I was thrilled by that, that idea. And I was at my marketing job when I was watching the Tesla stock go up, man, I really want to be a part of that company. And so quit and applied and applied and applied, somehow got there

Andy: 25:14

Well done for doing that. And I'm just a couple of things come to mind. One is this wonderful parallel between what you were describing about you like to start with a blank sheet of paper, when you're doing your dashboards. Now, if you were building a car today, you wouldn't start with one that's already got an internal combustion engine and hack after hack after hack to make it work

Brett Mangel: 25:36

Yeah. Great catch on that one. And that is a yeah, there's something beautiful about being able to start fresh and come at somebody with a new idea and take the best of what's there before. So you know, we reused a lot of lot of stuff that was already existing, but where we didn't have to, we didn't do it. And, yeah, I think what they're doing with the cars is beautiful, and really proud to have helped support on that side.

Andy: 26:00

So it's the elegance of the thinking, as well, that the elegance of the whole sorry, that's my word, not yours, but just springs to mind in terms of really appreciating the thought that's gone in beforehand, to reinventing the car.

Brett Mangel: 26:16

Yeah, some of the minimalist designs come about, you know, it's easy to see things that get big and bloated. And it's kind of refreshing when you see something that's just the essence of what it needs to be. Yeah, yeah, really appreciate there. You know, even from things like removing the vents in the interior of the cars. It's such an idea that I can't believe no one ever has ever done it, you know, it's just, we don't need those little plastic things that are going to break off after five years. And yeah, we can rethink all that stuff and kind of look at things in new.

Andy: 26:46

I remember conversations about grills as well. radiator grills, and when you absolutely don't need a radiator grill on an electric car, but are people ready for cars without radiator grilles on and things like that?

Brett Mangel: 27:01

Yeah, I used to hate that ugly nose, or I used to love that that nose cone on the front. Now I look at it. I'm like, man that looks so integrated. It looks so much cleaner without the grill.

Andy: 27:09

Yeah. Yeah. You also said, when you left your marketing company, you'd save some money, you had enough money then to sort of leave and to start applying for Tesla. So are you a spender or a saver?

Brett Mangel: 27:23

Primarily a little bit of a spender. But a decent investor, I guess things have worked out for me fortunately, some of that comes from just being in Silicon Valley, where I've seen Apple and Tesla and a couple other companies 10x. And it's, it's really enabled me to have more freedom. But I learned about investing young and I studied economics, so so that was always a part of it, you know, try to maximise what I do save, but I'm not as good of the budget as I probably should be.

Andy: 27:53

That's honest of you, thanks.

Brett Mangel: 27:55

I just gotta stop going out to restaurants, you know, start cooking more at home that would take care of everything. I like food.

Andy: 28:03

Same same. What advice I don't normally ask people to sort of give advice, but I think I'm really passionate about younger people understanding a little bit about money and investment. And you said you had some success, and you already grew up with that mindset. And then you studied economics. So are there some thoughts you'd share to, To people who didn't have that? Who were in their 20s? Say, and just starting out? What What would you have to say?

Brett Mangel: 28:32

Yeah, I would say that it's always doable. You know, there's a certain level of, I think complacency where people go, Oh, that's not for me. And the fact is, it can be for you, you have to kind of make some decisions and apply yourself towards it. But if you do, it's one of the highest return on investment activities, you will take the the ability to kind of like plan your own financial freedom, and the power that comes from compounding is really kind of unbelievable, especially if you start young. And so there's some resources out there, there's some great like financial independence. subreddits talk about this, talk about your savings rate and investing in, you know, index funds and just kind of be in safe with it. But it does work. And it's, I would say just go for it. It's not generally as complicated as it needs to be. And you can start real simple. And the main thing is believing that you can do it because if you believe you can't, then you know, go for it. But it's actually a really simple formula, you know, spend less than you earn and and invest some of that and as you slowly learn and lean into it, you'll start learning a little bit more about the compounding and different tools you have for compounding that money and it makes a lifetime a difference. You know, this last year I had COVID and I got laid off from what I thought was a great job and you never know what's gonna happen to you so being able to plan for the worst is always always good.

Andy: 29:52

That's great coming from someone who's a lot younger than me, Brett because when you're I think it's a really interesting point that you make about people believing that's not for them. You know, it's a whole different world that they don't inhabit. And as you say, as Henry Ford, who said, Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right. So very helpful. Thank you very much. And I don't think we've got into any danger there in terms of giving investment advice. We're just talking conceptually about the about the idea of it. And so thanks for sharing that. So you got into Tesla. Finally, it took you a year. How did you feel? Was it was it an email you got? Presumably not a letter by then an email that said, Come along? How did that How did someone phone you? What was the experience of actually being accepted?

Brett Mangel: 30:46

Yeah, it actually took about three years because I applied back in 2012. So went through one round of not getting not hearing anything back. And then the second time, yeah, I believe it was a phone call. No, it was an interview, before my first phone call. And I remember, walking out of I did actually have another marketing job for about three months that I was doing, I remember walking out of there, taking the phone call, just walking through the streets of San Francisco just been thrilled. And I had known someone else who got hired at Tesla, just recently. And so we talked for an hour just about how cool it would be to work there. And I was thrilled to talk to a few people like, Oh, I really like this new company I'm working for but you know, and it was like, now this would just be so stupid if I don't take this role. And then I went down for the interview. And I was just like, this is this is the place. I know some people would get a little bit more nervous on like interviews and first dates. And I'm definitely more not nervous on interviews, not say the same about first dates. I'm Yeah, it's completely different ballgame for me. And so I showed up there and was just like, this is where I need to be. This is where, yeah, I was just in the moment and confident and was thrilled to be there. Yeah, it was exciting.

