Los Angeles was almost finished, at least as data.
Reonomy had been rebuilding its data-processing pipeline and the technology around it. The new system was written in Scala, which I thought was pretty neat, and the team was using it to finish a new market in Los Angeles.
The next problem was capacity.
We wanted to increase ingestion, but recruiting enough people for that team would take time. I reached out to an engineering friend whose group had done consulting engagements and asked whether there might be a useful overlap while I staffed up.
I did not have a packaged project ready to hand over. The point of the note was to explore whether part of the work fit their experience and whether a temporary engagement could help us keep moving. He was interested in finding a piece of the system that his team could build with us and then train us to operate.
That made the conversation worth having. The pipeline was ours, and the long-term team still needed to be ours, but a focused project might bridge the gap without pretending I could hire everybody immediately.
Two months earlier, I had been sketching a consulting network for small, high-value pieces of work. Now I was sitting on the other side of the same question. Reonomy had a specific technical push, a hiring delay, and a possible outside team that could help for a while.
Nothing was agreed yet. We had a rebuilt pipeline nearing its first new market, an ingestion team that needed more people, and a call to see whether consulting could cover one part of the distance.
Scala was the neat part. Staffing it was the actual work.