Andy: 31:57

Can you remember? Can you remember anything of the interview itself?

Brett Mangel: 32:01

So I remember, I got really sick, I woke up just, I Yeah, there was something not right with my gut. And my way to get to Fremont from San Francisco was a motorcycle at the time. So I'd spend 50 minutes suited up on a motorcycle with a gut that was unpredictable. And I got there and just went into the bathroom, immediately took Pepto Bismol went into a couple of interviews, came back out to the bathroom again, took more Pepto Bismol went into our last interviews, came out took more and then I got back on the thing back got back on the bike to head back home and but the whole time I was there I had a smile on my face. You know, it was it was really interesting dichotomy of the best of times the worst of times, but it was, it was thrilling.

Andy: 32:44

So you were running on adrenaline and excitement about that? Was it challenging? The interview? You obviously enjoyed it? It sounds like you enjoyed it?

Brett Mangel: 32:54

Yeah, we had a couple of things that I remember I got wrong in the interview. And I was like, Man, I really, really got that right. We took an Excel test that I got mostly right. I did it quick time. So I was happy with that. And then I think the thing that ultimately landed me the interview was talking about how, you know, today, I want to solve this problem. And I have to go to my engineer at this date. And then tomorrow, I want to solve this problem, solve that, and then go to my engineer to further point. And then the next day I want to solve and go further and further. It's about progression. And I felt like that was the thing that stood out that I remember at least from my interview, the idea of progressing the idea of continuously getting better the idea of having like a passion for it and and the desire for growth. But everything else felt kind of normal. I did okay, on the Excel test. I got a couple things wrong. I did okay, on the other exercise, I got a couple of things wrong. But desire to grow, I think is something that they they really liked.

Andy: 33:47

And what was the role that you're going for?

Brett Mangel: 33:50

So as operations analyst for the service department,

Andy: 33:54

right. And what was it like when you actually started doing the, the job? And what were you doing? What was your responsibility there?

Brett Mangel: 34:03

Yeah, so my primary role was, I would work with a tool called Tableau to build dashboards, use some sequel to pull data into the dashboards as well. But that's a little bit was a little bit less of it at the time. And the goal was to build things so that people can understand where things are moving. A lot of the automotive business was moving part A from place B to place C, and making sure that those were done in a reasonable timeline. Making sure that we just knew where everything was, we weren't really understand, trying to understand quantum mechanics. A lot of it was logistics. So it was about having creating visibility into what was happening, issues that were happening with the car, whether or not those issues were increasing or decreasing, headcount needs and all that kind of stuff. So my goal was basically to answer questions, you know, a director would reach say Hey, what's going on with this? ah well let me build you a dashboard. And so I kind of saw myself as trying to beat the Google of service come to me with a question, and I'll either get you an answer or with the networking I was able to do, I was able to find someone who knew the answer. So, so that was my goal was just to be able to answer any question which I just, I loved.

Andy: 35:11

I love that you wanted it to be the Google of service, I saw that on your LinkedIn. And I thought, wow, that's, you have a really nice way of using words, you know, succinctly and very clearly. So I think I'm imagining I have no idea what happens. I just, I'm in awe of the way you must look at numbers and the way you must relate to numbers and be able to manipulate data. And I just see a glimpse of it also, that your use of languages is tidy. And so I appreciated that. And so the service area, so this was are we talked about keeping vehicles on the road, say a bit about what service responsibility you were in, we're not in, in building the cars now we're keeping the cars on the road are we yeah?

Brett Mangel: 35:52

Precisely, keeping the cars on the road, getting the cars on the road, making sure they're ready for delivery. And of course, service kind of touches a lot of different things, because it relates to the quality of the bill, the reliability of the vehicle. And so we kind of had our hands in a lot of pies, we had interfaces, like close relationships with what was happening at the end of line manufacturing, and quality assurance, as well as what was going on in the some of the engineering space. But the idea was to make sure that we had all the cars running at all times. So ideally, we didn't have too long of wait times, we had parts where they needed to be we had the headcount to support, and we had better ways to serve our customers to things like mobile service, whatever would make their lives a little easier. Yeah, one thing I really loved about it was yeah, just how important this was for people, you know, these people had gone out and spent $100,000 on a car taking a risk. Um, at the time, it was only model S's and model x's, which are pricey. And, you know, they needed this to get their kids to and from school every day, you know, these were real products in real people's hands had a big impact on their lives. They had done it, usually, with some sense of goodness of their heart, like the idea of let's try to help climate let's try to help this company. They all knew it was not a brand new Mercedes Benz with all the all the trimmings inside. And so they had taken this risk on us. And it felt like we really had a responsibility to serve these customers. So there was a lot of sense of importance to the work that we did, even though it wasn't as sexy as designing the cars or designing the manufacturing line. It really had a big sense of like, importance.

Andy: 37:20

Oh, it's hugely important. So this is the this the moment of truth when they're actually living with the vehicle? And does it does it work? And if it fails, how quickly and how well, does that get rectified is a huge responsibility. And the context I mean, it's worth reminding everyone of the context of this was a brand new company, or very relatively new company with a new product. Scaling. Yeah, unproven, growing the volumes, and being pulled in lots of different directions, lots of minimal resources. But say everything always stretched really thinly. And a growing number of vehicles out there needing to be serviced. And I guess more issues coming to light as they do with any new product. The more miles that go on it, the more you have out in the market, the more issues surface and so helping to, to to coordinate that was very valuable. And did you already by then have the sense that yeah, this is what I thought work would be like this is, you know, when I was frustrated in college, this is now shaping up to I've got more control. Now.

Brett Mangel: 38:34

Yeah, this was a just pinch myself, it's my dream job. I would was working in the factory, you know, every time we'd go to the bathroom, we had terrible dirty bathrooms up up some elevator up some stairs into like, just metal kind of blue collar just welded together bathrooms, and you have to walk by all the cars every time you go through, and you see them with their hazard lights on as they're ready for the next stage. And it's just, I'd walk that floor, just thrilled to be there. All the excitement around what was happening and all the chaos and sat next to some doors that people would go in and out of all the time. It's like catch face time with everyone who's walking by and it was amazing.

Andy: 39:13

You sound like you were part of something pretty exciting.

Brett Mangel: 39:16

Yeah. Yeah, I was very fortunate and grateful to be in that position. I had a friend who would sometimes stay late at night till you know, 10 or 11, when the line shut down, because we were only running one shift at the time. And we would just walk around the factory and, you know, a couple secret codes to get into some doors that we go check out this skunkworks area. It was always like trying to figure out, you know, just see everything that was happening to the change. It was very, was inspiring, inspiring.

Andy: 39:43

Yeah. I was fortunate enough to visit the factory in Fremont. And one of the things that struck me about it was how much of the car was actually made there, so right down to winding the copper around the motors that that's and I might be getting the terminology wrong because I'm not a mechanical engineer. But for me that was, you would know better than than I what they were doing there. But that to me seemed pretty darned fundamental if you like.

Brett Mangel: 40:11

yeah, it's crazy to see people putting together the main control units the touchscreens. And it's like I didn't, I'd never seen one of those being built, it's kind of crazy just to think that that can be built, you kind of always think just appears in some factory somewhere else and to see it with your own eyes every day as you walk through the cafeteria or whatever is pretty cool.

Andy: 40:30

Yes, that was another thing that struck me on that tour was the those touchscreens because when you see it in a finished car, you think, okay, 17 inch touchscreen, that's, you know, it's like a big iPad. That's what people typically say, isn't it? But then when you realise, oh, no, no, it's not an iPad, this is something Tesla have made themselves, because they couldn't buy what they wanted, at that size, and with the brightness that you need, so that you can see it in a car with, you know, lots of sunlight coming on it, and so on. So, these were moments for me, you know, realising what, what had gone into it. So how did tell us a little bit about how your role evolved? And your journey within Tesla?

Brett Mangel: 41:12

Yeah, so So my role evolved, essentially, when I started, I was kind of a gopher, you know, I would go for this data, I go for this data, help us with this answer. And over time, as I started getting more networks, people would kind of approach me at the beginning of a project and say, Hey, we're going to be launching this in two months, can you help us make sure we get set up with the data we need. And at that point, it turned into more of a consulting project where I would hop in there early on, help them understand their operations, help them create systems that would like work well with data and make sure we could track everything, make sure nothing was going to fall through the cracks, make sure that incentives and everything were kind of aligned. And it gave me the opportunity to be influential across a lot of different projects. So basically, I was able to kind of see a lot of the business see solutions that had been implemented on different sides and kind of be a cross pollinator for different ideas to go from, oh, here's what they're doing in quality, you know, is there something we can take from that when we're doing these instruction manuals its something that may seem completely out of left field, but having that kind of broad shaped general knowledge, along with the deep technical centre. So there's something like the idea of a T shaped person T shaped skillset? Have you heard that before?

Andy: 42:19

No, tell me more.

Brett Mangel: 42:21

So the idea is, you have one area where you go deep vertically, and you say this is my area of expertise. But you also have this broad general experience, that kind of makes a T across horizontally. And that allows you to have one place where you're firmly fixed, and you can get called in, like every project. But it also means that you can cross pollinate those projects with different ideas that you build up from different experiences. So that was kind of like my goal. I love learning a little bit technically. But really, I like seeing broader on the scope of business, how things are solved. And so that was kind of one of my driving like growth patterns that I was aiming for.

Andy: 42:58

So was it your curiosity that led you to naturally operate like that?

Brett Mangel: 43:04

Yeah, I think so. Some might have been like a FOMO, like a fear of missing out. I remember, I had some co workers who would sit next to me, and sometimes they'd be talking about something and I'd pipe up and go, Oh, what was that? And they'd be like, Brett, This doesn't concern you.

Andy: 43:17

If it happens in this factory i wanna know.

Brett Mangel: 43:20

Yeah, first six months, it was a little bit annoying. And then after that, I realised they realised like, you know, I learned some stuff about what else was happening. So you know, I used to organise some happy hours. And you hear a lot about people's real thoughts about things that happy hours. And it was great to be able to say, Oh, I know someone is doing something like that in this area. And I think communication is one of the biggest challenges at those big companies, and so anything you can kind of do to have that the ability to connect other people and connect people with solutions. It feels like there's a lot of value in it. But mostly for me, it was just I want to know everything about this company

Andy: 43:54

It's brilliant Brett. Absolutely brilliant. So thanks for sharing what your motives were very genuine, wholesome, sort of reasons for having that curiosity. And you know, I don't think FOMO is a bad thing. It's just natural, isn't it? What I'm thinking is, what an asset you start to become. And I love that term, you use cross pollinating. So I'm picturing in our little Brett the bee, if you like Brett the bumble bee, going from meeting to meeting across silos across divisions and departments, but with this knowledge, and a little bit of experience from each area, and being in a position to share that the value that would bring to the teams you are connecting with and and the power that then comes with that, that you started off saying you were a gopher, and then it sounds like over a relatively short space of time you'd have been a valued a very valued participant in those meetings.

Brett Mangel: 44:55

Yeah, I I certainly think so. It was something that kind of evolved naturally. Initially, I didn't think it was a lot of power as I was kind of going through it, you know, you run into things where try to tell a project manager this and they go, no this is how we're gonna do it. Oh, come on it No, no, this is, you know, you don't always make the final decisions. But one thing I realised over time, I got into a programme manager type role where I was managing service capacity for Europe for a little bit. And I realised you always had someone to answer to, you know, I would have to answer to finance at that point, or it's to the directors who had to answer the VP. Unless you're Elon, you always have someone to answer to. And so I really started to appreciate just how much influence I had once I was able to look back and go, oh, like, you know, you're not lesser than other people, because they're making the decisions on this project. Instead, what you have is the ability to influence a lot of projects and make sure everything kind of works well enough and call things out as you see them. So I've grown more appreciation for that role over the years since I left, but it was thrilling. You know, it was great to kind of be able to interface with different departments. And, you know, back to my goal of being the Google of service. If I didn't have the answer, I would try to find you, the person who did. And that cross pollination helped me network people and connect them. And I loved it. I thought it was gonna be a dream job. And it turned out better than I expected.

Andy: 46:16

That's, that's wonderful to hear. So you also hear some quite tough stories about the environment at Tesla, and some people come out of it feeling a little bit shell shocked if you like, not the case for you.

Brett Mangel: 46:32

I mean, we had stressful moments, but I, I always felt excited by them. I like tight deadlines. I liked when we had the impossible set before us. And it was just something that we kind of always got it done. I don't know why it was, but I like the adrenaline.

Andy: 46:47

And I'm not wanting to flatter you as it were, but I am thinking perhaps you had the capability to handle it, you were a high performer in your team.

Brett Mangel: 46:59

Yeah, yeah. I liked what I did. And when the crunch time came, that was when it was time to, to show off what I got. And I cherish those moments.

Andy: 47:08

Yeah. And I think so don't I won't make you say it. But I think you are good at it. From what I've, from what I've learned, so, okay, so you have it sounds an entire really positive experience. It was challenging, but it was not. It was within your capability, you could stretch yourself and see it as an as a wonderful invigorating testing in all the right ways challenge and do it and feel great about and get fulfilment that you didn't have in the in the first marketing job, for example, which probably wasn't anywhere near as challenging as the Tesla environment.

Brett Mangel: 47:48

I will say I think one thing that helped us helped it feel. I mean, in the beginning, it was overwhelming. And once I got good at it, it became less so. But what we had, and then as we kind of built these things, a lot of my answers would come down to links. So I wasn't always building something for someone every time. It was, hey, we have a question about this. Okay, here's the link for the answer, rather than build it again, because we already built it before for some other team. And so at some point, we got to the point where I was almost feeling like I had built enough links to answer almost everything. And so it kind of like, almost automated myself out of a job. Not quite that far. But I was looking forward to the next challenge. I got a little bit. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of things in order. And it was kind of ready for the next next exploration.

Andy: 48:29

And we will we'll go there, Brett. And I just want to ask you a question first, though, because I know from reading some of your blog posts that you're very passionate about helping people to understand the value that they can bring in an analyst role. And is now a good time to talk about that, or will that come as we talk? Yeah, so we've obviously we've touched on some of it, we've touched on how to treat the role with curiosity with an open mind as an enabler to be the Google of service these this mindset that you brought to the role, which elevates it and already kind of sets the tone for how you're going to approach it and how you're going to grow in it. But what else would you say to people who were looking at an analyst role and or whatever they would call it, you know, better than me, you know, what would you like to share on that?

Brett Mangel: 49:21

Yeah, I think a lot of what it came down to at Tesla was networking, because of how kind of big the company is how many projects are going on, you know, I had one coworker say, network or die. That was their slogan for all the new hires. And it really does help you kind of get across, break through all the silos, get across teams. You know, I was working in manufacturing, quality delivery, our used vehicle programme, service, of course, but networking was really helpful. So I actually considered kind of more of an extroverts job. an extrovert is good with numbers would be kind of the way I think about it. So put yourself out there, ask questions, and then another big thing was learn how to get things wrong and like the right way. So how do you build things so that you can set, you know, when you're trying to order parts, and you have 25 cars to make, you can order 25, or maybe your it can either 24 or 26 steering wheels always order 26, you know, make sure that you're erring on the side of caution and giving yourself a margin of error. And kind of over explain yourself when you have things that that might be wrong. And just try to tell everyone that these are going to be wrong, these forecasts are going to be wrong. So they don't give you too much pain at the end of it, but help them understand the process that goes through it. So for me, it was all about building things with simplicity and clarity, that were almost certainly wrong. But the end user of our data would be able to take it and say, I know how this is going to be wrong. I don't trust the answers of the data. But I trust the data. And I trust myself to make decisions with it. So don't go for complexity, go for simplicity, go for explanation, go for acknowledging that these things are going to be wrong, but try to be wrong in a way that allows for continued growth and network.

Andy: 51:04

There's a lot of really good stuff in there. The I don't know where to start really. I'm just gonna go with it

Brett Mangel: 51:12

Sorry, I just kind of blasted through them all.

Andy: 51:13

No it's, it's so helpful Brett. So let's start with, okay. The fact that your role, presumably, your role kind of required you to, to network and to crossover. Did you weren't expected to just operate in one silo? Or was it more that you had this attitude that this is a marketplace for my skills and my opportunity to add value. And I'm going to go and talk to some people and go to some meetings and sell them some of my, my tableaus or my dashboard

Brett Mangel: 51:47

I think it was a little bit less on the expectation side. And a little bit more of I just was. So when I started in the role, actually, let me back up. It was me and one other guy in my team. And he we had an intern for the summer as well. So he kind of taught the both of us how to work over that summer. And then he quit. And the answer was gone. And it was just me for about a month. And so I really gotten to this frenetic pace of working, right. As soon as he left, we had a president who started the next week and said, I need 20 dashboards by Monday. And I need to know everything about the service business by Monday, and it was like, Okay, well, it's all on me. So I really kind of felt a sense of like frenetic pace, I need to know everything. Because I was like the main guy in service. And so I think some of it came from that of like, trying to get ahead of it, trying to solve everyone else's problems. And then I don't know where the sense of like branching out, but I think where I think that sense of like, need to branch out into different departments came from but I loved manufacturing. And I love the quality side of things. And it was always just kind of like going one step further. I don't think there was as much expectation from others as there was for myself. But I think that starting out pace of you're the guy and you need to know everything for the whole department was probably something that helped get me into sprinting mode, and then I just didn't really let up for the next couple of years

Andy: 53:07

Yeah. So you were you were wound up in that phase, and just kept up that pace. But I think I read, it must have been one of your blogs, because I've only got to read it anywhere else, that you reached a point where you you had a lot of things under control. Is that right? And you then realised you could branch out? So it was easier to branch out? Because you you had your dashboards for most things. And

Brett Mangel: 53:34

yes, yeah, that was probably after about two years, I started to be kind of like, okay, we have most of this settled. And so I took on a couple roles in our manufacturing side, would hop on different programme management projects for our used vehicles or whatever else. And then I realised that I wanted to, like I was kind of reaching the limit of what I could do within service and in Fremont. And question was that I want to go for like a promotion, do I want to go switch to another team. I felt really valuable where I was, but I realised that I could move geographically. So I asked if I can move to Amsterdam made up a small little case for it, and moved to Europe, where I was able to see a different side of the service department. And that was kind of my next journey to kind of branch out in one direction and learn some more.

Andy: 54:24

And at what point how many years had you been with Tesla when you moved?

Brett Mangel: 54:27

I asked at two years and I moved it two and a half years.

Andy: 54:31

Right. And had you been overseas before?

Brett Mangel: 54:35

briefly, I spent a couple of weeks there back in shortly around the time I graduated college,

Andy: 54:40

because one of my guests Annie Wechter, who was actually episode one of the podcast, it was I think the first time she'd been overseas when she went to work in Amsterdam, and she had about two weeks notice to go and do it. So how was the experience for you of living and working in Amsterdam?

Brett Mangel: 54:59

It was great I mean, Amsterdam is a hard city to beat, just in general for, you know, late 20s, expat single guy moving over there, it was a blast. But the pace of life definitely felt a lot different at Tesla there than it did it, you know, in Fremont, the idea of not being in a factory, much smaller, much clickier organisation. And it was a fun change of pace. I don't think the factory, I think the factory was more exciting. But the lifestyle and everything that went around Amsterdam was, was also a lot more fun. So give and take. And I really appreciate the ability to learn about the cultural differences, the way the businesses ran, you know, there's something like 14 countries in Europe that we served at the time compared to the one country in the US. So it was kind of like, a lot more complexity around things. And I was able to see kind of the nuance that I had hadn't been able to while I was in California,

Andy: 55:52

did it feel like a fresh challenge then with different countries and different requirements? Or was it similar to what you'd been doing? You know, it was already it was sorted,

Brett Mangel: 56:04

it was a bit of a fresh challenge, mainly from the sense of like breaking in. So getting in into the group, and being able to kind of interact with everyone know who everyone was, and kind of gain their confidence was a fresh challenge. So I think we had, you know, when I first got there, a lot of my dashboards were still there, we made some changes to them. We built some Europe specific dashboards, but that wasn't the bulk of it. When I first got there, it felt like it was about six months of kind of like training and onboarding, and talking through the data with different people and just trying to kind of gain some level of like, a network over there. So you know, we'd hire new service managers, and walk them through our dashboard, show them how things worked, tried to get them to come visit me whenever they were in Amsterdam, in the headquarters. And it felt like it was a little bit slow and kind of rebuilding like a friend group when you go to a new, new community. But it wasn't wasn't as challenging from that. From the technical side of things.

Andy: 57:01

How long did you stick that out for

Brett Mangel: 57:03

I was spent a year and a half there in total with Tesla. And the role did develop to become a little bit more exciting. So my latest role there was helping with planning out European service capacity. So this is right before the launch of the Model three. Okay, how many new service centres do we need? How many new technicians do we need? Where do they need to be? How big do they need to be? And at what pace do we need to hire? And so that was, that was a much more fun, kind of challenging role that I felt like, Okay, this is this is the meat of the problem. This is why I came to Tesla.

Andy: 57:36

Yeah, you strike me as the sort of person Brett if I was, if you were in my team, I'd really want to make sure you were adequately challenged and not getting not getting bored. With what you were doing and you need a certain level of challenge to be stimulated.

Brett Mangel: 57:55

Yeah, I definitely feel it turns me up to a higher gear. So

Andy: 57:59

Yeah. So when did you leave Tesla? was that after Amsterdam, are we getting towards the end of your Tesla term.

Brett Mangel: 58:09

Yeah. So I had a two year stint two year contract for Amsterdam. And after a year and a half, they kind of changed my contracts. There was a big org change, they fired my boss, they fired it was supposed to be my new boss. And it just kind of felt like things were chaotic. And I got another offer. But the new offer was for a agricultural fintech company down in Kenya, that was working to try to provide smallholder farmers with more profit, trying to help their business basically through loaning them fertiliser, and seeds and other high value high return on investment inputs. And then we'd get paid back at the end of harvest. So it was an opportunity to kind of learn something new to build something from scratch, to go to a new, you know, a new place that I'd never been and experience, something that was completely different from everything I've been doing. So

Andy: 59:01

how did they find you?

Brett Mangel: 59:02

I met a guy at a party. They had a small office in Amsterdam that had, you know, six or eight software, basically their software team. And so they, I met a guy and he said, Oh, you do business intelligence. We're hiring for that. We have a startup. And I was like, Yeah, everyone has a startup, but met with the team. They were all brilliant. And I was like this. This seems cool. And then Tesla started going a little bit, getting a little bit chaotic and uncertain for my role. And it was, you know, I was excited about the opportunity and challenge so I jumped at it.

Andy: 59:37

I'm excited for you. And I'm looking forward to going to Kenya with you in a moment. I'm also thinking that I'm shaking my head here thinking how you were an asset, you're a real asset, in terms of what you could do what you brought to Tesla and but you were vulnerable at that point to an approach because of the environment that you found yourself in at that point, you use the word chaotic, particularly chaotic for people in your position there. So I don't know if we need to say more about it, but I just wanted to underline it because people, you know, bright people really good talent walks, if you don't pay attention to things like we're talking about, you know, just a moment ago, if there's not enough challenge, like if you were left to stagnate, for example, or if you just make it chaotic or anyway, uncomfortable in a sort of not a helpful, challenging way, but just in a, this is this is not not good.

Brett Mangel: 1:00:42

Yeah. Yeah, it was not a fun time. And before that, I didn't think I was really in a vulnerable position, but it did kind of, like sneak up on me. And it was like, they wanted to change my contract. And that came with some conciliations that I wasn't ready to make. And it was just, you know, I got this other opportunity. So

Andy: 1:01:01

and you go to a party and someone starts hitting on you from a

Brett Mangel: 1:01:07

Yeah, it's great. You know, 22 year old software engineer. He was a great guy. But, uh, yeah, he was interested and I came.

Andy: 1:01:16

So tell us, tell us. Tell us about that, then. And did you go directly from Amsterdam to Kenya, what happened?

Brett Mangel: 1:01:25

Now, so I had another six months left on my work visa in Amsterdam. So my plan was to stay there, get it renewed, and basically travelled down to Kenya once every couple months to kind of like, visit meet the team. You know, I had an employee down there, who was who was working with me, and didn't think anything of it was just having working at the Amsterdam office kind of live in my life. And then, as the visa deadline approached, I realised, like, oh, we have to get some of this paperwork in order, and it was taking longer than expected. And so I went down there for an extended like six weeks day, and then met a girl, loved my job down there realise it's about to be winter in Amsterdam. And, you know, it was Kenya was on the equator. So it all kind of worked out, I can move down there and have this, you know, exciting new life, so. And then if I didn't like it, after six months, I could come back to the Netherlands, but COVID changed those plans. But I figured, yeah, let's go for it. Let's move down and see how it goes. And it was a great experience.

Andy: 1:02:23

I'm thinking, I love first of all, I love it when my guests introduce a bit of romance into the story it's always nice. And also thinking Fremont. The difference between, say growing up in Fremont, and then I've never been to Kenya. So you're going to have to enlighten me, but how was it? Yeah. What was the contrast? Some of the contrast there?

Brett Mangel: 1:02:44

Yeah, it was a it's a very beautiful place, a lot of natural beauty. You know, I didn't really know what to expect that it might be a little bit dirtier than it was. But they've actually like banned plastic bags for like the last 10 years. So there's no plastic. There's not as much plastic as I expected on the streets. There's a lot of people and a lot of chaos and some smog from the buses. But it was a it was just a vibrant city with a lot of natural beauty around it. You know, there's monkeys throughout the city. There's a national park in the city that actually has, you know, lions and gazelles and giraffes and everything. We saw some zebras in the city was pretty cool. It kind of became the one of the roundabouts and is eating the grass out of it. So those are, like, irrigated. But yeah, it's a, an adventurous place with you know, a very hustling bustling downtown and a go getter attitude. So we worked with a lot of really smart people on our team who were out there, trying to make it all work. And, you know, a lot of them were kind of greener employees compared to our American and Dutch teams. You know, we had a lot of people who kind of were like, really top top performers in Silicon Valley, or would have been if they had been in that area, but some really smart engineers, and we were kind of building this organisation. And it was a cool experience. It was a bit of a contrast between the Dutch and the Kenyan mentality. But it was fun. It was great. very welcoming. Yeah,

Andy: 1:04:04

yeah. And so it's a startup environment. It sounds like you would be quite, quite seasoned by now. If you like, even for a young guy, you definitely earned your spurs in the cut and thrust of Fremont in the Tesla factory. So was this role fairly straightforward in terms of the work that you had today?

Brett Mangel: 1:04:25

Yeah, it felt it always felt okay. It wasn't as chaotic. The agriculture business works on seasons. So that means that we have two big like rainy seasons in Kenya, a long rain season and a short rain season. So long rains is like March and April. And then short rains is like, I think October and November, but we would basically be prepping for the season, so we'd have a chaotic rush. But once kind of the season got in full swing, it was like everything slowed down. So you know, once the rain started, we couldn't really do a whole lot and once the rains ended, it was like all right, like Now we have six months until our next next season really gets in swing. So

Andy: 1:05:04

you went from quarter end rushes to seasonal rushes

Brett Mangel: 1:05:09

Yeah, the difference was that at quarter end, I still had a lot of work to do there versus us at season end, it was like, now we had to make sure everything was in line, several months at a time, so we could get all the people through the process. Because it wasn't like we just had cars that were built, they were waiting for a couple parts to get pushed out the door. So the timeline in cadence was a little bit different. But there was still some sense of urgency and excitement, and then it settled down and some urgency and excitement and then it would settle down. So

Andy: 1:05:37

I'm not sure if I understood completely Brett when you described it, but were you providing these farmers with, with money or with seed and the what they needed?

Brett Mangel: 1:05:48

Yeah, it was seed insurance and training. So we were kind of loaning them agricultural supplies, and then they would pay us back at the end of harvest. Right. So I guess technically, we weren't a bank. We weren't executing like real loans. It was more like, almost like a layaway programme, or, you know, we're a supplier with, you know, 180 days later payment. But a lot of the same kind of like, like business practices applied of kind of making a loan, approving them for loans. Yeah. So the goal was ultimately to increase their profits and help them grow more food.

Andy: 1:06:22

very noble. And a worthy mission to be to be following. And the girl that you met was she based in Kenya, or was

Brett Mangel: 1:06:34

so she had moved to Kenya about a week before I did. And so she was actually Canadian, but had been been working in West Africa for a little while before moving to East Africa. And yeah, it made for a nice welcoming and introduction to Kenya.

Andy: 1:06:49

Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure. And how long did you stay there for?

Brett Mangel: 1:06:53

So we left when COVID hit, there was a lockdown on March 25. And so I got the flight on March 24. And she got a flight on March 25. Yeah, it was chaotic times. That was stress that I didn't like, I like stress at Tesla. But that stress was not as much fun.

Andy: 1:07:10

What's the difference? Conceptually there? Do you think?

Brett Mangel: 1:07:13

I think some of it there was, you know, at Tesla, we knew it. We knew that we had the support of like all the people around us, we knew that we were all on the same team. If we failed, we failed together. And if we didn't, if we succeeded, then it was, you know, something to look forward to. Whereas around the time of COVID, we didn't really know what was going on. We were in a foreign country. And if we missed our flights, we would have been like trapped there. So I remember, we actually both booked flights out for March 25, the same time. And then like six hours before? Well, on the previous day, they sent me a message, your flight has been cancelled, and you have been reassigned to the March 24 flight. And you have six hours to get to the airport and, you know, pack up and everything. And basically had to leave her behind. And that was always a bit stressful, as you know, I would rather be on the flight after her than the flight before her. And so yeah, that was a chaotic, chaotic moment. And we'd rather not re go through that. But it was a

Andy: 1:08:12

Yeah, it just sounds stressful. But you both got back. You both got back. And where did you come back to then.

Brett Mangel: 1:08:20

So I came to California, I was trying to go to Canada with her. But they wouldn't allow Americans in at that point. I think I'd missed it by, you know, a day or two on one of our previously booked flights. And came back to California and was trying to keep up with the Kenyan work and trying to deal with some of the chaos of handling the long distance relationship and the stress that was going on in the quarantine and all that stuff. So spent three months in California at a friend's house and yeah,

Andy: 1:08:48

but you had then enforced separation, and did your job carry on? You can your job carried on?

Brett Mangel: 1:08:55

Carried on for about three months. So I made it to, I think mid June. And, you know, our repayments rates were really low, and we laid off a good, good portion of the team. And I think with me being in California, my future was uncertain with the company. And yeah, I got laid off along with them. But it was great because we actually me and my girlfriend were able to reunite the next day. And so having that time off to kind of re nurture what we had lost was was appreciated.

Andy: 1:09:24

Wonderful, wonderful. And what happened workwise then after that,

Brett Mangel: 1:09:29

after that, we just kind of travelled for a while. So we had a we weren't able to she wasn't able to stay in the US. She was able to make it through to August, and then

Andy: 1:09:37

It sounds like, yeah. Wow. Sounds pretty cool. I love the her visa expired. So we had to go to the next place that would let us in which was Croatia is the one we chose. And then we went to Hungary because they would let us in and then from Hungary we can get into the Netherlands again. And then she got into school in Paris and so we went to Paris for a while. And then I got kicked out of the US for a little bit so I got into apartment in Austin. So at least I had a home base, Paris got locked down. So she went back to Kenya because it was way cheaper and it wasn't locked down. And it was sunny. And so I joined her in Kenya for a little while. But then she got a job in Guatemala. And on and on, it's been a pretty wild year. idea that, because it can be quite difficult to work out where to go to, but if someone's made it easy, right? Well, where's the only place that'll let us go who will have is right now Croatia? Okay. Well, yeah.

Brett Mangel: 1:10:34

Fortunately, we never got COVID throughout the whole experience, too. So it was a, you know, it wasn't as terrible as it could have been. And we had a nice little forced vacation.

Andy: 1:10:43

Yeah. Over How long were you doing that travelling?

Brett Mangel: 1:10:46

So the first part started last August and ran until maybe like November. And then back in January, I went, end of January, I went to visit her in Kenya and spend a month in Guatemala. And, yeah, it was a, an experience.

Andy: 1:11:01

Wonderful, wonderful. And are you, I think you're working now with a consulting firm

Brett Mangel: 1:11:06

Correct. So I'm doing a couple things. One is I am consulting with a, an AI consulting company here. And they're actually in Boston, but you're in the US. And they build data systems for high stakes industries. So healthcare and finance, primarily, some life sciences. And so learning a bit more of the technical side there learning about some new industries. But also some, you know, a couple hours a week, I spent some time with a company in Kenya that I advise, who is ramping up electric vehicles, so still have a connection to that space, and they're called Opibus. And they're doing some really cool things with converting buses to electric converting Safari vehicles to electric as well as ramping their own line of electric motorcycles. So really bringing that kind of underserved space in Africa, kind of to the forefront and trying to ramp up the zero emissions vehicles over there. Which is pretty cool.

Andy: 1:12:00

Yes. Yeah. Very cool. So has that brought us up to the present day?

Brett Mangel: 1:12:06

Pretty much. Here we are in 2021. Yeah, been a wild ride. But it was a short career. But uh, we have a short career to cover, but it's been a fun one so far.

Andy: 1:12:16

Yeah, and lots of really good golden nuggets that you shared. And, and some recurring themes as well, Brett that I love to reinforce. And one of those, you know, for example, that curiosity and making sure you get into other departments and get to know people and understand what they do, and network, that's been a recurring theme of the guests that I've had, I think in your case, you also knew at a fairly early age, what you enjoyed doing and, and where your strengths were, and, and so on. So another, another great thing to know, and to then be able to follow up, you know, follow through on so it's been absolute pleasure getting to know you over the last hour or two. And thank you very much indeed for sharing your story. With me. I'm looking forward to staying connected with you from now on so thanks very much.

Brett Mangel: 1:13:17

Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's always fun to walk through this and hear someone else's perspective on it. So I was glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Andy: 1:13:29

You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy Follows, I hope you found some helpful points to reflect on in Brett's story, some takeaways for me, the clarity of thought that he had that realisation at an early age about the changing nature of the world. And the misalignment that there was between that and the educational process. He had a theory about it. And he was prepared to test it himself with himself as the guinea pig, if you like he saw school and college as a necessary but frustrating phase to have to pass through. And he looked forward to the relative freedom and levels of control that he expected would be a feature of the workplace. And he was right, he did indeed flourish in a challenging working environment. And when that level of challenge tailed off a little bit, he became bored. He had innate curiosity to want to know what was going on in other areas of the business. And he was able to cross pollinate, as he called it between divisions because of his T shaped approach where he was deep in one sector but spread across other sectors as well. He enjoyed the different pace of life in Amsterdam, and I thought it was interesting how when the environment became more chaotic, that culture changed, he became vulnerable to approach from other organisations. I think that's a very valuable thing for us to be aware of. We publish these episodes to celebrate my guests careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. I am genuinely interested to know what resonated with you. If you have any comments or feedback for us. If you've got any questions, or if Brett's insights have helped you in any way, then do please let us know by leaving a review. Your feedback helps us grow. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser, or you can find the episode our instagram at Career-view Mirror and put a comment there. Some listeners have reached out to me with specific requests and I've been able to introduce them to our guests to discuss their own career direction. And that's been very rewarding for me, for my listeners and for my guests, and thank you to all of you for sharing your feedback. Thanks also to Hannah our producer, to be among the first to know about upcoming guests follow us on Instagram @careerviewirror and if you know people who would benefit from hearing these stories, please show them how to find us. Thank you for listening